ROOTS
Zach Azzanni freely admitted he was blown away when the Bears called him about their wide receivers job a couple weeks ago. Up to this point he’s spent his entire football career as a coach in the college ranks. He’d fully expected to resume work in 2017 at Tennessee. Instead Chicago caught wind of his work and wanted to bring in a fresh face with new ideas.
As it turns out he’s also somebody with a pretty decent track record too. Antonio Brown was one of his great success stories out of Central Michigan. He also helped Jared Abbrederis become a star at Wisconsin. One of his more underrated jobs was the one he pulled with a young tight end named Jack Doyle during his brief stint at Western Kentucky as Scout.com pointed out.
“Azzanni spent 2011 as the offensive coordinator/ wide receivers coach at Western Kentucky. In his lone season at WKU, the school featured the nation’s 2nd leading rusher in Bobby Rainey (141.3 ypg) and TE Jack Doyle finished 5th in the nation in receiving yards among tight ends (614).”
DOYLE RULES
Prior to 2016, Doyle was little more than a bench player. That changed when Coby Fleener departed the Indianapolis Colts in free agency. The door was opened for Doyle to step up and he took full advantage. Over the course of the season he became one of their more consistent and dangerous threat, particularly in the red zone.
At 6’6″, Doyle is an inviting big target who shows quickness, athleticism and enough speed to find the open gaps in pass coverage over the middle. If he hadn’t been sharing time with teammate Dwayne Allen, he might’ve done better than the 589 yards and five touchdowns he ended up with. At age 26 and with little mileage on his body, it’s plainly obvious that his best days are ahead of him.
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This sounds exactly like the type of free agent that Pace loves to sign. Younger, getting better and still relatively cheaper than the big names. The Bears are in desperate need of help at tight end with Zach Miller coming off another season-ending injury. Not to mention nobody on the depth chart behind him who can be called a reasonable option.
The best part is they now have somebody in the building who can help convince Doyle that a move to Chicago is in his best interests. Azzanni will be there for him and the team can guarantee him a bigger role in the offense. Especially given the limited competition he’ll be up against.
