The Chicago Bears quickly executed a focused coaching search, came away with Matt Nagy, and watched him put together a solid coaching staff in what felt like a blink of an eye.
It all happened so quickly, we weren’t even able to ruminate on some of the candidates whom we thought deserved interviews, but didn’t even get calls from the Bears (well, at least not any that were reported). Heck, it was a bit of a surprise the Bears didn’t even interview a college coach, despite the rumors surrounding Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Stanford’s David Shaw.
Or maybe they did.
RosterWatch – a branch of the Sirius XM Radio family and “the world’s leading independent resource for year-round NFL player analysis” – rattled off some thoughts from the Senior Bowl and linked the Bears to a head coach candidate no one saw coming:
1) Notre Dame HC Brian Kelly might be looking for a way out. We’re told he had eyes for the NFL, one source said he interviewed for #Bears job.
— RosterWatch (@RosterWatch) January 23, 2018
Wow. Definitely didn’t see that as a possibility.
Notre Dame Head Coach Brian Kelly was on the hot seat prior to the 2017 season, but it cooled considerably following a 10-3 season. So maybe we shouldn’t be all that surprised regarding the part of RosterWatch’s report that suggested Kelly was looking for a way out.
Still, Kelly would have been an odd fit for the Bears’ head coaching position. Even though his Fighting Irish bounced back from a 4-8 season to win 10 games last year, the 56-year-old Kelly has long been a defensive-leaning mind who coached linebackers and defensive backs before getting his first head coaching job in 1991 at Grand Valley State. Additionally, Kelly’s quarterbacks have had a tendency to not live up to the lofty expectations they arrive on campus with.
All things considered, an older coach with a defensive background and a history of under-performing quarterbacks isn’t what one would have expected the Bears to have interest in after firing John Fox.