Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

“I read that defensive coaches Reggie Herring and Paul Pasqualoni have backgrounds as coaches on teams that play 3-4 defensive fronts. It's a known fact that the defensive coordinator Mel Tucker is also versed in the 3-4. My question is with the present defense being a 4-3 and dismissing a major change do you see the Bears playing a hybrid 4-3 in the upcoming season? – Chuck D., Guilin, China”Tucker has worked in a 3-4 scheme but the majority of his background is in a 4-3. The Bears are going to remain 4-3 based and I believe they will be more versatile with wrinkles this season. For all the emphasis there has been on scheme, though, I think we have gotten away from the fact that this is a players’ league and players win on Sundays, not schemes. The Bears didn’t have the personnel to win last season and they certainly didn’t have it after injuries piled up. They need playmakers on defense. If you have a defense loaded with playmakers, you can be dominant on defense with a Cover-2 scheme.”

I think going to a hybrid scheme is a good idea. Anything that confuses the offense even a little can creat as much as a half second hesitation and that can be a significant advantage. As long as your own players are well coached and know what they are doing, of course. If getting fancy with a hybrid scheme causes more mistakes it will be disastrous.

Having said that, Biggs is ultimately correct. It's about the players, especially the players up front. I think the Bears know that and I expect effective moves in that area.

Posted with Blogsy

Steve Rosenbloom at the Chicago Tribune compares the Bears defense to the Seahawks by claiming that there is no comparison:

“The more I watched the Seahawks defense in the Super Bowl, the more embarrassed I was for the Bears defense.

“The less hope I hold for the Bears defense next season, as well. And maybe the season after that.”

There were 767 words in this article. Rosenbloom talks about the linebackers, the safeties, the corners, the speed the athleticism, and the tackling. And the fact that the Bears need all of it. 767 words. And not one of them about the real reason why the Seahawks dominated the game – the linemen. The Seahawks rushed Peyton Manning and harried him all game. That drove everything else. Meanwhile on the other side of the ball Russell Wilson got a whole quarter of mediocre play to get comfortable as he got good protection and was able to use his mobility in the few instances where he had to extend the play.

Over and over again as I’ve listened to the post game analysis I’ve heard the mantra that “defense wins championships”. What a load of hooey. You want to win football games you do what the 49ers and the Seahawks did in the NFC West. You get strong at the line of scrimmage and you win it. That’s how you win football games whether its in the regular season or the playoffs. And that’s what the Bears have to do.

Its that simple.

From Brian Manzullo at the Detroit Free Press:

“Heath Evans, a former NFL fullback now working as an analyst for Fox’s NFL coverage, says three unnamed Lions last fall told him stories of [defensive tackle Ndamukong] Suh trying to establish dominance in the locker room, even over coach Jim Schwartz, who was fired late last month after a disappointing 7-9 season.

“’The consistent message that came out of there is that Suh was uncontrollable and that he would constantly do things to kind of show his power over Jim Schwartz, whether it was team meetings, showing up late, or whatever it may be,’ Evans told Matt Dery of 105.1 FM in Detroit. ‘When you don’t put players in line, I don’t care how great they are.’”

Looks like new head coach Jim Caldwell has his work cut out for him.

Armando Salguero at the Miami Herald gives Miami fans an unusual reason to feel better about their team. And Bears fans should share the feeling:

“The reported departure of Dolphins linebacker coach George Edwards to Minnesota to become the Vikings defensive coordinator deserves congratulations for him. Dolphins fans should applaud that someone from the Dolphins coaching staff is moving on up, professionally and geographically. No, seriously, you should really be thrilled …

“Because in his last two seasons coaching the Dolphins linebackers — Edwards’s second stint with the team following a tenure that lasted 2005-2009 — the unit has mostly underperformed. Indeed, last season as the Miami defense fell to 24th in the NFL in rushing yards allowed, the worse ranking since 2007, it was clear that linebackers Dannell Ellerbe and Phillip Wheeler were at the core of the problems with the run defense.”

“But here’s the rub …

Ellerbe played quite well for Baltimore in 2012. Wheeler was outstanding in Oakland in 2012. And the two players the Dolphins jettisoned to upgrade to Wheeler and Ellerbe played better for their new teams. Karlos Dansby was a borderline Defensive Player of the Year candidate in Arizona and Kevin Burnett was a revelation in Oakland.”

“So to recap, the players the Dolphins added under Edwards played better elsewhere before arriving but took a step back in Miami. And the players who didn’t play well enough under Edwards the year before were released and had banner seasons elsewhere.

I don’t see this as a coincidence. And I see a good portion, if not the majority of the responsibility for this, falling on the position coach involved — Edwards

So congratulations to him for getting the promotion. Problem partially solved.”

Yes. Congratulations to all of the rest of us in the NFC North as well.

Steve Rosenbloom interprets what I thought were some fairly innocuous comments from former Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher for the Chicago Tribune:

And he does hate the Bears, or at least the quarterback and general manager. We know this because he didn’t use the quarterback’s or general manager’s name when talking about Phil Emery’s decision to give Jay Cutler that seven-year, $126 million contract.

“The thinking is, if you have a franchise quarterback, you hold onto them’’ Urlacher said. “It’s hard to find them in the NFL, and I think the GM there thought he had one, so he paid him like one.’’

The only thing Urlacher missed was “Fredo, you’re nothing to me now.’’

If you’re keeping score at home, not only did Urlacher refuse to utter either person’s name, but he refused to say that Cutler is a franchise quarterback, just that the GM thought he had one.

That’s code for no, Urlacher does not believe The Quarterback Who Must Not Be Named is elite at that position.

That’s also code for no, the General Manager Who Must Not Be Named doesn’t know what he’s doing at that position.

Hard to believe that there’s someone out there reading more into these sorts of comments than I typically do. But I don’t think Rosenbloom is wrong nor am I surprised. Urlacher will likely hold a grudge against the organization for a long time even though it doesn’t appear to be justified.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune urges Bear fans to give defensive coordinator Mel Tucker a chance to see what he can do with the defense:

“The Jaguars ranked sixth in the NFL on defense under Tucker in 2011 after the abbreviated offseason. Jacksonville was fifth in Football Outsiders’ ranking system and one of only two units in the top five against both the pass and the run. That was without a single Pro Bowl player.”

Much has been made of Tucker’s lack of qualifications and the miserable performance of the 2012 Jaguars, a team that had even less talent than the 2011 version. But Tucker is respected throughout the league and there’s good reason for that.

In any case, as Biggs points out, former head coach Lovie Smith‘s first reaction when the offense wasn’t performing was to change coordinators. Most Bears fans understand how well that worked. The current regime seems to be taking a different tack:

“As an organization it appears there is more ownership of problems than there was in the past, and that could be a step in the right direction. Coach Marc Trestman said “it starts with me” and general manager Phil Emery held himself responsible, citing, among other things, a lack of depth at tackle and safety.”

I don’t think firing a coordinator who wasn’t even running his own system after only one year is a good solution to the Bears problems. If nothing else, it makes potential candidates for the job wary about the situation that they might be getting themselves into. Emphasizing patience and resisting a knee jerk reaction to dump a respected coach with a history of making lemonade from lemons seems like a good move. Its time to stop using the coordinators as fall guys who take the blame for organizational failure on multiple levels.

The Bears have instead decided to make fixing the defense a community-driven, team-oriented issue where everyone takes responsibility for the problem. Everyone, Emery, Trestman and Tucker, is now pulling in the same direction and doing their part to fix the problem. If that continues, better days may be ahead.

As I noted in my previous post today the Bears have emerged from 2 weeks of meetings with a plan for 2014. We don’t know all of the details but we do know that replacing defensive coordinator Mel Tucker isn’t one of them. In the process of pointing this out, I noted this passage from the report of Adam L Jahns at the Chicago Sun-Times:

“Another important factor is that Tucker, by some accounts, was able to reach some of [former head coach Lovie Smith’s] loyalists and defensive leaders, who are signed past this season. That includes linebacker Lance Briggs, whom [head coach Marc] Trestman and [general manager Phil] Emery intentionally commended earlier this month.”

Speculation is that Briggs never fully accepted the change in the coaching staff. So if Briggs got along with Tucker, what was the problem? Perhaps this cut from David Haugh’s column in the Chicago Tribune after the disastrous loss to the Philedelphia Eagles late last season provides a clue:

“Inside a stunned Bears locker room Sunday night after a disgraceful 54-11 loss to the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field, coach Marc Trestman approached Jay Cutler. Josh McCown joined them near the corner to form a quorum.

“You didn’t need to be lip reader to understand the agenda they privately set.

“Burn the tape, they said in so many words. By the time the last Bear boarded the team bus, that had become the mantra you will hear more this week than ‘Jingle Bells.’”

OK. Probably the right thing to do. But if there was a “quorum”, where was the representative from the defense? Where was Briggs or veterans James Anderson or Julius Peppers?

Trestman obviously spent most of his personal time in 2013 getting the offense on board with the plan and developing that side of the ball. And, to be honest, that’s perfectly fine. There are only 24 hours in the day and he probably chose to spend most of those working where his expertise lies in his first year as head coach. And he absolutely needed to cultivate Cutler and, to a lesser extent, McCown as the quarterbacks and de facto leaders on that side.

But the defense is now still sitting in the station and Trestman now needs to do more than leave it to Tucker to get them on board the train. The offense is up and running and more work on that side of the ball can be off-loaded to offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer , both for the good of the team and for his own development as a coordinator and, eventually, into head coaching material.

The tendency is for a head coach to want to spend time on “his” side of the ball, leaving his coordinator on the “other” side to effectively be the head coach for that half of the team. It’s fairly obvious that this is what former Bears head coach Love Smith did and it never gave good results. When Smith was fired, most of the despair emanated from personnel on the defensive side of the ball. You got the distinct impression that offensive players like Cutler were a bit more ambivalent. Trestman isn’t going to be fired any time soon. But reports about the attitude of defensive veterans towards his leadership may not be all that different from what players like Cutler were feeling just a couple years ago.

Hopefully Trestman learned something about how to fix a defense as a head coach in Canada. As noted by Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune last month, Trestman used three defensive coordinators in five years in Montreal. He likely knows by now that turning over coaching personnel isn’t the complete answer to your problems. Eventually you have to start looking closer at yourself and taking personal responsibility for the issues on both sides of the ball, not just one.

I expect to hear a lot more in the coming year about Trestman’s involvement in the defense. About conversations not just with Cutler but with veteran defensive personnel like Briggs. I expect to hear that he’s balancing his time, spending more time in defensive meetings. If not, no matter what other changes are made, Trestman will never be coaching a complete team.