Matt Forte on competing with Smirnoff and Pickleball, Bears coaching changes

From the football field to the Pickleball court, Matt Forte has never lost his competitive edge, or his love for the city of Chicago. As a former member of the Chicago Bears, not only does he pride himself on giving back to the community, he wants his former team to thrive for the good of the city.

In an interview with Bears Wire, Forte discussed partnering with Smirnoff to get back into competition for the city of Chicago, his longtime roots with Pickleball, and plenty of hot topics surrounding the 2024 Chicago Bears team.

Matt Forte back competing in Chicago with Smirnoff and Pickleball

Forte is bringing his competitive side back to the city of Chicago, this time with the sport of Pickleball. Teaming up with SMIRNOFF Smash Vodka Soda, Forte will compete alongside recent Chicago Sky player Kysre Gondrezick to take on the pair that will advance to the championship on November 20.

"Obviously, I'm a competitor and I got a deal with Smirnoff where we've been doing things around Chicago and it was the perfect matchup," Forte said.

Dating back to his days in Junior High, Forte has had a long history with Pickleball, where he's also won a championship, showing his championship competitiveness.

"I actually played Pickleball in seventh and eighth grade, for some reason in Louisiana in PE [Physical Education] it was one of the sports that they made us play," Forte said. "Me and my good friend from back home, we were baseball teammates, and we were teammates for Pickleball and we won the school championship. I haven't played it in a while but the competitiveness in me, I know I had to go to the Pickleball courts and tell everybody in Chicago to come out."

What went wrong with Shane Waldron?

It's been a chaotic week for the Bears, which saw offensive coordinator Shane Waldron fired and Thomas Brown named as the new offensive coordinator. Just 48 hours after the news dropped of Waldron's firing, Forte dissected what went wrong for the former coordinator after just nine games in his first season.

"I think he doesn't get the concept of what kind of offense he has," Forte said. "I don't think he really understands the identity or had the ability to help them create an identity as far as an offense. When you have an offense, you really have to take an assessment of what you do best, and not try to trick people, and run trick plays, and do all of these bells and whistles. When it comes down to it, there's a few things that offenses do well and when you stick to those, it doesn't matter if the defense knows what you're doing, they still have to stop the play."

A big failure for Waldron with this Bears team was not understanding his rookie quarterback Caleb Williams, how to get his plethora of weapons the ball, and what worked best for this team. It is due to those failures that the team moved on to Brown, giving him the opportunity to right the offense.

How can Thomas Brown help Caleb Williams?

As a former NFL running back, a collegiate running backs coach for nearly a decade, and then a running backs coach in the NFL until receiving promotions, Brown understands the run game, so does Forte, and he hopes that's where the new coordinator's focus lies.

"What I'm hoping he [Brown] brings is an effective running game, cause they haven't really been effective," Forte said. "They've had some big plays here and there but I hope he can mix it up. If you can running back-by-committee with them and wear a defense down, it will help tremendously on Caleb's play, where he doesn't have to worry about blitzes so much. When you throw the ball 50, 40, times a game, they're going to pin their ears back and blitz you, and that has seemed what defenses are trying to do. What I'm hoping is he won't try to go away from the running game. It's a seed that gets planted.

"People get in a rush too much these days. This is the microwave generation, they want it to work right now, but when it comes to the run game, you have to wear teams down, wear defenses down, and really help the quarterback out, especially a young rookie quarterback."

Of course, one of the team's best running backs in their long and storied history, will identify the need for a productive run game to help Williams. The Bears offense teased the football world with small glimmers of hope before their bye week, and then it was followed by a disastrous downward spiral. For the competitor he is as a former player, one who focuses on giving back to the city of Chicago through Pickleball and his passion for his former team, Forte wants to see things turned around.

Former teammates becoming coaches

In part of giving back to the city of Chicago, quite a few of his former teammates are also giving back to the next generation of football players as high school coaches. To name a few, Robbie Gould, Jason McKie, Spice Adams, and Charles Tillman have all been involved with high school football coaching this year. That doesn't come as a surprise to Forte, especially Gould.

"Especially Robbie, he was involved in the details of special teams and the whole concept," Forte said. "Even Jason, he's so good at encouraging. Coaching is not just the intelligence part of the game, it's more about how can you motivate somebody, and when I came to Chicago as a rookie, Jason had already been there, played in the Super Bowl, blocked for Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson, and he had a lot to offer me. I knew Jason was going to be a great coach. I went to Spice Adams' son's football game and Peanut [Tillman] is out there coaching the DBs, and those type of guys I knew they'd always be involved and close to the sport because of how much they put into it. The Bears actually need to hire them, they need to hire Peanut, Spice, Jason, and Robbie, everybody."

Whether it be on the football field or Pickleball court, Forte is the ultimate competitor. It is because of that competitive drive, that he also wants to see the Bears turn around their 2024 season and sustain long-term success.

This article originally appeared on Bears Wire: Matt Forte on competing in Pickleball, Bears coaching changes