Source: Bears hiring Doyle as OC, Allen as DC

CHICAGO — Less than one week after being hired as the 19th head coach in Chicago Bears history, Ben Johnson has hired his three coordinators.

According to a league source, the Bears are hiring Declan Doyle as the team’s offensive coordinator and Dennis Allen as defensive coordinator and retaining Richard Hightower as special teams coordinator.

Declan, 28, has coached tight ends with the Denver Broncos since 2023. He spent four seasons at the beginning of his NFL coaching career as an offensive assistant with the New Orleans Saints.

Johnson said he will continue to call offensive plays in Chicago after three seasons as Detroit’s offensive coordinator. He prioritized finding a coach whose largest responsibility will be helping him game plan for each week’s opponent.

“It’s going to be critical for me to find somebody that can organize and structure and set the table, particularly early in the week,” Johnson said Wednesday at his introductory news conference. “I have been around a number of guys that have called plays in the past and I’ve seen the potential pitfalls that could arise as you’re approaching the entire football team and you can’t get to watching as much tape early in the week as you possibly could.

“The offensive coordinator position is going to have to be somebody that not only I trust but we’ll be extremely detail oriented, organized and structured to set the table and also be willing to work late nights.”

Allen, who has never coached alongside Johnson, is a long-tenured member of the Saints coaching tree, which bred Lions coach Dan Campbell and former Detroit defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, now the New York Jets’ head coach.

Allen was immediately tabbed as the favorite to land the Bears’ defensive coordinator position after Johnson was hired.

Allen was with the Saints from 2006 until 2011, when he left to take the Broncos’ defensive coordinator job. He was hired as the head coach of the Raiders in 2012, then fired four games into the 2014 season. He returned to the Saints as a senior defensive assistant before taking over as defensive coordinator when Rob Ryan was fired. He was promoted to the head coach position in 2022 after Sean Payton stepped away, but was fired midway through the 2024 season.

“I’ve never coached with Dennis,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I’ve never met him. But, I would tell you we faced that defense a year ago when he was in New Orleans and gained a lot of respect for it. I think everywhere he has been along the way, they have been a top third-down team, a top red zone team. So there are a lot of pillars about what he does schematically that would be appealing to me. He has worked with Aaron Glenn, he has worked with Dan Campbell. Both speak very highly of him. So he’s on the list. But there are a number of really good candidates.”

Hightower is entering his fourth season as the Bears’ special teams coordinator after beginning his his second stint in Chicago in 2022. A veteran coach with 19 years of NFL experience, Hightower became the special teams coordinator in San Francisco in 2017, a position he held through the 2021 season before being hired in the same role by the Bears four seasons ago.

Last week, sources told ESPN that the Bears would not retain several coaches from the 2024 staff, including interim head coach/offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, quarterbacks coach Kerry Joseph, wide receivers coach Chris Beatty, offensive line coach Chris Morgan, running backs coach Chad Morton, defensive coordinator Eric Washington and cornerbacks coach Jon Hoke.