Post by xaosgorilla on Jan 20, 2017 22:33:45 GMT -6
"Now we root for the highest draft position. That's our "championship" now. We post about how we hope we can lose enough games to get a decent draft pick."
We? Who is this we you speak of?
Yes, I do realize that there was a rather large thread about this during the season that included a vote. I just couldn't resist making the comment.
"Now we root for the highest draft position. That's our "championship" now. We post about how we hope we can lose enough games to get a decent draft pick."
We? Who is this we you speak of?
Yes, I do realize that there was a rather large thread about this during the season that included a vote. I just couldn't resist making the comment.
Guilty as charged. I was we. Maybe there were more I's in the we too.
I know I basically had written off the year and felt we needed a big infusion of talent and that a high pick was our best route to get that talent. I actually think we could use one more year of it, but would rather actually make the playoffs some time while I'm living.
Were you happy with the 7 8 9 wins before and the shit drafts?
That 10 win season was an anomoly and a lie. It was the death throws of an aged def that wad no longer going to carry the team anymore. Lovie stays to this point the teambis every bit as bad...possibly worse since he couldnt draft or evaluate talent for shit. His say plus emerys...ugh terrible.
I was all for moving on from Lovie Smith. I am waiting for that "better" thing to happen :-) I think we all are.
The only good thing about the lovie dovie years was they were better than the wanny jar head years. I was glad we moved on but they screwed the pooch with emery trestman. Now we're even worse off it seems. I'm going to look at it like cooking. You have to break some eggs to get an omelet. We've been beating those eggs for 4 years. It's time to mix in the bacon and sausage and get cooking.
I'm just so happy we went from a 10-win season to a 3-win season. Are we "better" now?
Call me stupid, but it sure doesn't feel like "better" ... it feels like crap floating in the toilet bowl of the NFL. Just floating and stinking.
I think the issue with Lovie was directional. Lovie had success but the league is always evolving and he seemed to be stagnating. I think that was the issue. Lovie was good for the Bears. He had a lot of success with a team that always lacked a QB, but his way of winning was dying and the talent on the team was in decline. I think moving from Smith to Trestman was a massive pendulum swing - an unfortunate one - but moving on from Smith was going to come at some point. It's unfortunate that movement was so unpurposeful.
10 wins is 10 wins though Ric. It's better than 3 wins. LOL, even I can do that math. The Division Championships happened. It's better than last place in the NFCN like we do now. The Super Bowl appearance happened. We had a lot of good wins over those years.
Now we root for the highest draft position. That's our "championship" now. We post about how we hope we can lose enough games to get a decent draft pick.
Don't get me wrong, I was all for letting Angelo and Lovie go. I still think that was the thing to do. I have zero regrets. What does make me angry is that the team didn't upgrade. It was a crippling downgrade to hire Emery and Trestman. It set the team back, badly. It just broke our back. Angelo and Lovie let the team atrophy. We needed a GM like Pace (or better) at that critical time. But at that critical moment when we needed to upgrade the GM and HC, the team made a mistake that killed us - and we are still paying the price for that poor hiring of Emery and Trestman.
I know it doesn't do any good to whine about it now. But I do admit it makes me crazy angry to continue to be one of the worst teams in the entire NFL. And being in last place in the NFCN each year stinks too.
Now we are wondering if Fox will be yet another failure. It is a real possibility. Then you start the whole process over again. Meanwhile the years go by.
But good for Briggs for calling that fan out. I have nothing to fault Briggs for, he's just being proud of the Bears teams he played on, at a Pro-Bowl and All-Pro level year after year. The team won a lot of games while he was here. Championships. Playoffs. Super Bowl appearance. And not one year did we have to endure a steaming pile of crap 3-win season like THIS year. Those are the facts. If Lovie got fired after a 10-win season, you wonder what is appropriate for a 3-win coach, who only won 6 games the year before. His record is worse than Marc Trestman's here.
Now we are wondering if Fox will be yet another failure. It is a real possibility. Then you start the whole process over again.
I don't agree with the last sentence. I think people make too big a deal of continuity over change. When you are operating at 85%, you need the continuity to get that other 20%. However, to get to that 85% to begin with, that means you have good people in place and so continuity is a desirable thing.
Continuity is something you actually DON'T want when you have something not working. I would say 3 wins can be defined as not working. For us Continuity is bad.
1st step. Get the people in place that can and are fixing the situation.
2nd step is continuity of that fixing trend and the people driving it.
The reason I do not agree with the last sentence is that I see stuff happening now that we did not have before. I see us being able to get and develop talent. So no, we don;t start over. We put in different coaches but we do so with an elevated level of talent. Much of our problem is talent. Some of that is going away.
Talent will get you to a pretty high degree. I think Lovie was a mediocre coach. But during some of his years, he had talent. So he saw success. He was not able to leverage the full benefit of that talent because he just simply was not much more than an average coach. Now, we are lacking in talent, but I honestly that has been and is continuing to change. I think Pace will get us to where we were before talent wise, and hopefully even better. That is where we could go for years again (with a team that starts winning but can't close the deal) until we realize the leadership also is at issue. Now I realize I may be fully wrong here. Fox did not impress but there were injuries. However, what drives my comments is that even with injuries, we had better than a 3 win team. Some don't feel that way, so this is not a red flag. I do think we were better than three wins, so I see a red flag.
THere are a lot of ifs here. IF I am right (can't be sure until we see Fox try and win with more talent and see how he stalls -- in other words, possibly watch us get stuck in the mud for a few more years), then as talent gets better, wins get to be more. He gets renewed. We get into playoffs or barely into playoffs and keep missing the prize. We still think we are lucky to have a coach that gets us to the playoffs so it can;t be his fault. This goes on for another cycle of player talent (people like Long, etc get older and retire) and Pace needs to restock that talent again.
That is a possible scenario, but since I am high on Pace, I will say that he likely keeps us stocked with players so we don;t have the dip in talent that we had under Jerry (yes, I blame Jerry) where players get old and we could not replace them. The more likely scenario is that we get to and maintain a good level of player talent but don't get past the finish line. And so we don;t truly have to start completely over.
How is that? about 1000 words to say what I could have said in 30. I'm going for 2500 next time.
I think that is a great synopsis of it all (you could write a book for the unabridged version of it all). I was incorrect about the starting all over again. We would not be starting over but rather making a coaching correction. Good catch there BIH. I agree with you.
Now we are wondering if Fox will be yet another failure. It is a real possibility. Then you start the whole process over again.
I don't agree with the last sentence. I think people make too big a deal of continuity over change. When you are operating at 85%, you need the continuity to get that other 20%. However, to get to that 85% to begin with, that means you have good people in place and so continuity is a desirable thing.
Continuity is something you actually DON'T want when you have something not working. I would say 3 wins can be defined as not working. For us Continuity is bad.
1st step. Get the people in place that can and are fixing the situation.
2nd step is continuity of that fixing trend and the people driving it.
The reason I do not agree with the last sentence is that I see stuff happening now that we did not have before. I see us being able to get and develop talent. So no, we don;t start over. We put in different coaches but we do so with an elevated level of talent. Much of our problem is talent. Some of that is going away.
Talent will get you to a pretty high degree. I think Lovie was a mediocre coach. But during some of his years, he had talent. So he saw success. He was not able to leverage the full benefit of that talent because he just simply was not much more than an average coach. Now, we are lacking in talent, but I honestly that has been and is continuing to change. I think Pace will get us to where we were before talent wise, and hopefully even better. That is where we could go for years again (with a team that starts winning but can't close the deal) until we realize the leadership also is at issue. Now I realize I may be fully wrong here. Fox did not impress but there were injuries. However, what drives my comments is that even with injuries, we had better than a 3 win team. Some don't feel that way, so this is not a red flag. I do think we were better than three wins, so I see a red flag.
THere are a lot of ifs here. IF I am right (can't be sure until we see Fox try and win with more talent and see how he stalls -- in other words, possibly watch us get stuck in the mud for a few more years), then as talent gets better, wins get to be more. He gets renewed. We get into playoffs or barely into playoffs and keep missing the prize. We still think we are lucky to have a coach that gets us to the playoffs so it can;t be his fault. This goes on for another cycle of player talent (people like Long, etc get older and retire) and Pace needs to restock that talent again.
That is a possible scenario, but since I am high on Pace, I will say that he likely keeps us stocked with players so we don;t have the dip in talent that we had under Jerry (yes, I blame Jerry) where players get old and we could not replace them. The more likely scenario is that we get to and maintain a good level of player talent but don't get past the finish line. And so we don;t truly have to start completely over.
How is that? about 1000 words to say what I could have said in 30. I'm going for 2500 next time.
I think that is a great synopsis of it all (you could write a book for the unabridged version of it all). I was incorrect about the starting all over again. We would not be starting over but rather making a coaching correction. Good catch there BIH. I agree with you.
I think that is a great synopsis of it all (you could write a book for the unabridged version of it all). I was incorrect about the starting all over again. We would not be starting over but rather making a coaching correction. Good catch there BIH. I agree with you.
nah.... Ric would get pissy with me.
+1 In seriousness though, Ric balances us all out here. We do have a nice array of posters now. It helps me look at things from multiple angles. You were right about us not starting completely over. I missed that thought, but it was a good way to look at the situation.
I do get tired of cycling through the coaches and GMs. Lovie needed to go, but the Bears pissed me off by making things worse instead of better. And while I was all for letting Lovie go, I do have many good memories of his teams here. Certainly in the many decades I've followed the Bears I've seen Lovie as one of the best coaches we have ever had here. People mention some of his mediocre years here, and rightfully so, but George Halas had a number of mediocre years too - and he was our best head coach over the past 90+ years of the franchise.
I'm just so happy we went from a 10-win season to a 3-win season. Are we "better" now?
Were you happy with the 7 8 9 wins before and the shit drafts?
That 10 win season was an anomoly and a lie. It was the death throws of an aged def that wad no longer going to carry the team anymore. Lovie stays to this point the teambis every bit as bad...possibly worse since he couldnt draft or evaluate talent for shit. His say plus emerys...ugh terrible.
I agree.. What happened was that Bears face the weak teams in the first half and tougher teams in the second half. What exposed the Bears was the Seattle game.
Were you happy with the 7 8 9 wins before and the shit drafts?
That 10 win season was an anomoly and a lie. It was the death throws of an aged def that wad no longer going to carry the team anymore. Lovie stays to this point the teambis every bit as bad...possibly worse since he couldnt draft or evaluate talent for shit. His say plus emerys...ugh terrible.
I agree.. What happened was that Bears face the weak teams in the first half and tougher teams in the second half. What exposed the Bears was the Seattle game.
+1 I agree with that.
But in fairness, I can't remember ever facing a weaker schedule than this season. Yet we only won 3 games. Are we better? No, of course not. I liked winning seasons. I liked winning championships. I liked going to the Super Bowl. I liked having a coach who was NFL Coach of the Year. I liked watching some epic games that we won. I liked having one of the winningest coaches in our 90+ year history.
But Lovie did have his faults and I did want someone better.
But boy, this isn't "better" by a long shot. And while Lovie Smith wasn't the answer, he did some good things here too. I figure it's right to give the man his due for the good things, at least. But don't ignore his faults either.
I agree.. What happened was that Bears face the weak teams in the first half and tougher teams in the second half. What exposed the Bears was the Seattle game.
+1 I agree with that.
But in fairness, I can't remember ever facing a weaker schedule than this season. Yet we only won 3 games. Are we better? No, of course not. I liked winning seasons. I liked winning championships. I liked going to the Super Bowl. I liked having a coach who was NFL Coach of the Year. I liked watching some epic games that we won. I liked having one of the winningest coaches in our 90+ year history.
But Lovie did have his faults and I did want someone better.
But boy, this isn't "better" by a long shot. And while Lovie Smith wasn't the answer, he did some good things here too. I figure it's right to give the man his due for the good things, at least. But don't ignore his faults either.
I agree I'm not happy with happened after the firing of Lovie Smith. It should have been handled much better. I agree the Bears do suck and I didn't realize how horrible the Bears where and it may take longer to make the team competitive. Also, I don't think that Fox is the long term answer.