Luke Getsy's future in crosshairs as Bears enter critical offseason for rebuild future

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- All the talk around the Bears centers on the futures of head coach Matt Eberflus and quarterback Justin Fields. But there's a third cog in the equation -- one who finds himself in the crosshairs as general manager Ryan Poles begins his evaluations entering a critical offseason.

Offensive coordinator Luke Getsy.

The Bears' offense finished the season second in rushing and went from 23rd to 16th in scoring and 28th to 17th in yards per game. But they remain in the bottom third in the league in passing. The Bears rank 26th in the NFL in passing yards per game and 25th in yards per attempt.

The passing game simply hasn't been good enough. Some of that falls on the quarterback, but a lot of that will fall on Getsy, whose game-planning and play-calling has been uneven at best.

"When you look at those, they’re always going to be one of those things," head coach Matt Eberflus said after the Bears' 17-9 loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. "We’re putting players in position as coaches, and when it doesn’t work, you as a play-caller, you have to look at that. Did I put our best players in position in coverage in that particular play?

"And then you look at the execution side. Was it executed well based on the play design, based on the coverage, based on a multitude of things? I think you have to look at all of it, all-encompassing. It’s not just one or the other."

Getsy's final outing wasn't one for the books.

The Bears didn't score a touchdown Sunday at Lambeau Field. The loss of center Lucas Patrick and right guard Nate Davis hampered them, and Getsy had little answers to get the passing game going. The Packers sacked quarterback Justin Fields five times and notched 10 tackles for loss.

Fields went just 11-for-16 for 148 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. The Bears rushed for just 75 yards on 25 carries. Getsy schemed open a 33-yard pass to DJ Moore, on which he got Moore matched up against linebacker Quay Walker.

There was too little of that Sunday—too little of that all season.

"I think he’s fine," Moore said of Getsy after the loss. "You know, like I said, it just comes down to us being explosive on the offensive side. We got the players to do it. We got our quarterback to do it. Everything else, we just need to call the plays that put us in position to have explosives down the field or catch and runs like we did today. We just gotta be an explosive team and not a team that’s behind the sticks. 

"Behind the details of it. It really doesn’t matter who’s calling the plays, we just gotta be explosive and do what we do as players."

Moore also noted the Bears need to do a better job of crafting their offensive identity.

"Try to balance how, if that’s the kind of team we are, we’re going to be an explosive team or if we’re going to be a running team that’s going to play off the clock," Moore said."

In Week 17, Getsy crafted a game plan to attack a top-10 Atlanta Falcons defense without Darnell Mooney and with a limited Cole Kmet. He moved Moore around and got him favorable matchups that led to explosives.

There was none of that magic Sunday in Green Bay, and Getsy's future, along with that of Fields and Eberflus, is up in the air as the Bears enter a critical offseason for their rebuild.

“I just think his work ethic," Fields said when asked what gives him belief in Getsy. "Like I said early this year, we improved as a team. We learned how to win. The coaches also improved. It’s hand-in-hand. Nobody is perfect. I’ve been saying that for I don’t know how long. Nobody is perfect. We’ve all gotten better. He’s good at adjusting. If I talk to him, if the players talk to him, he’s going to listen to what we have to say and he’s going to do what’s best for the team. That’s one thing about Luke. He’s an open book, an open mind. You can sit down with him and have a conversation with him and he’ll listen and really take it to heart.”

Fields acknowledged that Sunday could have been his final game as the Bears' starting quarterback. He knows that he could come back, but Getsy could be gone.

Should they both return, the QB-OC duo will have to sit down and decipher what works, what doesn't work, and how to jumpstart a passing game that had minimal explosive days in 2023.

"It’s two sides of it because you got to know what he’s thinking and he’s got to know what I’m thinking," Fields said of potential conversations with Getsy. "I think that’s a conversation we got to sit down and have. Watch all the games together. Go over what we could have done better, what we would change. Would we change the play calls? Would I have mad different decisions on certain plays? I think you really have to sit down and go over the film together and really talk it out to have those conversations."

Fields and Getsy's partnership got off to a rocky start in 2022, but Getsy tinkered with the offense and introduced a comprehensive quarterback run game midway through last season to spark the Bears' offense. The 2023 season got off to an even rockier start, with the Bears' offense resembling nothing close to the unit that found success in 2022.

Getsy and Fields made some changes after the first three weeks, and the offense found some life on the ground. But the consistency in the passing game never materialized. An explosive game would be followed by a dud. A creative game plan trailed by a game in which Getsy dialed up 20 screens. The scripts were good. The rest often looked like he was throwing things at the wall. The in-game adjustments were few and far between. Getsy improved, but it might have been enough.

In the end, that might be the tagline for the Bears that find their futures up in the air after another dismal loss to the Packers: "They improved, but is that enough?"

What the Bears plan to do at quarterback might inform what they do at offensive coordinator.

But if Getsy needed a strong finish to return in 2024, Sunday's game wasn't the statement he needed. That much was clear.

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