Matt Nagy. Ryan Pace. Ted Phillips. The Chicago Bears triumvirate of power in the football operations has taken it on the chin from all angles for the past few months. Fans are fed up. The media is laughing at them. Nobody takes this team seriously. Not a surprise when it’s 4-9 with an aging roster that is banged up and directionless. Yet some have pointed the finger to the very top. Directly at team chairman George McCaskey. Why aren’t more people calling him out? Well, Gary Fencik sure did.
The former Pro Bowl safety and member of the fabled 1985 championship team has harbored serious frustration with the organization for years. To him, it is obvious there are systemic issues that run deep. Issues that McCaskey can’t seem to solve. Why? A big issue is an unwillingness to surround himself with actual football people. Phillips is one such example. A man with a career background in accounting is making football decisions. What?
Then there is the personality issue.
George is not a bad guy. By all accounts, he is a class act and devoted family man. The problem is he can’t separate that from his work. During an interview with Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, Fencik explained what he meant. McCaskey runs into an issue with his GM and coaching hires where he comes to really like them, but for the wrong reasons. He is too focused on their character traits and not enough on whether they actually do their jobs well.
“They consistently seem to confuse liking someone with someone doing their job well,” Fencik said. “And that was another situation that told you that they don’t really know how to ask the right questions or how to measure performance to know definitively whether you are moving in the right direction. That’s a huge problem.”
So many people have had statements about why McCaskey can’t seem to find the right guys to run his team. Fencik summed it up to absolute perfection in just three sentences. Look at the head coaches he has hired since taking over in 2011. Marc Trestman, John Fox, and Nagy. Three guys known for their affable and positive personalities. Not exactly their track records of championship-winning success.
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Trestman lost a Super Bowl as a coordinator in Oakland. Fox lost two Super Bowls with two different teams. Nagy never even reached a Super Bowl. Yet McCaskey was convinced that because of their all-in-it-together mentalities that it would be different in Chicago? That isn’t how it works.
Gary Fencik basically said McCaskey fears strong personalities
Guys who aren’t afraid to be confrontational when it is warranted. That aren’t afraid to be real with somebody. To say the things that must be said. This is why Bruce Arians didn’t get the job back in 2013. His blunt, no-nonsense style turned the team brass off. This was despite Arians being the reigning Coach of the Year. Instead, they opted to go with Trestman, a guy that hadn’t coached in the NFL for almost 10 years at that point.
It isn’t that the Bears need a firebreather like Mike Ditka. It is that they need somebody that is willing to make tough decisions and always has the big picture in mind. That is what Gary Fencik is driving at. Trestman, Fox, and Nagy were all the same. Too small-minded in their approach. Unwilling to seize control of the organization. Be that big personality everybody else has to follow.
Ditka had his faults, but he at least understood that part of the job.
McCaskey has settled for good people rather than good coaches or GMs for the past decade. It might be time to stop caring about liking a person and start caring about whether they can make your franchise successful. Nobody ever said this league needed angels running things in order to win. Bears fans don’t care if the people in charge are likable. They care if they win.
