New Bears coach Trestman has to prove staying power

The new coach of the Chicago Bears will have a lot to answer for in 2014. And no, that isn’t a misprint—I said 2014, and I meant it.

As ballyhooed a hire as Marc Trestman has been in the immediate reactions by a variety of outlets (save for the comments from ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, who was evenly feast-or-famine), there are reasons for Bears fans to have concerns about the beyond-immediate future of their offense. Consider Trestman’s tenures with the teams he has coached. Here’s a chart from a post at SB Nation’s Windy City Gridiron by Kay Paradiso that shows his years and offensive ranks as a coordinator in the NFL:

Year	Team	Rushing Yds	Rushing TDs	Passing Yds	Passing TDs	INTs	Sacks
1989	Cleveland	21st	12th	11th	16th	5th	8th
1995	San Francisco	23rd	3rd	1st	4th	13th	16th
1996	San Francisco	10th	4th	7th	8th	10th	22nd
1998	Arizona	21st	6th	8th	20th	25th	22nd
1999	Arizona	29th	10th	27th	31st	30th	21st
2000	Arizona	27th	29th	17th	23rd	29th	14th
2002	Oakland	18th	5th	1st	8th	22nd	17th
2003	Oakland	16th	12th	27th	32nd	8th	25th

What do you notice about that chart?

1) No team is listed for more than three years.

As Mark Potash of the Chicago Sun-Times notes: “Trestman went to the playoffs in his first season with the Browns (1988), 49ers (1995), Lions (1997), Cardinals (1998) and Raiders (2001). He also won a national championship in his first year as quarterbacks coach with the University of Miami (1983) and went to a bowl game in his first season at North Carolina State (2005) and to the Grey Cup in his first season with the Alouettes (2008).” That’s a lot of early successes and quick departures for a guy who’s seen postseason football with eight different teams.  Assistant coaches are often at the mercy of their head coach’s performance and the opportunities offered to them elsewhere, but it’s not unreasonable to ask why he moved around so much before finding what seemed like a long-term fit in the CFL.  Trestman had signed an extension to remain in Montreal through 2016 before being offered the Bears job.

2) The rushing attack for those teams, as measured in yards, only ranked better than 16^th-best in one season, and it averaged around 20^th.

After signing a four-year, $32 million contract prior to the 2012 season, Matt Forte played much like he has before, rushing for over 1,000 yards and catching 44 passes to rank among the Bears’ top two receivers.  Forte’s reception total was the lowest of his career, but that figure should improve under Trestman. I won’t pretend to be a scholar of the West Coast/Walshian/horizontal attack philosophy, but if yards-after-the-catch is as prominent a goal as it has been for players under Andy Reid, Mike McCarthy, or Mike Holmgren, I agree with Paradiso that Forte and Brandon Marshall ought to have a field day every week.

That being said, it is hard to know how many touches Forte will get on the ground. Potash notes that in 2005, Trestman switched offenses in the middle of the season at N.C. State, a change that turned the 2-4 Wolfpack into a bowl-winning team 7-5 team.   Toney Baker and Andre Brown were the beneficiaries of Trestman’s mov to a run-heavy attack, racking up 1400 yards on 253 carries combined.  However, Trestman’s lead running backs in Montreal have been inconsistent. Although Brandon Whitaker lead the CFL in 2011 with 1,381 yards on 226 carries and former West Virginia stud Avon Cobourne racked up similar totals in 2009, the in-between years didn’t see any Alouettes crack the 1,000-yard mark. Ryan Karhut, a former Alouettes lineman, noted an emphasis on pass protection under Trestman, and it is possible that such focus on passing could come at the expense of brilliant rushing exploits by Forte, who is a talented runner in his own right despite his middle-of-the-road stats.  Forte still has a few more youthful seasons in him before he turns 30, but whether or not the Bears maximize the full complement of his talents will be up to Trestman.      

3) The passing attack, in yards and touchdowns, regressed from season 1 to season 2 in Trestman’s time with Arizona and with Oakland.

Granted, the ’03 season in Oakland was probably doomed once Rich Gannon went down in Week 7 with an injury (though the Raiders had been 2-5 up to that point), and it’s very hard to replicate MVP-and-AFC-championship-caliber numbers with Rick Mirer at the helm (no offense to Rick). Similarly, Jake Plummer missed four games with an injury in the middle of the ’99 season, and Football Outsiders will tell you that the ‘98 Cardinals were a huge statistical anomaly that set far too high a bar for the following year anyway. Still, it’s a tad disconcerting that Jake Plummer’s TD:INT ratio regressed from 17:20 to 9:24 in an encore performance when he threw about 2-3 fewer passes per game than the year before.

In Trestman’s defense, he does sound like a “coachable coach,” someone who tries to adapt to their surroundings to have success. He guided two old quarterbacks, Gannon and the Alouettes’ Anthony Calvillo, to MVP seasons, though the latter was great even before Trestman coached him. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, Alouettes wideout S.J. Green, and Karhut have all spoken to Trestman’s ability in calling plays and shaping his offensive philosophy around the tools available to him – indeed, his success going from the NFL to the CFL should be evidence enough of that. But for former Oakland Raiders receiver Tim Brown and others skeptical of Trestman’s capacity for managing a locker room, years two and three in Chicago will be the real litmus test for knowing whether Trestman can provide more than flash-in-the-pan success for the Bears.