LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Thomas Brown said Wednesday that his interview to be the full-time Bears head coach hadn’t been scheduled yet.

The interim head coach knows though there’s more work on the 2024 season left to do before pondering the future, anyway. That’s Brown’s primary focus, with Sunday’s season finale at Green Bay up next on the docket.

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Then comes the exit interviews, where he and general manager Ryan Poles will meet with each player separately once the season is over.

In terms of the opportunity to be considered for the role in 2025, that aspect of his future is up in the air.

“That hasn’t really been discussed a whole lot,” Brown said in a Wednesday press conference. “That’s not really my concern. So, we’ll see what happens after the game.”

While the final results haven’t been good since he took over, it seems logical to infer that Brown will at least be part of the Bears’ initial round of interviews in their coaching search.  

Those who have closely followed the Bears these past six weeks should understand Brown as an individual and a leader, an accountable, no-nonsense personality who stays in the moment and tries to put experiences in the proper perspective.

That includes a rough stretch of games since he took over for Matt Eberflus.

“I’ve always been a pretty confident person,” Brown said. “Even through this, I’ve become more confident when it comes to being in … somewhat of a worst-possible (case) scenario in certain ways and still being able to power through it. And just thinking about the opportunities that present themselves down the road when it’s not this adverse situation at the beginning, you can start fresh from ground zero, build the right way whether it be offensively or the entire team in general.”

This is an individual who went from offensive passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator to interim head coach in roughly three weeks, inheriting a team in serious trouble that had lost its way.

Brown said he has learned how to endure through adversity, how to take positives from dark times and what not to do at certain times.

He has given a thorough evaluation of the Bears situation, of what went wrong and where during a season that started with so much promise. He has expressed those things Poles along the way, providing feedback after seeing things up close.

“Ryan and I have a great dialogue almost every single day,” Brown said, “and I’m pretty open, honest, transparent about the good, the bad and the ugly – myself and everybody included.”

Brown has high aspirations for his coaching career, with positive reviews of his performance at every stage. He has been a play caller twice now and has assumed head-coaching responsibilities over the last four games.

Brown made it clear he’d like to be a head coach again, here or elsewhere as his career on the sidelines progresses.

“There are only 32 head jobs in this league so it’s obviously a huge deal, it’s highly coveted — everybody wants one,” Brown said. “They may or may not be prepared for the opportunity when the get the opportunity.  I think there’s also different looks when it comes to the outside perspective of who is ready for an opportunity and who isn’t. And also I think about the amount of people who have been in spots and been highly successful that were at the beginning were underwhelming hires and also highly criticized for a number of reasons because of the perception.

“I think about being able to have the opportunity at some point to have a true belief, have the backing and also just from an accomplishment standpoint it’s going to be a goal of mine like it’s a goal of many guys. But all I can do is control the controllables and that’s what I do every single day — prepare myself and maximize the opportunities and when I get an opportunity, go swing for the fence.”