Former Bison Babich promoted
LAKE FOREST, Ill. – The Chicago Bears promoted Bob Babich from linebackers’ coach to defensive coordinator Tuesday, one day after the team announced it would not retain Ron Rivera.
Babich, in his fourth year with the Bears, also coached with Lovie Smith in St. Louis and at the University of Tulsa. He was the Rams’ linebackers’ coach when Smith was defensive coordinator. At Tulsa, he coached the tight ends while Smith worked with linebackers.
“It was so long ago. We were just young coaches trying to come up through the ranks,” Babich said. “We were on different staffs for many years and we stayed in contact. We’ve always talked about being the best that we could be, but we’ve never talked about being on the same staff with one of us being the head coach and the other a coordinator.”
Babich was head coach at North Dakota State from 1997-2002, compiling a 46-22 record that included going 12-1 in 2002 when the school reached the national semifinals.
Rivera’s contract wasn’t renewed after three seasons, even though the Bears went to the playoffs two years in a row and led the NFL this season with 44 takeaways.
Chicago lost the Super Bowl to the Indianapolis Colts 29-17 on Feb. 4.
Speaking after a Chicago Bulls game, Rivera said Tuesday night that he wasn’t surprised Smith moved so quickly to replace him.
“Again, I think it was something Coach wanted to do. Again, we talked about going another direction and this is the opportunity for them,” Rivera said.
Hours after the Bears announced Rivera would not return, he’d talked with eight teams about their head coaching vacancies the last two years; he was hired by San Diego to be the Chargers’ linebackers’ coach.
“I think what it will do is broaden my expertise in terms of what I know as a coach,” Rivera said. “If you look back at jobs this year that were handed out, three of them went to head coaches on the offensive side and three of them to coaches who kept the 3-4 defense.”
Asked if he would do anything differently than Rivera did last season, Babich said: “No. Obviously there’s always hindsight whatever situation you’re in and once again we’ll go through the process of evaluating the season and try to figure out what we could do better.”