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Former Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman goes back to coaching in the CFL

Former Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman has reportedly been hired to coach the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. (AP)
Former Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman has reportedly been hired to coach the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. (AP)

The NFL, the people who comment on it and fans who follow it generally aren’t too keen on anything that happens outside of the norm. They want things to stay mostly the same because that’s the way it is.

Marc Trestman was something different, and it didn’t work out. He came from a successful run as a Canadian Football League head coach, was given only two seasons as head coach of the Chicago Bears, had a rocky and short tenure as Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator, and now he’s reportedly going back to Canada.

Multiple reports Monday, including Arash Madani of Sportsnet and Gary Lawless of TSN, said the Toronto Argonauts were close to hiring Trestman as their new head coach with Jim Popp as their new general manager. Popp was the longtime GM of the Montreal Alouettes, where he and Trestman had a successful five-year run that included two straight Grey Cup titles.

The NFL generally doesn’t mine the CFL for head coaches, and it probably won’t again for a long time after Trestman failed. Trestman had a decent first season in 2013 with the Bears, as their offense set some franchise records and the team went 8-8. A bad second season, when the Bears went 5-11, was all he got in Chicago. He was fired, moved on to be the Ravens’ offensive coordinator, then was fired in early October during his season season there.

Trestman wasn’t a totally random hire for the Bears, considering he spent many years as an NFL assistant before going to Canada. But his hiring was considered out of the box and an experiment, and the experiment didn’t work.

Trestman was very good coaching in Canada, and moving back there makes sense for him. He leaves the NFL with a 13-19 career record as a head coach, and presumably as a cautionary tale for any NFL team in the future that wants to try something different.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!