Fire Lovie Smith already
>> Sunday
This post should take as long to read as it took for me to lose complete faith in the Bears this season. The last 11 seconds of today's game exemplified the Bears' two greatest weaknesses right now:
1. Lovie Smith
2. The Cover 2
Today Lovie solidified his position has a horrible decision-maker, and the Cover 2 is now clearly outmoded. First, let's talk Lovie. I stopped supporting this guy in 2006 even though we went to the Super Bowl. The "Rex Grossman is our starting quarterback" mantra was enough to make me dislike him. He has lost my respect continually since late 2006.
Now, the defense. Over the past few years, whenever a couple of defensive starters have been out of the line-up, the Bears bite the big one on defense. Perhaps the Cover 2 is suited for the Bears' 11 defensive starters, but it continues to fail when the defense is banged up. And it tends to fall off in the second half even when our guys are healthy.
Any thoughts from people that actually understand football?
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You know, I figured there was a post hidden in there, but I just figured it would be "Paul is Dead" over and over or some other subliminal message.
Yeah, I am actually tired of the whole stoic look Lovie displays. He needs to go Mike Ditka pre-heart attack on that defense.
Now, lets look at some positives. Kyle Orton certainly is starting to look like the real deal with a pretty much C-level offense.
Yes it sucks the Bears lost today, but had Elam not missed that chip shot, it wouldn't have even come down to a blown cover-2 assignment.
Unfortunately, I don't have my Wingdings-to-English translator on me right now, but I would like to know what hidden messages lie within. I would hope that "Orton for MVP" appears somewhere in there.
Found this after hours reading the post with my secret decoder ring.
"This post should take as long to read as it took for me to lose complete faith in the Bears this season. The last 11 seconds of today's game exemplified the Bears' two greatest weaknesses right now:
1. Lovie Smith
2. The Cover 2
Today Lovie solidified his position has a horrible decision-maker, and the Cover 2 is now clearly outmoded. First, let's talk Lovie. I stopped supporting this guy in 2006 even though we went to the Super Bowl. The "Rex Grossman is our starting quarterback" mantra was enough to make me dislike him. He has lost my respect continually since late 2006.
Now, the defense. Over the past few years, whenever a couple of defensive starters have been out of the line-up, the Bears bite the big one on defense. Perhaps the Cover 2 is suited for the Bears' 11 defensive starters, but it continues to fail when the defense is banged up. And it tends to fall off in the second half even when our guys are healthy.
Any thoughts from people that actually understand football?"
You asked for an opinion from someone who knows football - you got it.
First, on the Cover 2 argument: the Bears, despite being a "Cover 2" team, don't necessarily play Cover 2 all the time or even a majority of the time. Most likely, the Bears probably play Cover 2 about 35% of the time (mostly on third and long situations or in base defense when they're not blitzing). There's an SI article about this that backs me up statistically, but I'm too lazy to search the SI archives for it.
Every defense, despite what they're known for, will mix up coverages depending on down and distance and game situation. Yesterday, the Bears probably did this more than normal, considering they were playing a rookie QB. So, you can't really say they lost because they didn't ever get out of Cover 2.
Howeva - After re-watching the play a dozen times on YouTube, it looks like the Bears were in a Cover 2 look on the play to Jenkins and Ryan recognized it and went to the corner, one of the few holes in the Cover 2.
However, it's still possible that the Bears were actually in Cover 3 or 4 and that Ricky Manning (#24?) fucked up, because he didn't look like he got a very deep drop into his zone (and actually saw something that made him stop his backpedal for a second allowing Jenkins to beat him up the field) and Mike Brown wasn't quick enough getting to the sideline to break up the pass (which he should be able to do in a long pass against Cover 2).
So, if you want to blame someone, be pissed at Mike Brown. He should have at least been in a position to break up the pass to Jenkins, because Urlacher (and the other LB in the game, I assume Briggs) had the deep middle assignments where there was only one receiver running to the seam (which they would have allowed because the Falcons were out of timeouts).
So, to sum up this nonsense: don't blame Lovie or the Cover 2, blame Mike Brown. Blown assignment at the wrong time, shitty luck. And, if you want, you can blame Lovie or the defensive coordinator because they probably should have been in a Quarters defense in that situation to prevent deep stuff to the seams.
In summation, I should be hired to coach the Oakland Raiders.
You didn't ask for an opinion from someone who knows nothing about football. You got it.
The Bears just choked. Ever since their 2006 Super Bowl loss they haven't been able to find that magic that defined the great 85 Bears and teams of the past. Remember the Super Bowl Shuffle? That's how those old Bears teams played, relaxed and loose. I think the Bears were too wound up and still had memories of Peyton Manning passes all over the place flying through their heads. It's enough to make Da Bears guys cry.
Not to mention the topic noone is talking about...the quarterback situation. The quarterback is often called the field general and I feel that Kyle Orton did a terrible job of running the defense on this play. They don't call it the most important position for nothing. You could see in that defense's eyes that they had quit on their quarterback and therefore quit on the play.
Football is a tough nasty sport and this Bears team doesn't look nasty at all. A new coach(Ditka is available!) might bring in the attitude they need.
Yours in sarcasm,
Phil Nevin
Phil Nevin - brilliant as always.
I would have preferred "Yours in Christ," though.
I'm still searching for a religion that permits my rampant adultery. Those 6th and 9th commandments are killer, I covet other people's wives for at least an hour a day.
Phil Nevin
I love how thanks to your frequent commenting on this blog, we now come up as the 12th result in a "phil nevin" Google search. Of all our achievements, that may be the most impressive.
Considering that I figured the Bears to be an unwatchable 5-6 win team going into the season, I have been pleasantly surprised that they have been competitive in every game and should have won just about all of them. That being said, I think Lovie has been exposed as basically an average head coach (not like Marty Morningweh by any means, but no Vince Lombardi either). I'm not a huge fan of the Cover 2, because it places such pressure on getting a pass rush and a lot times design passing games to get the ball quickly now to avoid pressure. Playing the Cover 2 leaves tons of holes in the middle of the field for offenses to exploit unless pressure is created. From the coaching staff's perspective, the MVP this season has to be Ron Turner who's designed a pretty damn good offense considering the state of the O-Line and skill position players going into the season.
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