Veteran playmaker Keenan Allen might be back for the Chicago Bears in Week 4 against the Los Angeles Rams, but it doesn’t appear key Chicago players are convinced his return will help their offensive woes that much in 2024.
And they’re letting offensive coordinator Shane Waldron know it.
According to Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer, Caleb Williams, Cole Kmet, and Marcedes Lewis met with Waldron this week to tell him he needs to coach and call plays more aggressively. Uh, yeah, that’s never what you want to hear about an offense less than a month into the season. I’m talking about both having the private meeting with their coach and the kinda alarming critical message.
https://twitter.com/nflonfox/status/1840425485550977355
Waldron, of course, is in his first year as Chicago’s lead offensive mind. While he had a good reputation with the Seattle Seahawks in recent years, a combination of Williams’ learning curve as a rookie and a bunch of different moving parts have led the Bears to one of the NFL’s worst statistical offenses so far.
To Waldron’s credit, he appears receptive to this kind of criticism. Earlier this week, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Waldron had spent significant time highlighting some of his worst play calls and taking responsibility for them in front of his players. That might be no small thing.
At the very least, it seems the Bears’ offensive leaders and Waldron have a quality back-and-forth dialogue. We’ll see whether it manifests in more points and yards moving forward.