A SCAM: WOULDN’T KEVIN WARREN BUY INTO SCHEFTER’S QUID PRO QUO WITH CARROLL?

Imagine if the Bears, after an unprecedented year of flubs, accept the unethical journalism pap of ESPN’s football insider — who urges Halas Hall to hire Carroll at 73 as a favor to the coach's agent

We have reached the point where Pete Carroll could be hired because Adam Schefter recommended it. Wouldn’t that be despicable, in the shady and murky dealings of Halas Hall? This is the low point in the Bears’ search for another head coach — their sixth (or seventh) in 13 years — and what’s disturbing about president Kevin Warren and general manager Ryan Poles is how they’ve read the news on ESPN.com.

Gee, writes Schefter, Carroll wants the job. He adds reinforcement that never should be part of his job description as an NFL insider. The Bears, the reporter says, “are in the market for a head coach who can help reset their culture. Few coaches have been more effective than Carroll at doing just that.” It’s a snapshot of how some of us think Schefter does his job: He performs a favor for an agent — in this case, Carroll’s representative — and pushes the envelope for the Bears to hire him.

WTF?

Can you imagine Warren commenting to Poles, “Hey, should we hire Carroll as Schefter says?” Isn’t anything possible in the tidal wave that has overtaken Lake Forest after nine straight losses? The Bears have appointed some strange people, from Marc Trestman all the way through Matt Eberflus, but this would be madness. Carroll will turn 74 next fall. That makes him a year older than Bill Belichick, the greatest of all NFL coaches, who was ignored by the Bears and signed at the University of North Carolina. Hiring Carroll when he burned out in Seattle makes no sense, which is odder when the Seahawks happen to be in Chicago with first-year coach Mike Macdonald, who is 8-7 and trying for a playoff berth at 37.

Yet Schefter is using his job instincts to help Carroll, which is journalistic trash that should lead to his removal from the network beat. If the Bears want to uproot culture, they would hire Mike Vrabel, who shouts down players and reporters and was fired in Tennessee because he spoke his mind about a faulty new general manager. If they want an offensive coach to help Caleb Williams, they will eye Ben Johnson, who might say no and force them to hire Washington’s cheaper coordinator, Kliff Kingsbury.

Carroll? The Christmas Day story drew the ire of Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, who wants us to know how insiders attempt their sellout deceit. “Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports that Carroll wants back in,” Florio wrote. “Which means, frankly, that Carroll’s agent has specifically told this to Schefter in the hopes that Schefter would broadcast it to the world, in the hopes of generating public opinion. Then, Carroll’s agent will owe Schefter big time. And that’s how the sausage gets made.

“It’s hard to fault Carroll’s agent for trying to use the media to get the word out about Carroll. That’s the agent’s job. It’s not the media’s job, however, to engage in quid pro quo P.R. for coaching candidates. … It’s another thing to let your strings be pulled by ‘sources’ (probably only one source, but making it plural always sounds better) who want to get their back scratched — and who will return the favor, possibly many times over.”

Florio is not alone. Aaron Rodgers, who still owns Soldier Field though he has lost spectacularly in New York, made the same comment this week. “Do these guys feel like when people feed them information, that they have to quid pro quo back to them some sort of thing? Because that would be an interesting decision there … how do you justify being objective in that situation?” he told Pat McAfee. “I would just be interested, for a guy like Schefty, what does he feel like the outside pull is when you have so many sources? And obviously he does. And so does (Ian) Rapoport. They have so many people that talk to them. But do you feel constrained to help these people out?”

Quid pro quo.

Only Warren and Poles would listen.

The Bears should laugh it off, but you know what? They might not. As Schefter points out in his story: “Carroll is one of four head coaches to have led teams to both a national championship and the Super Bowl. The others are Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson and Jim Harbaugh.” He also noted a Carroll comment on Seattle radio. “I get asked a lot, so I'm pretty familiar with answering that I could coach tomorrow,” he said on 93.9 KJR. “I’m physically in the best shape I've been in a long time. I'm ready to be ready to do all the activities that I'm doing and feeling really good about it.”

Schefter found time to fire back at Florio on the holiday. “Everything you say here is 100 percent wrong,” he wrote. “Keep up the guess work and Merry Christmas.”

Folks are unmasking Schefter. Last week, he suggested Michael Vick might take the football coaching job at Sacramento State, believing he might have $50 million in NIL money. Doug Gottlieb, who still hosts a national talk show on Fox Sports, also is the basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay. “Jeezus Shefty, edit what agents tell you … 0.0% chance Sac State has $50m in NIL,” Gottlieb posted. “Have to raise money for a stadium, coaches, and then NIL. Saying it is $50m in NIL is disingenuous.”

Responded Schefter, who saw Vick sign with Norfolk State: “And Jeezus, Doug. A seven-game losing steak and last place in the Horizon League? Less time on social media and more time in the gym.”

So in one swoop, an “insider” has the attention of Halas Hall after angering Florio, Rodgers and Gottlieb. At ESPN, chairman Jimmy Pitaro should move Schefter to Major League Baseball and replace him on the NFL with Jeff Passan. And Warren?

Please help suffering Bears fans and remove Carroll from the list. You can’t hire a man, very good in his 50s and 60s, who wants a five-year contract until he’s 78. Nick Saban left coaching at 73. This spring, Carroll is teaching a USC class in the Marshall School of Business. “The Game is Life,” it’s called.

If anyone needs help in football coaching, try the Trojans, where Lincoln Riley is struggling after coaching Williams. Carroll should stop by a practice on campus. Halas Hall? Leave Warren alone.

Quid pro quo? What does that mean, another trick play by the Lions? Another failure to call timeout? Another Doug Kramer Jr. fumble? Another Tyrique Stevenson fan rumble? Another blocked kick?

It might be.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.