It's Green Bay Packers week for the Chicago Bears, so something had to be done. After weeks of offensive failures, the Bears will have a new offensive coordinator and new playcaller at Soldier Field on Sunday, when the Packers visit Illinois.

On Tuesday, head coach Matt Eberflus decided to fire Shane Waldron ten weeks into the season to promote passing game coordinator Thomas Brown. It's certainly a questionable long-term process for the Bears, but it's also a new challenge for the Packers — after all, Jeff Hafley will have to build his gameplan without a single game of Brown calling plays for rookie quarterback Caleb Williams.

Track record

Thomas Brown doesn't have a great track record as an offensive coordinator, though. He's been in the NFL since 2020, first as a running backs coach, then adding the assistant head coach title for the Los Angeles Rams. In 2022, he switched from the running backs to the tight ends, which helped him get an OC job for the Carolina Panthers last season.

Working with Bryce Young, the results were not great. The Panthers finished the season 29th in EPA/play and 30th in success rate.

The big early concern among Packers fans on social media is that the Panthers still scored 30 on the Packers late in the season. Gladfully for Green Bay, though, Joe Barry is not the defensive coordinator anymore.

Brown was the passing game coordinator for the Bears this season. Through ten weeks, Chicago's offense is 23rd in dropback EPA.

Similar concepts

Another important context in this change is that both Waldron and Brown come from the same offensive tree. Even though Waldron was the Seattle Seahawks' offensive coordinator for three years and Brown spent a season with the Panthers, they worked together under head coach Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams.

In different points, Waldron was a tight ends coach, passing game coordinator, and quarterbacks coach in Los Angeles.

At this point, the Bears wanted some type of change — Caleb Williams has not thrown a single touchdown pass since Week 6.

Naturally, any type of change brings new challenges, and the Packers will have to handle those on Sunday. But it's also not a huge difference, and the basics of the scheme will be the same.

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