Bears finalizing deal for their next offensive coordinator in Shane Waldron |
After roughly two weeks of picking out candidates and narrowing the search down to 10, the Bears have decided who the next OC will be. While this may surprise some, Matt Eberflus and the Chicago Bears are set to announce Shane Waldron as the team's next offensive coordinator.
This comes after he was granted a second interview, and the Bears liked what they heard each time enough to give him the job. Waldron was the Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator the past few seasons, but with Pete Carroll getting fired after the season, his staff was given the go-ahead to interview for other positions. Waldron wanted to try his luck elsewhere, and it worked in his favor as he will now be heading to Halas Hall to get this Bears offense back on track. We have been mentioning for the better part of a week that most of the candidates the Bears identified for their OC position fell from the Sean McVay or Kyle Shannahan tree. Chicago clearly had a vision for how they wanted their offense to look and felt only certain guys could get them to that level. Waldron may be known for his work in Seattle the past few seasons, but the 44-year-old falls under the offensive vision as he worked under McVay for several seasons. What started as one of the fastest-rising TE coaches in 2017 turned into the Rams' passing coordinator a few seasons later before moving to Seattle in 2021. While with the Seahawks, Waldron is credited with working alongside Russell Wilson and Geno Smith, but his work with Smith over the past two seasons stands out the most. Once viewed as a journeyman QB or even someone who may never play again, the Seahawks took a chance on Smith in 2022 and put him in the Waldron system. Once there, Smith went on to have a career year in 2022 to earn the Comeback Player of the Year award and then turned around and had another strong showing this season. That alone is worth the recognition he received this offseason and is a big reason the Bears went after him. Now set to come to the Bears, Chicago hopes Waldron can work wonders with Justin Fields, similar to what he did with Smith the past season. When you think about it, Fields is a more athletic version of Wilson but does tend to play the same way at times. If Waldron can create a system designed to work around Fields and his strengths, as well as use his mobility to his advantage, things will be looking up for the Bears and their offense in the near future. This is a massive hire for Eberflus, as the Luke Getsy experiment failed miserably. Not only are you bringing in a coach with experience coaching different parts of the offense, but he now has three years of playcalling under his belt, which is something Getsy never had. Getsy never called a single play under Matt LaFleur in Green Bay, and you could see the ramifications from that in Chicago as the Bear's offense was inconsistent and head-scratching most of the time. Waldron gives the Bears a much more experienced play-caller calling the shots and someone with a creative mindset on the offensive end. The Bears offense could use creativity as they were very vanilla and predictable on most occasions last year. Waldron does a great job of mixing the run and pass, which could help the Bears' offense take things to the next level. Waldron knows how to run an offense for a defensive-minded coach like Carroll, so running an offense for another defensive-minded guy shouldn't be an issue. Although not the best numbers in 2023, with 21.4 PPG and 322.9 YPG, it was still better than what the Bears posted during their two seasons with Getsy. In three years with the Seahawks, Waldron and his offense averaged 22.7 PPG with 356.8 YPG. Waldron revived Geno Smith in his 1st year with him.
Geno ranked 1st completion% (69.8), 4th in TDs (30), 5th in rating (100.9) and 7th in passing yards (4,282) in 2022 all career highs.
Could he be being brought in to do something similar? 👀 #DaBears #Bears #ChicagoBears
