Nov. 14--The spectacular fashion in which the Bears have fallen to 3-6, more than the fact they are three games below .500, has coach Marc Trestman in an increasingly shaky situation.
What Trestman does with the remaining seven games of his second season will determine his future. General manager Phil Emery -- and presumably others involved, including Chairman George McCaskey and President Ted Phillips -- will evaluate the entire spectrum when charting a future for the organization.
Could that future include firing Trestman after only two seasons?
Since 2000, 23 coaches have been fired or resigned after two seasons or less (discounting interim reigns). To dump Trestman would be to join a landscape the Raiders, Browns and Redskins dominate. Those three teams account for 12 of the changes, with the Raiders replacing six coaches and the other two three apiece. The Raiders and Redskins are floundering, as usual, while the Browns are experiencing rare success atop the AFC North with their eighth coach, Mike Pettine, since rejoining the league in 1999 after a three-year absence.
Meanwhile, the Bears have sunk to unprecedented depths after giving up 50 or more points in successive games. It's one thing to lose. It's another thing to be a punching bag on the way to becoming a punch line. Failing to be competitive is a more disturbing issue, one that has hung over the organization since the Oct. 26 fiasco at New England.
Whether pre-scheduled or not, McCaskey and Phillips made media appearances in the wake of the loss to the Patriots and offered up the type of corporate sports gobbledygook you would expect when asked about Trestman and the football operation: Full faith of those in charge. A midseason backing is meaningless at season's end.
The Bears almost assuredly will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season and seventh time in eight years, and that shortcoming alone should prompt an inspection. It's premature to say whether Trestman can make this team competitive with five of the final seven games at Soldier Field. If he does not, it will be an ugly march to the end.
In that case, the Bears will have to make a decision: Give Trestman a year to get the program on track or fire a coach after only two seasons with two years remaining on his contract, the kind of business decision the team has avoided in the past. The last Bears coach to work only two seasons was Paddy Driscoll in 1957-58 between George Halas' third and fourth stints.
Trestman is 11-14, and that is as many or more victories than eight of the coaches fired after two seasons. The Bears last opened a season 3-6 in 2003 and fired Dick Jauron when that year finished 7-9. They were 2-8 to begin 2002, an asterisk season because home games were played in Champaign.
Jauron's Bears were worse in his second season, 2000, when a 1-7 start turned into a 5-11 finish. The losses piled up and there was the humiliating 17-0 shutout in San Francisco when the offense went nowhere and Terrell Owens had 20 receptions to show up Jerry Rice in his final home game at Candlestick Park. But the Bears weren't having 50-spots dropped on them while the offense did zip.
Still, the organization shook things up. Personnel boss Mark Hatley was run off after the draft and the McCaskeys finally hired a general manager, but they forced Jerry Angelo to retain Jauron, who was 11-21 with two years remaining on his contract.
That was business when Michael McCaskey was chairman. There are those at Halas Hall who wonder quietly if George McCaskey will operate differently in a different era with greater cash flow from television deals and all the other revenue streams that spill into NFL clubs.
Only one team with a quick trigger on a coach since 2000 has transitioned quickly into sustained success -- the Broncos, who replaced Josh McDaniels with John Fox in 2011. They somehow won a bad AFC West with Tim Tebow before Peyton Manning rescued them the following year.
Even the Seahawks had their ups and downs when Pete Carroll followed one-year coach Jim Mora Jr. They won the NFC West in 2010 with a 7-9 record, and Carroll was 14-18 after his first two seasons. It took hundreds of roster moves in conjunction with GM John Schneider and hitting on a third-round quarterback in Russell Wilson to get it right.
There are a couple of marked differences between 2014 and the 2000 Bears that were so bad in Jauron's second season. There were no heightened expectations for that team with quarterback Cade McCown in his second (and final) season with the team. The Bears dropped huge money on Jay Cutler this offseason with the belief that Trestman had rebuilt the offense. This team was supposed to compete in the conference, not just the division.
Right now, it looks like the quarterback whisperer is communicating in his own gobbledygook, and the defense is an insult to civic pride. What matters is how the powers that be view it seven weeks from now.
bmbiggs@tribpub.com
Twitter @BradBiggs
