Mitchell Trubisky named starting QB

At the time, I had been wanting Lovie gone for years and was happy to see him go, but there's no denying the disaster the Bears have become since... it's obvious he was a much better coach than I gave him credit for. (It was mostly that goddam clueless look on his face looking up at the scoreboard whenever the opponent scored that drove me nuts).

I would almost say the same thing about Angelo... it's amazing watching the shitarded decisions Emery and Pace make for the last 6 years. I've always been curious how GMs, with access to a lot more info than a coach potato moron like me, can do things that are so patently obvious, flat out retarded that even idiots like me know how stupid they are.

 

No, it was the right move. Lovie had years and years of a great defense and even with tons of weapons on offense couldn't lead us to the promised land. And by that point he had stopped beating the Packers (in fact we were getting destroyed), the #1 goal he set out for the franchise. Lovie's lack of success with the Bucs and now (sadly) at my alma mater is telling. The game had passed him by, but he did benefit from the fact that JA did have some big hits defensively in the draft, all of those guys who bought in 100% to what Lovie was preaching. Plus he was almost as bad as John Fox as an in-game manager. Does anyone remember the timeout he called against the Seahawks in the playoffs which allowed them to attempt a hail mary at the end of regulation during the Super Bowl run? That alone was a fireable offense.

Part of what sunk Lovie was Shitwad. My revisionist history has always been that if Shitwad had ONE good game in the second half of 2012 (either against the Seahawks, Vikings, Packers, Texans, all which were extremely winnable games thanks to our defense), we go 11-5, win the division, and Lovie keeps his job for at least 2 more seasons. Those next two seasons turned out to be the Juicebox years. Eventually he was going to get fired because the defense declined, weren't replaced with good players, and Shitwad was always going to be Shitwad.

The real problem is this franchise can't fucking hire a good coach to save itself (nor a good GM for that matter). Ditka will always be Ditka, and it's blasphemous to suggest otherwise, but really has this team ever had a great coach in any of our lifetime's?

 

^

McCarthy and Rodgers figured out his insanely predictable Tampa 2. The bears would ALWAYS get the packers to 3rd and 7. And then Lovie would do his signature play everybody knew was coming--and for reasons today I still cant fathom how he didn't see it didn't work. How he'd always stupidly fake the blitz with Urlacher and Briggs at the line looking like they're about to shoot the gaps over the center. It worked on Farve towards the end.....

Yeah Rodgers figured that out after like a year. He always knew to hit Greg Jennings on the quick slant to the place 54 or 55 should have been, but they always were running back to--and then chased Jennings as he scampered another 20 yards for an easy first. When my grandmother was alive--she hated football. But she knew that was coming and asked why not change or do something different.

I'd also say the big thing that sunk Lovie was his/the organization's inattention to offense. During his tenure, he always seemed to just throw a coordinator at the problem to try and figure out some kind of passing game, and you just knew it was about the defense--never the offense. JA didn't help. They needed football people, instead we saw the Mike Martz experiment go horribly wrong because they didn't get the personnel to handle 7 step drops. Shitwad being shitwad aside, the bears couldn't run 7 step drops with worse smurf receivers than what we see now and J'Marcus Webb guarding the blindside. If I'm going to be a revisionist historian myself--Kyle Orton was the perfect guy for a Lovie Smith team. He didn't make mistakes, they ran the ball, and just kept offenses on the field long enough to not burn out the defense, who knew how to create turnovers. Factor in the best/dumbest return man I've ever seen, and they didn't need Jay Cutler.

I can see Pace now some years later trying to do both build offense and defense, something the bears have not done successfully in my lifetime. That's an entirely different can of worms though.

Lovie definitely got shafted in Tampa, and now thank god he's at Illinois. Pat Fitzgerald doesn't have to give me a heart attack playing the Illini anymore, because they're bad. Lovie's the perfect coach for the dumbest of universities.

 

I want to focus on this, because it did with Lovie. It also did with the bears, and reflecting on it now 7ish years after his firing I don't know whom to hold more accountable. During Lovie's time here the college and HS games changed. Kids became far more athletic and the 3-4 defense was becoming less of a fad and more of a standard. 4-3 schemes nowadays are uncommon, particularly because its really hard to find 4 guys, linemen, consistently getting to the QB letting the back 7 do their thing. 3-4 offenses split up who's blitzing and who's not, and give you more options.

traditional Mike/Will/Sam LBs became less and less common at the NCAA level and HS levels. Not long ago in the draft thread I brought up the newest defensive craze--the hybrid box safety/lb guy. Jabrill Peppers, Deione Buchannon, Shaq Thompson, Sua Cravens, Kam Chancellor, and a host of other names I cant think of right now are not going to be the minority.

Offenses have changed too, QBs have changed, schemes and offensive weapons have changed. Defensive players have changed. You need flexible, more athletic schemes these days, and Lovie's scheme, especially in decline was not one that could last going into the 2010 decade.

Lovie didn't change/catch up. The bears didn't. Its why Emery took a 3-4 blitzing OLB in Shame, the guy from Boise St. who had 20 sacks, and played him in every position except the one he succeeded at. Lovie tried making him a 265 lb DE. Remember that? Then he was a Will or Sam (I forget, Mel Tucker's defenses I didn't know what was happening) who had no instincts or clue how plays developed or what his assignment was and then ILB where it was worse. Mix Mel Tucker in on that train wreck that ended up being Shame's development.

 

Urlacher was a safety in college too, but I don't watch any college ball, so I have no idea if he was at the head of this trend or something completely different

 

I guess this speaks to the synergy between HC and GM. Phil Emery drafted "his guy" despite it being a terrible positional fit for the existing Defense.

I suppose the bigger thing, is that Emery & Juicebox (& Tucker) were absolutely the worst hires (maybe in Bears history) to try and gradually rebuild the 10-6 team. So it's not so much that Lovie was fired, but instead who we replaced him with. I see your guys point, Lovie would have just steered us in the same gradual exorable decline that Juicebox did.

 

Don’t mean to hijack the thread, but it’s somewhat relevant. Shitty QB play, booing crowd, coach making excuses... thank God he’s gone.

https://www.thescore.com/nfl/events/25581/box_score

 

Potshots agianst that douche nozzle are ringfenced. You can make them any time or place regardless of thread topic or line of conversation until the end of time. Its our payoff for being force fed an 8 year diet of shitburgers.

No justification was needed. Well done.