The Bears would be getting quite an accomplished head coach if they ended up hiring Pete Carroll.
It sure sounds like former Seattle Seahawks and USC Trojans head coach Pete Carroll wants to get back on the sidelines, and the Chicago Bears just so happen to have an opening that could be a good fit.
Ironically enough, the Bears' greatest hope right now is a former USC quarterback, No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams. Carroll coached at USC from 2001 to 2009 and he won two National Championships with the Trojans.
He coached two Heisman Trophy quarterbacks in Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart, and a third Heisman winner in Reggie Bush. Williams won the Heisman Trophy in 2022 as a member of the Trojans.
Carroll left USC in a bit of trouble with the NCAA due to multiple recruiting violations, but he skated free to the NFL, where he went on to be head coach of the Seahawks from 2010 to 2023. He won Super Bowl XLVIII with the Seahawks.
Carroll stepped down from the Seattle head coaching gig in January of 2024 after a 7-10 season in 2021 followed by two 9-8 seasons in a row in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Now with the Bears looking to replace Matt Eberflus -- who was unceremoniously fired mid-season -- Carroll will be interviewing for the Bears' job on Thursday.
Where does Carroll rank amongst the potential candidates for Chicago? Well, he's right near the top.
ESPN is reporting that Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, former Tennesee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel, Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores and Bears interim head coach Thomas Brown are all candidates, among others.
Here's how the Bears should rank them.
It should all start and end with Johnson for the Bears. They have a young and talented quarterback in Williams who just needs some direction and someone to believe in him. Johnson has turned Jared Goff into an MVP candidate for the Lions and he's without a doubt currently the best offensive play-caller in the NFL.
Johnson is creative and hungry, and what he's done with the Lions will quickly earn him respect in Chicago's locker room. Johnson could be the key to truly unlocking Williams' potential
In Carroll, the Bears know they're getting a winner. He's done it at both the college and NFL level and even at 73 years old he's still clearly energic and youthful (just watch him enthusiastically chew gum).
Carroll can build a strong foundation in Chicago and we know he can coach quarterbacks. He was arguably the key to Russell Wilson's terrific early-career success, and he could do the same thing for Williams.
Joe Brady was a really hot name in 2019 when he was the passing game coordinator at LSU when Joe Burrow and the Tigers went undefeated and won the National Championship.
Brady parlayed that into a job as the offense coordinator with the Carolina Panthers in 2020 and 2021 and then he became Josh Allen's quarterback coach in Buffalo in 2022.
He's been the Bills' offensive coordinator this past season and he's overseen an offense that was second in the league in scoring with 30.9 points per game, so the Bears could surely do a lot worse than Brady.
If he can turn Williams into the next Allen, he'd be a home run hire.
In Brian Flores you get a coach who has been a head coach before, so he knows the ropes, but he's also a great defensive identity guy.
The Bears have always been a defense-first type organization and in Flores, they'd be getting an aggressive and young defensive mind who perhaps just didn't have the right situation to succeed his first time around as head coach of the Miami Dolphins.
Flores was 24-25 in three seasons with Miami, but he's really interesting as a candidate for Chicago because of the way he has Minnesota's defense flying around this season.
If the Bears decide to stick with Brown, at the very least they'd be giving Williams and the offense some consistency -- and that can't be underrated.
Brown went 1-4 as the interim head coach in Chicago after being promoted from offensive coordinator, but that one win did break the Bears' 11-game losing skid to the Green Bay Packers.
You know what you're getting with Vrabel, and that could be considered good or bad if you're the Bears. He's a former player and he'd bring the New England Patriots' style of toughness and accountability to Chicago. For a young Bears squad, that could be invaluable.
He also had a decent amount of success with the Titans, who, frankly, are a bad franchise. He went 54-45 in six seasons in Tennessee and took the Titans to the playoffs three times.
There's a lot to like about Vrabel, but with the Patriots having recently fired Jarod Mayo, it seems like he could be destined to join up again with Robert Kraft.