Bears Whipped by Arizona. Time to Clean House?
Today, the Bears were embarassed for the second time in three weeks, as they lost to Arizona 41-21. Quick recap:
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Can't tackle. Can't cover. Can't rush the passer. Top to bottom, horrible performance by the D.
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Offense was OK, but still kept making stupid drive-killing penalties. Offensive line is still horrible as Cutler was again under pressure all day.
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Tommie Harris has officially fallen off the deep end. Straight up crazy. It's a shame. He was awesome his first few years, and was seriously looking to be on a hall of fame career path. But then this deeply religious man had a kid out of wedlock and he's gone crazier than Cedric Benson on Draft Day. Hell, he's Alonzo Spellman crazy. He should talk to Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher about how to effectively deal with baby mamas.
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Jay Cutler is fine. The Receivers are fine, too.
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Is the missing Brian Urlacher the impetus for this whole fiasco? Seems everybody's whipping boy, the most overrated player in football, was the glue that kept this unit respectable last year. Not sure if he's the only reason but he's clearly a big reason for this debacle.
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I'm not convinced that Lovie's defensive playcalling is the reason for this mess. Throughout the whole first half, players were in position to make plays - they just didn't. Tim Hightower and Beanie Wells were making Bears tacklers look like kindergarteners. Then Larry Fitzgerald was Larry Fitzgerald, though you can blame Lovie that he wasn't doubled. And Warner delivered a big FU.
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That said, Lovie's not off the hook for this mess. It starts with the head coach, and they were completely unprepared for the second time in three weeks. In fact, they've been horrible in pretty much every first half this season, save the Cleveland game where even a high school team would have looked good. I don't get it. Lovie's supposed to be bad at halftime adjustments. He's supposed to own first halfs.
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I don't think Ron Turner's doing a very good job this year. Yes, the line sucks. But there's nothing creative about his playbook, and they're underutilizing Cutler's talent. Every time Ron tries a trick play it backfires immediately and kills drives. Stop it.
I've always liked and defended Lovie Smith. No, he wasn't the best coach in the league. But he kept them in games, and he rarely had complete brain farts that cost his team the game (like Jauron and Wannstedt). He kept them in games, too. Before this year, he had only been blown out and embarassed 2 or 3 times total in his tenure. You can live with one crap game per year. His only real in-game faults were clock management and poor timing with the replay flag. His choice of assistants weren't always the best either. (Bob Babich? Terry Shea?) All in all, I'd say he was a top 12-15 coach. Again, not great, but probably good enough to win a championship given the right players. Could the Bears do better than Lovie? Yes, but they could do a whole lot worse.
This year, however, this team is in shambles. Complete meltdowns every week. The team not ready at the opening gun for really any game this season. Terrible.
And I didn't even talk about Angelo. This year's draft is, thus far, a disaster. Yes, Johnny Knox is great and Alfalava looks like he might be a keeper. But the rest of the draft class has contributed precisely dick. They don't even dress on Sundays. Yes, we got Cutler. He was our number one. Great. But what about their 2nd-7th round picks? Iglesias, Melton, Gilbert, Moore - all worthless thus far. I'm not going to write them off, because they're still here. But I thought Red Shirts were only in college. The 2008 draft got us Forte and a number of other decent contributors, but zero potential stars. The '07 draft was a complete disaster. Solid if droppy Olsen and a whole bunch of nothing. (Nice breakout game today notwithstanding).
So do I want them gone? No. Not yet. It depends on how the rest of this season goes. I was saying last week, the last two NFC representatives in the Super Bowl had horrible regular seasons. The Cards won a crappy division at 9-7 (with multiple blowouts among those seven losses), and the Giants snuck in with a fugly 10-6 after every fan had completely given up hope (and they ended up winning the SB). Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the Bears are on their way to the Super Bowl. The toilet bowl is more like it. I'm just saying at 4-4, they've done nothing to preclude them from making the postseason just yet. They just suck really bad, and at present I wouldn't rank them in the league's top 20. Horrible. Putrid. Hot garbage. But if they can turn the ship around, get hot, and somehow win 9 or 10 games, I'll be much more willing to give this regime one more shot at glory.
And really, I only want to clean house if the Bears are 100% willing to throw massive amounts of cash at one of the Super Bowl winning coaches currently on the sidelines. If they get some crappy retread or unknown assistant, I think I'd rather keep rolling the dice with Lovie.