With Mike Tice taking over as offensive coordinator of the Bears, it’s not entirely clear what the Bears will do on offense. Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune has an idea; he predicts the offense will look a lot like the one the Vikings ran during Tice’s tenure as head coach in Minnesota.
“Mike was very involved in the offense in Minnesota,” Lions offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, who coordinated the offense in Minnesota during three of Tice’s four years in charge. “He was an offensive head coach. I leaned on him heavily. He had lots of very good ideas.”
And so, while Tice is regarded as a meat-and-potatoes guy on offense, the reality is that there will be plenty of flying pig, especially with Jay Cutler at quarterback and Brandon Marshall at receiver.
The throws won’t simply be horizontal. “The passing game was based on getting big plays,” Linehan said.
Of course, there’s a difference between Brandon Marshall and Randy Moss, but the Marshall-Cutler combination arguably can be as potent as Moss and Daunte Culpepper were under Tice.
While all of this may be good news for the fantasy football crowd, the reality is that, under Tice, the Vikings went to the playoffs only once in four seasons. If that pattern repeats itself in Chicago, he won’t be the offensive coordinator for long -- because there will be a new head coach.