Getting fired is simply part of the job for any NFL coach, and that alone doesn’t disqualify any candidate the Bears are vetting in their ongoing search. If Bill Belichick and Andy Reid can get pushed out, anybody can.
Not all firings are created equally, and the Bears have seen that illustrated in their last two. When they booted Matt Nagy after the 2021 season, he left with a winning record, two playoff appearances in four seasons and an image mostly untarnished. There’s little doubt someone else eventually will give him another shot.
Matt Eberflus, meanwhile, might have trouble getting a coordinator job anytime soon and is unlikely to ever get a second chance at being an NFL head coach. The reasons are too obvious and extensive to bother restating.
It’s all about context, and that’s a critical component for Bears general manager Ryan Poles to evaluate as he considers coaches looking for another shot at the top job like Pete Carroll, Mike McCarthy, Brian Flores and Kliff Kingsbury. The Bears interviewed or plan to interview eight coaches who have done it before in the NFL, counting Mike Vrabel, who is off the board after being hired by the Patriots.
Their most experienced candidates are Carroll, McCarthy and Ron Rivera, a trio that has a combined 49 seasons of experience in the head coach’s office. All three already have interviewed.
Carroll, 73, was fired as head coach twice in the 1990s before great runs at USC and with the Seahawks. His exit from Seattle after the 2023 season was portrayed as mutual, but it was clear from his later comments he wasn’t looking to leave.
Once he got things rolling with the Seahawks, Carroll had just one losing season from 2012 through ’23. He launched quarterback Russell Wilson’s career by having the wisdom to play him as a rookie — a third-round pick, by the way — over pricy free-agent acquisition Matt Flynn, then had two winning seasons and a playoff appearance after the Seahawks offloaded Wilson for draft picks.
Carroll was swept out because things were going merely fine, not great. Fine would be a step up for the Bears and many other teams. He went 137-89-1 with the Seahawks; it’s been three decades since the Bears had a run close to that.
It’s similar for McCarthy, 61, after the Cowboys moved on from him this month. While he’s not the most thrilling candidate, he made the playoffs 9 of 13 seasons with the Packers and 3 of 5 seasons with the Cowboys. Both teams did well under his watch, but wanted to shake things up in the hope that someone new could reenergize the team and vault them to greatness.
That’d be a nice problem to have at Halas Hall, where Nagy got an extra season after back-to-back 8-8 records and Eberflus kept his job despite a 10-24 start rife with missteps.
Rivera’s situation is a different story. As much as the Bears love him for being a linebacker on their 1985 championship team and masterful work as defensive coordinator for them in the mid-2000s, his time coaching the Panthers and Commanders was relatively uninspiring.
Rivera, 63, had some very good seasons with Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, including a Super Bowl appearance, but had a losing record in three of his last four seasons. He didn’t have a winning season in four years with the Commanders. The last time he did was in 2017.
The candidates with less experience — Flores, Kingsbury, Arthur Smith and Vance Joseph — come with more questions than those three. And the biggest question is whether they grew from their failures.
Kingsbury brought out the best in Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, but why did their relationship appear to sour at the end? And can he be enough of a disciplinarian to straighten out the Bears?
Williams thinks so based on their season together at USC. He said this month he wants a discipline-minded coach and listed several other important qualities, then said Kingsbury “fits a bunch of those.”
Flores made meaningful progress with the Dolphins, who were highly dysfunctional at the time, and probably didn’t deserve to get fired—he sued the team alleging owner Stephen Ross bribed him to lose games — but has he actually changed after quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s comments about him being “a terrible person”?
Did Smith, who did very well as offensive coordinator for the Titans and Steelers, come away from his firing in Atlanta with a firm grasp on why his team was so inconsistent and sloppy?
Was Joseph doomed in Denver because he never had a legitimate quarterback, or was he in over his head taking the step up from defensive coordinator to head coach?
All four must answer those questions in interviews, and the Bears must decide whether those are lessons learned or errors bound to recur.
Still, that might be easier to assess than hearing untested coaches talk about hypotheticals. With Lions coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady and others trying to make the leap for the first time, it’s all projection.
The Bears bought into what they believed were good answers and smart plans from Nagy and Eberflus, but neither was ready. Neither truly understood the job other than through observation, and it showed. While Kingsbury and others weren’t great in their first try, at least they understand firsthand what they’re getting into.
All experience, good or bad, can be productive. It depends on whether the coach uses it to adjust his course going forward.