Role Changes for Bears Staff Aim to Eliminate Sideline Chaos

Eric Washington and Chris Beatty have slightly different roles in the revised Bears coaching staff as they work on opposite sides of the football for Sunday’s game with the San Francisco 49ers.

Beatty, it’s an increased role preparing the game plan and talking with interim head coach Thomas Brown. But for Washington, it’s all about play calling now after his regular workload with the defense.

Calling defensive plays is not new to Washington, who called all of the Bears defensive plays in the preseason and had some previous experience at it in Carolina. The extent of it is new.

“It doesn’t change a lot,” Washington said. “I’m responsible for the entire plan. Previously there was a lot of collaboration between myself and the rest of the staff and that will remain true. We have an excellent staff and we pull from all of our perspectives and knowledge and experiences.

“But at the end of the day I’ve got final responsibility with every single thing that we do.”

Washington called defensive plays from the start of the Carolina Panthers season in 2018 until the end of November, then Ron Rivera took the duties back.

They gave up almost exactly the same number of yards, 353, but in Rivera’s four games were allowing six points less than they did when Washington did it.

“Just looking back at that, at your first time having an opportunity to function in that role, there is no easy part of calling the game,” Washington said. “But the gotta-have-it situations, the fourth-down plays, the calls that you need to make in the red zone are critical because those things can lead to points.

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“So you have to make sure that you have a really decisive plan, you get the guys the best call that really accentuates what we can do and manages that situation and let them go play.”

Washington obviously isn’t telling anyone what to expect from him as a play caller in detail but sounds like he wants to be aggressive.

“Well, it’s gonna be accentuated, and it’s gonna be led by our players,” he said. “It’s gonna be led by their awareness, their physicality, their speed, their violence and just making sure that there’s clarity.

“There can’t be any ambiguity on defense and then go out and make the kind of plays and play with the assertiveness that we want to play with. And so I want to start with that. And I also want to make sure that we know who we are. The No. 1 reason that people fail is that you don’t know who you are. I want to make sure that from the front to back, every single person in that room including the coaches, we know exactly what our identity consists of. And that whatever we decide to do, it’s in the best interest in the talent that we have on the football field.”

The offensive side changes in the mechanics of it all. Brown remains play caller but now he’s on the sidelines. Interim offensive coordinator Chris Beatty, their passing game coordinator and receivers coach, takes on the role of coordinator without calling plays.

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The problem with this is Beatty will be on the sidelines, as well. So they’ll have assistant offensive line coach Jason “Hoss” Houghtaling calling down defensive fronts and personnel groups of the 49ers offense while quarterbacks and receivers assistant Robbie Picazo keeps them abreast of down-to-down coverage situations.

“He’s been doing that for me the whole time,” Beatty said. “So I don’t think that will change. It will just be Thomas is paying more attention (on the field) as opposed to being up there to see it himself.”

The real change for Beatty occurred when Shane Waldron was fired as offensive coordinator and Brown took that position.

“When he took over, I started doing a lot more hands on stuff with him and working hand in hand with him, so that part became a little bit more of my every day than just the normal coaching the receivers group and doing one part of the game plan for Shane,” Beatty said. “But as far as this week, it hasn’t really been too much different.”

The goal for the coaching staff is to up the effectiveness and keep everything flowing, but faster after the late-game fiasco at Detroit.

“I’ll probably have a little bit more to say with the time management part of it,” Beatty said. “Obviously we had some issues with that, so we’re going to try to streamline that a little bit to make that a little less hectic maybe on the headset and more a couple of heads getting together before everything happens as opposed to as it happens.

“So those things we’re trying to work through and fit those things in.”

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— tc (@TheCruseman) December 5, 2024

Not much changes for QB Caleb Williams as he’s still working with Brown’s play calls, except now Brown is on the sidelines.

They need to keep it as familiar as possible for Williams because he’s a rookie.

“Sometimes you take those things for granted, when you worked with Matthew Stafford or Justin Herbert,” Beattie said. “They’ve been through those situations, whereas Caleb is going through a lot of these for the first time. It’s our job to make it easier for him.

“We’re going to try and do better at that and be better at communicating all those things in the process.”

Twitter: BearsOnSI