The Effects Of a Mike Tice Departure-An Indictment of the Lovie Smith Era

to break up the band. Players, in that context, have very little credibility.

You mentioned earlier in this thread that the Bears are poised for a playoff run in 2012 but I would argue that until off-season moves are made, none of us can make that claim. Based on the results of 2011, there are 2 teams in our division alone that are ahead of us in the run for the playoffs. Which means that our ability to win the division is slim and one of those two teams has the inside track over the Bears for one of the two WC slots. When you consider the other teams in the NFC who are playoff contenders, there are a lot of teams that will be in the hunt for that one spot.

The Bears will have a new OC (might be Tice but might not which means a whole new system), an aging and declining defense, a potentially weaker WR corp than we already have since your most productive WR had a near career ending injury, and a less than average offensive line. That doesn’t add up to a “playoff ready” team.

Again, we have to wait for the off-season moves and some of these weaknesses should (hopefully, anyway) be addressed but I doubt if all of them will be and the other teams I mentioned before aren’t going to be standing pat either. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong but I’m not optimistic about their chances for next year.

To Kev H’s point, the problem (assuming my assessment is closer to the truth) with keeping Lovie on is a wasted year rather than a year of whatever the new systems will be preparing for the future.

While not identical (they only lost Rodgers for one game, not 6) they suffered their fair share of injuries without being set back too much.

where we all continually said “gosh, think if the offensive line was actually good” or “man, what if we had real wide receivers”

oh wait.

Lovie kept playing him for 4 games after it was apparent Hanie couldn’t win. I think it’s on both Lovie and Jerry, but we’ll never know who made those calls.

And his replacement wasn’t even playing football. That’s not just on Angelo—that’s on Lovie and the coaching staff for not pulling the trigger more quickly or doing more to try and make Hanie not look like a pile of suck.

This team lost very winnable games down the stretch, because of poor coaching on both sides of the ball. You mean to really tell me that 3 points is the best you can muster against the Chiefs? Or that the hallmark of your coach’s career, defense, lets Tim Tebow own your face in the last few minutes of a close game?

Five offensive turnovers in the Seahawks game? That’s on coaching.

entirely for the idea of Hanie as the backup before he actually had to perform the duty. Many will deny it now, but there were few arguments to the idea that Hanie could have a starting job somewhere and Martz was regulary lambasted for not wanting Hanie.

Let’s be fair here. You aren’t honestly going to say you believe the Broncos could repeat that success, are you?

They’re the Seahawks of ’11.

Onside recovery, ball carrier running out of bounds, crazy strip and fumble when team is about to win, QB throwing for less than 48% on the season, 59 yard FG to tie with no time remaining, etc. etc.

Lots of bounces went their way. It’s not likely to be duplicated, but who knows, their division is terrible.

Can they argument be made that hey might’ve helped in the later losses? Perhaps, but his loss wasn’t exactly killing them, either.

you can claim him because he was your starter but he was a rookie who looked decent for one game so it’s tough to definitely say he was going to play that much better than his replacement did.

I generally agree with some of what you’re saying there. While I personally don’t think that I need a “target”, per se, I can understand why it can be easy to latch to one, so I don’t fundamentally argue against the point.

It’s tough to comprehend too many GMs who would actively want to not have control over their decisions, particularly in the first year of their tenure. That said, I don’t know that it necessarily has to be a dealbreaker, but I think it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the decision to remain Smith is likely going to make their search more difficult.

It could very well be unholy, but I can understand why the organization/family would want to keep him around. He seems like he’s a generally pretty decent guy, he’s not a bad coach, by any means, and he does have the support of the players. Again, it’s primarily because it’s a less familiar situation—rarely do GMs receive the mandate to keep a coach. They may decide to keep the coach, but rarely are they told they HAVE to.

A black sky would be cool. During the day. Like once or twice.

I think with Rivera, it was probably a little different, b/c, in my wildly outlandish dreams, i see Lovie being a little more protective of “his defense”, and the love that Rivera was getting maybe put him off to the idea of bringing him back. But I probably made that up completely. With regards to Martz, I think it was Martz genuinely realizing he wasn’t going to be coming back anyways, so while not technically a firing, he quit so he wouldn’t have to hang around til the end of the month.

You want me to die a little inside at that prospect don’t you?

some of the features never got updated after the 40’s but they had character.

…. be linked more to Angelo and bad talent evaluation than to Lovie . All I’m gonna say here is you can’t polish a turd & thats the majority of what Angelo gave Smith , Turds .