In moving on from Matt Eberflus the day after Thanksgiving, the Chicago Bears gave themselves a five-week headstart on their head coaching search, allowing the powers that be the luxury to put together a search committee, a plan and a roadmap to start vetting candidates without sneaking around behind anyone’s back to do it.

It also allowed for nights like Thursday to happen.

On one end, the 6–3 snoozer against the Seattle Seahawks is a result of how this season was handled. You can’t take a pass-game coordinator, make him offensive coordinator and then head coach in 19 days, and expect all to be O.K. with your rookie quarterback. And it hasn’t been O.K. The Bears scored 45 points total in December.

On the other end, there’s a lesson learned, and Thursday’s flatline after weeks of the offense circling the drain only further colors the complexion of the Bears’ search.

When Chicago set out to find its replacement for Eberflus a month ago, it was with the idea that there was much more to fix than just the quarterback. A culture change was needed, and a Dan Campbell–style leader of men would be best to turn around a franchise that last won a playoff game when Jay Cutler was quarterback and Lovie Smith was the head coach.

That logic remains sound.

Of course, so does the idea that Caleb Williams must be developed—and the Seattle stat line (16-of-28, 122 yards, 1 INT, 53.0 rating, seven sacks taken) and the operational issues Williams was buried under (clock management was a disaster down the stretch again) only highlight it.

We have one week to go, and we’re covering the never-ending NFL weekend that still isn’t over yet. There were two games on Wednesday, another on Thursday, three on Saturday, nine on Sunday and another tonight. In The Takeaways, we’ll walk you through everything, with a deeper look at …

• The Minnesota Vikings’ year-long unlikely trek to a 14th win.

• How the Washington Commanders’ facelift has come together faster than anyone thought.

• Joe Burrow’s remarkable MVP push and where it leaves the Cincinnati Bengals.

And a whole lot more. But we’re going to start this week with a spin around the NFL’s coaching carousel through the reporting I did ahead of Thursday night’s game. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to everything else, too.)

So what’s changed in Chicago? Well, the company line may have shifted a bit from the idea that the Bears are solely looking for a “leader of men.” One thing that was emphasized to me over the past week was that if that “leader of men” wasn’t specifically a quarterbacks guy, then he’d have to have a very clear and sustainable plan for the quarterback (while Campbell himself did fire an offensive coordinator before getting to his, he had a veteran in Jared Goff at the position).

Here’s some more on where I see their search going …

• The biggest question that prime candidates have is about the role of team president Kevin Warren, and I think the McCaskey family is aware of that. To that end, GM Ryan Poles is set up to run point on the search, and I’m told it’s because that’s the way ownership wants it. Warren will have a seat at the table and a major say, of course. But Poles will, too, as the McCaskeys seek alignment on the football operations side.

• Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson’s name has been linked to Chicago forever. I think last year, the Bears would’ve been near the top of his list. This year? It’s probably more wait-and-see. He’ll be selective this year taking interviews, likely only to sit down with teams he can see himself working for. And while I expect him to take an interview with Chicago, his criteria will remain as we’ve outlined, with Johnson seeking alignment with a GM and an ownership group willing to identify and fix its mistakes. Maybe he’ll find that in Chicago. Maybe not. We’ll see.

• Former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel and current Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn are two leader-of-men types who fit the mold. I think the experience of both as players and Vrabel’s as a head coach and Glenn’s in the NFC North, would be pluses. But both will have to have quarterback plans, as we said.

• Kliff Kingsbury is on the list. He’s been a head coach in college (Texas Tech) and the NFL (Arizona Cardinals). He worked with Williams at USC in 2023, knows the good and bad, went through a tough year with the quarterback and they came out of it with a solid bond. Kingsbury also coached Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech and told me in ’23 that parallels between the Chiefs’ QB and Williams are “eerie.” The Bears interviewed Kingsbury for the OC job in January, so they have a feel for him. That said, Kingsbury’s found football rejuvenation in D.C. and won’t jump just to jump.

• Another name connected to the position is Minnesota Vikings DC Brian Flores. He was a Boston College teammate of Poles in 2003, and the two have similar roots in the Bill Belichick system (Poles worked under Scott Pioli in Kansas City). I’m also told that Warren’s vetting of Flores with all his old connections in Minnesota (Warren worked for the Vikings for 15 years) yielded strong reviews for the 43-year-old. He will, of course, have to lay out a plan for how things would be different with Williams than they were with Tua Tagovailoa in Miami.

• Interim coach Thomas Brown will get a look. As tough as the past month has been, the brass has sympathy for the challenge he’s faced, going from pass-game coordinator (where he wasn’t even running a position group) to interim OC to interim head coach in November.

• Then, there’s Pete Carroll, whose record speaks for itself. He’s won a Super Bowl, been to two Super Bowls and had success that transcended all levels of the sport, with two national titles on his résumé from nine seasons at USC. He also oversaw the development of three first-round quarterbacks with the Trojans, two of whom won the Heisman Trophy, and then Russell Wilson in Seattle. The question, of course, is his age. He’s 73. But the Bears, at the very least, would like to sit down and talk with him.

And let’s use Carroll’s candidacy as a jumping-off point, to dive into everything else that’s happening with a week left until Black Monday.

So, it got out last week that Carroll has shown interest in the Chicago opening.

The reality, though, is that the Bears’ opportunity isn’t the only job he’ll have his eye on. All the teams with openings have been informed he wants to coach in 2025, and that isn’t a new revelation. As was the case with Belichick, last year’s exit wasn’t voluntary for Carroll—and if it were up to him, he’d have coached this year with another NFL team (he even reached out to the Los Angeles Chargers to inquire about their opening in January).

Carroll has spent the past year the way he did in his gap year of 2000, between jobs with the New England Patriots and USC, taking a fine-tooth comb to his program and philosophy. Which, of course, is not what someone who intends to fade into retirement would do.

And now, here’s some more from around the rumor mill …

• What the New York Jets have to sell that the other teams with openings don’t is a blank slate. Owner Woody Johnson, and consultants Mike Tannenbaum and Rick Spielman, are open to hiring a GM and building around him, or a coach and building around him, as they seek harmony in an organization that hasn’t had any in quite some time. Finding someone who will be ready for the unique challenges in that market will be vital, too. Which gives candidates either from the Northeast or with experience in the organization or just the temperament for New York a leg up.

• That makes the former Jet, Glenn, a name to watch in New Jersey, but the Jets likely won’t be the only team after the Lions’ defensive coordinator. I’d expect the New Orleans Saints—who have hinted they’d like a person connected to the organization and with experience—to have Glenn high on their list. Interim coach Darren Rizzi is well-liked. And if they’re willing to bend a bit on the experience part, Buffalo Bills OC Joe Brady’s ties to Saints GM Mickey Loomis, who is running point, loom large. As far as names outside the New Orleans family, Vrabel is one they’ve investigated.

•  Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has taken his normal measured approach, staying quiet while allowing GM Trent Baalke and coach Doug Pederson to finish out the season. There had been murmurs for a while that Baalke could survive—bolstered by the green-lighting of an extension for Baalke draft pick Walker Little, who was only a spot starter until the in-season Cam Robinson trade—but it seems more likely that a clean sweep is coming. And particularly because Baalke feuded with the coaching staff over the past couple of years.

• New York Giants owner John Mara really wants to stay the course with GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll, but he’s also realistic about where the team is. There’s a lot from how the season has gone that’s tough to reckon with, and Mara will sit down with both guys soon to hear out their plan going forward and make a decision from there. That said, Schoen and Daboll aren’t tied together, and there’s been at least some buzz that Schoen could be safer than Daboll. Either way, the two will be evaluated separately.

• Las Vegas Raiders coach Antonio Pierce’s status has been up in the air for over a month. The team has continued to play hard for him, the roster’s gotten younger, the young guys have developed and going to Scott Turner as OC has mostly worked. They won Sunday. That said, with the expectation that the football people will be under a mandate to find a long-term quarterback this offseason, change is absolutely in play, if not likely. Tom Brady’s role will come into focus, too. The minority owner is invested in broadcasting, and calling the NFC championship and Super Bowl could likely limit his involvement in a coaching search. But …

• Mark Davis will listen to Brady’s counsel on where Pierce has taken the program and where things should go. There are plenty of well-connected folks who believe Vrabel would be the front-runner for that job. In fact, last year, when Brady showed up at the team’s final practice of the season, some internally took it as a sign that a run at Vrabel, who hadn’t yet been fired in Tennessee, could be on the way.

• Vrabel and Johnson are, for what it’s worth, clearly the belles of this ball. Plenty of folks feel like the fit for Johnson might be in Jacksonville. Meanwhile, with Vrabel, it’s important to consider his experience at the end in Tennessee in how he’ll seek alignment. Brady could give him that in Vegas. The Giants would be one to watch, too, if they make a change. A favored Vrabel GM candidate, Ryan Cowden, is on Schoen’s staff, and his old DC/confidant, Shane Bowen, is already in place for a coach who could remind Mara a bit of Bill Parcells.

• The plot has thickened on the Dallas Cowboys’ situation. Mike McCarthy’s players have very clearly played hard for him. The team’s charge toward .500, sans Dak Prescott (and having lost Micah Parsons and DeMarcus Lawrence for significant chunks of the year) has added rich context to his three consecutive 12-win seasons preceding this year, even with Sunday’s collapse in Philly factored in. And the Joneses are impressed with the team’s resilience. What complicates things is that McCarthy’s contract is up. Additionally, I’m told virtually the entire coaching staff is up, too—meaning just about everyone needs a new deal. This means keeping them will require a significant reinvestment.

• The Patriots are now a bit of a wild card. The Krafts have sympathy for the position Jerod Mayo’s been put in, a year or two earlier than they expected to make him head coach. As such, their intention all along has been to let him learn through his mistakes in Year 1. But after Saturday, it’s hard to talk about that situation in absolutes. I think he’ll be judged internally on whether players are playing for him, how he’s tactically managed his staff and how his program is built. My guess, still, would be the Krafts will want a two-year view of all that, rather than just a one-year snapshot. But, again, I don’t think anything is 100%.

Elsewhere, I’d be pretty surprised if there was a change in Philly after the year the Eagles have had. On the GM side, there have been at least murmurs of front-office shuffling in Indianapolis and Miami.

And there’s still a week of games left, with the chance that their results could shift things just a little—with the Bears demonstrating, again, just how that can happen.