In Mike Tice's first year as an offensive coordinator, we aren't all that sure exactly what kind of offense he wants to run - run/pass balance, featured playcalls, et cetera. We know one thing for sure though, he wants it to be "explosive." And good.
"We want to be explosive. We want to be able to get the ball down the field. We want to be able to run the ball explosively, and we're going to do those things."
That might come directly from the Department of Obviousity, also known as the Lovie Smith School of Not Revealing Much of Anything, but it's safe to say Tice has clear ideas of what he wants to do, and he has the tools to do it.
We rag on him for being a first-time offensive coordinator, but we forget he's got almost thirty years of NFL experience under his belt, between fourteen years as a player and entering his sixteenth year as a coach of some capacity. So as a result, he's seen a lot around the NFL. We took a look at Tice's offenses as a head coach in Minnesota and a tight-ends coach in Jacksonville and tried to draw our own conclusions as to what he'll run back in January, and on Friday Stephen looked at Tice's roster in Minnesota compared to the tools he'll have at his disposal in Chicago.
Tice reflected on his new job title with the Bears, saying it wasn't going to be a big difference from his former jobs.
"You're talking about managing people and putting people in position to do their jobs as best they can," he said. "I've been blessed to be a head coach in the league before, so I've had to manage people.
"You're talking about taking a bunch of ideas from a bunch of guys that have a chance to have some input, filtering through that information and putting it together on paper and deciding what the Bears are going to look like based on the talent pool that we have and based on the skills of the players that we have, and that's what we're trying to do right now."
What do you think the Bears' offense will look like in 2012?