Emery: Bears’ leadership will help Marshall

Bears general manager Phil Emery said he feels confident that the team’s character and leadership in the locker room and on the coaching staff will help control troubled wide receiver Brandon Marshall.

“I look at our situation in our locker room,” Emery said on a conference call Thursday. “We have a very strong core group of players who are focused on winning and are good people. So, No. 1 is, we evaluated Brandon in that context. We believe we’re bringing him into a very strong core of other players.

“The other part of that is the composition of your coaching staff, and I think that we have the right head coach for this situation, for Brandon.

“Coach (Lovie) Smith is the same person day in and day out. With Brandon, that’s what he needs, he needs some consistency, and coach Smith has shown over time that he is that model of consistency. He is a players’ coach, he’s a demanding person, but he’s also a compassionate person that players can relate to.”

Marshall is an elite talent and tremendously productive player whom the Bears acquired Tuesday from the Miami Dolphins for a pair of third-round picks.

But he has a lengthy and sordid history of off-the-field problems including violence against women. Just last weekend he was involved in a fracas at a New York City nightclub around 4 a.m., where he allegedly punched a woman in the face after his wife had been struck in the head with a bottle.

Because of his previous problems, the league could suspend Marshall, depending on his involvement in this latest incident, which is still being investigated. But Emery declined to speculate.

“We’re getting a little far ahead of the process,” the GM said. “The league has contacted us. We’re in contact with the league. We are working through this process with them along with doing our own work.”

Marshall has been very public about being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder last summer and trying to improve his behavior through treatment.

“I’m not an expert in this disorder, and I would never pretend to be,” Emery said. “I do know we’re going to support Brandon in every way possible, not only as a teammate and a player, but in terms of his disorder.

“Brandon’s been very public with it. I’m assuming that he will continue to. We will make sure that he has the same support structure that has helped him advance and help him move forward as a person and mature and grow.”

While Emery said the final decision on trading for Marshall was his, he consulted with ownership, Smith and others in the organization. New quarterbacks coach Jeremy Bates was an assistant in Denver when Marshall was with the Broncos, and Jay Cutler was the starting quarterback there for two-plus years.

“As we were looking at bringing Brandon in,” Smith said, “Phil wanted to know … was I completely on board with Brandon coming here, and the answer is ‘Yes.’ I understand some of the issues that he’s had in the past. I just felt like he would still work here. I felt really good about it.”

Emery hopes that Marshall’s transparency about his condition outweighs his latest incident and his checkered past.

But if the pattern that has developed over the past five years continues, it will haunt Emery and the Bears for years. It’s not just Emery’s reputation, but that of the Bears and the McCaskey family that hangs in the balance.

“His public acknowledgment of his disorder tells me a lot about his courage and about the type of person he is,” Emery said. “It makes a big statement to me about who he is as a person.

“Also, the performance on the field reveals the person’s football character in terms of his passion, his toughness, and his competitiveness. We know Brandon’s one of the top players in the NFL, and that speaks volumes about his football character.”

It’s Marshall’s ability on the field that speaks volumes about why the Bears risked so much.

“Despite the problems that Brandon has had — and he acknowledges, and we acknowledge that he has had — he has always performed at a very high level on the field,” Emery said.

“He’s a three-time Pro Bowl player. In the last five years he has the second-most catches (474) in the league, only behind (New England’s) Wes Welker.”

That’s the bottom line.

rlegere@dailyherald.com