Why the Bears Missed Briggs Against Seattle and Other Points of View

Bears

  • The Chicago Tribune‘s Brad Biggs gives insight into some offensive line technique via coach Mike Tice:

“Really, just looking at the footwork of Chris [Williams], there were a couple of times (against the Seahawks) where he spread his feet and never stepped or anything.

“I think it’s that technique ‘A guy is on me real quick,’ instead of him stepping. That takes time and repetition. We’ve had weeks to repeat the technique and do it over and over to where now he’s better. He still has a moment or two, but he’s really improved.”

  • Pisa Tinoisamoa comments on the absence of Lance Briggs from the game the last time the Bears played Seattle.  Replacement Brian Iwuh had a good game with 10 tackles.  Via Sean Jensen at the Chicago Sun-Times:

“You can’t even really say [the Bears lost] because he didn’t play.  But you know if he would have, it would have been a different outcome, at least defensively, because you can count on Lance Briggs for a couple of game-changing plays.

“That’s what we missed.”

  • Trent Dilfer at ESPN says about what the Bears need to do to beat the Seahawks:

Elsewhere

  • The Seahawks might be missing concussed linebacker Lofa Tatupu, who was concussed in Sunday’s game.  Coach Pete Carroll says he’s encouraged by Tatupu’s progress but given the delicacy with which concussions are being handled by the league, I’m going to be mildly surprised if he returns quickly.  If he doesn’t pass the necessary tests, it will be a double whammy as the Seahawks will move David Hawthorn to middle linebacker from the weak side to replace him.  Via Danny O’Neil at the Seattle Times.
  • Eagles quarterback Kevin Kolb wants to start or be traded.  Adam Schefter at ESPN doesn’t sound optimistic either will happen:

  • Mike Florio at profootballtalk.com gives us even more reasons to be grateful that the Bears are owned by Virginai McCaskey rather than Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.  What a mess.
  • Dilfer says that the Falcons need to make the Packers pay for being overly aggressive:

One Final Thought

The Raiders are hiring.  I’ve got this funny feeling that the Raiders are going to be talking to Jon Gruden about returning to the Bay area.  I can hear your laughter.  But it’s still not going away…

A Different Seattle Team Is Coming to Town This Time Around

Mike Mulligan at the Chicago Sun-Times comments on the Seahawk victory over the Saints:

“[Matt] Hasselbeck used veteran guile, sleight of hand and 6-5 wide receiver Mike Williams (10 receptions, 123 yards) to terrorize the Bears. His description of the victory against the Saints could have applied to the earlier Bears game.

‘‘’We got a rhythm going, with pass protection, and I was using my cadence pretty good, and quick counts and sort of quick counts, normal count, hard count, double count,’ Hasselbeck said. ‘Using all those things in our toolbox.’’’

The difference is, of course, that Seattle is now bringing a running game to town in the form of Marshawn Lynch.  The Seahawks have the look of a much more balanced team this time around – the type of offense that often gives the Bears trouble.  The Bears are going to have to adjust if they want to win in the playoffs as pointed out by defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli via Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune:

“The pace and tempo are going to pick up now.  That’s a fun part of this thing. They understand it. They know the importance of details and execution. We’ve got some elite players who play as a team.”

Nevertheless they lack playoff experience on the offensive side of the ball.   While we sit and sounder whether the Bears can adjust, we already know that they Seahawks can.  They dialed it up and played noticeably faster Saturday.

The Seahawks still don’t exactly execute like the Patriots.  And the Bears will be a lot different offensively compared to the last time they played them, as well.  But nevertheless the Seahawks are a dangerous team.

I’m not saying the underdog Seahawks will win.  But I’d take the points.

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Browns Provide Blue Print to Beat the Patriots

A friend (who is rather anti-Bear) and I were debating the merits of the Green Bay Packers when he brought up this observation:  the Packers are team in the NFC playoff picture with the best chance to beat the Patriots.  An anonymous quote from the Audibles feature at Pro Football Weekly reminded me of his comment:

“If you want to beat the Patriots, you need to look at the job Cleveland did on them. The one thing (Eric) Mangini definitely knows is how to beat New England. They had a phenomenal game plan. I’ve never seen Tom Brady so confused. They had 11 guys standing, and (Brady) had no idea who was coming and who was dropping. No team is good playing from behind, especially if the offense can run at you. Colt McCoy made a few plays early, and (Peyton) Hillis ran at them. That is the winning formula to beat New England. It’s a copycat league, and you have to know where you could pull from.”

Defensively this is exactly what the Packers did to the Patriots and they almost beat them.  They run a look with only two down linemen and everyone else stands around so you can’t tell who is coming from where.  It’s problematic but it also looks to me like the type of defense that you could beat with the run if you had the right blocking scheme.

Frankly I don’t see anyone in the NFC beating the Patriots in a Super Bowl matchup.  But I said that the last time they were there and they lost.  It will be interesting to see if more teams do, in fact, copy the Cleveland game plan and what the Patriots do to try to stop it.

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Packers Rip Off Shareholders and Other News

Bears

“I don’t know why they keep bringing up me. This was 38 years ago that I played.”

“We have the best offensive line coach in the league, period.”

‘‘’If I look up right guard in the dictionary, I see a picture of Lance Louis,’ Tice said in August.”

“Tice proved adept at not only acknowledging a mistake but correcting it — both rare commodities at Halas Hall in recent years. It took the Bears four years to realize Mark Anderson wasn’t a starting defensive end. It took Tice four games to realize Louis wasn’t a starting right guard.”

“I never thought anyone would say this, especially in Chicago, but go Pack go!”

Elsewhere

  • Tom Kowalsi at mlive.com breaks down the Lions roster.  Big needs in the back seven of the defense should tell us what direction they’ll go in free agency and the draft.
  • Here’s the Detroit Lions season wrapup with Brian VanOchten and Bill Simonson at mlive.com.  Some good points made here including the fact that the Cleveland Browns ended on a winning streak last year (though the Lions are probably different):

  • This week’s Audibles at Pro Football Weekly was particularly good.  Here’s yet another astute observation:

“Coaches remember what a player did. Personnel guys are supposed to be on top of coaches to remember what (players) can do. Every team has different power structures. What you have to realize with coaches is that very few of them can separate the emotion.”

  • Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh gets a few warm comments from the Kansas City fans  yesterday after their win:

“You can put Aaron Rodgers in that elite quarterback class. He’s got his first playoff victory.”

  • Mike Lupica echos my thoughts on Jim Harbaugh‘s hiring for ESPN:

One Final Thought

Another reason to hate the Packers as they blatantly rip off loyal shareholders:

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Eagles-Packers Illustrate the Bears Long-Term Predicament

Neil Hayes at the Chicago Sun-Times elegantly drives what is perhaps the most important point for Bear fans about today’s Packers-Eagles matchup home:

If the Eagles beat the Packers in today’s NFC wild-card game at Lincoln Financial Field, they will take on the Bears in the divisional round next Sunday at Soldier Field. If the Packers win today, they’ll head next to Atlanta — and it would keep alive a possible meeting with the Bears in the NFC Championship Game.

That’s the short view. The longer view is more sobering.

The Packers and Eagles not only have elite quarterbacks but were the third- and fourth-youngest teams in the NFC at the start of the season and have only gotten younger as injured veterans have been replaced by backups. The Bears are the third-oldest team and likely will have to fight through these teams again and again if they hope to remain competitive in the NFC in the coming years.

This is the predicament that GM Jerry Angelo and his front office have put this franchise in and this is why I withhold my whole hearted support.  While the window opens for teams like the Packers, Eagles and Patriots, it is rapidly closing for the Bears and it has been for some years.  The Bears do have a couple of young play makers including the recently drafted Johnny Knox.  But the last Pro Bowl position player they drafted were Tommie Harris and Nathan Vasher in 2004.

The Bears have to do better in the draft if they want to keep up with the younger teams in the NFL.

Thoughts of Bears Game Drives Jets Sanchez to Win Over Colts and Other News

Bears

“Kansas City and Chicago are extremely strong with their coordinators, but the Chiefs’ Todd Haley is unproven as a head guy and the Bears’ Lovie Smith has some game-day inconsistencies. Smith has guided his team to the Super Bowl, though.”

He rates the Bears coaching staff a disappointing 9th of the 12 playoff teams.

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel beat writer Bob McGinn gives Bears GM Jerry Angelo some love probably though gritted teeth.  (I had to link to this story through commentary by Tom Kowalski at mlive.com rather than directly to the Journal Sentinel because I didn’t want to become a “Packer Insider”.  It didn’t sound too masculine to me…

Elsewhere

“Sanchez credited his poise and the team’s overall coolness under pressure to the lessons learned in a regular-season loss to the Bears.

“‘The most important thing to me was remembering the Chicago game,’ he said. ‘A field goal … just give us a chance, give us the fourth down, and not turn the ball over like the Chicago game.”’

  • ESPN‘s Merril Hoge makes some interesting comments about what the Jets did to beat Peyton Manning:

  • Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck tells ESPN that the Seahawks took advantage of the Saints defense making “educated guesses”:

Saints defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, is going to take some heat this week.

  • Ben Maller at FOX Sports Radio reports that the bettors took a bath yesterday.  Seventy-five percent of the action was on Indianapolis.  Sixty-eight percent was on the Saints.  Like Maller, I can’t say I’m surprised.  Bookies aren’t in the business to lose money and when the split isn’t close to 50-50, you can figure that the result is more likely to end up in Vegas’ favor.
  • Williamson rates the top ten NFL rookies this year.  The Super Bowl favorite Patriots have two.  The Bears have zero.
  • Williamson also had this provocative comment:

“If you were not aware, there is an offensive line shortage in the NFL. There are fewer elite lines than in my recent memory. And even some of the best teams in the league are fielding very ordinary units up front.”

I would say that every breathing Bear fan is definitely aware.

  • Dave Hyde and Mike Berardino at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel point out that the Dolphins aren’t the only ones who made mistakes in botching the attempt to hire Jim Harbaugh.  The press had a bad week as well:

  • Darrelle Revis talks to the New York Post about the Jets matchup with the Patriots next week:

The key question is whether the Jets can recover form the butt kicking they took from the Patriots late in the season to play with the needed confidence to win.

One Final Thought

Seattle coach Pete Carroll on their upset win over the Saints (via the Chicago Tribune):

“It didn’t matter what I said to them, or what was said outside, and all of the story lines and all that, they just did not buy it.  Where that came from? If I knew that, we’d have something special here. It came out of an attitude and it came out of a faith in one another.”

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Bears Doing a Better Job of Hiding the Defensive Alignment This Year

Vaughn McClure at the Chicago Tribune interviews Brian Urlacher:

“Others might call the Bears’ Cover-2 defense predictable, but Urlacher thinks it’s simply pretty darn good.

“‘If we’re so predictable, then we shouldn’t be in the playoffs,’ he said. ‘If you look around the league — and most people don’t see the intricacies of each defense for every team — we don’t screw up a lot.”’

In fairness the Bears really aren’t that predictable anymore.  As has been pointed out by several good color commentators over the course of the season the Bears are disguising their converges more than they ever have this year.  They often start in the cover two but switch to a different defense right before the snap.  It’s yet another reason why the defense has been better this year.

Fans Should Be Careful What They Wish For

Mike Mulligan leads his article for the Chicago Sun-Times today with this:

“Welcome to the upside-down world of the NFL playoffs, where even the most ardent of Bears fans will be cheering for the Green Bay Packers today.

“If the Packers pull off an upset in Philadelphia, then the Bears will be hosting the worst playoff team in NFL history a week from today.”

Most Bear fans agree.  But be careful what you wish for.  Though Seattle is very beatable seeing Green Bay go should probably be the number one priority.

The Packers are very inconsistent.  They didn’t play well in either of the games against the Bears with 18 penalties in game 1 at Soldier Field and with quarterback Aaron Rogers not throwing with his usual accuracy in game 2, not to mention the wide receivers dropping balls all over the field.

But if the Packers somehow put together four good games in a row, they are the most dangerous team in the NFC playoffs.  And their tenacious man-to-man defense along with their patience on offense with screens and the underneath passing game make them far and away the worst match up for the Bears in the NFC playoffs.

Steve Ross Really Doesn’t Get It

The other day, I wrote an entry entitled “Brian Urlacher Doesn’t Get It”.  Well, Urlacher’s got nothing on Dophins owner Steve Ross.

Here is what Ross had to say about the botched attempt to hire Jim Harbaugh as head coach while retaining Tony Sparano (via ESPN):

“Ross, who took over the Dolphins two years ago, said he had never interviewed a coach before and was naive to think he could keep his meeting with Harbaugh secret.

“‘I should have probably let Tony know,’ Ross said. ‘I never thought it would be national news. I realized after having read the papers the anguish I had put Tony through. It’s probably a mistake on my part not thinking that when you do something like this, it’s public.”

Let’s set aside Ross’ naivete.  He really thinks that the reason to tell Sparano was because the word might get out?  Not because, I don’t know, because its part of being a stand up employer of people in an honest, stand up organization?  A stand up guy?

Dave Hyde and Mike Berardino at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel confirm in this video what most of us already figured:

Jeff Ireland was put in an uncomfortable spot when Ross decided to go ahead and interview Harbaugh without firing Sparano first.  He undoubtedly tried in vain to tell Ross that he was doing the wrong thing:

Ross’ message is that the whole thing would have been OK as long as he could have kept it all a secret and worked behind Sparano’s back.  My message is, “Who would want to work for a guy you can’t trust?”  Is it any wonder that Harbaugh turned him down?

Take a look at the expression on Sparano’s face during the press conference and tell me he isn’t going to leave as soon as possible if he ever achieves the needed success to have a choice.  Tell me who would blame him.

Matt Millen’s Comments Provide Insight Into the Job Which Jerry Angelo Has Done with the Bears

Like a lot of young people, when I was a graduate student I thought I knew a lot more than I actual did.  Teaching people like me at that point can sometimes be a struggle.  I’ll never forget one a senior member of our laboratory turning to me after one particularly frustrating experience and saying, “There are a thousand things you can do wrong with this.  I’ve done them all.  Listen to what I’m saying.”

As an older adult I’m now doing my level best to try to evaluate the job that general manager Jerry Angelo has done in the face of the successful regular season which the Bears just completed.  It’s not easy.  You end up walking a tight rope between the positive view point expressed by Dan Pompei and the more negative view point of Dan McNeil, both writing for the Chicago Tribune.

I still haven’t made up my mind exactly how I feel but some perspective was gained from an interview by Dave Birkett at the Detroit Free Press with former Lions GM Matt Millen.  This article was recently brought to my attention in relation to Angelo by Mike Mulligan on WSCR’s Mully and Hanley Show.  Mulligan made an under-appreciated point that I’d like to highlight.

Millen was an utter failure as GM.  In his own words, he “stunk at it.”  Most would say that makes him somewhat less than an expert at how to manage a football team.  But there’s a lot to be gained by listening to someone who is an expert at how to fail at it, as well.  Here’s what Millen had to say:

“It’s less about the game of football.  It’s less about X’s and O’s. It’s less about personnel decisions. It’s a job about managing people. It’s about building a consensus when you pick the right head coach. You can’t go in and be this football czar and say, ‘This is how it’s going to work.’ If you pick somebody that a coach doesn’t like and doesn’t coach, that’s a bad situation.”

To his everlasting credit, this is something Angelo knows and has known for a long time.  He has, in fact, been talking about consensus building since he was hired.  For instance, he knows very well that Lovie Smith and the relevant position coaches have to be on board when you select a draft pick.  You can’t ask them to coach someone they don’t believe in.  And, of course, you have to balance that against what the scouts say and what you think personally.  If there’s a disagreement, you have to do some convincing and get all parties completely on board.  Indeed, occasionally Angelo undoubtedly has to select players he doesn’t think much of in the spirit of compromise.  Overall its an incredibly difficult task.

Many fans (like me) have wondered just how much influence Smith has over personnel issues, particularly as it pertains to the draft.  We wonder how much to “blame” him for Angelo’s failures there.  And in the end, we usually come to the conclusion that Angelo makes the final decision and, therefore, he has to bear ultimate responsibility.

This is technically true.   But what people don’t understand is that its not true because Angelo decided not to override Lovie Smith.  As is clear from Millen’s comments, he can’t override him.  Not if he wants a successful organization.  The reason the draft picks are ultimately Angelo’s responsibility is because he hired Smith in the first place.  That makes them inseparable partners in everything they do and, frankly, it means you can’t criticize Angelo without criticizing everyone in the organization from him on down for their role in the process.

So give Angelo credit for recognizing and doing at least a reasonable job of holding together an organization of diverse personalities and keeping them all headed more or less in the same direction.  A lot of people have failed to accomplish that much.  Just ask Matt Millen.