Luke Getsy knew it was finally his time. He’d been doing the grunt work of a graduate assistant at Akron for two seasons, and, at 24, he finally knew everything.
Perfect timing, too, because the Zips had a bunch of coaches leave for other jobs that offseason to clear the way for Getsy to begin his skyrocketing ascent as a Division I quarterbacks coach or something similarly important.
But that never happened. Even with all the turnover, coach J.D. Brookhart didn’t promote him. Getsy was stunned, but he got over it quickly. He decided that would be the last time he’d be preoccupied with looking ahead in his career and was resolute that he’d simply “do my job and kick butt at it,” and let whatever might be next come to him in its time.
Getsy, now 39, looks back at that as a foundational lesson and still thinks that way. When Bears coach Matt Eberflus hired him as offensive coordinator in January 2022, common logic was that he’d last two seasons — either he’d be so good that some other team would pluck him for a head-coaching spot or he’d flop and get fired.
That is a wide and wild range of outcomes, and the pressure would be enormous if Getsy allowed it to enter his mind.
He’s not an idiot. He knows the stakes. He just doesn’t get caught up in them.
“When this opportunity came, this was more about me being excited to lead a group of men; I don’t think of what’s next,” Getsy told the Sun-Times. “I truly don’t. Those opportunities will come if they’re meant to come.
“But when I make a decision to move, all my thoughts are more on, ‘Is this gonna be OK for my family?’ I have four little ones that I care more about than wanting to be a head coach somewhere. . . . And I didn’t think, ‘What if we lose?’ I’m gonna give everything I’ve got, and hopefully my coaching style and all the work I’ve put into this will take care of itself.”
For Getsy’s sake, it’s good that he has that peace going into a season in which the pressure on quarterback Justin Fields is at a peak. And given that Getsy is responsible for his development, it’s equally high for him.
There’s an incredibly long way to go. Getsy and Fields are looking up from the foot of the mountain.
As Fields goes, so go the Bears, so let’s start with him: He was an explosive runner last season with 1,143 yards and eight touchdowns but the least productive passer in the NFL at 149.5 yards per game. There was plenty of good in there, and game-changing runs will always be part of his repertoire, but the overall template is unsustainable. That’s the opinion inside and outside Halas Hall. No one thinks that’s the answer.
“I don’t plan on rushing for 1,000 yards every year,” Fields said.
The Bears were 23rd in the league in scoring at 19.2 points per game, a shade below the 19.7 they averaged over Matt Nagy’s final three seasons as coach, and it was a roller coaster to get there. They averaged only 15.5 points the first six games — Fields had one game with only seven completions — before a spike to nearly 30 per game over the next five.
It was hard to get a read on anything as a roster that was already stripped down crumbled completely, and the Bears were rarely competitive the rest of the way.
They led the league in rushing at 177.3 yards per game, but the fruitless passing attack left them sitting 28th in total offense. They allowed the fourth-most sacks, and no one on the team reached 600 receiving yards — a mark 63 players topped leaguewide.
But general manager Ryan Poles was in teardown mode last season, making it even murkier to evaluate Getsy. This season should be much different after Poles spent the offseason upgrading all over the field.
“The better your team is, the more you can overcome the rough parts,” Getsy said. “We just weren’t to that point where we were able to overcome a penalty or a two-yard loss on a run play or a sack. Hopefully we’re able to handle those situations now.”
And that should lead to a clearer view of Getsy’s ability as a coach. His ideas no longer will run into the brick wall of a depleted roster ill-suited to execute them. Smart plays look a lot smarter when good players run them.
“His growth in the first year was really cool to watch,” Eberflus said. “His growth in the second year is going to be even better.”
As part of the Bears’ expected progress, though, they’re betting that Fields will be better. Getsy must guide him forward, and this is the first time he has been in charge of that in the NFL. The majority of his pro coaching experience was in Green Bay, where Aaron Rodgers was nine seasons in and had already won an MVP and a Super Bowl when Getsy arrived as a quality-control coach in 2014.
Of the 33 quarterbacks who threw at least 200 passes last season, Fields finished 25th in passer rating (85.2), 31st in completion percentage (60.4) and 32nd in interception rate (3.5% of his passes). He threw 17 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions.
In 27 games, he has thrown for more than two touchdowns only once, put up a 100-plus passer rating four times and topped out at 291 passing yards. Every move the Bears have made, and virtually every thought Getsy has had about the offense, has been intended to facilitate his growth.
“My mind is on how I can help everybody that’s in this building be the best version of themselves, and Justin is front and center of that because everything we do runs through him,” Getsy said. “I’m making sure he feels great about it and he’s confident in what he’s doing, and that confidence will spill over to everybody.”
There were flashes of that happening last season when Fields sparked a second-half rally against the Vikings, upended the Patriots on ‘‘Monday Night Football’’ and nearly downed the Dolphins the day he ran for a quarterback-record 178 yards.
Getsy hopes those glimpses of potential become the norm this season, albeit with the production tilted much more toward passing than running.
It took awhile to get the offense looking even somewhat viable last season, but the Bears believe that was due to the overhauling of the entire organization. For Fields, the staff changes essentially wiped out parts of his rookie experience, and the reshuffled -roster needed time to acclimate.
The roster looks a lot different this season, too, with new wide receivers and a remodeled offensive line, but at least Eberflus, Getsy, Fields and quarterbacks coach Andrew Janocko are still in place. So even if it doesn’t click immediately, Getsy is confident it will eventually get rolling.
“There was never any panic in my previous years [with the Packers] when we’d get blown out or have a bad day at the office,” he said. “You trusted the process and tried to get better.”
But those teams were really good. This one went 3-14 last season.
“But hopefully we’re going that way,” he said. “Those teams were able to lean on -previous successes, but early in that regime, they were 6-10 [in Rodgers’] first year, and three years into it they won it all. It’s always a process.”
Every coach thinks their team is on that path. Nagy thought he still had the Bears on track going into his last season.
What differentiates Getsy, though, is his willingness to adapt. Every coach has to find the line between conviction and flexibility, and Getsy seems open-minded. After those dreadful first six games last season, the offense looked dramatically different against the Patriots. He disagreed that it was a major shift in the offense, but it certainly was a change.
“That’s our job — to adapt and continue to grow and transform,” he said. “If you stay stagnant, coaches are too good in this league. It’s ever-evolving. If it’s the same way you’ve always been doing it, teams are going to catch on to that.”
That was true from one game to the next last season, but even more so going into this one.
Every opponent on the schedule this season has a full catalog of film on how Fields played last season, and there’s no doubt the defensive emphasis will be on taking away his rushing opportunities and forcing him to prove he can pass. He and Getsy have to be ready to succeed in a new way.
After the snub at Akron, by the way, Getsy got a call two weeks later from West Virginia Wesleyan asking him to come aboard as offensive coordinator. It was quite a step down to Division II, and he made about $30,000, but the learning experience was formative.
He really didn’t know everything, it turned out.
That was probably the biggest thing he learned, actually. Getsy maintained that humble approach as he ascended, picking up as much as he could from Rodgers, Matt LaFleur and others over seven seasons in Green Bay.
He had the same mentality as a first-time NFL coordinator with the Bears last season, likening himself to the young players on the roster who were experiencing so many things for the first time. Making complicated in-game decisions based in unanticipated scenarios felt natural by the end of the season. He got better.
Now, with a legitimate roster and a second offseason working with Fields, it’s time for Getsy to show what he can do.
