Is Mike Martz failing as an offensive coordinator?

A coach has to adapt his scheme and put his players in the best place to succeed. Neil Hayes had an article (in the today’s Den) about this too. Martz is not doing that, he just continues to run his offense as if he’s still got Warner, Pace, Faulk, Bruce and Holt.

Adapt; look at the strengths of your QBs game. Look at what Shanahan is doing with Grossman in Washington. Good offensive coaches modify and adapt to their personnel. Rex is a good play-action thrower so the Redskins tailor their offense to that. Martz is totally failing.

They brought in Martz without the correct people to run his system. Jay cutler has done nothing but take a beating the last 3 years (he got sacked quite a bit in the one year with Turner) and I fear any chance of him being a franchise quarterback has been ruined by Martz and Angelo’s stubborness. Angelo won’t get offensive lineman or recievers to run the offense and Martz won’t adjust the offense to the people he has.

While I give Martz credit for concentrating on the run last week and getting the o-lineman running downhill, it was really more of an aberration than the norm.

Martz believes in his system more than anything else, and he’s willing to overlook the flaws of his players in the steadfast faith that they’ll eventually fit into his style. Of course, the Bears could eventually get the hang of the offense and execute more consistently, but it will be in spite of Martz, not because of him.

If the offense doesn’t start performing, I’m afraid we’ll have set Jay’s career back by years, and he’ll turn into another Alex Smith. Not saying that’s a foregone conclusion, but it’s a likely outcome if Martz refuses to adjust to his personnel.

And can we get some more shotgun, please? It seems obvious that one way to get rid of Jay’s jitters in the pocket is to allow him to see the pass rush right after the snap instead of making him drop back seven steps from center and hope he doesn’t get blind-sided before step #5. Just my two cents.

I’d think Martz is the head coach. Lovie just sits back and watch it all happen. Cutler’s not without some blame. He has to be held accountable for those over throws and still holding the ball too long some times. Isolating yourself from the team isn’t a solution.

Cutler has made some bad decisions, no doubt. But without competent wide receivers and without adequate protection, he’s jumpy in the pocket and making rash decisions. He hasn’t really been set up to succeed. Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, excellent quarterbacks, no doubt. But I really wonder what they would look like if they had the offensive line Cutler does. There would be a lot more turnovers and certainly a lot fewer completed passes out of both of them, that’s for sure.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

By then Tice had the o-line in better shape and executing better. And, while the run/pass ratio might of been better, some of Martz’s calls are so tricky that they fool our players.

If you call a run that calls for CW to pull and block on Clay Matthews and CW is late and Matthews hits Forte in the backfield for a 5 yard loss, you don’t call that play a 2nd time unless your Martz. It’s not just the ratio that Martz is calling, it’s also which run plays he’s calling.

And, it’s also when he calls his pass plays. I have no reliable evidence, but if my recall is accurate I don’t believe we called many or any playaction passes on 1st down on Sunday.

Looking at the performance of the o-line against any D that figures them out, I doubt any OC could do anything at all. Hard to make any kind of plays if by the third step there’s already a nose tackle on his back, or forte has the DE and OLB on his face before reaching the LOS. Or when he manages to get some time, overthrow the ball a bit and the receivers go all “what, me worry?”. We have the personnel to run the ball against teams with bad rush D, and little else .

But it’s time to move on. The front office should evaluate how Cutler is at this point of his career regarding his awareness, passing and moving (I’m not sure if the lack of rollouts Cutler was so good at is due to design – which he had some liberty to do before – or result from the knee injury), taking into consideration we have perhaps the best outside runner on the league and the “receiving” corps, and find someone on NCAA who would make full use of the offense. Martz time is up, not only here, but most likely in the league. But hey, at least he’s no Ron Turner. If Martz doesn’t know how to to use Cutler, Turner was even worse.

I posted this yesterday and the points I’m making are that the relative lack of effectiveness is multi-pronged. Each failure compounds the next.

Our O-Line is not so bueno, our receivers are – meh, the scheme is predictable.

Cutler is having Pavlovian reflexes to having the crap beat out of him week after week.

Martz could absolutely do a better job of creating plays that work to our guys strengths. Our guys could absolutely do a better job in executing the plays that are called. Cutler could do a better job of getting the ball out. The Line could do a better job in protection.

It’s all woulda, coulda, shoulda. It’s still too early to draw any concrete conclusions about where this team is headed. Periodically, I see flashes of brilliance. Unfortunately, I also see mental breakdowns – missed assignments – wrong routes run – dropped passes – holding on too long.

4 games in and our Bears are still a work in progress. So long as they continue to win, and I see some improvement in execution, I’m not gonna call for Martz’s head.

of the martz hire only because I thought he break Cutler….IMO that is starting to happen…..Then add in the fact that Angelo refuses to upgrade the OLine or the WR corp and martz refusing to adept to his personnel and just run his offense no matter what and it starts to look bad….

But seriously the offensive failings is a combination of everything and everyone in my humble opinion. Martz refuses to adapt, Angelo refuses to upgrade key positions on offense, Lovie refuses to put a leash on Martz, the line refuses to block, the receivers refuse to run correct routes or outmuscle defenders and the QB is too jumpy and overthrows and underthrows receivers.

I put most of the blame on Angelo and Martz for obvious reasons. But you have receivers who are still doing things they were doing last year. To me not a single receiver on this team (except Bennett since he’s been hurt) has improved on the things that they needed to work on. I get that Hester and Knox are fast but that’s it. They have not improved their route-running nor their physicality. Jay has always had a tendency to over and under throw receivers and that is something he’s done since his Denver days. But Jay also is at fault because he doesn’t play smart when he needs to. Look I am a Cutler supporter and I always will. But he needs to do a better job of handling pressure and I know I don’t know what it’s like to get hit by 350 pound men but he needs to do a better job of getting rid of the football and handling the phantom pressure. I get that even with good protection the DLine still gets too close for comfort BUT he should know that he still has a pocket he can step up in and make the throws that are there to be made.

I guess if I had to pick the biggest culprit it would be Martz for the reasons stated above. The refusal to alter his scheme to fit the personnel is ALL on Martz and as a so-called genius he needs to see this and fix it accordingly. So far I’ve seen nothing from Martz that would indicate that he is an offensive genius. If he can’t see or if he refuses to see the shortcomings of his offense, than he needs to be fired. I know it’ll suck to go through another OC but so far Martz is just holding these talented, yet inconsistent guys back and making them all regress.

Bears are back up in the power Rankings. 3 whole spots. Number 13. Whoopdie do.

If anything, I’d say Ron Turner tried somewhat to play to Cutler’s skill set, and we all know how that turned out. Hardly giving Martz a pass, but some of the comments I see on this thread are ridiculous.

This has been the case for several years now, not just because Mike Martz is suddenly making everyone look crappy.

IMO the lack of talent at WR is the problem. I still see the O-Line as a problem but they are making good progress. Im not the biggest fan of Martz and I dont think he’s doing a great job, however I dont think its all his problem. Get Cutty a legit go to receiver, and the offense will improve no matter who is calling the plays.

and he’s not likely to get much more than we have already seen from the current talent on this roster. I do believe he designs some great plays and overall knows what he wants to mold an offense into. I have not been a fan of his in-game play calling and I do tend to agree with many people here that his shortcomings as a play caller were masked by the talent level in STL in the early 2000s. He was brought in to install his offense here, but has not been given any of the tools necessary to succeed (except Forte and Cutler). It is my compliant with the Lovie philosophy in general; put your scheme in place, execute it, and no matter what stay the course. Tice is being expected to do the same thing; mine gold from sh!t. NO scheme is that good, so this is not a recipe for success. For Martz to have success, the Bears need about 3-5 position/player upgrades on offense, which will not happen before the defense ages out of “elite” status. I call that football hell!

Bad drafting – little or no O-line drafting, most of it late round afterthoughts. Too many receivers who used to be defensive backs and getting converted, and no attempt to get a top shelf receiver.

Bad scheme – Martzball kills QB’s. In conjunction with bad O-line, also removes RB’s from the equation.

Bad coaching – Lovie still acts like Marty’s his boss. Didn’t do much to rein him in until Cutler missed a game thinking he was Batman last year. Let him go AGAIN this year. Lovie shouldn’t be allowed to hire buddies.

I came to the conclusion that Martz keeps the running plays on one side of his playcard and passes on the other and then promptly forgets the card has 2 sides.

His system can work, and Cutler has had some great games in it. But Martz should be able to at least adjust some things in it like allowing Jay to make audibles, and taking some stuff out of the 2008 Denver playbook that Jay was so good with and just adding that to what he already has.

It would probably help if one of Cutler’s favorite targets wasn’t shipped off to Carolina as well…

He’s relying on an offense that requires …

1. Smart receivers who run tight routes.
2. A good offensive line that can hold a bit longer for those route to devlelop.
3. A running game to keep the D honest. Like all offenses. 200+ yards against the 31st run D in the NFL does not a running game make.

He has none of these.

His offense ignores …

1. His mobile QB – and has no bootlegs or rollouts seemingly.
2. Audibles. Audibles. Audibles.
3. Quick slants. Short stuff other than screens.
4. Tight ends.

Because unfortunately this is the job I thought he would do. A stubborn man with an outdated scheme that the league has evolved way past. A history of getting QB’s killed and abandoning the run game entirely. Mad Mike, i seriously hope you are on the way out, soon.