Bear Digest

Bears to interview Super Bowl champion for open head coach position

As the architect of an elite defensive unit known as 'The Legion of Boom', there are few more qualified candidates to be an NFL head coach than Pete Carroll.

Pete Martuneac

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The Chicago Bears were hit with a 'good news, bad news' situation on Tuesday evening. First, the Dallas Cowboys denied them permission to interview Mike McCarthy for their open head coach position, signaling that Dallas is prepared to keep the Super Bowl champion coach around for a long time.

Good news followed immediately after as ESPN's Dan Graziano reported that the Bears were set to interview another Super Bowl champion head coach on Thursday, Pete Carroll.

For many Bears fans and football analysts, Carroll would be an odd choice should the Bears choose to hire him. Carroll would turn 74 right around Week 1 of next season, virtually guaranteeing that he would be a short-term solution for the Bears. But a short-term solution might be exactly what they need at this moment.

Develop Caleb Williams into a superstar, and everything else should fall in line.

Right now, the Chicago Bears are sitting on a potential gold mine in their young quarterback, Caleb Williams. After just one year in the NFL, he has already put together one of the best passing seasons in franchise history, despite the turmoil of going through multiple offensive coordinators and head coaches. It's been nothing short of impressive.

But his career can still go awry if the Bears get this head coaching hire wrong. So why not bring in a proven winner in Pete Carroll, the man who turned Russell Wilson into a fringe Hall of Fame quarterback, to make sure Williams is set on a path to superstardom?

When you get the quarterback right, building a championship roster gets substantially easier. Bring in Carroll, let him mold Williams into a true franchise quarterback, and then in three or four years when Carroll retires, every football coach with a promising future will be beating down George McCaskey's door to get an interview.

That's not to say that the Bears definitely should hire Carroll, but it'd be foolish to ignore him completely. The development of Caleb Williams is too important to the franchise to turn up their noses at the prospect of a short-term head coach.

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Pete Martuneac
PETE MARTUNEAC

A former Marine and Purdue Boilermaker, Pete has been covering the Chicago Bears since 2022 as a senior contributor on BearsTalk. He lives with his wife, two kids and loyal dog.

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