The Bears and their fans are hoping for the wrong Lions coordinator
Look, I know what some of the early responses from this article are going to be. I cover the Lions for a living and I'm sure there will be a contingent of Bears fans who will insist I'm just a Lions fan that's afraid of Ben Johnson teaming up with Caleb Williams. This isn't that […]
Look, I know what some of the early responses from this article are going to be. I cover the Lions for a living and I'm sure there will be a contingent of Bears fans who will insist I'm just a Lions fan that's afraid of Ben Johnson teaming up with Caleb Williams. This isn't that so get that out of your head.
The other response might be "The last thing that we need is a defensive coordinator." I can understand that point of view to a point. Matt Eberflus was a defensive guy and it didn't work out, so hiring Aaron Glenn seems like a bad idea at the onset.
To me, it's the best possible move the Bears could make. I get what you're saying about the defensive coordinator thing because I've said similar things about the Lions in their searches in the past. The thing is that now I looked at that as broken logic to a point.
Yes, the Bears have a young quarterback in Caleb Williams who could use someone to come him and guide him in the right direction, but teams need to stop looking at their organization as if it's one player being successful away from accomplishing what they want to accomplish.
What the Bears need is a complete overhaul in culture. It's been broken for a very long time. This team was once a vaunted franchise that had one of the greatest cultures of all time. Since then it feels as though they've been chasing a reboot of that instead of trying to install a new one.
With Glenn, the Bears get a leader of men that everyone in the locker room will follow. They get the defensive version of Dan Campbell. Some fans might call Campbell a "meathead" or a "rah rah guy," but what he does works. The reason the Lions are where they're at right now is because they established a culture and then built around the culture and refused to sway from that idea. They did not build around a player.
Ben Johnson is a phenomenal playcaller, but he can't do that in my opinion. At least he can't do it in the way that Glenn can. Johnson also isn't the sole reason the Lions offense is the way it is right now. There are guys like passing coordinator Tanner Engstrand who have been a huge part of what this group does in Detroit.
With that in mind, the Bears could easily add Engstrand to Glenn's staff and you get a guy that's been under Johnson's tutelage for the last three seasons. The guy that is expected to potentially be the Lions' new OC if Johnson leaves, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen at this time.
The good news is that the Bears have already requested an interview with Glenn. We'll see what happens.
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