Source: Chicago Bears hire Doyle as OC, Allen named DC

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

According to a league source, the Bears are hiring Declan Doyle as the team’s offensive coordinator, 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 main responsibility will be to help him plan each week’s opponent.

“It’s going to be critical for me to find someone who can organize and structure and set the table, especially early in the week,” Johnson said. “I’ve been around a number of guys who have called plays in the past and I’ve seen the potential pitfalls that could arise when you approach the whole football team and you don’t get to see as much tape early in the week as you could at all.

“The offensive coordinator position will have to be someone that I not only trust, but we will be extremely detail oriented, organized and structured to cover the table and also be willing to work late nights.”

Allen, who has never coached with Johnson, is a longtime member of the Saints coaching tree that brought up Lions coach Dan Campbell and former Detroit defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn.

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

Allen was with the Saints from 2006 to 2011, when he left to take the Broncos’ defensive coordinator job. He was fired four games into his tenure as Raiders head coach and 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 coaching position in 2022 after Sean Payton stepped down, but was fired midway through the 2024 season.

“I never trained with Dennis,” Johnson said. “I’ve never met him. But. I will tell you that we faced that defense a year ago when he was in New Orleans and got a lot of respect for it. I think everywhere he’s been along the way, they’ve been a top third-down team so there’s a lot of pillars of what he does that would be appealing to me He’s worked with Dan Campbell him so he’s on the list But there’s a number of really good candidates.’

Hightower enters his fourth season as the Bears’ special teams coordinator after beginning 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, cornerbacks coach Jon Hoke.