The Bears Suck

[southsider2k5]

What do you do with the defense next year? So many of the big money players seemed to regress this year. Is is the coaching or the players?

[lostfan]

What do you do with the defense next year? So many of the big money players seemed to regress this year. Is is the coaching or the players?

Mostly the coaching but a little of both.

[whitesoxbrian]

how many on an NFL roster? you named 7 guys. other than briggs and forte the best guy is our punter. Beekman sucks BTW. That entire O-Line sucks. Hopefully Williams can be decent.

Beekman doesn't suck. If you ask me, he was our best and most consistent OL this year. Garza and Kreutz significantly dropped off, St Clair had a solid first couple weeks but then he was awful, and Tait was terrible down the stretch. Beekman is going to get "stonewalled" a lot of times on run plays because of his size but when he gets leverage he is a pretty good OG.

[Hatchetman]

What do you do with the defense next year? So many of the big money players seemed to regress this year. Is is the coaching or the players?

 

 

I dunno what the salary cap ramifications would be, but I would cut Urlacher, Harris, Ogunleye, and Vasher. That's $25 mil in salary for essentially replacement level guys.

[Balta1701]

What do you do with the defense next year? So many of the big money players seemed to regress this year. Is is the coaching or the players?

Realistically...if it's the players, then there's little the Bears can do, because they've committed good money to a number of those guys and you really can't cut guys like Harris or Tillman or probably Vasher right now without hurting your cap situation.

 

All you can do right now is add a draftee at a position, maybe fill in the Safety slot with someone new, and try changing the coaching, because it's going to be almost impossible to overhaul those players.

[Jordan4life_2007]

Not entirely true. Beat the Colts and the Iggles.

 

The Colts game was a total fluke. Peyton Manning was clearly not ready to start the season. If we played them today we'd lose by at least 30. And I don't consider the Eagles a good team. Took two epic chokes by Dallas/Tampa for them to barely get in.

[Balta1701]

I dunno what the salary cap ramifications would be, but I would cut Urlacher, Harris, Ogunleye, and Vasher. That's $25 mil in salary for essentially replacement level guys.

The issue with the NFL cap is that you cut those guys and you're probably still paying them. Given how recently they were extended (Harris and Urlacher in particular) you're probably paying them even more next year to cut them than to keep them.

[Hatchetman]

Beekman doesn't suck. If you ask me, he was our best and most consistent OL this year. Garza and Kreutz significantly dropped off, St Clair had a solid first couple weeks but then he was awful, and Tait was terrible down the stretch. Beekman is going to get "stonewalled" a lot of times on run plays because of his size but when he gets leverage he is a pretty good OG.

 

we can quibble but the entire o-line blows and beekman is hardly a building block type of guy.

[lostfan]

Beekman doesn't suck. If you ask me, he was our best and most consistent OL this year. Garza and Kreutz significantly dropped off, St Clair had a solid first couple weeks but then he was awful, and Tait was terrible down the stretch. Beekman is going to get "stonewalled" a lot of times on run plays because of his size but when he gets leverage he is a pretty good OG.

Kreutz started declining last year, he's just not the same player anymore. I'm just throwing this out there but I think Beekman can and should replace Kreutz at C while the team looks for a new G (it won't happen though).

[Balta1701]

we can quibble but the entire o-line blows and beekman is hardly a building block type of guy.

Hardly a building block guy? He started in his 2nd season at LG and was a fairly good steal of a draft pick in that regard, performed well enough that he wasn't a revolving door in his first full season. That's exactly the kind of guy you want as a building block, because you expect him to get better with time.

[Jordan4life_2007]

we can quibble but the entire o-line blows and beekman is hardly a building block type of guy.

 

Maybe not a building block, but he had a pretty good year. Beekman is the least of our worries on the O-line as of right now.

[rangercal]

This is a joke, right? Our schedule sucked. And we lost to every good team we played.

 

Bulls***. The Jets,Pats and Dolphins schedule sucked. Ours was tough. That's no excuse though.

[Hawkfan]

theres no way you can say their schedule was easy. Were not in a weak division, but I'd call it average. Then outside the division you had Carolina, Tampa Bay, Philly, Indi, Tennessee, Atlanta, and New Orleans. 5 of those teams are playoff teams, and the ones that aren't were pretty good clubs.

[Jenksismyhero]

Put me in the camp of this team sucks, and will continue to suck, until Lovie and his crew are run out of town. Three games proved to me this year that Lovie can not coach:

 

1) Atlanta - how on earth you allow your team to give up a 25-30 yard out pattern, the only possible play to lose that game, is beyond me.

 

2) Tampa Bay - not to outdo himself, Lovie also allowed his team to give up a 99 yard drive with Brian Freakin' Griese throwing something like 400 passes in one game (thanks to some bone-head personal foul penalties)

 

3) Detroit - we go so f'n lucky to win this game it wasn't even funny. I bet we were the only team out of 16 to be that close to losing to the worst team in NFL history.

 

Of course this doesn't include 3 out of the last 4 games, which were won in the last 5 seconds of the game thanks to some EXTREMELY lucky defense and special teams plays. And for me, what made it all worse was Lovie's annoying non-chalant style of "well, we made some mistakes, we look forward to next week." Has the guy ever scolded a player? Or does he just look at the scoreboard with a blank face to find out if what just happened is real?

 

The "experts" at the beginning of the season had this team pegged perfectly. They are/were, at best, a 7 win team that got extremely lucky with its schedule and with some blown plays on the other side of the ball.

 

Also, I'm not a Grossman fan, but someone explain to me how Orton basically has a Grossman season (horrible game followed by good game followed by horrible game) but no one is talking about it. In fact, the sports media in town are talking about considering Orton as the future QB. Excuse me, I just barfed on my laptop.

 

The entire team needs to be gutted. The Defense is old and declining rapidly (except for the goal line stop against the Eagles, can someone point to a time the D actually stopped a drive when they needed to?), the O-line is beyond terrible, there are no passing threats except for Olsen (who can't block anyone) and Forte (the lone brightspot on the team, but now probably a brightspot that will shine one year shorter because of the workload he was given as a rookie). There are just too many holes to fix.

 

Unfortunately, like the Cubs, the Bears make a s***-ton of money so there's absolutely no reason to make any changes. Be prepared for at least 2 more seasons of missing the playoffs. Hopefully we can draft another 5-6 players that in a couple of years will be decent.

 

/depressing rant

[Hawkfan]

Put me in the camp of this team sucks, and will continue to suck, until Lovie and his crew are run out of town. Three games proved to me this year that Lovie can not coach:

 

1) Atlanta - how on earth you allow your team to give up a 25-30 yard out pattern, the only possible play to lose that game, is beyond me.

 

2) Tampa Bay - not to outdo himself, Lovie also allowed his team to give up a 99 yard drive with Brian Freakin' Griese throwing something like 400 passes in one game (thanks to some bone-head personal foul penalties)

 

3) Detroit - we go so f'n lucky to win this game it wasn't even funny. I bet we were the only team out of 16 to be that close to losing to the worst team in NFL history.

 

Of course this doesn't include 3 out of the last 4 games, which were won in the last 5 seconds of the game thanks to some EXTREMELY lucky defense and special teams plays. And for me, what made it all worse was Lovie's annoying non-chalant style of "well, we made some mistakes, we look forward to next week." Has the guy ever scolded a player? Or does he just look at the scoreboard with a blank face to find out if what just happened is real?

 

The "experts" at the beginning of the season had this team pegged perfectly. They are/were, at best, a 7 win team that got extremely lucky with its schedule and with some blown plays on the other side of the ball.

 

LOL hilarious

[lostfan]

2) Tampa Bay - not to outdo himself, Lovie also allowed his team to give up a 99 yard drive with Brian Freakin' Griese throwing something like 400 passes in one game (thanks to some bone-head personal foul penalties)

Griese is a lot better of a QB than anyone in this town wanted to give him credit for, probably because of his weak arm especially in comparison to Grossman's. Plus, remember when he basically did the same thing at Philly last year?

[NorthSideSox72]

--O-Line needs at least 2 more solid bodies than it has.

 

--Defensive backfield needs some healthy talent influx.

 

--Lovie's coaching team is just not good at their jobs.

 

Fix those things and this is a playoff competitive team.

 

--As an added bonus... maybe, for once in their history, the Bears could go out and get a top half QB. That would push them over the top.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

--O-Line needs at least 2 more solid bodies than it has.

 

--Defensive backfield needs some healthy talent influx.

 

--Lovie's coaching team is just not good at their jobs.

 

Fix those things and this is a playoff competitive team.

 

--As an added bonus... maybe, for once in their history, the Bears could go out and get a top half QB. That would push them over the top.

 

 

Don't hold your breath! I'm pretty certain the McCaskeys and Angelo have determined that the QB position just isn't very valuable. History certainly shows that to be the case...

 

Winning SuperBowl QB's:

 

1) Terry Bradshaw (4)

2) Joe Montana (4)

3) Troy Aikman (3)

4) Tom Brady (3)

5) Bart Starr (2)

6) Bob Griese (2)

7) Roger Staubach (2)

8) Jim Plunkett (2)

9) John Elway (2)

10) Joe Namath (1)

11) Len Dawson (1)

12) Johnny Unitas (1)

13) Ken Stabler (1)

14) Joe Theisman (1)

15) Jim McMahon (1)

16) Phil Simms (1)

17) Doug Williams (1)

18) Jeff Hostetler (1)

19) Mark Rypien (1)

20) Steve Young (1)

21) Brett Favre (1)

22) Kurt Warner (1)

23) Trent Dilfer (1)

24) Brad Johnson (1)

25) Ben Roethlisberger (1)

26) Peyton Manning (1)

27) Eli Manning (1)

 

Take away the flukey Johnsons and Dilfers on this list, and basically you need a franchise, if not hall of fame, caliber QB to win.

[chiguy79]

 

Lovie is another reason Ozzie is the best, Lovie = Jerry Manuel with similar results. I can't stand boring coaches, and then we wonder why the team doesn't play with fire...perhaps because the coach sleeps through the games.

 

Take away the bears turnover ratio and we are a pretty bad team. Maybe instead of whining that they weren't paid enough in the off season the players should have prepared for the season.

 

Someone had it right Cubs=Bears, both are too popular with no real competition to require them to win on the field.

 

 

[Kyyle23]

Lovie is another reason Ozzie is the best, Lovie = Jerry Manuel with similar results. I can't stand boring coaches, and then we wonder why the team doesn't play with fire...perhaps because the coach sleeps through the games.

Take away the bears turnover ratio and we are a pretty bad team. Maybe instead of whining that they weren't paid enough in the off season the players should have prepared for the season.

 

Someone had it right Cubs=Bears, both are too popular with no real competition to require them to win on the field.

 

I hate hearing this reasoning over and over, its totally asinine. Tony Dungy won a superbowl with the exact same attitude, Lovie Smith took a team to a superbowl, and if you want to get into baseball analogies then Joe Torre won 4 world series with the exact same attitude, it has nothing to do with rubbing off on the players. The players are either prepared to play and the coaches put them into position to win, or they dont.

 

Take away the turnover ratio and they are a bad team? Why dont you take away their run stopping and then they are a bad defense? Or maybe you could GIVE Orton a few more of those easy dropped passes and *voila* he is a better quarterback, because who knows, maybe one of those guys would have scored. I know for a fact that Marty Booker dropped at least 2 easy TDs in the endzone.

 

Call it like it is, they were a largely mediocre team that couldnt get over the hump, and other largely mediocre teams went to the playoffs because of it.

[lostfan]

People bring up the turnover thing all the time, I remember hearing this in '06 from people saying that defense was overrated. The fact is they practice the turnover ratio from the start of training camp, so that's fundamentally a part of what the team is about. And it's pretty consistent, year after year.

[Jenksismyhero]

I have seen both Tony Dungy and Joe Torre yell at refs/umps. I have never seen Lovie raise his voice to anyone.

 

I'm not saying he has to be an ass, or that he has to be so outspoken that it's borderline annoying. But guess what, get pissed a little when things don't go your way and your team might rally behind you. Or better yet, when you have moron players making moron plays, if you get in their face and let them know about it they won't make the same mistake again. Remember how many personal foul and blocking in the back penalties this team had in those early losses? Imagine if the coach acted like he cared a little instead of just staring at the f'n jumbo-tron trying to figure it out. Maybe Tillman's personal foul call in the Tampa Bay game wouldn't have happened.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kyyle23]

I have seen both Tony Dungy and Joe Torre yell at refs/umps. I have never seen Lovie raise his voice to anyone.

I'm not saying he has to be an ass, or that he has to be so outspoken that it's borderline annoying. But guess what, get pissed a little when things don't go your way and your team might rally behind you. Or better yet, when you have moron players making moron plays, if you get in their face and let them know about it they won't make the same mistake again. Remember how many personal foul and blocking in the back penalties this team had in those early losses? Imagine if the coach acted like he cared a little instead of just staring at the f'n jumbo-tron trying to figure it out. Maybe Tillman's personal foul call in the Tampa Bay game wouldn't have happened.

 

Im sure you are around him at all times to note when he does or does not raise his voice. And I have seen Jerry Manuel yell at umps too, and it doesnt change any perception of him

Edited December 29, 2008 by kyyle23

[Hawkfan]

"if it looks like idiot and acts like one, it probably is" Dali lama

[Kyyle23]

"if it looks like idiot and acts like one, it probably is" Dali lama

 

I just searched this quote and didnt find anything linking to Dalai Lama. Strange