Are Bears Fans Turning a Blind Eye to Lovie Smith?
It seems as things get worse by the day all I hear from Bears fans is their disgust for Jay Cutler, Mike Martz and Jerry Angelo. The only one of those three I have anything bad to say about is Jerry Angelo. The guy had lots of money to spend this offseason and decided not to fix the offense. For some reason he thought Roy Williams and Marion Barber would solve the Bears problems. Well so far we are three games in and neither has made an impact at all. So Angelo gets an F for the season thus far.
Now onto the main point of this blog. Other than Angelo the other big issue is the head coach Lovie Smith. For some reason when I talk poorly about Smith most Bears fans get agitated and stand up for him like he pulled them from a burning building. I feel like Bears fans refuse to see his issues. What issues you ask? His complete mishandling of the offense, his poor job of coaching the defense and his poor coaching decisions in general.
For those of you who blame the offensive woes on Martz or Cutler you are wrong. Cutler is not the greatest QB in the land. There is no argument here but he is a decent NFL QB. If the Bears could get a better QB I would gladly trade him but can anyone tell me what QB the Bears could bring in that would do a better job with no offensive line to speak of and what I consider the worst corp of wide receivers in the NFL? I don’t believe there is one out there available for the Bears taking. I also don’t blame Martz’s insane play calling on him. Lovie was the one who hired Martz so that is on him. He new what kind of offense Martz wanted to run. If Lovie didn’t like the all passing play calling then he needs to do something about it. Maybe for a half of a game I could see Martz getting away with that but not for two full games this season. The head coach is in charge of everyone so the terrible play calling is all on him.
Even if you push the offense off on someone else how about this lack luster defense? He is supped to be a defensive genius with his Tampa cover 2 defense. Well the Bears have been lit up for almost 30 points in 2 of the first 3 games. You can blame that on the offense making the defense play too much but the reality is good QBs eat Lovies defense for dinner. With Lovie’s cover 2 style there tends to be a receiver open at all times between the safeties and linebackers. It constantly gets exploited on third and long. Against poor teams with average QBs this is not a problem and the Bears defense tends to dominate those games but against good teams the Bears defense struggles. You can tell me all you want about the defense getting tired but the reality is Rodgers was causing the Bears defense to play back on their heels all game. The Bears were just able to bend and not break as much in the first half. I don’t consider this a great defense. The last time the Bears were a great D Rivera was in charge and since then there has been a decline in Bears defensive play. Sure they are still good because there is lot of talent on that side of the ball but they are no where near where they were under Rivera. Plus when the cover 2 isn’t working Lovie refuses to run anything else. He just doesn’t seem to adapt to the situation well, which is why I often think he is out coached.
The final straw and maybe the biggest issue for me is Lovie’s bad decisions as a head coach. Last year Lovie was clearly out coached in the NFC title game and has always been a bad judge at when to throw his red flag. This last Sunday was just another example of his bad decision making ability. That clever punt return for the TD that never was this last weekend was just a terrible call. I am of coarse not talking about the play itself as that was ingenious. I am talking about the timing of the play. The game was over the Bears were not going to win. That play is something you keep in your pocket till late in a game that you are only down by one score. Now every team in the NFL knows to look out for that and probably will not work if called again. It was just another terrible decision. There are usually one or two mistakes like that in every game that Lovie just miscoaches.
He isn’t the worst coach in the NFL, he just has proved he is not better than average. Yes the Bears went to the Superbowl and two NFC title games but I think that has more to do with the Bears overall talent and a little luck more than Lovie’s coaching ability. I will say that he does get the most out of every player on that field every Sunday and they all love him for it but personally that isn’t enough to counteract the poor decision making ability as a head coach, letting the offense get run into the ground by a terrible play calling offensive coordinator and using a sub par defensive scheme. I honestly think for the Bears to improve Lovie Smith must be one of the pieces to go.
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11 Rants to “Are Bears Fans Turning a Blind Eye to Lovie Smith?”
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I just want to say as a Bear fan I pretty much agree with everything your saying. This team lacks a lot of pep. You got a qb with an I don’t care attitude who drags his feet when he walks and is not pumped or jazzed to do anything. Even when were winning. Other players feed off this. As for Lovie, it pisses me off that he gives no reaction when his players are messing up. If your going to wait till halftime to yell at them then what happens to the 3rd and 4th quarter?? You need to correct things as the game is going on, not wait till were blown away. What good is it to yell AFTER THE GAME?? As for Martz, i’m tired of his hearing about his offense and it’s scheme’s. So far i haven’t been impressed with shit. We need changes starting from the top..ANGELO, LOVIE, AND MARTZ.
I can see why Cutler doesn’t care. If my bosses at work didn’t care what I did I probably wouldn’t care about what I was doing either. Plus they have done their best to get him killed.
BESIDES THEM, THE McCASKEY’S NEED TO SELL THE TEAM, AS LONG AS TED PHILLIPS IS IN CHARGE THE BEARS WILL ALWAYS STINK !
I am so tired of seeing LS post game interviews. Well we weren’t quite prepared for them this week. You have to give credit to THEM for being ready for us. Why not at least say what everyone allready knows. Something like this. Well we could have made some adjustments away from the tampa 2 but I don’t know any others. The t-2 does work as long as giving up 8 to 10 yards at a time isn’t critical to stopping an offense. You will please note that we rely on our defense to score in order to win. Thats in part because I am to afraid to yell at my OC. It took me 4 or 5 rejections from others before I found the guy i wanted the whole time and i dont think i could take that again. As for my o-line. You will have to see how moving Garza who should have been cut years ago to center to replace a pro bowl center is a act of genius not desperation.” We won’t be going anywhere with this group of coaches. I would say get rid of lovie now but the front office would just replace him with either Martz a proven loser, Tice a proven loser, or even Marinelli a 0-16 proven loser. So yeah we have to ride out the season then dump and rebuild again. I would also get rid of Angelo.
Say what you want about the Bears coaching staff, they continue to play each season without alot of talent. It takes more than Urlacher and Peppers to play defense, there getting old and Bears upper management has never developed a solid plan to keep this team competetive. Angelo’s demise will be his inability to draft and evaluate talent, his staff of scouts have not done a good job as well. Ted Phillips has done a poor job in recent years allowing this poor performance and holding no one accountable. The Bears brass seems comfortable with this approach. We will not be the franchise we all want to see until serious changes to the organization are made.
First off I agree with you that everyone from Ted Phillips on down needs to removed. The point of what I am saying is that Bears fans tend to give Lovie a free pass and I think he is just as much of a problem as the rest.
Secondly you left some pretty good defenders off that list. Briggs, Meriweather, Harris and Tillman are also good defenders and have been probowlers. Older yes but still very good defenders. It’s true that injuries don’t help but the defense is not just two guys. There is quite a bit of talent on that team. You are correct that the Bears have done a terrible job developing talent to replace these older stars. This all needs to change.
Whoever is blaming Cutler is just stupid.
Give him the tools to work with and he would be a lot better than “decent”…
He’s not the answer by himself but would be a big part of it, JA must go.
agreed
WATCH OUT NOW FOR FORTE TO LEAVE THE BEARS, WHY STAY WITH A LOSER? WHEN HE CAN GET A CONTARCT WITH A WINNER NEXT YEAR, I WOULD ! THEY REALLY SCREWED UP BY NOT GIVING HIM A CONTRACT !
Totally agree. Even just an o-line!
I soooooo agree with the people who are tired of the same old SHIT!! Get rid of hater smith(What his REAL name should be!!) He is a terrible coach with NO emotions what-so-ever!! In every game his facial expressions are the same EMOTIONLESS and, I for one am sick and tired of it! He sucks as a coach! I don’t think he even really knows anything about the game of football! Martz is an idiot and has made us look bad each and every time! Why is his ass sitting in a booth, when he should be on the field?! THINGS need to change and NOW!! Get rid of these assclowns who bring this team disgrace and disappointment! In my opinion the ONLY BEARS player that has always performed magnificently has been Brian Urlacher, Period!!!!