Chicago Bears fans will want to yell at Mike Martz the way Jay Cutler used to when they hear Martz’s assessment of the team’s current offense.
There’s a dose of hope locally for what the Bears can become with the team in the early stages of rebuilding under new general manager Ryan Poles and first-year coach Matt Eberflus. That optimism isn’t shared on a national level.
Now Martz — a guy with a proven record as a head coach and offensive mind — is saying the Bears don’t just look bad on offense, they’re as deficient on that side of the ball as the 2008 Detroit Lions, the first NFL team to go 0-16.
In an article for The 33rd Team — an online publication with a collection of former league executives on its roster, including Hall of Famers Bill Polian and Bill Parcells — Martz didn’t hold back in his review of the Bears with the season less than three weeks away.
Of course, Martz is familiar with the challenges offensive coordinators have faced at Halas Hall. He held the position in 2010 and 2011, directing the offense the last time the Bears won a playoff game. It was known at the time he and Cutler clashed on occasion.
Since then, Bears play callers have seemingly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle as the team went from Martz to Mike Tice, Marc Trestman, Adam Gase, Dowell Loggains, Matt Nagy, Bill Lazor, back to Nagy and then Lazor again. Only Nagy, who found a soft landing with his former team as the Kansas City Chiefs quarterbacks coach, is currently employed in the league.
Martz’s scathing assessment of the Bears offense came in an article in which he ranked the NFC North quarterbacks. In order, he went with Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers), Kirk Cousins (Minnesota Vikings), Jared Goff (Detroit Lions) and Justin Fields (Bears). Martz’s concern is that the Bears are so bad around Fields, he won’t have a chance.
“Fields is a guy that makes a lot of mistakes and is not particularly accurate at times,” Martz wrote. “He’s not a quick read-and-react guy, and he’s on a horrendous team. But I don’t know if I’ve seen an offense that bad in talent since the 0-16 Detroit Lions. They just don’t have anybody there. … It’s a bad football team right now.”
Martz has an idea of what the Lions were working with in 2008. He was their offensive coordinator in the two seasons before that debacle.
He’s not the only one who has been skeptical of the players around Fields. Ross Tucker ranked the Bears offensive line last in the league by a wide margin before the team signed veterans Riley Reiff and Michael Schofield. Tucker knows a little something about play in the trenches as a former NFL offensive lineman.
Interestingly, neither Reiff nor Schofield has been with the first team much the last few weeks. The Bears appear to be betting on the upside of a handful of young players in rookie Braxton Jones at left tackle and second-year pros Teven Jenkins at right guard and Larry Borom at right tackle. The outlook for this group could be brighter by midseason.
The Bears have question marks at wide receiver after Darnell Mooney. Byron Pringle remains sidelined with a quadriceps injury. That has allowed Equanimeous St. Brown to make plays throughout training camp. His career high of 21 receptions came in 2018. Then there’s rookie Velus Jones and more unknowns at the position.
“It’s going to take a long time for them to get talent there,” Martz wrote. “(Fields) needs to be on a good football team behind really good players for a couple of years to learn how to play the position. And when you put a guy behind a bad offensive line and you have no talent at wide receiver and you tell him to just go make big plays, he’s going to learn bad habits. You start doing stupid stuff just trying to survive.”
The new regime didn’t inherit a ton of pieces from an offense that ranked 27th in yards and scoring, 30th in passing and 32nd in interception rate and third-down conversions a year ago. Poles clearly is taking a long view of the rebuilding process with the Bears getting the salary cap in order for the future. They are far from being one piece away, so they didn’t make any extravagant purchases in the offseason. Poles also lacked a first-round pick as the Bears finished paying for the trade up to draft Fields at No. 11 in 2021.
Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy arrived from Green Bay with impressive credentials and glowing praise from Rodgers for his role in the Packers’ juggernaut offense. He’s building from the ground up, knowing far more patience is required than the coaching staff had to extend in Green Bay.
“There’s a balance between demand and patience and setting an expectation and letting them know it’s not OK for some things,” Getsy said last week when he last met with reporters. “Then at some points you always have to remember to go pat them on the back and let them know that you care about them, too, because I do.
“There’s got to be a demand too. There’s got to be an expectation. We set our standards really high, and I don’t care if it was three months or three years into this thing. So we’ve got to meet those standards.”
Standards are very high internally. Expectations are very low when you get away from Halas Hall. The Bears can’t offer much defense for their offense until the season begins.
Perhaps this is one reason Eberflus announced starters will play most if not all of the first half in the preseason finale Saturday night in Cleveland. The offensive line needs more cohesion. Fields needs more experience in the system. The wide receivers need more work.
It’s a process, and most involved probably would admit it’s going to be a long one. Martz is predicting a painful process, so yell at him for now. Maybe Fields and Co. will be able to yell at him one day, too, and let him know he was wrong.
