Post by brasilbear on Sept 21, 2023 6:23:04 GMT -6
Only if you think being above .500 is the goal. What about Lovie and his cycle of OCs and poor in game management showed us he was capable of building a solid steady contender? Was it his "firing" of Rivera? Letting Babich run the DEF? The Shea/Martz/Turner/Tice debacle?
Was it a mistake to fire Juaron? Should we go back to Ditka, how many winning seasons since then?
Pining for Lovie at this point and holding him up as some pinnacle of coaching is revisionist and defeatist.
The problem wasn't firing Lovie, his time was up. The problem was Emery/Trestman, Pace/Fox/Nagy and now Poles/E-flaus can't win or draft apparently. But sure, let's bring back Lovie! Worked for the Sox when LaRussia came back.
Post by bearsfaninaz on Sept 21, 2023 6:45:56 GMT -6
Lovie would still be here if he would've hired just 1 competent OC. He would've won a SB. He just didn't want to build an offense, and once his defense lost a step or were injured it fell apart.
Lovie would still be here if he would've hired just 1 competent OC. He would've won a SB. He just didn't want to build an offense, and once his defense lost a step or were injured it fell apart.
I believe after Lovie fired Martz, he was so desperate for an offensive coordinator he just offered the job to the first person that made eye contact with him at Halas Hall.
That's how the Bears wound up with Mike "Blocking Sleds" Tice as the OC for a year.
Post by brasilbear on Sept 21, 2023 6:58:03 GMT -6
That's how bad things are here now. We're longing for a HC from a decade ago. Even when Lovie was here as the board passed through my iterations, we didn't want to get stuck with a HC who was too good to fire (over 500 and making the playoffs every other year) but not good enough to take the team to the promised land (sustained SB runs and more than 1 appearance.) It's not like Lovie went to TB and won, or Illinois and won or the Texans.
I don't want 500 and a playoff win every two years. I want 700 and 3-4 playoff wins a year. Lovie was never going to get there.
Lovie would still be here if he would've hired just 1 competent OC. He would've won a SB. He just didn't want to build an offense, and once his defense lost a step or were injured it fell apart.
I believe after Lovie fired Martz, he was so desperate for an offensive coordinator he just offered the job to the first person that made eye contact with him at Halas Hall.
That's how the Bears wound up with Mike "Blocking Sleds" Tice as the OC for a year.
I Believe that. Still will never forgive that SB when we were running all over Indy with T. Jones and he decided to air it out in the rain against Manning.
Only if you think being above .500 is the goal. What about Lovie and his cycle of OCs and poor in game management showed us he was capable of building a solid steady contender? Was it his "firing" of Rivera? Letting Babich run the DEF? The Shea/Martz/Turner/Tice debacle?
Was it a mistake to fire Juaron? Should we go back to Ditka, how many winning seasons since then?
Pining for Lovie at this point and holding him up as some pinnacle of coaching is revisionist and defeatist.
The problem wasn't firing Lovie, his time was up. The problem was Emery/Trestman, Pace/Fox/Nagy and now Poles/E-flaus can't win or draft apparently. But sure, let's bring back Lovie! Worked for the Sox when LaRussia came back.
Lovie would still be here if he would've hired just 1 competent OC. He would've won a SB. He just didn't want to build an offense, and once his defense lost a step or were injured it fell apart.
+1 to you both.
If the question was raised as "Was it a mistake to fire Lovie Smith and Jerry Angelo and replace them with Marc Trestman and Phil Emery?", the answer would have been 100% yes. But IMO we are living through a variation of a Lovie Smith coached team right now. The NFL has morphed into a sport that heavily favors the offensive side of the ball and a successful HC these days needs either to be a great offensive coach or have one as his OC.
If you look at Lovie's record as a coach, it isn't exactly stellar. His NFL career post the 2006 SB run is 63-81. His college career was 17-39.
I believe after Lovie fired Martz, he was so desperate for an offensive coordinator he just offered the job to the first person that made eye contact with him at Halas Hall.
That's how the Bears wound up with Mike "Blocking Sleds" Tice as the OC for a year.
I Believe that. Still will never forgive that SB when we were running all over Indy with T. Jones and he decided to air it out in the rain against Manning.
You mean Ron "Don't Call Me Norv" Turner for that brilliant SB strategy?
That's how bad things are here now. We're longing for a HC from a decade ago. Even when Lovie was here as the board passed through my iterations, we didn't want to get stuck with a HC who was too good to fire (over 500 and making the playoffs every other year) but not good enough to take the team to the promised land (sustained SB runs and more than 1 appearance.) It's not like Lovie went to TB and won, or Illinois and won or the Texans.
I don't want 500 and a playoff win every two years. I want 700 and 3-4 playoff wins a year. Lovie was never going to get there.
I wouldn't prefer this either over a Chiefs or a Patriot style SB playoff run but this team hasn't had a winning record since 2018 speaks a lot. We haven't won a single playoff game since 2010. At this point I wouldn't mind a Lovie style coach again. Meaning a coach that gets us one SB attempt and a wins a few playoff games in his time.
Being a Bears fan in the 2010's and 2020's is hard. This team just doesn't have it. We are more than a few key players away from even taking the NFC North let alone a super bowl run.
Post by brasilbear on Sept 21, 2023 7:42:59 GMT -6
Are we saying we are seriously interested in being the Broncos or the Rams? One year of glory and then....
I'd rather be the 49ers or Bengels/Bills/Eagles at this point.
We are so desperate to win something,anything that we'd sell our daughters for one SB win.
Later addition:
What I'm trying to say is that the failure of the team since Lovie is not proof that the Bears were wrong to move on. Lovie in Chicago had reached a stagnant position.
(1) No clear plan for beating GB and winning the division consistently. Planning on getting into the playoffs by wildcard is not a sustainable plan. (2) QB not on same page as OC and no apparent plan to replace him. (3) League as a whole had learned how to play against the Tampa-2. There was no apparent plan to address this.
It was time to move on. If Lovie's last season had been 6-10 we wouldn't even be having this conversation