Legendary Minnesota Vikings head coach Bud Grant once told Marc Trestman that “there’s a graveyard just for coaches,” according to a 2013 article in the Pioneer Press.
Trestman, a native of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, found that coaching graveyard on Monday when he was fired after two years as head coach of the Chicago Bears.
#Bears have informed GM Phil Emery and coach Marc Trestman they will not return to team.
— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) December 29, 2014
The Bears went 8-8 under Trestman in 2013 before plummeting to 5-11 this season; a crash that Trestman couldn’t survive.
Trestman, 58, is one of a handful of head coaches and general managers dismissed on what the NFL world calls “Black Monday.” Rex Ryan is out in New York, Mike Smith was fired by the Falcons and Jim Harbaugh is leaving the 49ers.
ESPNChicago.com has a list of 15 reasons Trestman’s dismissal was inevitable. Perhaps the most glaring on the list is the back-to-back games in which Chicago allowed 50 points (a pair of blowout losses to the Patriots and Packers). The last professional football team to reach such a low was the Rochester Jeffersons in 1923.
But as bad as the Bears defense was, it was the lack of production from quarterback Jay Cutler that got Trestman fired, USA Today reports. The article, written by Jim Corbett, closes with this attack on Trestman.
“He has only himself to blame for failing miserably as the quarterback whisperer who couldn’t be heard.”
Trestman is known as a quarterback guru, but he damaged his locker-room credibility when he reinserted Cutler into the starting lineup for their Week 17 game against the Vikings – just one week after benching Cutler in search of a spark for the offense.
Trestman bounced around the NFL as an assistant coach for a number of years before taking command of the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes in 2008. According to ESPN, Trestman wasn’t the first CFL coach to make the jump to the NFL. Grant did the same, as did Bills legend Marv Levy.
According to the Pioneer Press, Trestman’s first NFL job was with the Vikings in 1985; a job given to him by Grant.
While Grant might have been right about a special graveyard waiting for NFL coaches, Trestman’s NFL future isn’t decidedly six-feet under.
