Marc Trestman Offering Little Hope for Chicago Bears' 2014 Season

There is no way to win a press conference after an ugly 55-14 loss to your archrival in a prime-time game. Marc Trestman was a sitting duck at the podium Monday at Halas Hall.

The Chicago Bears head coach arrived at the podium nearly 30 minutes late, and then he sat there for 20, sans a plan for the future. This was the same Trestman press conference you’ve heard after each of the Bears' six losses this season.

When the coach first took the stage, he immediately dove into the Green Bay loss, which was a clear signal that no changes were being made. His first comments about the loss are puzzling.

“We had another slow start that started with taking the ball too deep out of the end zone, and some penalties that backed our offense up,” Trestman said.

What makes Trestman’s assessment puzzling is the first 15 plays generally are scripted. NFL players should have the first 15 plays memorized. There is no reason why his team has had so much trouble at the start of games.

Looking back at the last three weeks, the Bears have been outscored in the first half by a combined score of 94-7. Even if you remove the 42 points Green Bay scored Sunday night, the Bears still were outscored 52-7 in the Miami and New England game combined.

Are the players completely tuning out the coaching staff? That’s a question that needs to be answered by those in real decision-making positions at Halas Hall.

There is no excuse for Chris Williams taking the kick out of the end zone from eight-yards deep. Rule changes before the start of the 2013 season resulted in fewer kickoff returns, yet Williams’ 10 returns tied the NFL record for most return attempts in a game, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com.

Williams, on the season, has 21 returns for 537 yards. Take away his one return for a 101-yard touchdown, and he’s down to 20 for 436. That’s an average of 21.8 yards per kickoff return. How often do you find yourself asking why he’s taking it out of the end zone from eight-yards deep?

It’s not a winning proposition, yet it continues to happen. Williams ranks fourth in the league in return attempts, in three to four fewer games than those ahead of him on the list.

Player	Number of returns	Games played
1. Jordan Todman	27 returns	10 games
2. Devin Hester	23 returns	9 games
3. Cordarrelle Patterson	22 returns	9 games
4. Chris Williams	21 returns	6 games

So, if getting off to a slow start is a problem, then why is the coaching staff allowing Williams to return the kick if he struggles to make it to the 20-yard line?

Either the message to Williams isn’t being sent by the coaching staff, or the player received the message and simply doesn’t care. Either way, there’s an issue here. The poor starting field position, penalties and poor execution in the first 15 plays all falls on the coaching staff’s ability to prepare the team.

Another puzzling statement from Trestman came just before he opened the floor for questions. Here’s what Trestman said about how the Bears move forward:

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I think the thing we’ve got to do to find our way out of it is to go back to San Francisco and look at the tapes; New York and Atlanta, and show ourselves and look at the things we did very, very well to play a highly-competitive four-quarter game.

Over the last three weeks, we certainly haven’t done that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We cannot sugarcoat this whatsoever. This is where we are and our entire focus now has to go onto Minnesota.

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What’s interesting here is that in the games against the San Francisco 49ers and New York Jets, the Bears weren’t outplaying the opponent until the second half, which is when the Bears pulled away from the Jets and rallied to beat the 49ers with ease. The only game where the Bears gave a strong four-quarter effort was against Atlanta.

And for Trestman to say the coaches and players need to go back and look at the tape from games that were games ago seems awfully trivial for a Monday press conference after a 55-14 loss. The head coach knows exactly what the team did right and wrong that led to those victories, because any intelligent head coach is going to build off a winning game plan in preparation for the next game.

Trestman’s blueprint for moving forward is all rhetoric. It doesn’t mean anything. There is no accountability for anything that has happened. No solutions have been offered, which should lead you to believe the head coach doesn’t exactly know what to do at this point.

Winning begins and ends with players who are accountable for what they’re expected to do on the field. Trestman often talks about accountability. He did so Monday when talking about his quarterback, Jay Cutler. When asked about any short-term or long-term changes being made at quarterback, Trestman said:

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I think the biggest thing is that Jay’s gotta play better. He didn’t play well enough yesterday, and we didn’t play well enough. And I’m certain he’d take accountability for that, but it’s very clear he did not play well enough yesterday. We cannot sugarcoat that. But at the same time, we did not play collectively as a team.

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The keyword being accountability. Cutler has never been the kind of teammate who points fingers, which is good. Again, though, like Trestman, acknowledging your mistakes and actually doing something about your mistakes are two different things. That isn’t accountability, folks.

That’s like saying “I’m sorry” over and over again after screwing something up for the 50th time. Cutler’s combined 15 turnovers is the most in the NFL, tied with Jacksonville Jaguars rookie Blake Bortles.

If you want to hold a man at his word and believe that Cutler deep down understands that he’s playing poorly and genuinely wants to stop making the same mistakes over and over again, then maybe Cutler just isn’t a good quarterback. And maybe, just maybe, his head coach should be questioning the quarterback’s epically failing approach to change.

Trestman even doubled down when pressed on the subject of a quarterback change, saying, “I think we’ve got to go back and get ready for Minnesota and, with that in mind, Jay’s gotta play better. He’s gotta play better, but he can’t do it alone. He’s got to play better just like the rest of us do.”

Looking at both answers, Trestman isn’t even answering the question, because he can’t. He can’t be honest to the media about his quarterback. Cutler hasn’t played well.

If accountability is No. 1 on the list of required traits for winning, having a quarterback who doesn’t repeatedly turn the ball over is No. 2. Based on Cutler’s continued propensity for turnovers and Trestman’s call for accountability, there has to be some sort of disconnect between head coach and quarterback, right?

That’s the Bears problem right there: Both the head coach and quarterback have zero clue what accountability in the real world truly means. Trestman somehow thinks a good work ethic with no results equals accountability. When asked if any coaching changes would be made, Trestman said: ““There will not be any at this time.”

He went on to say: “I stand by these guys and the job that they’re doing. I really believe in them.”

So, let’s really break this down. If Trestman truly believes his coaching staff is doing the best possible job it can, due to the hard work he sees on a daily basis, then how does one, after being outscored 133-51 in the last three games, not come to the conclusion that those coaches just might not be very good at their jobs?

If any given coach is giving his best effort without yielding results, then true accountability would mean the loss of his job.

David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune had a snarky take on the press conference; a take that is pretty accurate, too:

Trestman’s words Monday don’t back up his plan to not “sugarcoat” things when assessing the damage and developing a plan for the future.

Maybe Trestman won’t have to sugarcoat anything, because he somehow found the words to say “This team and this locker room is in a good place at this time.” That right there, folks, is your head-scratching comment of the day.

What’s the saying? The definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, if you thought you’d hear something different from Trestman, something perhaps, innovative or thought-provoking (in a good way), you were fooling yourself.

Nothing will change at Halas Hall until the coaches and players truly know that repeatedly falling short of expectation comes with consequences.

All quotes transcribed from audio recording of Monday's press conference.