Ex-Rutgers OC Ben McDaniels joins Chicago Bears staff
Former Rutgers offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Ben McDaniels is joining the offensive staff of Chicago Bears coach John Fox, according to a source.
It’s a return to the NFL for McDaniels, who was an offensive assistant for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2012–13 and the Denver Broncos’ quarterbacks coach in ’10 after a year as an offensive assistant for the Broncos.
This past season was McDaniels’s first in his positions at Rutgers. In 2014, he was the Scarlet Knights’ wide receivers coach.
While with Tampa Bay the season before, the 35-year-old McDaniels helped then-first-year quarterback Mike Glennon set franchise records for passing yards and touchdowns by a rookie. The Buccaneers set franchise records for points scored, total yards and passing yards during McDaniels’s first season with the team in 2012. He was hired as Columbia’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in late ’11 but left less than two months later for Tampa Bay.
As Denver’s quarterbacks coach in 2010, McDaniels coached then-Broncos rookie quarterback Tim Tebow following his season as an offensive assistant for the team. Both years were under his older brother, New England Patriots offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Josh McDaniel, who was Denver’s coach at the time.
The younger McDaniels was quarterbacks coach at Jackson High in Massillon, Ohio, in 2008, had the same position at Canton (Ohio) McKinley High from ’06–07 and was a graduate assistant at Minnesota from ’04–05. A Barberton, Ohio, native, he got his start in coaching in ’03 overseeing wide receivers at Warren G. Harding High in Warren, Ohio. McDaniels was a quarterback at Kent State from 2000–01.
The Bears went 6–10 this past season in Fox’s inaugural campaign with the team.
