Matt Eberflus sends a firm message on what he wants to see from the offense with Thomas Brown as the new coordinator
The Chicago Bears will be having a new man calling the offense on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers in new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown.Brown will be replacing Shane Waldron, who was fired on Tuesday after his unit was held out of the end zone for the second consecutive game in Week 10.Going into Week […]
The Chicago Bears will be having a new man calling the offense on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers in new offensive coordinator Thomas Brown.
Brown will be replacing Shane Waldron, who was fired on Tuesday after his unit was held out of the end zone for the second consecutive game in Week 10.
Going into Week 11, Bears' head coach Matt Eberflus was firm about what difference he wanted to see out of his team's offense with Brown now in command of the unit.
"What I'm looking from the offense is creativity," Eberflus said on Wednesday. "Working the guys into open positions on the field. And that takes creativity, but it takes everybody, working with everybody, to be able to get that done."
Creative play-calling was definitely one of Waldron's limitations with the Bears over the course of the first nine games of the season. It never seemed like any play built off each other and hardly were plays designed to put players in the best position to attack opposing defenses.
As a result, multiple offensive players on the Bears showed frustrations during the start of the season and expressed those frustrations with the staff, leading to this change.
"They just want to do more," Eberflus added. "They want to be more productive, more effective. You know, score points for a football team, just do more as a group, and then more individually in terms of helping the group. It was really good to see that they really wanted to get better, and it just didn't happen in a timely fashion."
With Brown now in charge of the offense and play-calling going forward, he's not looking to reinvent the wheel 10 weeks into the season. The Bears will still run the same system with the same verbiage and the main difference is that Brown will be calling plays from the booth as opposed to the sidelines.
And things are already sounding a lot more different under Brown's leadership before we even got to see the unit on the field.
"Here's what I say about fixing the problem, it starts every day we walk in the building," Brown said on Wednesday. "I said to the team today, [there's] two things you control when you walk in the building, it's your effort and your attitude. It starts there first."
As for how different things will look on the field under Brown, the team's new offensive coordinator already has a plan in place for how he wants to run his offense.
"Somebody had to try to find the best ways to be effective with our playmakers," Brown explained. "To be able to mirror what we do from a formation and motion standpoint, everything starts up front. Starts with the run game, how we attack, knock it forward mentality, and we build off that."
As for getting rookie quarterback Caleb Williams back in a groove coming off three straight games without a single touchdown, Brown has a plan for that as well.
"I think he does a lot well," Brown added. "I think his natural ability throwing the football is clearly obvious. I think being able to understand how to get the ball out of his hands as fast as possible when it comes to the concepts we end up dialing up, but also being able to let him use his natural God-given ability when it's relevant. Not every play, but when it comes to especially situational ball, third down, red zone, we come alive with that."
There's going to be a lot of pressure on Brown to get this offense back in a groove starting this weekend against the Green Bay Packers, but also the remaining seven games after this weekend. And that pressure is something Brown is embracing.
"As far as the pressure goes, pressure, to me, is a privilege," Brown said. "That means people expect something positive from me, so I embrace that. Excited about the opportunity that comes with a territory of this job, and honestly, if you don't want that, you probably do something else."
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