Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Bears defensive end Jared Allen gives an honest assessment of his year last year and how draining it was emotionally to Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune as he holds his baby daughter Lakelyn in his arms:

“With each ugly loss, he felt his energy tank leaking.

“Allen thought he had signed on to a team with a high-powered offense, a re-energized defense and an inspiring coach in Marc Trestman. Instead, the Bears’ 5-11 skid showed him otherwise and left him wrestling self-pity.

“‘There was almost this disappointment in myself that I had made a bad decision,’ Allen says of his free-agent signing. ‘As a man, as a player, you can’t let those circumstances affect you. Unfortunately there were times that I did. And that’s on me. It’s something you have to look back on and go, ‘Come on dude.’ ‘”

“‘I can’t let last season be my lasting impression, the image of a guy who was hurt and sick and pissed off,’ he says. ‘That’s not me. … This is not about making the best of a bad situation. It’s about being the best again in an environment where I can be.’

“He glances down again. Lakelyn is still asleep.”

Allen’s attitude should be inspiring to both teammates and fans that share a similar bitterness for how last season worked out. In particular, fellow defensive end Lamarr Houston, who started the season with a new free agent contract and a lot of hope, needs to pick up the peices and move one. It should be easier for him than Allen – he’s going back to playing a 3-4 defense that he saw a fair bit of success in with Oakland before signing with the Bears. If his attitude recovers, his performance should as well.

Many Bears fans had expectations that were as high as Allen’s. Those days are gone and the Bears are starting over with a clean slate top to bottom. They’ve left last year behind.

It’s our challenge to do the same and to embrace what’s coming.  Bears fans also need to make the best of our situation. The team isn’t going to a Super Bowl. But its going to be our pleasure to watch their progress – to watch old players adjust to new situations and to watch young players emerge in a new environment.

Passion Sunday has arrived and Easter is upon our doorstep.  Many consider this to be a moment of rebirth.  It is the hour when we rise up and are transformed into something that is closer to both our beginning and our end.  Spring is approaching. It will be a time of renewal for all of us.

Bucky Brooks (above), a draft analyst at nfl.com, has special insight into the mind of Bears head coach John Fox.

“‘Look for them to take a defensive player to get them back on track,’ Brooks said. ‘ … (Fox) wants to make sure the defense is what this team is built on.’

“Brooks was a scout with the Carolina Panthers when Fox was the Panthers’ coach, and Brooks noted that Fox ‘likes defensive picks.’

“Chicago could use an edge rusher and help in the secondary. A top-level edge rusher seems likely to be available at No. 7; the Bears likely would have their choice of any corner or safety with that pick, as well.”

I think Brooks and I are on the same page in thinking pass rusher or defensive tackle with that pick. The tackle would be easy to guess: Danny Shelton. Seventh overall might be a little high to take him base upon the current thinking by analysts around the league. Having said that, I like him considerably better than most and would love to see them take him there.

The other option is pass rusher. The Bears should have their pick of several of the top ones in the draft. I, personally, wouldn’t touch any of them that high past Dante Fowler, who should be long gone by then. But current thinking is that any of them is a reasonable option at that point.

Trading back might be the Bears best move in the end. But where eve they end up, I think you can bet they’re going defense with that pick.

Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune desccribes where he thinks the position of edge rusher is as the Bears remake their defense into a 3-4 base:

“Take your notions about a 4-3 end and save them for sub packages. While the Bears are in their base grouping, which general manager Ryan Pace has approximated will be 40 percent of the time, defensive ends primarily are big-bodied run stuffers. Like the nose tackle, they’re generally asked to occupy offensive linemen and keep the linebackers free to make tackles.

”
There are some 3-4 ends who disrupt the quarterback and wreak havoc in the backfield — think Texans star J.J. Watt; and new Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fango had one in the 49ers’ Justin Smith — but they’re more of an exception to the rule.

“The Bears want their base ends to be at least 280 pounds, which is necessary to anchor against blocks. “

Campbell confirms what I suspect. The Bears are likely going to take their linemen as they come and adapt the scheme aroud them. Ideally they’d like J.J. Watt. But they’ll settle for Ray McDonald and Jarvis Jenkins occupying linemen and the scheme will work just fine.

The philosophy probably extends to the nose tackle as well. Ideally you’d like to be strong up the middle with Vince Wilfork occupying blockers and getting some pass rush up the middle where you can get it. But they’ll make due with 303 lb Jeremiah Ratliff penetrating and be happy with that if they have to. It won’t be the best thing for the inside linebackers but it can work as many teams – including the 49ers under Fangio who have 318 lb Quinton Dial starting at nose tackle – have shown.

Bottom line, we really won’t know what the Bears will show in term of scheme next year until we see the players. They’ll adjust the scheme – which I think we all know will be multiple anyway – to what they have. That’s going to be a good thing for Bears general manager Ryan Pace. He’s going to be open to finding players who are the best at what they do almost no matter what that is. That’s going to maximize the size of the available pool and increase his chances of finding impact personnel. And arguably they’re the ones who win ball games.

Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com gives his view on the Bears progress in free agency to date:

“[Antrel] Rolle is old by NFL standards, there’s no other way to spin it. But at 26 and 28, respectively, [Pernell] McPhee and [Eddie] Royal fill screaming needs in the Bears starting lineup and are more than likely to still be in their primes if the Bears can contend in 2016 or 2017.

“[Ray] McDonald is 30 but has been extremely durable, and there is no reason short of additional off the field concerns that he can’t stay in his prime for two, three or four years. Jarvis Jenkins will be 27 in April, Mason Foster just turned 26 and Vladimir Ducasse is 27.

“Jenkins and Ducasse are former second-round picks and McDonald and Foster were threes, and all but Ducasse are certain starters or important rotation players on Day 1.

“With all four players on one-year deals with little or no guaranteed money, the Bears have taken no risk while adding two extra second-round picks and two extra third-round choices.”

I’m open to the idea that the Bears got younger with ascending players… potentially ascending players. But to state that the Bears added “two extra second-round picks and two extra third-round choices”? I can’t buy that.

The Bears added two second-round picks and two third-round choices who didn’t work out. If they had, they would have gotten paid instead of taking one-year minimum benefit prove it deals. They are all four potential starters – at this point three are probable starters. But also at this point mediocre starters overall.  You could potentially include Royal, McPhee and Rolle in that as well.  The Bears are counting on each being better than he was last year.

The hope is, of course, that the Bears can develop or otherwise use the talent that made these players second and third rounders better than their previous teams. Maybe they can. But I’d say that it’s more likely that out of Jenkins, Foster, and Ducasse you might have one that you’ll want to keep at the end of the season. That’s a more realistic result of the Bears progress in free agency to date.

I’m sorry. I really am. At minimum any of you who regularly read these posts are probably tired of me bashing quarterback Jay Cutler. There comes a point where if you do it enough you actually start to generate sympathy for him. Some of you may already be there. Again, I’m sorry.

I admit that these posts satisfy a driving need in me. I’m powerless to influence the people who matter and this is the only thing I can do. At some point – a point very soon – I’ll stop putting up a post every time Bears head coach John Fox or general manager Ryan Pace makes even a remote attempt to defend Cutler or imply that he can fix him. Now that they’ve decided to stick with Cutler, whether Fox actually wants him or not, it’s his job to do what he can to rehabilitate him. I know that. But fear that he actually will fool himself into thinking it can be done at a critical time when its realistic to cut Cutler loose impels me to vent on this site. I’ll get over it. I promise.

In the mean time, Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune scares me as he quotes Fox, who comments on Cutler:

“[Fox] saw a player whose struggles seemed to weigh him down.

“‘Maybe he got to the point where he lacked confidence a year ago,’ Fox said. ‘To build that back up, it’s going to take time. Daily. It takes trust, like any relationship.'”

I’m wondering if Fox gets it. I wonder if he understands that’s what Cutler is. He loses confidence and his struggles don’t just weigh him down, they weigh everyone down. Fox continues:

“‘Unless you have success it’s hard to have confidence,’ Fox said. ‘… I’ve always started with practice. I call them mini games. Try to structure them that way. This is all about what to do, how to do it and do it under pressure. That is what we do.'”

Fox has a point in that this is generally the way to build a team. But its combined with finding the right players to respond to that kind of motivation. For every person out there who builds confidence with success there’s at least one who can never find success because they lack the gene. I’m now convinced that Cutler is one of those guys. Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune tells Wiederer in this video that in listening to Fox talk it feels like “the final act” for Cutler. That’s probably because, whether he understands it or not, Campbell has seen almost as much of Cutler as most Bears fans have and he knows on some level that in a, as he puts it, “results-based business” Cutler’s never going to produce.

Is it possible to get to the point with Cutler where success breeds confidence and where he will perform at his best in a really big game? Anything is possible. But in order to get to the point where success breeds confidence you have to start somewhere where some degree of confidence breeds success. My guess is that you can build things little by little with small successes leading to big successes with many young NFL athletes who aren’t fragile by nature. Fox thinks he can build that by creating competition in practice. But there will always come that time in a real game when Cutler won’t be able to fool you – when they won’t be able to just run the football and the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys and you have to nut up and come through. Cutler’s well into his 30s and he is what he is. And I think he’s destined to always let you down when you need him most.

That’s what a loser is. I just hope that some how Fox comes to that decision sooner rather than later.