Trestman, Cutler Flew To New York To Meet With Leadership Expert
(CBS) A year after a disappointing 8-8 season and heartbreaking ending, the Bears are taking both logical and outside-the-box measures to reach their goals for 2014.
An example of the latter: Chicago coach Marc Trestman and quarterback Jay Cutler recently flew to New York to meet with Dov Seidman, an author speaker on leadership who is also an advisor for the NFL, "to exchange ideas about fostering a more ethical culture in the locker room," according to MMQB.com's Peter King.
Trestman told King that he "wanted to find out what else we could do to keep growing" as a team.
More from King:
I've heard of players and coaches working on football in the off-season, and maybe even on better forms of leadership. But for a coach and his top lieutenant in the locker room—who has never been considered a classic locker-room leader—to get on a plane and spend a day working on new techniques and dialog … that goes beyond the call of duty. Trestman and Cutler should be congratulated for it.
"I got a tremendous start in the way a locker room was run when I coached for five years in Canada," said Trestman, whose first head-coaching job was with Montreal of the CFL. "In our locker room, everyone should feel safe. For some of the guys in Chicago, it was kind of new to them. There'd be no hazing. Lovie Smith had a great group of players — a great group — and he did a great job with them. There were some subtle things I wanted to add. I wanted to keep growing."