Bears mailbag: On coaching candidates, blame game, lame ducks and more

The Sun-Times’ experts can answer your Bears questions all week on Twitter. Here’s a sampling of queries sent to @PatrickFinley, who responds with more than 280 characters:

A: If I were general manager Ryan Pace, my priority would be finding a coach with the acumen to develop Mitch Trubisky — the player my career will be judged on — and a history of making young quarterbacks great. Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels would be the first call I’d make. Though his stint as the Broncos’ coach was a mess, it still qualifies as experience that the other hot offensive coordinators — Frank Reich, Jim Bob Cooter and Pete Carmichael, to name a few — don’t have on their résumés. McDaniels knows the franchise, too; his brother, Ben, works for the Bears as an offensive coach.

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A: Believe me, the Bears weren’t saving some trick for the end of the 49ers game Sunday. When Fox said he had faith in his field-goal block unit, he was trying to explain why he chose that as the lesser of two evils. The other option would have been letting the 49ers score a touchdown to go up by four or six with 90 seconds left — if they actually took the bait. Personally, I would have let them score. But I play too much “Madden.”

A: Mike Glennon’s failure to give the Bears a competent performance as quarterback changed the landscape of the season after only four games. Had Glennon been league-average and stayed the starter, the Bears would have at least two more wins, and we might not be counting down the last days of the Fox era. As for your general-manager assertion, Pace has tied his future to Trubisky, and we don’t know enough about the rookie yet to judge him a success or a failure. That makes it much more difficult to evaluate Pace’s job.

There’s enough blame to go around. I wonder if both would go back in time and move Jay Cutler before their first season together so they could crater and find a young quarterback a season or two sooner.

A: If anything, losing the rest of the way might make the Bears more attractive — their draft pick would be higher. I don’t think Pace would be viewed as a lame duck by an incoming coach. Some coaches want to pick their own GM, though; I don’t think that will be the case at Halas Hall.

Follow me on Twitter @patrickfinley.

Email: pfinley@suntimes.com