With 20 potential candidates in Bears' coaching search, here are five contenders to watch

It took the Patriots a week to hire Mike Vrabel as their new head coach.

In that week, the Raiders and minority owner Tom Brady targeted Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their top choice and launched an all-out recruiting blitz.

Even the Cowboys, who dawdled about what to do with coach Mike McCarthy, made moves within hours of parting with him Monday, with owner Jerry Jones reaching out to Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.

Meanwhile, the Bears’ list of candidates gets longer every day. With their request Monday to talk with Packers offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, they now have interviewed — or will interview — 20 candidates.

Why does it always look so much easier everywhere else?

And that’s with a head start after firing Matt Eberflus in November. The Bears have had ample time to research and narrow their pool, and general manager Ryan Poles said they’ve used it to ‘‘prepare our process.’’ The list, however, looks as though they only recently have gotten started.

As Poles laid out the parameters of the search, his point was that there weren’t any. Everything was on the table, maybe even a reverse Ted Lasso if the Bears could lure the right soccer coach from Europe.

‘‘We’re going to cast a wide net; it’s going to be a diverse group,’’ Poles said. ‘‘We’re turning every stone to make sure we’re doing this the right way. . . . There’s going to be some names that you don’t expect.’’

Promise kept on that last one. Drew Petzing? David Shaw? Matt Campbell?

The net is too wide if it holds 20 candidates. It gives the appearance of a search that’s either meandering or being pulled in too many directions if Poles, president Kevin Warren and chairman George McCaskey are adding names based on their individual vision.

The upside is that the Bears don’t have to rush, especially if Johnson is their priority, because they might have to wait two more weeks before they can meet with him again.

As the interviews pile up, the five candidates most likely to advance to the finalist stage are Johnson, Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, McCarthy and Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury.

All but Johnson have head-coaching experience. All but Carroll coached in the NFL this season. Carroll and McCarthy have championship rings as head coaches, and Flores has four as a Patriots assistant under Bill Belichick. Johnson and Kingsbury come with concerns, but either would be ideal to pair with quarterback Caleb Williams.

It’s a little surprising the Bears’ list goes much deeper than those five. Shaw, for example, hasn’t coached in a football game of any kind since 2022. Petzing got his first coordinator-level job last season. Stenavich isn’t even the Packers’ play-caller.

There’s a canyon between those candidates and the ones at the top of the list.

Johnson and Kingsbury are the choices if the Bears want to establish the coach/quarterback connection that has eluded them for decades, and Williams spoke highly of both. Their teams will face off Saturday at Ford Field in a matchup between top-five offenses.

If the Bears want to go with more of a CEO-style, experienced coach, which seems very much like something Warren would want, they have good options in Carroll and McCarthy. Both have 18 seasons in the books as a head coach, know what the total picture should look like and what the standards should be at each position. Carroll had good-to-great offenses for most of his time in Seattle, and McCarthy had great defenses for most of his time in Dallas.

And if the Bears want to make a massive overcorrection after a season in which players complained about overall sloppiness and inattention, there’s little doubt Flores would tighten things up. He lets nothing slide — perhaps to his detriment.

While Flores remains a prominent candidate for the Bears and the rest of the league, there should be serious trepidation about handing him a young quarterback after what the Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa said about their time together.

‘‘If you woke up every morning and I told you that you suck, you don’t belong doing what you do, that you shouldn’t be here . . . how would it make you feel?’’ Tagovailoa said on ‘‘The Dan Le Batard Show.’’ ‘‘You have a terrible person telling you things that you . . . probably shouldn’t be hearing, [and] you’re going to start believing that about yourself.’’

Flores has said he has learned from the experience and changed, but the Bears can let another team find out how true that is.

Those are the issues they should be scrutinizing. And while the NFL’s elongated schedule for the hiring cycle buys them time, they would be better off spending it on quality than on quantity.