Welcome to Chicago: Clancy Barone, Tight Ends Coach

By Kevin Schroeder
- Tweet
- Pin It
Updated: January 21, 2020

The last of the catch-up posts. The Bears fired Kevin Gilbride after a rough year from their tight ends. The team was behind the 8 ball with Burton injured to start the year then injured again during the season, but Burton didn’t do much of anything when he was healthy, Shaheen ended up as a healthy scratch and then an unhealthy one, and an injury to Ben Braunecker left the team with J.P. Holtz, who they plucked off of Washington’s practice squad and Jesper Horsted, who came from their own practice squad. Obviously Pace has work to do, because nobody’s having any success with a mess like that, but once Pace upgrades the group, Clancy Barone is the man charged with coaching them up. Barone broke into the NFL with the Falcons in 2004 as the O-line coach before switching to tight ends coach the next year, a position in which he would spend the next two years. You’re about to notice a pattern here. After two years in San Diego as TE coach, Barone went to Denver, where he bounced back and forth between OL and TE coach over the next eight years. After his stint in Denver, Barone was hired by the Vikings as the TE coach before, yep, you guessed it, switching to OL coach the next year. Alge Crumpler and Julius Thoimas both had the best years of their career under Barone’s watch and Barone also got to coach Kyle Rudolph. The tight ends should be in good hands this season.

Twitter: @KSchroeder_312