Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career...........

Deleted
Deleted Member

Posts: 0
Likes:

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 1, 2018 10:46:47 GMT -6

Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2018 10:46:47 GMT -6

Matt Forte reflects on Bears career: 'I wish we would have kept Coach Lovie'

By: Lorin Cox | 54 minutes ago

bearswire.usatoday.com/2018/06/01/matt-forte-chicago-bears-career-lovie-smith/

Retirement has given Matt Forte some time to reflect on his career with the Chicago Bears.

He signed a one-day contract in April to retire with the team that drafted him, and he shared some of his thoughts about his career with the MMQB.

“If I could rewind time and go back and make something happen, I wish we would have kept Coach Lovie [Smith] and added in the draft and free agency and maybe hired a new offensive coordinator,” Forte said. “We had just got Brandon Marshall that season and the next year we got Martellus Bennett, and we started adding these pieces on offense, but then our defense fell apart. We missed the boat.”

Smith was fired after the Bears won 10 games in 2012. The team changed general managers the offseason prior, and Phil Emery wanted to bring in his coach to try to take the team to the next level.

As Forte pointed out in his interview, the Bears haven’t won 10 games in a season since, but there’s no way of knowing what would have happened if Smith had been able to stick around.

Forte suggested another offensive coordinator be brought in, but in 2012, Smith was already on his third coordinator over the previous four seasons.

It’s a fun hypothetical to think about, but the Emery-Marc Trestman era is over, and the Bears are full-steam ahead with GM Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy.

“I want there to be some continuity there,” Forte said. “They just switched coaches again, and I hope he can stay around for a long time, and I think Ryan Pace is doing a pretty good job of getting the players and coaches around that make sense.”

Quote

Deleted
Deleted Member

Posts: 0
Likes:

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 1, 2018 10:55:46 GMT -6

Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2018 10:55:46 GMT -6

In hindsight I think quite a few also wish we could have kept Lovie but in reality the offense just didn't blossom under him or his revolving door of OCs. Making Tice his OC was an awful decision but when no one else wants the job what else can you do?

So.....the problem wasn't so much moving on from Lovie but who we moved to. Emery's decision to eschew hiring a solid experienced NFL HC/OC like Bruce Arians in favor of importing a former NFL reject from Canada has to go down as one of the most boneheaded moves of all time and Halas Hall has seen lots of them over the years.

Arians elevated AZ while Trestman and Emery sunk us to a level we're still struggling to recover from.

I like what Nagy as done hiring his staff and I also like what Pace has done in is about face acquiring personnel. We have a lot of the pieces in place or so it seems. Now they just have to gel and develop as a team.

Quote

riczaj01
Administrator

Posts: 11,182

Likes: 10,110

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 1, 2018 11:22:19 GMT -6 JABF and brasilbear like this

Post by riczaj01 on Jun 1, 2018 11:22:19 GMT -6

Problem wasn't firing Lovie, his time in TB and his time so far in IL has proven he wasn't special. The problem was Emery was a tool and Trestman is perfect proof of the peter principle.

Quote

MartianBearsFan All-Pro Posts: 3,700 Likes: 3,050	Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 1, 2018 16:36:44 GMT -6 riczaj01 likes this Post by MartianBearsFan on Jun 1, 2018 16:36:44 GMT -6 Another problem was the Bears Defense was showing signs of aging. Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top

mikegolf
Team Captain

Enter your message here...

Posts: 1,236

Likes: 1,453

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 2, 2018 5:39:46 GMT -6 via mobile MartianBearsFan likes this

Post by mikegolf on Jun 2, 2018 5:39:46 GMT -6

And the multiyear complete bust draft classes. The Cutler Error; either he was just average or we failed to supply weapons around him, but probably both. Mainly the failure to draft NFL players killed off the Lovie Smith, JA era.

Quote

Deleted
Deleted Member

Posts: 0
Likes:

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 2, 2018 8:03:56 GMT -6 paytonisgod and MartianBearsFan like this

Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2018 8:03:56 GMT -6

I believe Lovie was one of the best Bears HCs in history. He was a very good defensive coach and his players had a ton of respect for him. Lovie's Achilles Heel like Fox's was a failure to field an offense that was as good as his defenses.

Some of that has to be blamed on JA although not for a lack of trying. Rex looked like he might be "the guy" but only briefly. His inconsistency was far worse than Cutler's and in the end he was only good enough to get you beat. Then by the time Cutler came along the OL Angelo "bought" to protect Rex was gone and he failed at replacing them or getting a group of capable WRs and the offense became far too predictable no matter who ran it.

The defense aged as well and looking back on it I can't recall even one LB JA drafted who could be groomed to step into Briggs or Urlacher's shoes. But even without them that defense would never have cratered as badly as it did under Lovie. That was a disaster of biblical proportions and neither Tucker, Trestman, or Emery seemed to have a solution. Man, some of those games were just downright embarrassing and it wasn't only a lack of players.

Lovie took over a POS team in TB and had them improving from 2 wins in his first year to 6 in his second then got fired because TB didn't want to lose Dirk Koetter to Miami so they made him HC. He goes 9-7 in 2016 with a team Lovie had been building then flops to 5-11 in 2017 and he gets fired. Had they kept the status quo maybe TB goes 11-5 instead.

As for the U of I Lovie took over the most moribund football program in the Big Ten. Getting that program back above water is gonna be like trying to raise Titanic off the ocean floor. It's at least a five year project and it's tough to recruit top prospects to a football program that bad when you have Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, and ND culling some of the best Midwest talent from the local pools and also smaller schools like NIU, Northern Iowa, and Central Michigan also competing and turning out NFL caliber players.

It's a steep hill to climb for any HC to recruit surrounded by the programs Illinois has to compete with.

Lovie was the second winningest Bears HC post Halas. In nine seasons he won 81 games, made it to one SB and fell one half of one game short of getting to a second one. I'll take that over what's happened since he left. With some better drafting on JA's and Emery's part and a solid OC instead of the revolving door we saw I believe he could have brought the Bears back much quicker than anything we've seen since.

Quote

MartianBearsFan
All-Pro

Posts: 3,700

Likes: 3,050

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 2, 2018 9:51:42 GMT -6

Post by MartianBearsFan on Jun 2, 2018 9:51:42 GMT -6

Jun 2, 2018 8:03:56 GMT -6 @soulman said:

I believe Lovie was one of the best Bears HCs in history. He was a very good defensive coach and his players had a ton of respect for him. Lovie's Achilles Heel like Fox's was a failure to field an offense that was as good as his defenses.

Some of that has to be blamed on JA although not for a lack of trying. Rex looked like he might be "the guy" but only briefly. His inconsistency was far worse than Cutler's and in the end he was only good enough to get you beat. Then by the time Cutler came along the OL Angelo "bought" to protect Rex was gone and he failed at replacing them or getting a group of capable WRs and the offense became far too predictable no matter who ran it.

The defense aged as well and looking back on it I can't recall even one LB JA drafted who could be groomed to step into Briggs or Urlacher's shoes. But even without them that defense would never have cratered as badly as it did under Lovie. That was a disaster of biblical proportions and neither Tucker, Trestman, or Emery seemed to have a solution. Man, some of those games were just downright embarrassing and it wasn't only a lack of players.

Lovie took over a POS team in TB and had them improving from 2 wins in his first year to 6 in his second then got fired because TB didn't want to lose Dirk Koetter to Miami so they made him HC. He goes 9-7 in 2016 with a team Lovie had been building then flops to 5-11 in 2017 and he gets fired. Had they kept the status quo maybe TB goes 11-5 instead.

As for the U of I Lovie took over the most moribund football program in the Big Ten. Getting that program back above water is gonna be like trying to raise Titanic off the ocean floor. It's at least a five year project and it's tough to recruit top prospects to a football program that bad when you have Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, and ND culling some of the best Midwest talent from the local pools and also smaller schools like NIU, Northern Iowa, and Central Michigan also competing and turning out NFL caliber players.

It's a steep hill to climb for any HC to recruit surrounded by the programs Illinois has to compete with.

Lovie was the second winningest Bears HC post Halas. In nine seasons he won 81 games, made it to one SB and fell one half of one game short of getting to a second one. I'll take that over what's happened since he left. With some better drafting on JA's and Emery's part and a solid OC instead of the revolving door we saw I believe he could have brought the Bears back much quicker than anything we've seen since.

Also, Lovie made a mistake in firing Chico and bringing in Bob Babbich as the DC.

Quote

Deleted
Deleted Member

Posts: 0
Likes:

Matt Forte Reflects On His Bears Career........... Jun 2, 2018 10:33:04 GMT -6 MartianBearsFan likes this

Post by Deleted on Jun 2, 2018 10:33:04 GMT -6

Jun 2, 2018 9:51:42 GMT -6 MartianBearsFan said: