Earlier this week, Bears kicker Robbie Gould took issue with coach Marc Trestman’s decision to bench quarterback Jay Cutler in Week 16 and said it was a sign that “this whole season’s not the Bear way” in terms of dealing with the issues facing the team.
One of Gould’s longtime teammates agrees with him. Linebacker Lance Briggs said on his weekly CSN Chicago show this week that he was “happy with what Robbie had to say” about the way the Bears have conducted their business this season.
“I certainly know what the ‘Bear way’ is, I lived it for many years. We always did a really good job of protecting what’s in our house, that locker room. If we had any issues, we handled it within that locker room and we protected ourselves from the outside,” Briggs said, via the Chicago Tribune. “There were a number of things that ended up slipping out that shouldn’t have. There was a lot of drama and there was more of a focus on what was happening off the field than what there was on the field and everything just kind of mounted and mounted on top of each other.”
Briggs closed the show by saying farewell to Bears fans and it continues to look like he’ll be learning the way of another team if he continues his career in 2015. With cornerback Charles Tillman also possibly leaving, the Bears will move further away from the players most associated with the Lovie Smith era, leaving responsibility for shaping “the Bear way” to a new group. We’ll know whether Trestman will continue to lead that group soon, but plenty of other questions remain about the Bears’ ability to get back on track next season.