The Chicago Bears have dismissed offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Now what?
Chicago is sitting at 4-5 on the season with a rookie quarterback on pace to eclipse 3,000 yards and score nearly 20 touchdowns, which is by far and away the best by a rookie quarterback in team history. From the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like a situation that warrants the most drastic change a club has made in-season.
But it was a lack of adjustments that doomed Waldron in Chicago. Something had to be done for a team that hadn’t scored an offensive touchdown in 23 drives. That’s two whole games. The offense as a whole has scored just 12 points in that span. The progress your first overall pick made in a three-game win streak prior to the Bears’ bye has been completely undone.
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Caleb Williams and Chicago’s offense have the sixth-lowest total EPA as a unit. The last three weeks since their bye week, Williams has a 50.5% completion rate, the lowest of any quarterbacks with at least 50 dropbacks in that span, per PFF. His 63.8 passer rating is the worst of any such quarterback. Williams is averaging 4.7 yards per attempt, which is second-worst.
And yet, whether it was because of the play calls or Williams’ own desire to make plays, he has the 10th-highest average depth of target in the last three games. He’s got the third-longest average time to throw. With that offensive line, which at one point had four of the five players on it out of position in last week’s 19-3 loss against the New England Patriots, holding the ball is the last thing Williams can afford to do.
What’s even more befuddling is that Williams has the second-best EPA per dropback on short and intermediate passes among quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks on the season, according to Next Gen Stats. He has the fifth-best passer rating on such throws.
Why aren’t more of those being called?
Players like tight end Cole Kmet, who had become a bit of a safety blanket for Williams leading up to the bye has been a non-factor in the three games since. He’s one of those players that occupy those short and intermediate routes. Not to mention, the pair have the second-highest EPA per attempt of any quarterback-tight end duo with at least 20 pass attempts. Williams has a 122.5 passer rating when targeting Kmet. He has an 85.3% completion rate.
It’s not as if Kmet has been fully utilized as a blocker, either. A way to help out the offensive line could be to use heavier personnel; think multiple tight ends, multiple running backs, etc. Except, the Bears haven’t been doing that, either. They have been in 12 personnel (one running back, two tight ends) just 20.8% of the time over the last three weeks, which ranks 23rd league-wide. They haven’t once put two running backs on the field at the same time in that span. There hasn’t been much creativity at all as far as personnel groupings go — the Bears have utilized just four unique types in the last three games. That’s tied for the second-fewest, though maybe not so out of character for a disciple of Sean McVay. The Rams are one of the only teams who has used a fewer number of groupings at three in that span. McVay lives in 11 personnel and that’s not hyperbole.
That’s all well and good if your offensive line can handle straight five-man protections or if your quarterback can get the ball out quickly and make decisions quickly, too. That isn’t the case in Chicago and that’s why Waldron is no longer the offensive coordinator.
Bears fire OC Shane Waldron — how much of it is on Caleb Williams?
So where do the Bears go from here?
They will move on to Thomas Brown, the team’s pass-game coordinator, who will be given another shot midseason to take over play-calling duties. It happened when he was in Carolina last year and head coach Frank Reich was fired. It’s still not quite a fair shake given that the playbook is the playbook at this point. The offensive system is already in place. It’s going to be up to Brown to figure out how to rearrange the pieces into something more productive. It’s going to be up to Brown to do what his predecessor couldn’t: adjust.
Within this powerhouse division, it wasn’t likely to begin with that the Bears would contend for the NFC North crown. I am on record over and over again this past offseason saying that more realistic expectations should have been placed on the Bears this season: let your young quarterback show signs of improvement, let him break Chicago’s dismal rookie records, maybe get to a winning record. That was realistic and that was enough for Williams’ first year.
That is all still possible, albeit the latter is getting increasingly unlikely. The Bears will begin intra-division play this week against the big, bad Green Bay Packers. Chicago hasn’t beaten Green Bay since 2018. They’re 2-18 against the Cheeseheads over the last decade. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur, has never lost to the Bears.
As if that wasn’t daunting enough, the Bears will have to face the Packers yet again to wrap up the season. In between those two games, they’ll get the better-than-expected Minnesota Vikings twice and the unstoppable Detroit Lions twice. Oh, they’ll also have to play San Francisco and Seattle. To get to a winning record, they’ll need to steal five wins. That means splitting every division series and beating the 49ers and Seahawks. It’s a tall task and it starts with their nemesis this weekend at home.
But hey, stranger things have happened. It would go a long, long way for the Bears to emerge victorious on their turf this Sunday with plenty of green and gold in the stands. Maybe the dismissal of Waldron will end up being an addition by subtraction. Maybe it will give them a spark.
Lord knows the Bears could use it.
Head coach Matt Eberflus could use it.
It’s hard to imagine that Eberflus will be the coach of the Chicago Bears much longer. They would have to do some miraculous things down the stretch to keep Eberflus in position. The Bears have never fired a head coach in-season. They likely won’t start now. But it’s hard to think there will be any real deliberation as the season concludes — not when Eberflus has seemingly lost control of the locker room as he has these past few weeks.
Bears veterans reportedly wanted Caleb Williams benched before Shane Waldron’s firing
Players have openly come out and questioned coaching decisions to the media. What they haven’t openly done, is backed Eberflus when asked directly about his job security. That’s different from last year, and even the year before when Chicago recorded just three wins. Flus has a 14-29 record since arriving in Chicago. That body of work, not to mention firing two offensive coordinators in the same calendar year, isn’t a resume befitting of faith and trust going forward.
The next hire the Bears make at head coach could be their most important to date, as it has been over the last decade. It will be the third-straight time the franchise has fired a head coach the year after drafting a quarterback in the first round. Both of the other two quarterbacks were also let go of before their rookie contracts were even over.
In order for Williams to not follow suit, he’ll need the sort of coach both Mitch Trubisky and Justin Fields never had.
Both of those players had multiple coordinators and first-time head coaches.
If the Bears want something different for Williams, it’s going to cost money, and a lot of it. Is the franchise willing to make that happen for a big-name coach?
Only time will tell.
Carmen Vitali is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. Carmen had previous stops with The Draft Network and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. She spent six seasons with the Bucs, including 2020, which added the title of Super Bowl Champion (and boat-parade participant) to her résumé. You can follow Carmen on Twitter at @CarmieV.
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