Bears’ wide receivers detail Shane Waldron firing: ‘He was too nice of a guy’

The Chicago Bears parted ways with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron this week, as his unit has been one of the worst in the league through 10 weeks. The Bears haven’t scored a touchdown in two games, and rank bottom three in yards per play (4.3), third down percentage (28.7%) and sacks allowed (38).

Firing Waldron is not going to solve all the Bears’ issues, but it’s clear the offense wasn’t living up to expectations. On Wednesday, some of Chicago’s receivers addressed the big move.

D.J. Moore told reporters that on-the-fly adjustments were a problem with Waldon. He wanted to wait until halftime instead of addressing an issue in the moment. 

“I want to say probably when we want to call it’s probably like a drive too late or like we wanted to make adjustments and we just wait till halftime to make it and then we don’t get the same looks …” Moore said, via ESPN. 

Keenan Allen had an interesting quote, saying Waldron was “too nice,” and wasn’t the type to hold people accountable. 

“I would say just probably he was too nice of a guy,” Allen said, via The Chicago Tribune. “I think during OTAs, training camp, he kind of fell into a trap of letting things go, not holding people accountable. Obviously those things lead to a slippery slope.”

There have been multiple reports this season indicating players had raised issues with Waldron behind closed doors. The offensive coordinator even met with the “team’s leadership council” in September after a loss to the Indianapolis Colts to talk about the offense at large, per ESPN. Ultimately, not much changed, which is why head coach Matt Eberflus made the move he did. 

“They just want to do more. They just want to do more,” Eberflus said, via ESPN. “They want to be more productive. More effective. Score points for our football team. Just do more as a group and then more individually in terms of helping the group … to me it was really, really good to see that they really wanted to get better. And it just didn’t happen in a timely fashion.”