AP

Kicker Jay Feely spent a few weeks with the Bears as their dismal season was coming to an end in December, giving him a front-row seat for quarterback Jay Cutler’s brief benching and the final days of Marc Trestman’s head coaching tenure.

Feely was left with some strong impressions. During an appearance with Adam Schein on Mad Dog Sports Radio, Feely said he thought Trestman failed to inspire the players because he “was a little awkward when he spoke” and that problem was exacerbated by a lack of leadership from players. One of the players who failed to lead was Cutler, who Feely spoke highly of as a player while saying the team would be much better off if the quarterback was a leader off the field as well.

Feely doesn’t think Cutler’s going to change who he is at this point in his career, which means the Bears have to make other arrangements on the leadership front.

“That’s not who he is. You’re going to have a vacuum there,” Feely said. “So you have to know that as a general manager or a head coach, ‘Hey, we’re not going to have that leadership from this position, so we’ve really got to have other guys that are going to step up and are going to be our verbal leaders.'”

Feely did add that he thinks John Fox would provide the team with the leadership that was missing with Trestman at the helm and that he thinks there’s plenty of talent in Chicago to fuel a turnaround if the other issues can be dealt with this offseason.