Before the Bears’ game against the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday night, Olin Kreutz was on the radio still trying to educate the listeners at the end of a lost season.
Kreutz, one of the great offensive linemen in Bears history, was pontificating (not a word he would use) on the perilous state of the team’s current O-line before he finally just gave up.
Advertisement
“That was just word salad,” he told his partners on the pregame show. “I have no idea what they’re doing.”
And of course, neither do they. Which is the issue. Rookie quarterback Caleb Williams was sacked seven times in the Bears’ 6-3 loss to Seattle, extending his single-season franchise record and the team’s latest epic losing streak.
It’s been another long, trying Bears season for everyone, including the former players who are paid to talk about a team trapped in its cycle of dysfunction, ineptitude and defeat.
The Bears have lost 10 in a row going into the season finale in Green Bay. Head coach Matt Eberflus was fired after Thanksgiving. General manager Ryan Poles, who reportedly is heading into the last year of his contract, should be on thin ice considering that the team hasn’t won a game since October.
GO DEEPER
'Sell the team!': Bears fans vent their anger in home finale of calamitous season
The current Bears, like Williams, are learning what the predecessors already knew: History always seems to repeat itself at Halas Hall.
“I said to Pat Mannelly the other day on the radio, we don’t do pre and post for games,” Kreutz told me recently. “We do pre and post for regimes.”
Kreutz, a center, and Mannelly, a long snapper, played together from 1998 through 2010. They experienced the unique highs and lows of the NFL’s charter franchise as players and now they talk about it for a living on the Bears’ pre- and postgame shows on 670 The Score.
.@olin_kreutz: "Ryan Poles, the only reason you would keep him is to keep a little stability for Caleb Williams. That's the only reason you'd do it. Because every other decision you can find, you could give a reason to fire him."
Listen: https://t.co/8qAxxPve4j pic.twitter.com/EwWlQYRWtc
— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) December 27, 2024
Viewers are sick of watching these games and so are these former Bears. And while they at least get paid to be miserable, the experience is wearing on them.
“I’m sick of breaking down press conferences,” Mannelly said. “I want to break down matchups and tape. Like I love sitting in front of my iPad and watching, you know, if Aidan Hutchinson was going against Darnell Wright. That would be what I would love to do. But now I’m watching Thomas Brown on a Thursday and we’re grading how he commands a room.”
Advertisement
It’s not just a job for the likes of Kreutz, who made six Pro Bowls as a Bear, or Mannelly, who set the franchise record for games played, or Tom Waddle, the tough receiver who has hosted radio shows in Chicago for nearly three decades. These guys bleed orange and blue just like a regular Grabowski. That they know a lot more about football, as well as the inner workings of Halas Hall, well, that’s what makes it hurt even more.
In some markets, the opportunities to be a rah-rah team guy on the air are plentiful. But not in Chicago. No one wants to hear how great things are because they aren’t.
“If they were winning, I’d be the biggest homer on the face of the f-ing planet,” said Waddle, who played for the Bears in the 1980s and ’90s. “I mean, I’d be leading the charge. But in the name of the good Lord, what am I supposed to say?”
Johnny Morris was a modern-day pioneer, setting Bears records as a receiver before segueing into a career as a TV sports anchor. His TV shows with Mike Ditka are a part of Chicago sports lore.
Ed O’Bradovich and Doug Buffone hosted an uproarious postgame show on 670 The Score for years. Dan Jiggetts was a mainstay on TV and radio for decades. The list of ’85 Bears who did media in this town is basically the entire roster, headlined by characters like Steve “Mongo” McMichael, Dan Hampton and, of course, Ditka.
While Tom Thayer still does the radio analysis for the games and Hampton and O’Bradovich still host postgames together on WGN radio, the old-timers have mostly made way for the next generation.
These days, it’s the 2006 Super Bowl-losing Bears, the last group that remembers what it’s like to have a winning culture at Halas Hall.
Alex Brown and Lance Briggs just moved over to CHGO from the defunct NBC Sports Chicago, while Kreutz and Mannelly have been toiling for years on The Score, where they vent their frustrations before and after games and in regular guest spots during the week. Their teammate, Jason McKie, works the sidelines for the Bears radio broadcast.
Waddle, who quickly moved into a media career in the ’90s and hosts afternoons with Marc Silverman on ESPN 1000, appears on Marquee Sports Network’s Bears shows and does the pregame show for the Bears Radio Network.
Talking about the Bears in a market that can’t get enough Bears talk is a good gig in theory. But it’s not good for your mental health if you actually care about the results.
This is the Bears’ fourth losing season in a row and their eighth since Lovie Smith was canned after going 10-6 in 2012.
Waddle played on the last Bears team to win a road playoff game. That was 30 years ago this Wednesday. Kreutz and Mannelly were on the last Bears team to win a playoff game. That was 14 years ago this January.
Advertisement
“I knew when I got into this I was going to have to be critical at times,” Waddle said. “I didn’t know that I was going to have to be this critical this often.”
“I guess the biggest thing is, I’ve been doing it 11 years now,” Mannelly said. “I’m just disappointed.”
“You know what it’s like in Chicago when the Bears are winning,” Kreutz said. “I’m an analyst now. I’d like to enjoy a playoff game, a playoff win.”
GO DEEPER
How the Bears found yet another way to lose a game in the final minute
While Waddle and Mannelly were affable as players and already doing media, Kreutz was the guy flicking the lights on and off when our time in the locker room was over. But he was a good quote if you asked the right questions, and he suffered no fools when talking about the game of football. Given his status in the locker room, he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.
For instance, after a late-season loss in 2009, he told the Tribune’s Brad Biggs: “There is a lot wrong with the whole organization, but it is not Lovie (Smith). You can’t concern yourself with their job, but you can’t help but think about it. … It has to be fixed from top to bottom. I have an idea (where it starts), but it’s not my place to say.”
That bit of honesty earned Kreutz a trip to talk to team president Ted Phillips and GM Jerry Angelo, as he recently recalled. But not much seems to have changed. There are still a lot of problems at Halas Hall and that’s what he and Mannelly end up talking about most of the time.
Kreutz’s current relationship with the Bears isn’t great. In a 670 The Score interview back in January 2022, he revealed that former Bears offensive line coach Harry Hiestand wanted Kreutz to help him coach in 2018, but the team was only willing to pay him $15 an hour. That reveal caused a big uproar in town and Bears chairman George McCaskey essentially called Kreutz a liar. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well with Kreutz.
Here’s Olin telling the story:
— Danny Parkins (@DannyParkins) January 7, 2022
But he still gets info from inside Halas Hall and he spends a lot of time talking about the Bears with his friends around the league. He also trains offensive linemen, including some Bears players, in his gym. He thinks about 30 percent of what he knows makes it on the air.
“I police myself more out of respect for the guys in the building,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I have much of a relationship with the team after that George thing. But I’m pretty sure I’m not going down a Sammy Sosa route here.”
Advertisement
Other Bears critics like Mannelly and Waddle still have healthy relationships with the franchise despite being incensed with the state of the team.
“I’ve got a good relationship with George,” Waddle said. “You know, George is a good guy. But it doesn’t mean I can’t also say that I don’t think that under George’s tenure, that the organization has been successful. It hasn’t. I guess that’s the line I have to walk.”
“You’re paid to give your honest opinion, you’re paid to do a job,” Mannelly said. “And I try to do everything as well as I can. And that’s the thing about it … you want to be talking about how good Darnell Wright’s going to be or the players that are making big plays. But now we’re talking about players that are struggling, the McCaskeys are struggling … and just the struggles that are going on with the organization.”
To be fair, they’re just as angry with some of the players as they are with the people making the decisions.
Maybe the Bears would be wise to listen. Maybe the Bears would be wise to reach out more often to these former players and ask for their advice. I’m sure a lot of NFL organizations don’t need to solicit advice from their ex-players in media jobs, but the Bears need all the help they can get.
When the Bears hired Poles, the search committee that picked him was made up of McCaskey, then-president Phillips, Bill Polian, the team’s then-director of player engagement LaMar “Soup” Campbell and Bears SVP for diversity, equity and inclusion Tanesha Wade. But no former Bears players. It’s curious, but not surprising.
“The McCaskeys or the higher-ups should really listen to their alumni and see how we really feel,” Mannelly said. “Because we know the game very well. We know that building very well and we kind of know when it’s broken.”
Maybe they’re wary of too many cooks in the kitchen, or too many leaks in the building. Maybe the people in charge think they’re smarter than everyone else.
Advertisement
But perhaps some former players would have nudged the Bears to hire Bruce Arians instead of Marc Trestman in 2013. Pointing out a recent story in the Chicago Tribune, Kreutz said he heard three years ago that Eberflus might have been on the outs with Indianapolis before the Bears hired him. These guys get information that they’re more than willing to share, publicly or privately.
Kreutz was annoyed when Brown, the interim coach, talked about ignoring the “outside noise” because as he saw it, people outside of Halas Hall offer problems and not solutions. The way Kreutz sees it, he’s giving them free advice. They don’t even have to pay him $15 an hour.
“It’s hard for me because you want them to be right,” he said. “It’s like you say, ‘I don’t think this is going to work but I hope you prove me wrong.’ And sure enough, they don’t.”
(Top photo: Olin Kreutz, right, and Patrick Mannelly, center, talk with 670 The Score host David Haugh / Courtesy of 670 The Score)
