ESPN YouTube Channel video: ESPN correspondent Ed Werder on the Chicago Bears firing of head coach Lovie Smith on Monday, and what he may do. Uploaded January 1, 2013. http://youtu.be/mUOnaPIMPD4
While there clearly are a lot of people who like Lovie Smith's personality and experience, including some current players, consider how the players have actually played for HIM, since it seems to be something that ESPN and a lot of social media types keep ignoring.
The Bears have made the watered-down NFL playoffs only ONCE in the past 6 years despite the talent on that team, including failing 3 seasons in a row AFTER making the Super Bowl.
That's more than embarrassing and is NOT something that fans of an NFL team in the third-largest city in the country are going to be satisfied with.
Nor should they be.
View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8938166&pid=nullThe one year the Bears made the playoffs in the past six seasons, 2010, they promptly lost the NFC Championship game -at home- in large part because they were so grossly unprepared for an injury to QB Jay Cutler.
Whose responsibility is it to ensure that you have competent back-ups if not the head coach?
As has been noted here many times before, I lived in Chicago in the mid-1980's and that coincided with their 1985-86 Super Bowl run and win, and I still usually root for the Bears.
But these CHRONIC weaknesses with the Bears, like not being able to assemble a good staff or a competent offensive line to keep Cutler upright, can be laid squarely upon Lovie Smith as head coach.
In the end, the facts didn't lie -one playoff appearance in the past six years is NOT satisfactory.
If anything, his firing was an overdue decision for fans of the team.
Just like the one the Eagles and Chargers made to finally be rid of Andy Reid and Norv Turner.
Both need to stay away from the NFL for a year for their own good -and ours.
We can't stand the utter predictability of their problems every year and their chronic inability to adequately resolve them.
If the Bears were smart, and that's not a given, obviously, they'd hire former Ravens head coach and Vikings OC Brian Billick, someone who knows something about offense when he has some talent to work with, like he did with those Vikings teams of the late '90's when they were one of the most-exciting teams of the past 25 years.
Give Jay Cutler some help from someone who knows what they're talking about.