Da Bears: 7-9

7-9. (Thumb pointing downward while making a farting noise). There were high expectations for Da Bears coming into this season with the acquisition of franchise quarterback Jay Cutler, yet they couldn’t even finish with a .500 record let alone win the North Division. The organization in its entirety is problematic. I’ve shared my thoughts about the front office in a previous post, so I’m going to start where the game begins and ends, in the trenches. Angelo went out and signed a veteran and future Hall of Famer in Orlando Pace. Pace is simply past his prime. WAY past his prime like he went past the Seven-Eleven that would indicate that he’s gone too far and is now on a road that Google Maps hasn’t yet charted. He’s just too slow these days for the athletes that line up across from him at defensive end. This signing seemed like a great idea on paper, but it forced Chris Williams to move out of his comfort zone as left tackle to the opposite end of the line for his first full season as a starter and may have caused a domino effect on the entire offensive line. They didn’t provide the run blocking that Forte flourished under last year and the poor pass protection had Cutler rattled and off his game for most of the season. On the other side of the ball, we brought in ex-head coach of the 0-16 Detroit Lions Rod Marinelli as the defensive lineman/assistant coach. This didn’t bring in the results that Da Bears were hoping for, but I don’t think that he was the problem. He did some good things with what he had, running inside stunts amongst other things that worked when the players actually executed the plays properly. Tommie Harris is a dynamite football player…when he actually decides that he wants to show up and play. With the “Tampa 2” scheme that Lovie has implemented upon this defense, the most vital position is the 3-technique lineman. He’s there because he’s so big and so quick and so athletic that he can get up-field and be disruptive in the backfield or simply occupy space as well as the two O-linemen whose gap he’s firing into. This is a major nuisance for offenses and it allows our Pro Bowl caliber linebackers to clean up any leftover run-game messes or quickly drop back into coverage if need be. Losing Urlacher brought about a whole new set of problems for Da Bears and their scheme. Ogunleye did a fine job this year, of course it probably had nothing to do with it being a contract year I’m sure. Alex Brown had an average season and Mark Anderson really didn’t make the most of his playing time. Do I even have to mention Gaines Adams? (There’s more on him in the first December ’09 post). The point is we didn’t win many of the wars in the trenches, which is why we didn’t win enough games to make it to the playoffs. Also, for the most part, it was the fault of the poor performances of the players in those trenches, not that of the coaching. Again, it turned into a domino effect whether it put too much responsibility on the 34th string linebackers, caused Cutler to try to do too much and force the ball into spots he may normally not have with less than two seconds to survey the field, provoked our sub-par safeties out of position causing them to miss their assignments, or making our #2, #3, and #3 receivers to forever be on the wrong page and break off routes (and no that wasn’t a typo because we didn’t have a #1 receiver all year). I will give credit to Da Bears for showing up for Monday Night Football against the Vikings. Who doesn’t enjoy a victory over Favre and crew? They ended the season with two winners after a win over Detroit, which was still close until mid-fourth quarter. I’m afraid it was too little too late for Da Bears. I took it as a sign that they wanted to make sure at least Lovie comes back to coach, although O-coordinator Ron Turner will probably be added to my HE GONE list later this week, and maybe even GM Jerry Angelo, better yet President and CEO Ted Philips!