Luke Getsy Building a Bears Offense
Luke Getsy and Justin Fields are about to get to know each much other better.
They have to if Getsy is going to build an offense around the second-year quarterback.
It's the first step in the construction of the new Bears offense with Fields at the center, something similar to what Getsy was part of in Green Bay as receivers coach and then quarterbacks coach.
"We've got to dive into what everybody does best, right?" Getsy said. "It starts with the quarterback. This is a quarterback-driven offense. The things the quarterback position does well, that's gonna be the driver of who we are. And then we're gonna marry that to what the other guys on the football field do well. That's the purpose of the offensive coordinator, right? To dive into what the people do well, what they do best, and then build the offense around that."
Getsy had the rare opportunity to work under one coach with a team, leave and then return under another coach with the same team and many of the same players. The key was Aaron Rodgers, of course.
"This is a quarterback-driven offense. The things the quarterback position does well, that's gonna be the driver of who we are."
-Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy
When he returned to the Packers staff after a year as Mississippi State offensive coordinator, Getsy came in at the time Packers coach Matt LaFleur was installing his offense. So he's been a part of the process.
"That was the ease in the transition," Getsy said during his first press conference Thursday with Chicago media. "The west coast style system, that's QB driven, that remained the same. From the time that I got there, their emphasis has been around that position, building through the QB position.
"The biggest thing that attracted me to that opportunity to work with Matt was the teaching style and the emphasis to committing to the run game, letting the run game drive the play-pass game and then building everything around that. We'll be a similar type of approach. We'll let one thing drive the next."
Getsy's experience working with Rodgers taught him one thing and it goes right along with what GM Ryan Poles said about prioritizing improvement by the Bears offensive line. It's something he'll fall back on now.
"It's all about protecting the QB," Getsy said. "Everything is about QB. If you can run the ball and you can play-(action) pass you're going to have an opportunity to protect your QB.
"The emphasis of that being at the beginning of when we put it together back in 2019, those were all big opportunities to lean on."
While Getsy likes the idea of play-action passing and building the offensive line so they can run, he wants no part of making anyone think the Bears will be a run-first offense.
"You talk about taking a breath play (a run), playing the (quarterback) position is as strenuous and tough of a position in all of sports," Getsy said. "When you can take a breath here and there, sure.
"But we're not going to run the ball just to run the ball. We're going to find the best way to attack, no matter who we're playing against."
Because the plan is to build around Fields, the two are going to become close. Getsy already spoke with Fields and also remembered speaking to him during the predraft process last year.
"That process, super impressed with the man, the person; you can feel the determination, the will inside of him as he was communicating to me," Getsy said. "He was super sharp with what they did at Ohio State. And then just again just the brief conversation that we were able to have together here the other day, the same exact thing just jumped back out at me again.
"So I'm looking forward to getting to know him deeper, obviously. But I'm very optimistic about the type of person that he is and I think the will and the desire that he wants to be a great leader, too. So I think it’s a really cool opportunity with a young guy who I think has a really good drive."
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