An AFC owner walked into his locker room after another devastating playoff loss, angrily confronting one of his chief personnel operatives. “We have to do better,” he said. The personnel man nodded. With the sting of defeat still boiling his blood, he hoped the owner would just go back to his mansion and leave him the hell alone. The owner did not, and the ranting continued. “I want a plan. I want to see a plan. And I don’t want to see it in March. I want to see it next week.”
There is no such thing as a plan. One of the developments in sports over the last few years has been the emergence of this dopey phrase, “trust the process.” It is often accompanied with an even dopier phrase, “process over results.” Do I understand the concept? Yes. If you do the right things, if you prepare the correct way, the results will come. But here’s the problem with that sentiment when it comes to winning championships: it’s poppycock, balderdash, hogwash. What was the flaw in the process for Matt Nagy’s Bears that led to Cody Parkey’s double doink? What was the flaw in the process for that first Bills Super Bowl team that knocked Norwood’s kick wide right and changed the legacies of Marv Levy, Jim Kelly, etc.? Did Bill Belichick suddenly forget how the process _works_ when Tom Brady moved south for tax reasons? Had he not learned it yet in Cleveland? Changing sports, does Aaron Judge employ the right process to dominate the regular season but the wrong process for postseason success?
If you want to be a consistently good franchise, sure, process can be important. The Packers and Steelers have displayed solid process for the last decade. And no rings. If you want to win championships, that process better include employing the kinds of athletes (and coaches) that thrive in the definitive moments of a season’s most important contests. The Chiefs don’t win because of their process, which is evidenced by the fact that no one from that organization has made their process work in a second location. (Just as none of Belichick’s assistants were able to bring his magical “process” to a second location.) They win because they have two superstar coaches, a superstar quarterback and a superstar pass rusher.
The Bears have not failed to win consistently because of an absence of process. They have failed to win consistently because they have been deficient – for too long – as the two most important positions in an NFL franchise: head coach and quarterback. If Ben Johnson is a good head coach, and Caleb Williams is a good quarterback, the Bears will be good moving forward. If Johnson is great, and Williams is great, so will go the Bears. If they’re not, the Bears will return to the process that has defined them in the 21st century: the hiring process.
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