Three head coaching candidates the Bears need to avoid like the plague

Seeing a loved one get involved in a bad relationship is a painful feeling. As friends or family, we can do our part to stop them from doing something that will inevitably end badly, but in the end they have to make their own decisions and mistakes.

Chicago Bears fans have been going through the same vicious cycle of helpless déjà vu for years because our favorite team has been attracted to the wrong people for years. Time and time again, the Bears have hired an uninspired head coach, only to watch the team and the relationship inevitably fall apart.

It is especially dangerous to enter into a new relationship immediately after ending a bad relationship. The recovery is real, but while you can choose to take some time for yourself after a breakup, a football team doesn’t have that luxury. The offseason is just a week away for the Bears, and the sooner they find their new coach, the sooner they can put the Matt Eberflus era behind them and turn this franchise around.

Just because they need to act quickly doesn’t mean the Bears should be hasty, but recent reports from around the league suggest that along with some brilliant decisions, there are also some dangerous landmines in this coaching search. Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is the preferred candidate for most fans, although there are others like Mike Vrabel who have their supporters in the fan base.

Then there are the candidates who, frankly, make no sense at all. Given the way the Bears have been woefully imperfect at finding the man for the job in the past, Bears fans are understandably afraid they’ll do it again. Consider this a message in a bottle from the deserted island where most Bears fans were forced to spend their time. Ryan Poles, Kevin Warren: If you’re reading this, please don’t make the mistake of hiring any of these three candidates.

It seems like Mike McCarthy has only been mentioned lately as the punchline to a joke about his perennially underperforming Cowboys, but he’s also recently been brought up as a possible replacement for Matt Eberflus for some reason.

Chase Daniel, who I can only assume was mercilessly harassed by Jay Cutler during his two years with the Bears (why else would he post a take like that?), spoke of McCarthy as someone who would make sense for Chicago.

Forget for a moment that Bears fans aren’t fans of McCarthy since he coached the Packers for a long time, and instead focus on his recent track record. Maybe it got lost in the confusion when Cooper Rush threw interceptions against the Eagles on Sunday, but the Cowboys were a disaster even before they lost Dak Prescott for the year.

Dallas has been on a downward trend since losing to the Packers in the playoffs last year, an embarrassing 48-32 home loss that wasn’t even as close as the score suggested. The Cowboys fell 27-0 in that game, and they continued their slide this year, stumbling to a 7-9 record. That’s better than the Bears, but if that were the only requirement for a head coach, the candidate pool would be too large to fit into Soldier Field’s 61,500 seats.

I give McCarthy credit for leading the Cowboys to a 12-5 record in three straight years, but all he has to show for it is one playoff win in four tries. The Cowboys had arguably the best defense and offense in the league when McCarthy was there, but they never made it to the NFC Championship game. The Bears need someone whose team will perform at its best when it matters most.

Bears fans are scarred by Matt Eberflus’ consistently terrible late-game decisions, and McCarthy isn’t doing much better. Cowboys fans are still outraged over Dak Prescott’s season-ending quarterback trade with no time off against the 49ers in 2023, and that’s just one example.

The Bears can’t afford to settle for a coach whose best days are long behind him. McCarthy may or may not be in Dallas next year, but he definitely shouldn’t be in Chicago.

While we look at the coaches who are no longer at their best, let’s turn to Pete Carroll, whose name inexplicably came up this week because he is someone who shares common interests with the Bears.

Bringing this up in an interview would be a human resources violation, but the Bears can’t consider Carroll as their next head coach for the same reason Happy Gilmore said the IRS couldn’t take over his grandmother’s house: He is too old. Carroll is 73 and the Bears need someone who can see Caleb Williams through his prime. Think Bill Walsh and Joe Montana, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, or Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. You don’t need the next Sean McVay, but you also can’t hire Sean Connery (he died in 2020 at age 90).

Even ignoring Carroll’s age, his recent coaching record doesn’t inspire confidence that he can turn the Bears around. In his final three years in Seattle, Carroll went 7-10, 9-8 and 9-8. Bears fans would be thrilled to see them around .500 after this season’s disaster, but we need to shoot higher. Hiring Carroll because of what he did over a decade ago would be like the Jets trading for an outstanding Aaron Rodgers.

Carroll is a West Coast man who found most of his success near the Pacific Ocean as a coach at USC and Seattle. Would adjacent Lake Michigan feel like home? When winter comes and the cold wind blows, I don’t think that will be the case.

Even at his advanced age, Carroll’s youthful enthusiasm is undeniable, and his work in developing the Legion of Boom makes me believe he could do wonders with Tyrique Stevenson and the rest of the Bears secondary. But even in the best-case scenario, he would be little more than a stopgap measure before the Bears jump back on the coaching carousel in two or three years. This franchise needs stability, and hiring a 73-year-old coach who hasn’t reached a conference championship game in over a decade is not the way to achieve that.

Brian Flores has objectively done a fantastic job with Minnesota and is a big reason the Vikings are 14-2 and just one game away from securing the No. 1 seed in the NFC. The Vikings lack big names on the defensive side of the ball, yet they have given up the fourth-fewest points in the league while also having the most forced turnovers and the third-most sacks.

Unlike McCarthy and Carroll, Flores is only 43 years old, meaning he has the potential to be around for a while. His three-year tenure as head coach of the Miami Dolphins, particularly his handling of Tua Tagovailoa, leads me to believe that he should not be allowed anywhere near Caleb Williams and this offense.

Tua isn’t a guy known for speaking his mind, so him calling Flores “a terrible person” while criticizing his coaching style says a lot. The Bears need someone to boost Caleb’s confidence, not destroy it, and they can’t afford to take the chance that Flores has realized his mistake.

The Bears made the mistake of thinking that just because someone was a good defensive coordinator, that meant they would be a good head coach. We saw with Matt Eberflus that success on one side does not indicate success on the other.

It’s not reactionary to Eberflus’ failures to say that the Bears need an offensive mind to be their next head coach. Most of the teams that have achieved the greatest success in recent years have been led by offensive-minded coaches. Just look at Flores’ Vikings, who are led by former Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell. He turned Sam Darnold into a Pro Bowler, and he looks like he’ll be the Coach of the Year winner. That’s the type of coach the Bears need to be looking for.