The Chicago Bears are digging deep for their next head coach, and it seems like all options are on the table. Bears GM Ryan Poles didn’t even rule out the trade market to secure their next guy when asked in his end-of-season press conference yesterday.
They’ve already proven they aren’t shy about looking at head coaches who are currently employed. An interview with Dallas Cowboys HC Mike McCarthy was requested and subsequently denied by Jerry Jones.
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg thinks the Bears should go all in and trade for Pittsburgh Steelers HC Mike Tomlin.
“There is no team in the NFL that needs a culture built more than the Chicago Bears,” Greenberg said Wednesday on Get Up. “The Chicago Bears should offer anything it takes to see if the Steelers would be willing to trade them Mike Tomlin and then just hand the franchise to him.”
Not only would the Bears have to go all in on their offer to the Steelers, but they’d have to go all in on their offer to Tomlin. Adam Schefter reported that “one team” reached out about a trade but was told of a no-trade clause in his contract. Given the circumstances, the Bears very well could have been the team that reached out. Tomlin would have to be given a pretty sweet offer to waive his no-trade clause.
While trades for head coaches are fun to speculate about every offseason, they are so rare that they are barely worth mentioning anymore. The last real one to happen was in 2006, and there were several back in that era. The most recent two involving Sean Payton and Bruce Arians were both while those coaches were retired. The trades were only necessary because their previous teams still had rights to their contracts.
There is probably a good portion of Steelers fans who would view a Mike Tomlin trade as the best-case scenario. Many have been wanting to move on from Tomlin and his lack of playoff wins for years, and getting a king’s ransom of draft picks in the process would be even better. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much, though. Tomlin has said many times that he loves his job in Pittsburgh, and the Steelers don’t have it in their DNA to trade a head coach like that.
Schefter said he gets no sense that a trade would actually happen.
