Bear Digest

Bears Promote John DeFilippo to Dual Role Within Offense

Quarterbacks coach given dual title with passing game coordinator responsibilities added as Bears weight making changes to the quarterback spot on the roster.
Gene Chamberlain|
Bears Promote John DeFilippo to Dual Role Within Offense
Bears Promote John DeFilippo to Dual Role Within Offense

The Bears solved the loss of passing game coordinator Dave Ragone to the Atlanta Falcons by simply promoting from within.

In fact, they didn't really change much of anything.

Quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo will serve as passing game coordinator/quarterbacks coach in 2021, it was announced by the team on Monday.

The real question now is which quarterback he'll be working with as they sort through trade options.

It wasn't really known if they would even fill the passing game coordinator spot after Ragone left because the position was created for him when they hired DeFillipo as quarterbacks coach.

DeFilippo has worked with Carson Wentz, Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky now, as well as others like Kirk Cousins and Gardner Minshew.

DeFilippo has been an offensive coordinator in the past so they've basically given him a coordinator title and a bit of a promotion with this coaching staff change and that's about it.

DeFilippo was an offensive coordinator at Minnesota in 2018, Jacksonville in 2019 and Cleveland an 2015.

In all, DeFilippo has been an NFL coach for 23 years. He also has coached with Eagles, Jaguars, Vikings, Browns, Raiders, Jets, Giants, Colts and Panthers in addition to the Bears.

Under DeFilippo, Cousins became the first player in NFL history with 30 TD passes, at least 4,000 passing yards, 70 percent of his passes with 10 or fewer INTs.

Trubisky last year improved his passer rating by 10.5 points to 93.5 and his yards per pass attempted from 6.1 to 6.9 in his first season working with DeFilippo.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.

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