MEET THE COORDINATORS
Mark Helfrich
Offensive coordinator Age: 44
Resume: Oregon head coach, 2013-16; Oregon offensive coordinator, 2009-12; Colorado offensive coordinator, 2006-08; Arizona State passing game coordinator, 2003-05; Arizona State quarterbacks coach, 2001-02; Boise State quarterbacks coach, 1998-2000.
Why he’s here
Mark Helfrich is detailing his role as the Bears’ offensive coordinator — but not its play-caller — when he pauses.
“That’s part of our job, is to take something off coach [Matt] Nagy’s plate,” he said. “I’ve sat in that chair, and anything I can do to help him out I’m going to try to do.”
Helfrich, only two years removed from being the coach at college monster Oregon, was one of the NFL’s most surprising hires of the offseason.
He joined Nagy’s staff — and an NFL team for the first time in his career — in January even as his name was being considered for college jobs on the West Coast. The Bears liked his creativity and the additional intellectual firepower he’d share with quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
Gone is Helfrich’s independence — he called plays at Oregon — but it has been replaced with something altogether fascinating: how can he meld Oregon’s fast-paced, read-option, futuristic “Blur” offense with an NFL scheme?
Chip Kelly tried and failed. After being fired by the Eagles and 49ers, he returned to college. Helfrich, though, said his addition to the Bears is no referendum on those schemes. Rather, he’s adapting concepts — angles on quarterback runs, when to use tempo, and more — to Nagy’s system, which already blends spread and West Coast offense concepts.
The damage done by Oregon’s offense was cumulative. As the game wore on, defenses were worn out by the Ducks’ tempo. That won’t happen with the Bears.
“It’s not the same,” said Helfrich, who was Kelly’s coordinator for four years before four years as head coach. “You look at the college game, there’s 90 plays in a game, 100 plays. You look at the NFL, and that does not exist. It will not exist. That’s not how the game’s built.”
That won’t stop Helfrich from working his ideas into the mainstream.
The Bears will unleash them in the opener. “I think you just surround your quarterback, who’s your most valuable asset, with a lot of good resources,” GM Ryan Pace said. “We feel like we’ve done that, definitely with the coaching staff.
“It’s cool to walk into the offensive meeting room and see them collaborating and bouncing ideas off each other. It’s definitely that kind of relationship. So it’ll be interesting to see that play out. It’s definitely a creative offense.”