Thomas Brown insists that he is focused on the task at hand and not on what might happen in the future.
His immediate responsibility as the interim coach of the Chicago Bears is to help the team finish strong in the final five games, starting this weekend against San Francisco. He’s not thinking about anything beyond that.
“I think about just the moment. … I obviously understand the role that I’m in, understand what might come with it,” he said Wednesday. “But I also understand that we make most situations bigger than what it has to be because of the outside noise, what everybody else puts a value on it.”
The Bears are going through a situation unlike anything in the franchise’s history.
They fired their head coach for the first time during a season when Matt Eberflus was let go on Friday with a 4-8 record and the team on a six-game losing streak that included some puzzling decisions. Brown, who had just been promoted from passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator, was named the interim head coach.
The turning point came after a 23-20 loss to Detroit on Thanksgiving, when the Bears allowed the clock to run down instead of calling a timeout after a sack. This led to Caleb Williams throwing an incomplete pass from the Lions’ 41-yard line as time expired when Chicago should have had enough time for more than one play.
Star cornerback Jaylon Johnson interrupted Eberflus’ postgame speech and made his feelings clear. Other players had also voiced their frustrations with the coaching decisions in the weeks leading up to that game, and they didn’t hold back their emotions after the Detroit loss.
On Wednesday, defensive end DeMarcus Walker said he had a feeling that a change was coming after the loss to the Lions.
“You guys just look at the whole turnaround, how everything had been going, we just knew some changes were going to be made,” he said.
Now 38 years old, Brown has a big opportunity. He was the offensive coordinator for Carolina last season and spent the previous three years with the Los Angeles Rams under Sean McVay, the last two as assistant head coach. Before that, he was an assistant coach in college for nine years, working at Wisconsin, Georgia, Miami, and South Carolina.
His job now is to help fix a team that entered the season believing it had a chance at a playoff spot.
A major part of that job is developing quarterback Caleb Williams. In the three games since Brown took over as offensive coordinator, Williams has looked more comfortable, completing 75 of 117 passes for 827 yards, with five touchdowns, no interceptions, and a rating of 99.2. While Brown will continue to call the plays, the Bears now have another new offensive coordinator in wide receivers coach Chris Beatty.
“I think it is a stepping stone actually with my development because I think down the line I’ll have different OCs or different head coaches or whatever the case may be,” Williams said.
“And so being able to handle it my first year, handle a new playbook, handle all these different changes, handle all of this I think it definitely will help the development instead of hurting it or anything like that.”
Beyond developing the young quarterback, Brown will be judged on his ability to prepare, make decisions during games, and lead the locker room during his audition for the permanent job. He said that after the firing of Eberflus, he reached out to each player individually on Friday and Saturday and tried to set a tone when the team met on Monday.
“I want them to be excellent,” Brown said. “I can nitpick at every single play and tell a guy how he wasn’t perfect. And, so, perfection’s not the goal. It’s to excel at your craft.”
