9/5/14: Bears coach Marc Trestman announced Friday there will be no set captains this season. He also said coaches are prepared to make a decision tonight on the team’s starting safeties. Peggy Kusinski reports.
The Chicago Bears have plenty of veteran leaders on the team, but according to head coach Marc Trestman, none of them will have their jerseys adorned with a "C" patch this season as the team will not name captains for the year.
“We’re going to have game captains this year,” he told the media at Halas Hall on Friday. “We’re not going to elect. So we’re going to do it game-by-game and I’ll make that announcement to the team in the morning who the first game captains are going to be. We’ve got a lot of guys deserving.”
Lance Briggs, Roberto Garza, Jay Cutler, Julius Peppers and Patrick Mannelly were named captains last season, but with Peppers gone to Green Bay and Mannelly retired and hosting a morning radio show in Chicago, there is already some significant turnover on the roster.
Even still, it’s an interesting decision to say the least for the Bears not to name season-long captains, but Trestman has always been known as a player’s coach, so he knows what he’s doing here.
The Bears, according to Michael C. Wright of ESPN Chicago, have been naming captains for the past seven seasons, but that trend will come to an end. There are other teams that don’t have yearly captains, including the Green Bay Packers, but it will still be interesting to not see the “C” on Cutler’s chest this season.
