LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman on Monday addressed rumors regarding his job security on the heels of his team’s 3-5 start, saying he feels the organization continues to stand behind him.
Bears CEO Ted Phillips, team chairman George McCaskey and general manager Phil Emery have expressed support for the embattled coach in recent days.
“The support in this building has been outstanding,” Trestman said. “That’s all I can say. Everybody upstairs has been extremely supportive of the way we’re handling things. Our team has been unbelievably compliant in doing everything that we as coaches and myself have asked them to do.
“That’s evident on the field. It’s evident in the locker room. It’s evident in the meeting room that these guys are an amazing group of men that have been extremely compliant, and the support has been there.”
With myriad problems dogging every facet of the team as it preps to face the Green Bay Packers on Sunday at Lambeau Field, the Bears are coming off a bye week in which Trestman spent copious amounts of time studying the first eight weeks of the season.
Trestman also spent time trying to connect with players to glean “the things that we can do to help them,” he said.
After sifting through all the information, Trestman said, “the first part of the plan was to educate the guys on some of the things we found, which are in-house things we think we can do better,” and called the process similar to what the Bears did last season during their bye week.
The Bears have dropped four of their past five outings and are 11-13 since Trestman took over after the front office fired Lovie Smith, who was coming off a 10-6 season. Although rumors continue to circulate that players are starting to tune out Trestman, the coach disagreed.
“In a roundabout way, I think I just answered that,” Trestman said. “The only sense I have is how they respond to the things we’ve asked them to do, the level of their work ethic and energy on the practice field. I haven’t seen any of that dissipate at all. I haven’t seen it in our coaches’ ability to coach these guys.
“What we haven’t seen is the production on Sundays. We felt very good, and we told our team when we did our analysis that we are practicing hard. We are practicing with a purpose. There are some things we’ve asked them to do in practice to get more out of them. But in terms of energy, effort and compliance, I couldn’t ask any more of this team than I’ve asked of them here — not just the last two weeks — but over time.”
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