CASE GASE THE FOR
First-year Bears offensive coordinator has learned from some of the best in the business
As one of few people qualified to discuss Adam Gase the high school wide receiver and Adam Gase the burgeoning coach, Ryan Van Dyke’s opinions of Gase in the two roles differ greatly.
Van Dyke, Gase’s high school quarterback in Marshall, Mich., also played at Michigan State, where Gase, now in his first season as Bears offensive coordinator, was getting his first taste of teaching as a graduate assistant under Nick Saban.
“Talent-wise, he was average,” Van Dyke says of Gase the receiver. “He tried so hard. He was always working on drills and would break out stats after games so the coach had them the next morning.”
When the pair reunited at Michigan State, Van Dyke recalls all-nighters spent talking X’s and O’s with Gase and enlisting him for help with his throwing motion. “He didn’t act like he was coaching me; he was just on my side,” Van Dyke says.
The path for the 37-year-old Gase, from East Lansing, to the Bears this offseason included another collegiate stop at Louisiana State University with Saban, then onto the Detroit Lions for five seasons, before one year spent as the 49ers’ offensive assistant in 2007 preceded his record-breaking stint with the Broncos.
From Van Dyke to his first NFL passer, Jon Kitna, to Peyton Manning to Jay Cutler, all of the quarterbacks share a similar sentiment on Gase: he has their backs.
Perhaps it’s because Gase could only be so good at catching passes that he’s dedicated his life to helping design them.
And with consecutive, fourth quarter, game-winning drives the past two weeks – the first time he’s accomplished that feat since his inaugural year in Chicago – Cutler is thrilled to have Gase.
“It makes a difference. He gets you through the game, he talks to you. It’s an enjoyable experience,” Cutler, on his fifth coordinator in seven seasons in Chicago, says days before the second comeback and one of his finest moments with the Bears.
With a rash of injuries on the offensive side of the ball, including to Cutler, evaluating the Bears’ early offensive returns under Gase is not as easy as just looking at quarterback production and offensive numbers.
It’s more telling to note how Gase builds weekly game plans tailored
to his personnel’s strengths. Whether it’s installing some zone read with Cutler against Arizona or relying primarily on run-heavy formations when Jimmy Clausen was forced into action, they illustrate both Gase’s foresight and flexibility as a play-caller.
Gase has “all the things you look for,” John Fox, who’s built a reputation for grooming future NFL coaches, says when asked what stands out about his latest fast riser. “I think he’s smart and he’s good under pressure. Meaning he’s a good play-caller. I think he’s creative. Very, very hard worker. He prepares his staff and the players very well.… He is our offensive coordinator. But I also think he’s a tremendous coach.”
In 2006, shortly after joining the Lions, Kitna remembers Gase, recently shifted from the scouting department to offensive assistant, carrying out an assignment from offensive coordinator Mike Martz. Gase was instructed to give Kitna and fellow QB Dan Orlovsky a test on the plays – all 180 of them – they’d learned during the first week of camp.
“I remember Adam sitting in there and saying, ‘Hey, we just got to trust [Martz]. He’s been where we all want to go. Mike’s done everything that everyone of us in this room wants to do, so we’ve got to trust him.’ We think it’s crazy. I’m trying to get home. We started at like 9 a.m. Finally, at like 2, I’m done, so I left. I know Dan was there with Adam until like 11 at night doing that test.
“It was crazy, but it was one of those things that bonded us. We’d ask him questions and he’d say, ‘I’m not even sure on that.’ We were kind of all learning together. I really appreciated that. I just loved our time there.”
Gase’s first pupil once he became a quarterbacks coach in 2007, Kitna was nearly six years Gase’s senior and wielded more experience in the scheme than his young coach, having spent time under Martz disciple Ken Zampese in Cincinnati.
It’s no wonder, then, that Kitna calls Gase a “lifelong learner” – the two men, in many ways, were in the bunker together. Kitna told Gase he was “one of the best I’ve been around” because Gase wasn’t afraid to admit he didn’t know it all.
“I just kind of kept falling into being around the right people,” says Gase, who credits his father, Art, for his constant desire to learn. “To get an opportunity to be with a Nick Saban and the coaching staff that he had with him during my time at Michigan State. All of the sudden I’m with Steve Mariucci and the guys that he had.
“We didn’t have success in Detroit, but I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m learning from some great guys.’ Being around Dick Jauron, Rod Marinelli, Mike Martz comes in, Mike Nolan… it was just like non-stop. Then I get with Fox and [Josh] McDaniels and all those other guys. It’s like, if you don’t take it in, you’re really doing yourself a disservice.”
Peyton Manning has said he and Adam Gase are similar thinkers – they’re always searching for new and improved ways to move the football and score touchdowns.
In 2013, Gase’s first-ever time calling plays after overseeing the Broncos quarterback and receivers the previous four seasons, they succeeded.
The offense set an NFL record for points (606) and Manning authored his best statistical season, culminating in his fifth MVP award and Denver’s advancing to Super Bowl XLVII.
“Hopefully, at some point, I helped [Peyton], whether it was putting in a different scheme or talking coverage with him in a different way than he’s talked it before,” Gase says when asked the role he played for the NFL’s only five-time MVP.
Manning wouldn’t have stumped for Gase as an NFL head coach if he hadn’t helped the legendary quarterback, whether it was exchanging texts at all hours of the night or rebuilding an offense on the fly in 2014 after Manning suffered a torn quadriceps that impaired his throwing ability.
In fact, Manning conferred with clubs interested in interviewing Gase earlier this year, the second straight year in which his services were in demand.
With Denver in the midst of a Super Bowl run two years ago, Gase opted not to interview, but this offseason he sat down with no less than four clubs – the 49ers, Falcons, Bears and Bills – about their head coaching vacancies.
He reportedly was the frontrunner in San Francisco prior to the Niners’ decision to remain in house with Jim Tomsula and Gase’s to follow Fox to Chicago.
When Cutler took his pre-draft visit to the Lions in 2006, it was Gase who picked him up from the airport.
“I guess I just kind of gravitated [to him]. I liked the guy,” Gase recalls. “I remembered spending time with him.… He was tough. Obviously he had the physical abilities.”
When Gase arrived in Denver in 2009 as wide receivers coach, Cutler was there, albeit with one foot out the door toward Chicago thanks to a falling out between Cutler and Josh McDaniels.
Gravitational pulls aside, Gase is onto helping his latest quarterback in Cutler. And like Manning, Cutler has a chance to aid – rather, cement – Gase’s quest for a head-coaching position by sustaining the level of success they’ve enjoyed the past two weeks.
“All I have to do is figure out how to call the right plays on Sunday,” Gase says modestly. Of course, it’s much more than that. “Where he’s been, having worked alongside Manning, Cutler, I think those guys probably felt like he wasn’t their coach – he was helping them,” Van Dyke says. “I think some people just have a knack for being really good at that. He’s like a partner and I think that’s one of the reasons he’s been so successful.”
I think he’s smart and he’s good underpressure. Meaning he’s a good play-caller. I think he’s creative. Very, very hard worker. He prepares his staff and the players very well.… He is our offensive coordinator. But I also think he’s a tremendous coach. — JOHN FOX ON ADAM GASE