CHICAGO — How does a record-setting quarterback who finished his college career with minus-137 rushing yards become the architect of one of the NFL’s most successful ground attacks in decades?
The answer, if you ask J.D. Brookhart — the coach at Akron when Luke Getsy set 24 school passing records in 2005-06 — is simpler than you might think.
“Luke is the most sensible, pragmatic guy,” Brookhart said. “Very realistic about life, and that’s probably his saving grace as a coordinator.”
Five of the Bears’ six most successful games running the ball since 1989 have come in the last five weeks, and the sixth was the 283-yard effort in a Week 3 victory against the Houston Texans. The Bears lead the NFL with 2,017 rushing yards, on pace to become the ninth team in the Super Bowl era to average more than 200 yards per game. They join the 2019 Baltimore Ravens as the only team since the 1980 season to eclipse 2,000 yards in the first 10 games.
With 2 yards Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons at the Mercedes-Benz Dome, the Bears will surpass their total from the 2021 season (2,018). Since 1991, the franchise has had more rushing yards in a complete season only once — 2,099 in 2005. In other words, the Bears are likely to accomplish in 11 games what they haven’t done in a full season in more than two decades.
At the controls is the 38-year-old Getsy, a first-time NFL coordinator and a potential head coaching candidate after the season. He interviewed for the Denver Broncos’ top job before coach Matt Eberflus hired him to direct a Bears offense that has averaged 31 points over the last four games.
A prolific passer when he got his chance with the Zips, Getsy wasn’t a mobile quarterback, so nothing the Bears are doing with Justin Fields in the running game is linked to his days as a player.
His longest run in college?
“I think my longest run was at Pitt, it was short yardage and I had about a 60-yard run in the four-minute drill,” he said. “It was probably 30 actually. It felt like 60 because I’m so slow.”
It was actually 25 against Kent State in the 2003 season opener, but shows you his recall and sense of humor. In fairness, the negative career rushing total is in part because college statistics deduct sack yardage from a QB’s rushing total. In the NFL, sack yardage is subtracted from a team’s passing yardage.
In an era when many hotshot coordinators aim to prove how smart they are by designing high-octane passing offenses, Getsy is intriguing because he plays to his players’ strengths. Every coach pledges to do that but not all follow through — and not all understand the intricacies of a ground game to commit to it and make it work.
Fields is sixth in the league in rushing with 749 yards, but his success with designed runs and scrambles alike doesn’t define what the Bears are offensively. Khalil Herbert will miss at least the next four games on injured reserve with a hip injury but he enters this week second among NFL running backs averaging 5.95 yards per carry. His absence is a perfect opportunity for David Montgomery to enhance his value in free agency as he’s in the final year of his contract. All of the success rushing has come with moving parts up front too — the Bears have used seven starting combinations on the line. Factor in a passing game that is averaging a league-low 149.4 yards per game and it’s even more impressive as opponents have been able to dial in on the run game.
Tracing Getsy’s history as a player and coach and understanding the influences along the way offers insight into what has shaped him as a coordinator.
Steel Valley High School, Munhall, Pa.
A small town on the west bank of the Monongahela River, Munhall is about 7 miles from Pittsburgh. Getsy was raised there before becoming the first four-year starter at quarterback in school history. Ed Wehrer, the coach during Getsy’s career and now the superintendent of the school district, described a moment several years before he would coach the player.
“I watched him when he was in mighty mites football, 10 or 11 or something like that, it was the end of the championship game,” Wehrer said. “Steel Valley was on offense trying to do some level of hurry-up. At that age, you don’t have a very sophisticated attack. In the middle of all of this, Luke calls over to the sideline to tell his coaches he only had 10 guys on the field. That’s one of my favorite Luke Getsy stories and I wasn’t coaching — I just happened to be there watching Steel Valley youth football and kids that one day might play for me.
“What does that tell you about Luke? He is a student of the game, has this certain calmness about him that he’s able to control his emotions and remain an analytical, critical thinker.”
Western Pennsylvania has been dubbed the “Cradle of Quarterbacks” for producing such talents as Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Joe Namath, Jim Kelly, Johnny Unitas and many more NFL passers, and Getsy was the first quarterback in WPIAL (Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League ) history to top 5,000 yards. His 6,021 yards were a record when he graduated in 2002.
Steel Valley was a run-first offense, but Getsy made the most of his opportunities to throw, leading the team to the playoffs all four seasons. There were some “West Coastish” schemes sprinkled into a playbook with runs that had been staples of the offense for years.
“(Wehrer) was a grinder,” Getsy said. “The details had to be immaculate. You’d go to the board on a Saturday morning and if you were drawing it and you didn’t have everything perfect, it was an F and you owed 10 pushups. He was a pretty crazy dude but very good for me in the end.”
Akron
Transferring to the MAC school after spending two seasons as a backup at Pitt, Getsy had to sit out in 2004 before becoming the starter the next year, the only time in school history the Zips won the Mid-American Conference championship with Getsy attempting 109 passes and throwing for 868 yards and five touchdowns in the final two games of the season in what he described as basically a “run-and-shoot” offense.
“Luke was a recruitable quarterback only because of his intangibles,” said Brookhart, who was the offensive coordinator at Pitt before taking the Akron job. “He had no physical skills that said, ‘Recruit this kid.’ He wasn’t fast. He didn’t have a great arm. He was the guy that had everything else right about him. He understood the game. He was an intelligent player. He was a grunt-and groan, get-it-done guy, and that’s why he’s having the success he is having. There’s nothing flashy in any sense about Luke Getsy. He is a blue-collar Pittsburgh kid. That is what you are seeing there offensively.
“The kid was always engaged. He soaked it up every single day. It wasn’t flash and pizazz. Luke’s not going to tell you he’s the most intelligent guy or the most physically gifted guy. He just works at it. He’s s gem.”
After a brief stint as an undrafted rookie with the San Francisco 49ers in 2007, Getsy returned to Akron as a graduate assistant for two years. By then the Zips were running a variation of the spread offense, sort of Rich Rodriguez-esque with a lot of variations. He learned the system.
West Virginia Wesleyan
At 25, Getsy was hired as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at the Division II school but basically was in charge of everything but the offensive line, which Anthony Peluso coached.
“You watch film to get ideas or how to attack somebody,” Getsy said. “But you always implement what you know. You can’t teach something you don’t know. What you run into is, ‘What’s the why for this play? What’s the how?’ When you run into these issues, how do you respond? That’s something I learned very early in my career at Wesleyan.
“I knew the pass game well but I didn’t know the other parts well. That’s when my work ethic, I think, triggered in the sense of like it was me and an O-line coach (Peluso) and I had to learn and have answers for the tight ends, the running backs, the O-line, the receivers. That changed my mind of I can’t just be someone that knows the passing game.”
Pitt
The next year, former Bears coach Dave Wannstedt hired Getsy as a graduate assistant at the program Getsy originally joined as a player.
“You could tell, No. 1, that he connected with the players,” Wannstedt said. “No. 2, the guy had ideas, and No. 3, there was a real respect with Luke that he was not the coordinator, he knew his niche, he could get his points out there and fit in with the staff. I thought he was a great staff guy, which was critical for me.”
In the running game, Getsy learned the ins and outs of smashmouth football with Tony Wise, a former Bears assistant coach.
“We were a power-scheme team,” Getsy said. “We ran power 25 times a game.”
Indiana University (Pa.) of Pennsylvania
Curt Cignetti, now the head coach at James Madison, hired Getsy as his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2011, a position he held for two years. The Crimson Hawks averaged 259.3 rushing yards per game in 2012, ranking as one of the best in Division II in a 12-2 season. This is where Getsy was exposed to an outside/-zone running scheme that produced two 1,300-yard rushers in one season.
“I loved him and he was great, but he would get frustrated sometimes because we ran the ball too much,” Cignetti said, laughing. “We didn’t throw it much the two years he was there and it was mainly because of the quarterback.
“I can recall a couple conversations, maybe after a game we won, but didn’t necessarily play great on the road and were running the ball into stacked boxes and he said all I will let him do is throw a hitch. Luke is all about winning. He’s really smart, poised, detailed and very, very likable, very sharp. Really good knowledge base even at that age when I hired him. He had been around good people. He knew the run game and the pass game.”
Western Michigan
On the recommendation of Frank Cignetti Jr., Curt’s brother who was at Pitt when Getsy was a GA, P.J. Fleck hired Getsy to coach wide receivers.
“The willingness to take a chance, to be a little different and go outside the norm,” said Fleck, now the Minnesota coach. “Frank always talked about Luke and said, ‘This one is going to be special.’ Luke was always willing to go against the grain a little bit, not his personality but, ‘I’m going to do this a little differently. I’m going to be willing to learn this.’
“Everyone has a system, and terminology makes a system. A lot of us do all the same things. What makes a really good coach is can you adapt your personnel, who you don’t always get to pick and who doesn’t always pan out exactly the way you wanted it, can you still take your system and do what you have to do to win games and be creative enough to score points?
“Luke has been around so many people, and I can remember when Mike McCarthy, who was my coordinator (when I played in San Francisco), and Luke was working for me and we didn’t do well. We were 1-11 and it wasn’t because of Luke or anything else. We just completely started over. Mike said he got word about my wide receivers coach and heard good things. What do you think? I’m like, ‘This guy is a grand slam. I’ve only been around him nine months but this dude is legit. He’s going to be something someday.’ Mike hired him.”
Green Bay Packers
In the first of two stints, Getsy was hired by McCarthy as a quality control assistant in 2014, a role he held for two years. He was promoted to wide receivers coach in 2016.
“One of the unsung heroes is Coach Getsy,” receiver Davante Adams told Green Bay media in December.
Adams was disappointing in his first two seasons, and his ascent in 2016 coincided with Getsy’s promotion.
“Luke Getsy is a coach who I really, really enjoyed having,” Adams said. “I had a lot of respect for Gets and what he did with us because he played quarterback, so the way he dove into the wideout position as far as the particulars, that helped open up my eyes. He’s a guy who’s trying to be a master at his craft.”
Mississippi State
In 2018, Getsy left the NFL for the chance to be the offensive coordinator at the SEC school, a job he held for only one season. The Bulldogs had four players combine for 13 100-yard rushing games, led by quarterback Nick Fitzgerald, who had seven and finished with 1,121 yards. Mississippi State rushed for 300 yards or more in four games and averaged 223.6, second in the conference.
“I don’t want to disparage anyone I used to play with,” Fitzgerald said. “We just didn’t have a super, deep and extremely talented wide receiver group. We had some great tight ends, amazing running backs and I could run the ball. Luke and (coach) Joe Moorhead took a look at it and saw our talent really was running the ball and getting in front of the chains and then taking shots when we needed to. It was a personnel thing.”
So when Getsy is drawing up running plays for Fields, it’s not borrowing from the Ravens playbook and what they do with Lamar Jackson as much is falling back on what he did with Fitzgerald.
“A lot of it was zone reads, designed QB draws, QB lead,” Fitzgerald said. “We did a very, very good job of mixing up all the different looks and how we blocked, who we were pulling, who we were trapping. We had a great scheme for it.
“Luke was one of the most upbeat guys. Always there with a smile on his face, clapping, just kind of getting people excited about whatever we were doing that day.”
Green Bay Packers
Matt LaFleur hired Getsy for his second tour in Green Bay in 2019, naming him quarterbacks coach and adding the title of passing game coordinator in 2020.
“He’s about a month younger than me, so that’s pretty awesome for him to get an opportunity (interviewing for the Broncos job),” Aaron Rodgers told Green Bay media late last season. “But he’s been around the game a long time. He was in the QB room, the receiver room, then he went down to college and was offensive coordinator in the SEC and then came back. He’s been in our room for three years now, and he’s a fantastic coach. He’s a really good teacher of the game. I’m excited for him as well.”
Rodgers has been highly skilled for a very long time, but it’s on Getsy’s resume that the quarterback was named MVP in back-to-back seasons when he was passing game coordinator.
“He’s got a great energy about him,” Rodgers said.
Chicago Bears
Eberflus talked about wanting to play a physical brand of ball when he was hired, and the Bears have accomplished that down to what might be small details for viewers but are big for coaches — having wide receivers block in the running game. Fields knocked out Detroit Lions safety DeShon Elliott with a concussion on a touchdown run Sunday.
“It starts just with a mentality of the style of play,” Getsy said. “I don’t know if it’s where I’m from, what you’re raised on, what you see, what you believe. Ultimately it comes down to what style of team you have, what your personnel tells you, and you have to play to the strengths of your team. When I was in Green Bay, it wasn’t like I was promoting run the football like crazy when we had a great receiving corps and a quarterback and really good pass protectors. And then at other spots in my career it was a great offensive line to move people around, good running backs or a running quarterback like Nick Fitzgerald.”
Getsy said one of the best lessons he learned from McCarthy was that it is more difficult to handle success than adversity. At 3-7 and in last place in the NFC North, the Bears haven’t reached success. But they’ve become prolific on offense and are putting up points like the franchise hasn’t in a long time.
“When he says that, it’s when people pat you on the back, how do you handle it?” Getsy said. “Do you take it and gloat? Or is it more like, ‘Hey, thank you, I still have so much more to grow.’ It’s keeping your eye on the target rather than letting the outside noise — whether it’s praising you or kicking you to the curb — affect you.”
