New Bears president Kevin Warren should fit right in at Halas Hall.
It’s a situation made for what he enjoys most.
“I’m a big believer in challenges and I wouldn’t want it if it were easy,” said Warren, currently the Big Ten commissioner.
There certainly aren’t many greater challenges in the NFL than turning a 3-14 team into a Super Bowl winner, so Warren came to the right place.
“I never look at the negatives,” Warren said at Tuesday’s introductory press conference. “There is no such thing as a negative situation. There are only opportunities.”
Consider Halas Hall the land of opportunities.
The Bears needed someone to bring vitality and energy and it sounds as if Warren will be the person. He realizes the difficulty of what he’s facing but seems undeterred and instead thinks of it as a chance to do something special.
“If all the elements were in place, it wouldn’t have been as attractive,” Warren said. “But the main thing is the challenge. And I believe in every organization, there are certain inflection points.
“I think the Chicago Bears are at that point from a positive standpoint. We have so many positive things.”
Team board chairman George McCaskey called his attention to detail one of Warren’s greatest strengths. Warren didn’t disagree.
“We will continue to do it the right way,” Warren said. “We will work hard. We will have fun. We will be diligent. We will be detailed. We will be methodical.
“We’ll operate with integrity and honor at every step of the way.”
Warren illustrated his emphasis on detail and how little things made a difference with the first of his three NFL teams prior to Chicago, Dick Vermeil’s Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams of 1999.
“I believe in no missed steps,” he said. “I tell this story all the time. I was blessed with a Super Bowl ring, a Super Bowl trophy cause Mike Jones made a tackle at the 1-yard line (vs. Tennessee), and so you think for us, you know we had a successful season in St. Louis, the greatest show on turf, we won all these games, we were only behind 4:24 the entire year and it came down to one tackle at the 1-yard line—with five Hall of Famers and a Hall of Fame coach, so that tells me you got to have your stuff together.
“We cannot be on the same page and if we got issues, we got to say them and get them out on the table to move forward.”
The other aspect of Warren’s personality that stands out is his competitiveness. A former college basketball player who said he trained with wrestlers to build endurance and strength, he is still all about competing. Warren said his wife Greta can testify to this.
“They started giving up the yard of the month club, and she looked at me like, ‘I know what’s going to happen here,’ ” Warren said. “Our yard was OK. Once I saw that sign (for yard of the month) up, I went out and I got the mulch, I was bringing out experts and cutting the yard, cross-cutting it.
“What happened? We won yard of the month after about three months. I was so proud of that, but that was just a lesson: one, in being competitive, but two, just lean into it. That’s just how I approach life. ”
The Bears can use someone who leans into it.
They could probably use lawn improvement at Soldier Field, too.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
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