madlithuanian

1. Angelo: He seemed to draft decently at CB w/ some of the newer guys. Vasher and Tillman were the men, then injuries hit. He drafted some youth that were inexperienced. So instead of working schemes that would help the youngsters, Smith made them act like vets and set them up for failure. Player: When you're already giving up the first, and will be all drive long down the field, does it really matter if you give up 50 every now and then? And again, if Smith woudl practice tackling, missed tackles would probably be fewer. 2. Angelo: If Smith would stop asking Jerry to draft fast cover 2 guys, maybe they'd be better off. Player: If you were a OG in college, odds are you'll be a OG in the pros. Exceptions happen, but are rare. For every Urlacher, there's tons more experiments that have failed under the banner "coaching up" done by Smith. Oh yeah, Urlacher was under Dicky Animatron's watch... 3. Angelo: Yep, he's picked some injury prone guys. Deserve's the blame for that. There goes the 25%. But the entire roster of over 50+ guys are all injury prone and mental midgets? I think not. The TC's are a joke no matter what kind of straw-man BS you throw up there. Players: Professionals get paid to do a job. How well they do is usally a direct result of the direction they get from their leader. You can have a ton of great employees, but without good direction from the CEO, problems arise. You act as though coaching isn't even needed. Why bother having coaches at all if it's all up to the players? I'm not asking a coach to hold hands, I'm asking him to treat his crew like men and ask them to hit and play hard and smart. Not sit around and run drills that don't amount to jack in a real game while you stare like a deer in headlights wondering why your vaunted perfect scheme is getting picked apart like a pack of vultures on carrion. 4. Angelo: Sure, he could hand Smith a better hand of cards. But Smith has his hand. Instead of doing the most with it. He keeps thinking a pair of 6's is the same as a full house. Play the 6's correctly. Players: What does a fat player have to do with a bad scheme? A bad scheme is a bad scheme. Guess what?! Smith doesn't have the '85 Bears to play his vaunted scheme. He has what he freaking has. Use what you have to it's fullest potential instead of hoping that a run of the mill player will perform like a HoF'er. And um, poor execution usually starts in the country club camp 5. Angelo: Yep, if you draft guys and Smith is using them poorly, etc.. you need to man up and tell Smith to do it right. Henceforth, why Angelo gets 25% of the blame. Players: nfo, you have no idea what goes on at practice and who takes what off. All I know is in basketball, Rodman barely practiced, but rocked game time. Phil Jackson was smart enough to know his audience, and put his team in a position to win by letting it be. Maybe Smith's practices are just plain crappy and don't mimic the real game well enough to make a good determination on a player's potential in game time. Seems that your point WAS to defend Smith. Every single one of your posts was doing just that. Please don't play devil's advocate just to do so. I don't need to see "alternate' thoughts on Smith. I've seen enough evidence over the years that he is ill prepared to be a HC. And blame is going around. I didn't say Smith is 100%. I basically agreed with jason...and even went down from 60% to 50%. Angelo and the players are getting blame too. We are arguing over the silliness of percentage points. And if you think it's fun to poke the sleeping bear and watch me get upset, then so be it. I will not relent in my professing my dislike for Smith as the Bears' head coach until I see something that makes me re-think that. And I just don't see it happening. Possible. But not even remotely probable.

Smart man!

If you make a pro play 10 yards off the LOS, he cannot prevent a first. If you play a pro at one position he is weaker at than a nother, he will not preform well. If you hold a country club camp, that attitude will refelct in the seasonal preformances of your team. If you throw the red flag on bad plays, the players cannot get that timeout back. If you play an outdated scheme everyone has figured out, a pro player can't counter-balance that. If you don't get your best pro player out on the field, he will not contribute, while a the lesser player doesn't perform. I'll stop there. My blood pressure is starting to rise thinking about all the wrongs Smith has done recently...

You guys are falling right into the Smith pattern of non-tackling! MAN-UP! Kick ass! Change! Adapt! Don't sit back and wonder why your perfect plan isn't working out.

Wuss! Smith is at least 50%. Horrid decisions top to bottom killed numerous chances from TC to in-game poor decision making. I'd settle for 25/25 from there. It's the coaches job to put the players in position to make plays. They were not put in position to do so. Did they miss plays? Yep. But the glaring mistakes were decisions, not performance I felt. If I listed them all, it would take far too long and probably result in my having a heart episode. So I'll refrain.

Whoa! Hold your horses! Rotating? You mean changing up things on the fly to find the best match-up! Well, that's just darn revolutionary... That a little too modern for our stellar defensive minds to contemplate.

Good! OL and S are our big needs... I'd also add DT if possible.

AZ, I didn't mean to feathers ruffle, I just came to do the McCaskey-cheapie shuffle... If you keep reading the thread, you'll see I relent. At least mostly... I think I sepell out where we have and have not been cheap... I readily admit we've not been cheap regarding picking up players. My concern rests with staff. You'll see my quasi-retraction at the end... ...and I couldn't agree more. I'll gladly take Smith for another year in order to have Peppers for 5 more! I want long term properity. I'd have rather had my cake and eat it too, but I'll settle for cake!

Sounds good on paper...

I'd offer $50.00 for buying the Bears. Not sure the mcCaskey's would take it. But I think the value is a bit higher than that. I would't read much into that... I could see teams not wanting to give much more than a 3rd, possibly 4th. But a 6th is just low-balling.

I think you may be too close to Dallas... Landry was starting to lose it, and it was fairly apparent. Jimmy was a HUGE college coach. I'm not sure what the contract was, but it was a big and ballsy signing I feel. Risky doesn't mean not splashy or big. Was barry cheap? Again, he was HUGE in college. Again, splashy. And in all honesty, Jerry was just trying to claim all credit. That's why he put the pizza delivery guys in after Jimmy and Barry. Then realizing that was bad, hired Tuna. Tuna worked out well, but couldn't get a long with jerry. Under Parcells, Dallas was at their best and are really where they are today because of him. I visisted a few of his TC's when they were in Cali, and Parcells is the man. He is business. I'm dying to see a Bears camp, but don't want to waste my travel money going to a country club that I could better enjoy in the Caribbean. Jerry may have been cheap, but he looked flashy. And rarely does flashy get perceived as cheap. Who did we hire? Castoffs. We botche McGuinness, so we settled for Animatron. We couldn't lure Saban, so we settled for Zombie. The track record is simply not good. The only splash we made in all honesty was Wanny. At the time, it looked great on paper. At least that was a fairly ballsy move. YOu nabbed the #1 DC at the time on a SB winning team. Jauron and Smith were far from that. We'll just disagree. I think perception is the full 9 yards. Players and personnel. ...and history.

I readily admit that hindsight is always 20/20...and wish we would have let Smith walk. But, more realistically, he should have been extended with some out clauses before the SB run. He had just delivered 2 playoff appearances and looked poised for another. Waiting to fruition ended up costing far too much. Maybe having a pres and Gm that many think are unfit cost us more in this situation by having to pay Smith a large amount and for so long w/o any type of out clause? It's all in the timing. And sometimes you should let a player walk or coach walk when they are asking for too much. Carolina sure did... I agree on your assessment on when Mikey was booted. I agreed back then, and still do now. They are spending money on players. But, since then, they've only spent on staff when a gun was pointed to their head. Maybe the same can also be said of players? Would we have taken Peppers and the lot if JA and Zombie's jobs were not on the line? I completely hear you on your take on GSH! but, let's be honest, he gets a pass! He created the Bears...and the NFL for that matter! He's allowed to be cheap. he buil;t it from the bottom up. The mcCaskey's had it handed to them. They did not earn it. Therefore, for them to be cheap, is just being cheap. For GSH to be cheap, well...he came from that era and it's tough to teach old dogs new tricks. Especially when you built it. How's that for spin!? Huh? WAS and Dallas have paid for players. Charles Haley, D. Sanders, TO, Haynesworth, Bruce Smith, etc... And Danny and Jerry not spending on staff? Martyball, Gibbs II, Spurrier, and now Shanny all had a whirl in WAS and Jimmy, Barry and Tuna all had shots in Big D. That's spe nding... They don't do it at every change of regime, but they've done it. The Bears have NEVER done it. We always hope for the best with an up-and-comer. And the one time they kind of lucked into it in 2006, they paid to keep him or face too much wrath from the media. It's not all about the players. It never has been. It's everything. Your chess pieces and look great, but someone has to put them in position to check your opponent. It's all phases that win or take blame. Sometimes, certain facets hold more responsibility than others. OK, I'll relent...and run with what you said you'd take no issue with (...and apologies to AZ) with a slight ammendment: Until this team does a better job finding quality coaching, they will not have my full respect. They suck at it, but that doesn't mean they are cheap. This years' offseason should put an end to the team being currently called cheap. They are clueless, and make awful decisions, etc., but the idea they are cheap now is simply a weak argument these days. But, I fully understand if someone would want to call them cheap due to their overwhelming history of being so..

Wherever he prefers! Seriously... Wharever he wants. Brown can adjust to either side. Make the man happy. I'd say wherever he is best. But I don't feel that the staff is qualified to make that decision.

I'm not sure either. There are some new coaches out there like Shanahan that could be amking more. I don't have the info. Smith was also paid after a SB appearance and media pressure. Part of the reason for the extremely high salary is speculated that Sweatty Teddy botched the negotiations and also waited too long to make the offer, thus driving the price up. My basic response is "they had too". They didn't want to. Also, for the first few years, he was paid bottom of the barrel, s, when you average it out, I'm not sure how pricey it really was. I also get where you're going, and by no means do I not think they are not spending money on players. However, for AZ to say no one should ever think the Bears are cheap is a pipe dream. There's too much history of it, and there's a question mark on how they pay staff. But, it is more than true that they are currently (and for a while now) not been cheap paying players. We can debate whether they've made good decisions, but for players, they've not been cheap. It's also perception. You bring up Jerrah and Danny... We can argue the specifics, but the perception is that they thow nickels around like confetti. Our team has a different perception... Right or wrong. But usually perception, while not the entire story, is based in reality. And it takes a lot to completely change that. I love the signings and agree that the idea of cheapness should be curbed. but until I see them actually pay for a legitimate coaching and support staff, I'm weary still.

I'm with you guys on this...

Credit given. For players. I've argued before that the same does not hold true for how they pay for management and coaching. I'm open to seeing how it plays out after this regime is ousted. I reamin cautious regarding ownership. As always...

Beat me to it!

I could not agree more Mongo....

Seen enough of her already... There are FAR hotter gals around.

Great run of posts here.... I'd staisfied with either. These guys can be had w/o having to draft an immidiate starter. I like Otogwe a bit better because, as you mention, he'll be around longer.

Nothing compares to SB XX...not any super bowl or sports moment EVER. No disrespect to MJ... This isn't even close.

How about we just keep him on the jet?

Do we play them next year? Sure would be nice to pad the defensive stats...

Hell f'in no! (...but I'm impressed w/ JA to make all this happen. Then again, people that are backed into a corner tend to perform better.) I just hope Martz is all that and gets our O hummin'... And will pray that Peppers, Url and the gang can just play well despite the atrocious play calling that will come from Smith...

This day is indeed...