The Chicago Bears have headed north above the border to find their new head coach as they announced on Wednesday that Marc Trestman has been hired to lead the team.
Trestman has been coaching the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League (CFL) for the last five years and has led them to the Grey Cup championship in two of them. Trestman takes over for former head coach Lovie Smith, who was fired by the Bears at the end of the regular season.
Trestman has assistant coaching experience in the NFL, but this will be his first venture into head coaching in the league. He has previously worked as an offensive coordinator with the Oakland Raiders, Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns.
Phil Emery, the Bears general manager, interviewed over a dozen candidates for the job before settling on Trestman. Others who were being considered for the post included Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and Bruce Arians of the Indianapolis Colts.
It’s also been reported that Chicago hired Aaron Kromer, an offensive line coach with the New Orleans Saints, as he’ll become the team’s offensive coordinator.
Kromer took over the head coaching job of the Saints for half a dozen games this season while head coach Sean Payton was sitting out a year suspension for his role in the Bountygate scandal and interim coach Joe Vitt was serving his six-game ban.
The Bears got off to a great start this season by winning seven out of their first eight contests, but ten won just three more in the second half of the schedule to end the season at 10-6 and miss the layoffs. Smith had been the Bears head coach for the past nine years and he took the team to the Super Bowl once. However, he missed the playoffs five times in the last six years.
Trestman, who’s now 57 years old, has a history of working with quarterbacks and the Bears are hoping he can work well with their starting QB Jay Cutler. Trestman has been working in the NFL as a consultant in recent years during the CFL’s off-season and has been helping quarterbacks such as Cutler develop.
Smith helped build a good defense in Chicago, but he had a problem getting the offense to click. In his nine seasons with the Bears, their offense never reached higher than 15th in league rankings and finished 28th this year.
Chicago needs to fill in some holes at tight end and in the offensive line and also needs Cutler to play more consistently. He’s got one year remaining on his current contract so the 2013 season will possibly be a make or break year for him. He’ll now have to learn a new system under Trestman.
The Bears missed some key players due to injury this season, but that’s just part of the game, but they’re defense is getting older and they might have t address this situation sooner rather than later. However, they’ll have to make sure they don’t tinker too much with the leagues’ fifth-best defense.
