O’Donnell: The more the warier with Bears’ coaching search
CATASTROPHIC WILDFIRES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, an impending change in U.S. Presidential administrations and the No. 1 question topping all above the Chicago sports horizon is:
What's next for the Bears’ coaching search?
Despite a list of candidates that seems longer than well wishes on social media for the new baby daughter of Patrick Mahomes — Golden Raye, born Sunday — there are probabilities behind the ragged curtain at Halas Hall.
Among them:
--- confusion;
--- nonsense;
--- a bad outcome.
Anyone want to bet the other sides?
(That tote board would include the alternatives: no confusion, 100-1; no ongoing nonsense and wasted time, 1,000-1; and, a Super Bowl championship outcome from the next HC, Multiple Mega Millions-1.)
WITH NO FEWER THAN NINE INTERVIEWS in the can and more to come, what have George McCaskey and the Bears proven so far?
A.: They have no idea what they're looking for.
It's analogous to the old football axiom that when a coach is waffling between two starting QBs, he has none.
Only here's a desperate NFL franchise that's stack-caking a double-digit list of head coaching interviews.
(Maybe McCaskey and Co. could squeeze more revenue by charging each “an interview processing fee.”)
THE PAINT-BY-NUMBERS DUST PANNING is perfectly in keeping with the inert culture of the most mismanaged franchise in the National Football League.
Whoever winds up taking the haunted job is either an optimist beyond all reason or a hungry, self-impaling sort who can find some deep-coded link between the '85 Super Bowl Bears and the current paw patrollers.
(The deep-coded password could be: “Waechter.”)
IF DETROIT'S BEN JOHNSON TAKES the Chicago opening, all it would prove is that he's young, naive and represented by people who have no idea what thorough due diligence is all about.
Any further interviews involving Mike McCarthy, Pete Carroll, Ron Rivera and other AARP-eligibles should be conducted at the Field Museum of Natural History.
All of the others in the Lake Forest roundabout merely mean that an underperforming company has a well-paying, high-profile opening, complete with a promising young quarterback and a treacherous trap door on the far side.
THE LEADERS OF THE PACK FOR head coach hiring in the NFL during the Super Bowl era have been the Rooneys of Pittsburgh.
They've known what they wanted. They've understood the tricky blend of football philosophy and fan base. In 56 seasons, they've stood by their three selections — Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin — through growing pains to Lombardi Trophy triumphs to the inevitable end of the dance-hall days.
AND THE BEARS?
What head coach has ever walked out of Halas Hall happy?
It's all about a corporate charter apparently predicated on confusion, nonsense and bad outcomes.
STREET-BEATIN':
The NFL Wild Card weekend was the first in which five national TV services — ABC/ESPN, CBS, Fox, NBC and newcomer Prime Video — aired playoff games. And it was CBS — the only network with two telecasts — that had both the most refreshing duo (Ian Eagle and Charles Davis, Chargers-Texans) and the worst (Jim Nantz and the hopeless Tony “Skids” Romo, Broncos-Bills). …
Back to the Bears: Intriguing backstage chatter that the team has lost too much ground to rivals in the weight room since the death of Clyde Emrich three years ago. “The Legend,” then age 90, was in active emeritus status with the team and had influenced every coaching regime from George Halas to Matt Nagy. Halas hired Emrich as the league's first strength coach in 1971. …
All indications are that White Sox TV play-by-play man John Schriffen will be back for a second season. He was brutalized by segments of a ravenous Chicago sports media during a markedly poor rookie season. But the ultimate question shouldn't be about Schriffen's skill level. More properly, it would be directed toward the people who hired such an unfinished hopeful for big-market MLB. …
The dismissal of staff by Jerry Jones and the Cowboys means Fremd High's very own Scott Tolzien is technically a free agent. Tolzien has been the QBs coach in Dallas for the past three seasons. As has been stated before, there's this wild cosmic notion that he'll one day wind up back at Wisconsin — where he starred under Bret Bielema and won the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award in 2010. …
For archivists at The Gary Deeb Museum of Chicago Broadcast Communications, busybody Mike Leiderman forwarded the order of No. 1 sports anchors that the late Greg Gumbel worked behind during his TV start at WMAQ-Channel 5 (1973-81). The list: Johnny Morris, Tim Weigel, Al Meltzer and John O'Reilly. (Gumbel bolted for ESPN when Chet Coppock got to Ch. 5 and never stopped rising.) …
And faithful reader John Barton, on that broad search committee for a new Bears head coach: “Why haven't they included the head trainer, to find out what each candidate's tendencies are for going out on to the field when a player is down?”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.