It's nearly impossible not to be in full-scale "what-if" mode regarding the Chicago Bears this week, what with Lovie Smith's return and Bruce Arians' ascension and the Bears, despite last week's win over the Minnesota Vikings, having been reduced to national irrelevance once again.

The conditions remind us that being a head football coach in the NFL is the most difficult, most demanding, highest-profile, most important position in American sports. And in their latest attempt to find their man, the Bears seem to have whiffed.

Lance Briggs is among several Bears who have a deep respect for their former coach, Lovie Smith. AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

Did you see and hear what Smith's former players had to say about him this week as he prepares to bring his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to Chicago Sunday? The old Bears, most notably Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher, revere him, and their expressions are entirely representative of the way the great majority of Smith's players feel about him. They hold him in the kind of regard they don't have for the current coach, Marc Trestman. And that doesn't mean Trestman isn't as astute as Smith. From all indications, Trestman's knowledge of football is encyclopedic, but that hasn't translated into the kind of reverence that inspires players and it very likely never will.

Just listen to what Briggs had to say to reporters earlier this week: "Now looking back, defense and special teams, it was a special time." Not much translation is needed here. Defense and special teams are the two-thirds of football produced overwhelmingly by desire. Passion usually trumps skill when it comes to special teams players. And the emotion on defense and special teams characterized Smith's tenure with the Bears.

Not coincidentally, in the wake of consecutive historic Bears losses to the Patriots and Packers, where the defense and special teams couldn't have played worse, Trestman's teams are devoid of that kind of zealous devotion in a way that can't be overcome by advanced analytics.

Bears management fell in love with Trestman because they thought he could fix their $100 million quarterback, Jay Cutler, and now that it appears he cannot, it's probably a good time to panic. Trestman's biggest supporters, former players who say they know he's a fine teacher and exceptional offensive strategist, are now ready to jump off his bandwagon because Cutler is no closer to being fixed now than he was three years ago. And if Trestman can't deliver a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback AND the defense and special teams are going to take a huge step back as they did . . .

What the Bears easily could have done -- and this was suggested by a great many people at the time, particularly players who would run through a wall for Smith -- was bring Trestman in as Smith's offensive coordinator. Goodness knows Smith's clear weakness (hiring coordinators) had put him in a position where upper management could have insisted he had to give up that privilege. Trestman as offensive coordinator would have been a fine solution to what ailed the Bears offensively. And what was Trestman going to do -- say no to an NFL team offering him a coordinator job and opt to stay in the CFL?

It's an arrangement that certainly could have worked and just as certainly wouldn't have compromised the rest of the team. Urlacher, speaking of Smith, told "The Waddle & Silvy Show" on ESPN 1000 this week: "[Lovie] was great. He protected us. Everything that happened when it was bad was his fault. He would say that. And everything that happened good was because the players did a good job. I think if you look back at his interviews it was always like that. And we appreciated that.

"But when it was time for him to let us know we did something wrong, he let us know. We always knew when we screwed up, or when he wanted more out of us, he would let us know."

It's a sentiment that speaks to the reverence so many Bears players had for Smith, something that hasn't developed in any tangible way for Trestman.

The Bears have failed to rally around coach Marc Trestman during this difficult season. AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

And what makes it all even worse is the emergence of Arians in Arizona as a coach who inspires the same kind of emotion in his players that Smith does, even though on the outside, the two men couldn't appear to be any more opposite.

Of course, there wouldn't be nearly as much second-guessing had the Bears hired Arians, who certainly is no slouch when it comes to inspiring players. To do it in back-to-back stops in Indianapolis and Arizona leads you to wonder what in the world the Bears couldn't see in Arians that two other clubs could. Arians, by the way, is 26-10 in his past three seasons. And the Cardinals play with a mental toughness and boldness the Bears surely do not; it speaks directly to the impact a head football coach has on the personality of his team.

The Cardinals have lost several front-line players, including quarterback Carson Palmer, and kept right on mowing down opponents while the Bears have played way below their potential on offense. Again, as Urlacher said on "The Waddle & Silvy Show": "Bruce Arians is a great coach, by the way. He wins wherever he goes. You've got great players [on the Bears]. All these big-time players on offense, but you can't score points. You've got all these big-name players on defense, but you can't stop anybody. I don't know where it starts. I don't know how you fix it.

"But the players are there. I just can't figure out why they're in this situation. Every week they match up well with everybody, I think."

That, boys and girls, is an indictment of the coaching staff. You've got the talent, you match up with opponents, and you not only don't win, but you get humiliated in the loss? That speaks to the head coach's inability to inspire his players, particularly when it happens after a bye week, particularly when the opponent next up (in this case, the Packers) is a blood rival.

We can't be revisionist to the point of thinking that Smith's tenure, while it resulted in a trip to the Super Bowl, was problem-free; the mistakes made hiring and firing coordinators alone surely cost the Bears a trip or two to the playoffs. But his teams in Chicago never seemed rudderless, as is the case now. And Arians-coached teams in both Indianapolis and Arizona have shown a combativeness that has been absent on the Bears.

The only way to change that narrative is for Trestman to rally his team in a way he's mostly been unable to do, especially because quite a few men on his roster performed with so much more passion and success for his predecessor.