'We're Looking For Leaders': Bears Chairman Vows To Get It Right

CHICAGO — Chicago Bears Chairman George McCaskey doesn’t expect to win over many fans on the day he fired coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace, but he vowed to find a winning combination of hires that he will have the final say in moving forward.

McCaskey said Monday afternoon that Nagy and Pace were informed of the team’s decision to move on from the two Monday morning. Following three years of the team regressing from 2018, when the Bears finished 12-4 and won the NFC North Division title, Bears ownership decided that the Bears hadn’t won enough games or closed the gap enough within their own division to warrant giving Nagy and Pace more time at their respective jobs.

In an hourlong news conference, McCaskey and team President Ted Phillips said that the thorough and exhaustive search for both positions will begin immediately with the intent of bringing the Bears back into prominence.

McCaskey said that a search committee will consist of himself, Phillips, former Buffalo Bills and Carolina Panthers general manager and Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian, Vice President of Player Engagement LaMar “Soup” Campbell, and Senior Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Tanisha Wade.

McCaskey said that the Bears' next general manager will be responsible for the entire football operation and that the new executive will report directly to him, which represents a change in the team’s organizational chart.

McCaskey said Phillips will be focused on leading the project that could move the Bears to Arlington Heights in the future. Phillips said the deal that the Bears signed to purchase the site of the former Arlington racetrack likely will not be closed until later this year or in early 2023, which makes it too soon to set a timeline for the finalization of the Bears taking ownership of the 320-acre site.

The goal is to move forward from the past four years, when the Bears failed to make of progress that seemed to have the team on the right track after Nagy’s first season.

“In the end, we didn’t win enough games,” McCaskey said, adding, “over four seasons, we beat the teams we were expected to beat. Too often, though, we didn’t beat the better teams. You have to do that to excel in this league.”

McCaskey hopes to name a general manager first to assist in the search for a new coach. He said team officials will begin contacting candidates Monday but offered no timeline for hires to be made. While hiring a general manager first would be "ideal," McCaskey said if the right coaching candidate emerges, the team would move quickly to get that person "in-house."

McCaskey said that the team reached out to Polian — a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame — at some point this season to help in the evaluation of Pace and Nagy. McCaskey said team officials also spoke with others inside football but declined to identify who those people were and the subject of conversations that took place.

The criteria for both positions will be simple, McCaskey said. He cited a book recently authored by Polian that said Super Bowl teams are led by coaches whom the players don’t necessarily need to like but that they respect.

“We’ll be looking for leaders,” he said Monday.

McCaskey was asked about whether his tenure as chairman should be evaluated and if he is in a position to make the final determination of who fills the coach and general manager roles. In his 11 years as chairman, the Bears have registered two winning seasons and zero playoff victories.

McCaskey said that while the franchise's ownership is disappointed and frustrated with the results of recent seasons, the group has expressed interest in keeping McCaskey in his current role, he said.

"We get it that a lot of Bears fans are unhappy, and we're unhappy too," McCaskey said. "We're frustrated, and we understand that there's not really a whole lot that can be said today that is going to make people feel better about the situation. It may even be that once the candidates are introduced, there will be people who say, 'You picked the wrong guy' or 'You didn't get it right.'

"The only opportunity to produce results is on the field, and that won't be for some time to come. We feel that in time, it will be shown we picked the right people to lead the Bears."