It’s Time to Blow Up the Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears have turned into a dumpster fire. Time to blow it all up and start over.
It wasn’t too long ago that the Chicago Bears were considered one step away from greatness, and that firing Lovie Smith and bringing in an offensive-minded coach would bring them playoff glory. Now, a season and a half into the experiment of focusing all their energy on the offense, it’s become clear that the team is in complete turmoil. Fielding a losing team is bad enough, but the one thing you just can’t do in Chicago is put a putrid defense on the field. It’s become painfully obvious that it’s time to blow up the Chicago Bears and start over.
The Chicago Bears are famous for two basic conditions: a perennially punishing defense, and searching for a franchise QB. In the rare times when those elements have coalesced at the same time, they’ve put historically great teams on the field. Their essence, though, is to play great defense, put a good running game together and hope for the best with the passing game. A few factors play into this: the bad weather, the overall direction of the franchise, and the expectations of the fans.
So when Phil Emery came in as the new general manager and decided to take the franchise in the opposite direction, it was a risky experiment. He fired Lovie Smith, a defensive minded coach, despite an 81-63 record in nine seasons (Smith really earned that after missing the playoffs in five of his final six seasons). If the gamble paid off, it would pay off big. Imagine if you could hire an offensive minded coach, put a high powered passing game together with Chicago’s shut down defense and Matt Forte dominating the ground game. It could be one of those historically great runs.
It hasn’t paid off.
It’s hard to tell what’s had more impact – the horrific play on defense, the thorough meltdown of Jay Cutler, or Marc Trestman’s complete tone deafness as a head coach. All three of these factors have combined to produce a team that’s 5-9 and in utter free fall. Let’s examine each element.
Defense
The defense is playing such bad ball, it makes you recoil like you smelled something that just ain’t right. It’s not for lack of trying – of their eight picks in the draft in the fourth round or higher over the past two years, six have been spent on defense. You can pretty much lay this at the feet of Mel Tucker. In his two years as defensive coordinator, he’s been exposed. His defenses have ranked near the bottom in every statistical category, and this year they’re giving up just a shade under 30 points per game. In half their games, they’ve given up 31 or more, including back-to-back fifty-burgers to New England and Green Bay. It’s too bad nobody could have known ahead of time how terrible Mel Tucker is.
Except that it was pretty obvious going in. Mel Tucker had previously been the defensive coordinator for Cleveland and Jacksonville. In five seasons, he only once had a defense rank in the top half of the league. Most of those defenses – shockingly – mirrored the performance of this year’s Bears trainwreck. It’s inexplicable that he still has a job, as any Bears fan will tell you.
Jay Cutler
Speaking of hot messes … wow. Jay Cutler has had his challenges in the past, but nobody ever questioned his talent or ability to read defenses. This year has been a revelation. There was a moment in Monday night’s beatdown by the Saints when he came to the line, looked at the defensive alignment, and screamed “GODDAMMIT” at the top of his lungs (for the audience at home to hear) before calling time out.
He was echoing what many Bears fans have screamed at their television sets over the past few seasons. It’s hard to believe, but Cutler has been in Chicago for six seasons. In only one of those seasons has he averaged fewer than one interception per game. He’s thrown 93 interceptions in 81 games started as a Bear. On top of his 18 interceptions this year, he’s also coughed up 12 fumbles. In 14 games.
Cutler was supposed to thrive in Trestman’s offense. This offense has a ton of weapons on the outside and what should be a stout running game. It has all the elements to create a comfort zone for a quarterback that should allow him to thrive. Instead, Cutler has regressed badly.
Marc Trestman
What can you say about a coach who was supposed to come in and fix the offense, leave the stout defense well enough alone and control a locker room full of unique personalities? Not only has the offense imploded; not only has the defense become a league wide laughing stock; the greatest challenge Trestman faces is completely self inflicted. He’s allowed the inmates to run the asylum. What coach in their right mind allows Brandon Marshall, of all people, to leave town every week to do a TV show? Marc Trestman doesn’t seem to have any ability to enforce his will at all, which is not exactly the Bill Belichick model of coaching.
In fact, in every way over the past two seasons, the Chicago Bears have become the anti-Patriots. New England is held up as the model franchise, making all the right moves to sustain success year after year. The Bears have rewarded a terrible QB with a completely undeserved contract; hired a coach who cannot keep the locker room together and who cannot keep his promise to retool the offense to take advantage of all the weapons on the roster; and put a defensive team on the field that has Butkus fans hiding their head in shame. The cherry on top of the sundae came on Monday Night Football this week, when there were 11,000 no-shows for a prime time game in Soldier Field. Just embarrassing.
It is time to blow up this team and start from scratch. It’s obvious that they are not a player or two, or a coach or two, away from contending for a Super Bowl.
- It’s time to cut Jay Cutler. Yes, they’re on the hook for some money, but it’s not as bad as it appears. The trade market for him is probably non-existent. If they cut him before March, they don’t have to pay him $16 million of that guaranteed money. They’ve already paid him $38 million, but there’s precious little hope for any return on investment there. Time to make a clean break and start over.
- Marc Trestman needs to go, and take Mel Tucker with him. A coach who would stick by such a terrible defensive coordinator has no place in Chicago.
- Phil Emery was the architect of this mess. Sometimes, a general manager is unfairly wed to his head coaching hire. In this case, the blame is completely deserved. Emery is solely responsible for signing Cutler to a megadeal before this season, when he had shown that he had a shaky hold on his position. Seriously, seven years, $120 million, with $54 million guaranteed? What had Cutler done to earn that? And why the rush to sign him in the first place? The Bears were bidding against themselves in that bidding war.
Before the season, Emery had this to say:
"“We were in a position where if he [Lovie Smith] stayed, he would be picking his fifth offensive coordinator,” Emery said. “Part of it was because I really believe looking at a team that if you’re going to have success, the most important relationship is between the head coach and the quarterback.”Said Emery: “I like our quarterback. I think Jay Cutler is very talented. He wants to improve. I know he needed to improve for us to be a championship team. When we were looking at making a change we knew that if we were going to do it we were going to make that the focus point. We had to work from that end.”"
It’s become painfully obvious that Emery hitched his wagon to the wrong horse with the wrong driver. It’s time to blow it up and start over, and that starts with a new GM who can recruit a solid head coach. Chicago Bears fans can’t endure another season of this.