Mike Martz’s tumultuous tenure with the St. Louis Rams ended following a 2005 season that saw him miss 11 games due to a heart infection. The man who won a Super Bowl as offensive coordinator of the Greatest Showoffs on Turf and appeared in another as the team’s head coach embarked unabashedly on working his way back to one of the top 32 jobs in the sport by proving that he could still make the O’s run circles around the X’s.
After failed stops as a coordinator in Detroit and San Francisco, Martz’s days as a head coach appeared to be over.
But now that Martz has helped lead the Bears to the playoffs in his first year with the team, he’s thinking once again about being a head coach.
“Sure,” Martz recently said of his interest in reclaiming such a title, according to Neil Hayes of the Chicago Sun-Times. “If the opportunity were to come up again, who knows? Shoot, I’m 59 years old. I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now. And if that’s it for me, I’d be the happiest guy in the world, too.”
In Chicago, Martz is working under coach Lovie Smith, who was Martz’s defensive coordinator in St. Louis, and with defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, who was Martz’s boss in Detroit.
Given his role at the center of a storm of in-house squabbles and controversies in St. Louis, it’s hard to imagine Martz getting another shot at being a head coach. But NFL owners want to win, and they tend to acquire fairly short memories once a guy becomes a hot candidate.
It’s unclear how hot of a candidate Martz is or will be. Much of it depends on how his offense will perform in the 2010 postseason -- and whether the available jobs will be filled before Chicago’s run has ended.