And, I’m absolutely disgusted by it. Running backs are finding holes everywhere, receivers are finding separation, and when we finally get to a ball carrier we can’t tackle worth a crap!

Lovie better change his friggin tune and make them run some tackling drills this week, because this piss poor play is inexcusable.

AND… Lovie’s pet project Bob Babich isn’t doing anything productive right now up in the booth.

The main premise that he brought up was knowing how bad the defense was last year, Lovie came into camp and blamed it on injuries. In essence, he gave the Bears D a free ride, and Haugh is exactly right in his theory. The Bears have been playing soft, unenergized football. I know that we didn’t play everyone and blah, blah, blah. The problem is that we have known about our soft defense since last year, and besides shelling out money, it seems the coaching staff has done nothing to get more out of our defense.

I’m starting to get sick very quickly of this organization’s mismanagement. One got caught in a lie and one has been coddling his vaunted unit. While I believe it is a smart policy to keep your own players (Harris, Briggs, etc.) and even overpay a little for the privilege, I think it was a stupid mistake to lock up so many defensive contracts at once. Within the past two years: Tillman, Vasher, Urlacher, Briggs, Hillenmeyer, Harris, Alex Brown, and Mike Brown. Eight out of the eleven starters on defense are now locked up. Does anyone see what could happen here?

Players who got overpaid for their services for a long-term deal + complacency + Loviespeak that shows no sign of action anytime soon = Defense of ’07 all over again.

I miss Ron….

I may have to change my tune about Caleb Hanie. Wow. I was impressed last night. He was the only guy we had who was consistently making good things happen. He shook off pressure, and should’ve been sacked, only to escape the pocket and make some throws.
He moved the chains well… and had one gem of a TD throw from about 30 yards out that got called back on a penalty.

Brandon Rideau (Sp?) looked sharp again as well.
Adrian Peterson had one HUGE blitz pickup for Grossman.
That’s all I can remember right now.

’We’ve been vanilla the entire preseason,‘’ Smith said. ’’We are not going to use that as a reason for not playing as well as we need to. We’re not going to go down that road. Yeah, we’ll have a lot more stuff in [when we play the Colts], but that’s the base stuff we do and you need to be sound fundamentally with your base stuff.’’

He’s making an excuse, and saying it’s not an excuse. Lovely. Or, should I say Lovie?

Listen Lovie, with the amount of pro-bowl caliber talent on your defense, you shouldn’t have to game plan much at all in the pre-season to see good results. Our players are supposed to be more talented than most of the opposition. They’re expected to successfully shed blocks, apply pressure, keep good coverage, and make tackles regardless of what game plan you have or haven’t put together for them in the pre-season.

Except it’s Lovie Syndrome this time, he makes excuses and the team believes it and doesn’t respond to the coach any more and no longer get fired up by the coach. He needs to change this otherwise he will lose the team and the defense especially will under achieve.