The Bears not landing in the main tweet is not what bothers me. Instead, that there is “no clarity” at this point bugs the heck out of me.

The Chicago Bears’ search for a new coach keeps trudging along

As of this posting, it has been 46 days since Matt Eberflus was fired and a big, fat (metaphorical) “HELP WANTED!” sign was put up at Halas Hall. I can understand if not all their ducks are in a row. After all, we are only nine days into the offseason, the team still needs to fulfill Rooney Rule requirements, and its presumed top target is still coaching in the playoffs. And it isn’t as if the Bears are alone in this boat. Every other team that needs a head coach still needs to check those boxes.

UPDATED CHICAGO BEARS HEAD COACH CANDIDATE POWER RANKINGS

Maybe having a head start doesn’t matter when your best candidates are going to be coaching into mid-to-late January — or even February. And yet, to be 46 days into not having a head coach and not have clarity in the eyes of a long-standing NFL reporter is troubling. I’m not sounding all the alarm bells right now. But I see the red flags and refuse to ignore their presence.

Full disclosure: I expected a drawn-out and methodical search. So that it is taking time isn’t something that surprises me. Hence, it doesn’t bother me as much as it has others who are following along. Recent franchise history suggests that the Bears overcorrect (almost to a fault) in every hiring cycle. So after breezing through a search for a new brass in 2022 which yielded a new head coach just days after hiring a general manager, it makes sense that this team would lean hard in the opposite direction with a lengthy search and a list of candidates that would make a CVS receipt blush.

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That this front office is racking up interviews like they are going out of style makes sense to me. The Bears are an insulated franchise, so it makes sense that it would use this opportunity to reach out to anyone and everyone to actually do so. Whether this path bears fruit remains to be seen. Meanwhile, I can’t shake the feeling that the vibes are ominous now that the Ben Johnson-Bears hype seems to be dying down while buzz about him landing with the Las Vegas Raiders is picking up.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the Bears having a 38-day head start on this search. And while I did not expect this team to come out of the gate with a hire, I didn’t think I’d read from a national NFL insider that there is “no clarity” regarding who could be its next head coach nine days into the offseason. Again, I wasn’t expecting the Bears to have their ducks in a row and have a hire ready to roll. However, it is beginning to feel as if the team did not take full advantage of the head start it gave itself in November. If the Bears make an underwhelming hire, I imagine that feeling will return.