AP

Bears offensive coordinator Mike Tice says any talk of limiting Devin Hester to kick returns and taking him out of the wide receiver rotation is crazy. In fact, Tice says that if he can’t find a way to take advantage of Hester’s playmaking ability on offense, then he doesn’t deserve to be an offensive coordinator.

“Devin is going to be on the field. If he’s not on the field, then they should fire me,” Tice told Sean Jensen of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Tice isn’t putting a number on how many passes the Bears plan to throw to Hester each game, but that doesn’t mean he envisions any games when the Bears will limit Hester to special teams and not throw him any passes at all. It’s just that Tice says he learned the hard way as head coach of the Vikings that it’s foolish to say publicly how many times you’re going to get a certain wide receiver the ball. Tice invented the “Randy Ratio” for Randy Moss, in which the Vikings’ offense planned to throw at least 40 percent of its passes to Moss each game. In hindsight, Tice thinks publicly announcing how often he’d get one receiver the ball was unwise.

“I did the ‘Randy Ratio’; that came back to bite me in the ass, right?” Tice said.

It may end up biting Tice in the ass to publicly state that he should get fired if he can’t get the ball to Hester. But for now, Tice sounds confident in the Bears’ offense, and confident in Hester’s role in the Bears’ offense.