Chicago Bears near deal to hire Shane Waldron as next offensive coordinator

The Chicago Bears have reportedly landed on their top candidate for offensive coordinator this week. According to NFL insider Tom Pelissero, the team is wrapping up a deal with Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Shane Waldron to take over the offense under Matt Eberflus.

Coaching since 2005, Waldron has worked for New England, Washington, Los Angeles and Seattle, on top of Notre Dame, UMass and Hartford. He took over the Seahawks offense in 2021, working under Pete Carroll who vacated his position as head coach earlier this month.

The Seattle offense finished the 2023 regular season 17th in the league in points scored per game with 21.4 ppg. The Seahawks were 15th in passing yards per game and 27th in rushing yards. Quarterback Geno Smith threw for 3,624 yards with 20 touchdown passes and nine interceptions in 15 games. They finished the season 9-8 with a win over the Arizona Cardinals but missed out on clinching a spot in the playoffs.

In comparison, the Bears offense was 19th in scoring this season, averaging 21.2 points per game. It also ranked one spot higher than the Seahawks offense in total yards per game.

Besides Waldron, the Chicago Bears also interviewed Kliff Kingsbury for the job. Kingsbury was the head coach for the Arizona Cardinals and was the head coach at Texas Tech before that. He spent the 2023 season on staff with USC, working with QB Caleb Williams.

Bears move on to new offensive staff

Chicago parted ways with offensive coordinator Luke Getsy and other assistants this month. The move came after yet another year of missing the playoffs for Chicago. They’ve now finished below .500 in each of the last three seasons, the last two coached by Eberflus, and landed at No. 18 in the NFL in points per game this past season.

Regardless, with a top receiver in DJ Moore and a young talent at QB in Justin Fields, hopes were much higher on the offensive side of the ball, though the results simply weren’t.

Through Fields’ three seasons as the Chicago quarterback, results simply haven’t been good. The team went 6-11 and saw the head coach fired after the year, only for the new guy (Eberflus) to come in and bottom out at 3-14 the next season.

Still all-in on Fields, the Bears punted on their No. 1 draft position last spring and traded it away for future capital, including a 2024 Panthers first-rounder that will be the No. 1 overall pick yet again.