Bears Blitz

Published by Kristopher Knox on November 27, 2014
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears

When the Chicago Bears hired Marc Trestman to be their new head coach back in early 2013, the thought was that the offensive guru could build a perennial contender with quarterback Jay Cutler as his centerpiece. 

Though Trestman‘s most recent success had come in the Canadian Football League, the onetime University of Minnesota quarterback possessed a lengthy NFL resume. 

From 1987 to 2004, Trestman served as either a quarterbacks coach, an offensive coordinator or an assistant head coach with a number of NFL franchises. Quarterbacks who thrived under Trestman‘s tutelage included Bernie Kosar, Rich Gannon, Jake Plummer, Scott Mitchell and Steve Young.

With a talented, strong-armed quarterback to coach in Cutler, Trestman seemed like a smart hire for a team looking to establish an offensive identity.

After Thursday’s embarrassing 34-17 road loss to the division rival Detroit Lions, there’s a solid chance that many Bears fans simply identify Trestman (and his collective coaching staff) as offensive.

It was relatively easy to forgive last season’s 8-8 disappointment. Cutler missed five games due to injury, and players were learning new schemes on both sides of the football.

There were also at least some signs of promise as Cutler finished the 2013 season with a career-high 89.2 passer rating and Trestman managed to produce a 3-2 record with backup Josh McCown (who finished with an even better rating of 109.0).

Unfortunately, those signs of promise were not a precursor to actual 2014 success.

Coming into Thursday’s game, the Bears ranked just 20th in scoring (21.5 points per game on average) despite being able to move the football well (346.5 yards per game). Mel Tucker’s defense ranked 30th, allowing an average of 27.5 points per game. While Cutler held a passer rating of 93.0 for the season, he also continued to show a penchant for untimely mistakes (18 turnovers).

Inconsistency has also become a big trend for the Bears in 2014. Chicago’s average margin of victory through Week 12 was 9.2 points per game. The average margin of defeat was a staggering 18.8 points.

Thursday’s performance was a prime example of one of those bad defeats. Despite holding a 14-3 first-quarter lead, Trestman‘s Bears ended up losing by 17, and Cutler threw another pair of interceptions (one extremely ill-advised, one as time expired).

The defense surrendered a whopping 474 total yards of offense to a Lions unit that had averaged just 332.5 yards per game for the season.

Aside from being a truly putrid performance on nearly every level, the loss dropped Chicago to 5-7 and almost assuredly out of the playoff picture. It also ensures that neither of Trestman‘s first two seasons will end with double-digit wins.

This is hardly the type of progress the Bears were looking for when general manager Phil Emery fired Lovie Smith after a 10-6 season (with no playoffs) in 2012.

In fact, regression has been the reality for Chicago since firing Smith—stat lines for Cutler, Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery aside. 

In 2012, the Bears ranked fifth in total defense (315.6 yards allowed per game), third in scoring defense (17.3 points per game allowed) and 16th in scoring offense (23.4 points per game on average). 

More importantly, Chicago was not realistically eliminated from playoff contention by Thanksgiving that season.

It is easy to blame Tucker for rolling out ineffective defensive schemes. It is equally easy to blame Cutler for his baffling decision-making and for failing to be a team leader and an offense spark. However, Trestman himself must bear the brunt of the criticism for orchestrating this Chicago decline.

His inability to get his team prepared and driven for all four quarters is the ultimate reason why the Bears are all but done in 2014, and Trestman is probably all but done in Chicago.

Trestman rarely seems to bring a truly creative game plan (counting on mistakes from the opposition is not a plan), seems to make minimal halftime adjustments and never appears emotionally involved in the on-field action. 

He simply seems too eager to shrug his shoulders and move on to next week once the team falls behind late in ballgames. There was perhaps the perfect example of this on Thursday when Trestman trotted out the punt unit on fourth down despite being down three scores late in the fourth quarter. 

A 20-point loss wouldn’t have hurt much more than a 17-point defeat in this instance, but punting the ball away was Trestman‘s way of admitting he had given up and was looking ahead to the Dallas Cowboys.

His players have appeared just as quick to give up on a game this season, which is likely why so many losing efforts have turned into disastrous blowout defeats. It’s also the reason it feels like the Bears gave up on their 2014 season some time ago. If Chicago is hoping for a change in the near future, it just might be time to give up on Trestman. 

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