The Chicago Bears parted ways with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron this week, as their unit has been one of the worst in the league in 10 weeks. The Bears haven’t scored a touchdown in two games and rank in the bottom three in yards per play (4.3), third-down percentage (28.7%) and sacks allowed (38).
Firing Waldron won’t solve all of the Bears’ problems, but it’s clear the offense didn’t live up to expectations. On Wednesday, some of Chicago’s receivers addressed the big move.
DJ Moore told reporters that on-the-fly adjustments were a problem with Waldon. I wanted to wait until halftime instead of addressing a topic right away.
“I mean probably when we want to call it’s like it’s too late or like we want to make adjustments and we just wait until halftime to do it and then we don’t get the same looks…” Moore said, via ESPN.
Keenan Allen had an interesting quote, saying that Waldron was “too nice” and not the type to hold people accountable.
“I would say he was probably too nice a guy,” Allen said, via The Chicago Tribune. “I think during OTAs and training camp, he fell into the trap of letting things slide and not holding people accountable. Obviously, those things lead to a slippery slope.”
There have been multiple reports this season indicating that players had raised issues with Waldron behind closed doors. The offensive coordinator even met with the “team leadership council” in September after a loss to the Indianapolis Colts to discuss the offense as a whole, according to ESPN. In the end, not much changed, which is why head coach Matt Eberflus made the decision he did.
“They just want to do more. They just want to do more,” Eberflus said via ESPN. “They want to be more productive. More effective. Score points for our football team. Just do more as a group and then more individually in terms of helping the group… for me it was really good to see that they really wanted to improve and it just didn’t happen in the right moment.”
