Lucky Luciano

1. if angelo wanted to keep his job and throw the blame away from himself this would be a very good solution for him and not beyond the realm of possibility in desperate times in the way angelo thinks. if lovie says no then angelo can say he tried to keep lovie EVEN if he wants him out. (hmmmm... maybe like jauron?) he saves the mccaskey's/phillips lovies contract cost if lovie chooses to opt out. he has brought in a LEAGUE offensive golden boy that buys him at least 3-4 more years in his role in chicago as GM and the possible future head coach, shanny, under contract. it makes his bringing in cutler even that much better. if he pays shanny an over the top salary but it's only for the tenure of lovies old contract he can then withhold contract offers to whichever HC isn't performing or bite the bullet if it works out really well and make up the extra salary costs in other revenues from a major winning franchise. another bonus is shanny can evaluate offensive talent in the draft a thousand times better than angelo. a good working combo before the draft. you say lovie wasn't comfortable with rivera. i say apples and oranges. lovie wants control of the only thing he is capable of coaching even halfway well, the defense. rivera threatened lovie's genius status. that is why you will NEVER see angelo bring in any DC with teeth because lovie then becomes obsolete without any role as HC to fall back on. trust me it won't happen and if it does, it's not for long before lovie goes. but... with an offensive minded coach, lovie might not like it but may accept sharing that portion of it. it takes the heat completely off his back if the offense fails to keep us in contention. he keeps his status and salary intact for at least the remainder of his contract in chicago and doesn't end up like all our former HC's. 2. you wouldn't want it anyway? frankly i don't care jack $#!* whether coaches are *sharing the burden or not as long as the job gets done and we win superbowls. if it takes TWO head coaches in chicago to do it i'm all for it ESPECIALLY considering our track record for HC's in this franchise!!! if lovie and shanny are at each others throats like ditka and ryan, so what. the end result of rings is my only concern. if lovie doesn't like it? see ya lovie, it's been a real slice. * the example you mention in washington is also an apples/oranges situation. the guy replacing zorn's play calling is also offensive minded. not a defensive counterpart.

if they fire turner alone they seriously need to have someone in mind that is better before they do it. just promoting someone already in the fold would be a worse mistake than keeping him (john shoop comes to mind as this type of stupidity). as bad as our offense needs 'quality' players they also need someone who can coach them to become better players. even with our current draft status we should be able to find some good interior linemen. what we need is someone who can get them up to speed as soon as possible to fill out our offensive line and the only way for that to happen is through drafting and good coaching. my 7% solution... if we have a poor season/post-season and angelo is smart (don't count on it) what he does is offers a shared head coaching spot to shannahan, for a LARGE amount of cash, to run this mess similarly to the ditka - b. ryan era pre-superbowl. if lovie doesn't like it oh well, there is always the unemployment line. we get a proven offensive minded coach who is familiar with our main player on offense who has the possibility to turn our offense around within 2 years. if lovie and our defense continue to fail, lovies replacement is under contract. angelo had better start thinking about covering his arse or he will be looking for work himself (in my opinion he is more than half our problems and deserves to be fired) within a year or 2.

i not only agree but i would like to emphasize this. since the FIRST game of the season, teams have been overloading the line on one side (usually our right side) and have been causing havoc in our backfield. some if not most of this can fall on olsen and davis for doing nearly nothing to block freed up d-linemen or backers coming unabated to the qb USUALLY off right tackle or between the RG, RT gap. some can come from our RB and FB either missing blocks or not blocking the right defender. some comes from cutler not seeing these defensive lineups and calling audibles, reassigning blocking assignments or getting quick passes out to hot receivers (if our receivers are even running the correct hot routes in these instances) and some from what appears to be complete confusion from our linemen on who their blocking assignment is. BUT... i question this coaching staff for not going over this week after week in practice to either get cutler (whom many forget is a young qb) to recognize these sets and counter them OR get in the face of our RB's and TE's to forcefully change their blocking habits and mindset. this still going on by the 6th game in the season is inexcusable!!! just what the hell is our OC, our QB coach, our OL coach and our position coaches doing during film sessions or practice during the week before games? by this time and every team we have faced using the same tactics you would think SOMEONE could figure this out!! until we can counter this we will see it continually the rest of the season or until cutler is on IR or dead.

i can't agree with mulligan on some of this.. cleveland browns: 1. crennel - 4 years - 1 year with winning record 2. davis - 4 years - 1 year with winning record 3. belichick - 5 years - 1 year with winning record tampa bay: 1 superbowl appearance 1. gruden - 7 years - 4 years with winning record 2. dungy - 6 years - 4 years with winning record 3. wyche - 4 years - 0 years with winning record rams: 2 superbowl appearances 1. linehan - 3 years - 0 years with winning record 2. martz - 6 years - 3 years with winning record 3. vermiel - 3 years - 1 year with winning record chiefs: 1. edwards - 3 years - 1 year with winning record 2. vermiel - 5 years - 2 years with winning record 3. cunningham - 2 years - 1 year with winning record how convenient that he has left out the titans 15 years with the same coach. although i don't have the stats for GM's i am nearly certain their turnover is much less so than coaching staffs. in my opinion it starts with the person/s who are in charge of personnel. if you have a good 'system' set up for drafting college players you will do well. if your payroll is feeding high paid players, either first day picks who produce little or no input or high end free agents you HAVE to acquire because you draft poorly, you put your entire franchise in jeopardy. 2nd you need good, competent coaching staffs who can not only adapt to different systems in the nfl but who can coach your draft picks into production players and be able to evaluate talent.

some *excerpts... ok i can understand a coach getting fed up with the same questions over and over and wanting to stick up for his players. stating "we've got a good offensive line" a bit over the top but... he has no idea why?? that's a pretty scary statement. even taking heat and getting fed up with the media this is an amazing statement to utter even in your sleep. hmmmmmm... maybe if i knew each player personally i would like them too. but to say we have "good players and good depth"? is he living on bizzaro world? in regards to beekman... this is his high recommendation? his analysis of our supposedly future center? he is a good player (in the same breath he mentions "Frank's a good football player") and he "started last year"???? if these statements aren't just 'a here are some meaningless words, print what you want' type of statement this guy has some serious problems with reality. i can understand throwing your players under the bus publicly helps nobody but this tripe certainly does more harm than good to the credibility of this coaching staff. * http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2009/...nsive-line.html

i stated that both are getting beaten occasionally but certainly NOT to the extent you are stating. yes i have noticed. but where is the pressure coming from? around the the tackles? uhhhh... no. there is a reason #68 is taking the heat. are you serious? watch any offensive tackles and where they are putting the DE's on good blocks. what you are suggesting is rarely ever happening unless the DE's is just plain getting dominated by the tackle or getting help from a RB/TE, the defense's pass rush plain sucks or maybe in video games. on a 5-6 step drop it's absolutely normal for a qb to step up and throw the ball!!! that is what a pocket is for and why it's important to have one. if you don't agree with this then the best we can agree on is to agree to disagree. again i have to disagree. if turner says i want X player to start because he is flat out better i can't believe our gm calls him on the phone and says no. as far as lovie? i have stated this in the past that i don't think he knows enough ABOUT how to run an offense to force a player into the lineup. look at what lovie did with shay.

because by the 3rd on down the premium players were already picked!! this again goes to angelo's quantity over quality. unger was projected the best center in the draft and a very good prospect at guard. hmmm.... we have a dinosaur for a center (with beekman projected to step in but he had proved nothing after starting last season at guard). we have NO guards that are more than even average. QUALITY is the pick with unger, who dropped out of the lower 1st round to US, not just warm tackling dummies for camp. that pick would have given us multiple possibilities on the OL. if beekman sucks at center we have a great prospect in unger. if beekman plays well we have a great prospect at guard who can start and a backup center for beekman. a win win situation.

pass protection: this i don't totally agree with. pace has been getting beaten at times but what you suggest is he is getting consistently eaten up on the *edge which not true. he AND williams are 'looking' worse than the reality of the situation indicates because of the collapse of the interior pocket, stunts, overloading one side of the line, blitz's and quite frankly much of this is due to poor preparation, scheme and play calling. the same can be said of williams. yes at times williams is getting overpowered and pushed back but this is not consistent. the more serious problem is our TE's have been extremely poor at blocking and in my opinion this is giving the tackles some of the bad wrap they don't deserve. olson and davis don't have a clue out there and are responsible for complete whiffs of what SHOULD be their blocking assignments. they aren't even getting chip blocks right. *when our tackles are moving the DE's out and around as is normal there is no place for our qb to step into. the left guard is getting pushed back 2 yds at the snap and our center is not far behind. so what is happening is a pincer move where the DE's are meeting our qb in the middle with him having no place to go except into the wash and pick his way through jumbo bodies. agree even if i'm not a great fan of beekman, frank is just brutal. agree, i have no problem trying this out either. neither are having close to a stellar season so why not? you would have to keep in some protection plans so cutler doesn't get killed until you could see if williams can play on the left. with all that said, we are still not improving our lines interior without the beekman move. i can't believe lovie has any say in how this works out as he is clueless about offense. so ramp it up turner!!

forget keeping original picks for cutler, it was a steal. now, instead of us trading out of our second round pick i would have chosen max unger - center/guard. but instead as usual we trade quality for quantity with angie.

i have to vehemently disagree. cutler is a coup that will pay dividends for a decade unless we get him killed. there is no player more important and harder to find than a very good+ qb in his prime. it is almost unheard of to get one in a deal like we got. our problems are us WASTING first day draft picks year after year. no team can compensate for that.

we have never had the right players for this type of defense to be run full time (not to mention the SYSTEM has been compromised by good EDIT>OC's around the league for years). add to this, what we run is NOT even the definition of the cover 2 defense per se'. the cushions we give receivers off the line is insane and about 75% of our problems on defense. you not only need good tackles who can penetrate or push back the pocket but you need, in my opinion, at least one VERY GOOD cover corner to go with your safeties. you HAVE to stop the quick 2-3 step drop passing attack by disrupting the qb's timing. you do this by covering/jamming and/or directing the receivers off the LOS to give your DL time to even GET to the qb's. nobody seems to believe me when i say that a very good cover corner would have been the best addition to this type of system if you are fool enough to even run it. this is why we made a major mistake in not picking up charles woodson when he went initially to the packers!!! as it stands, we not only don't have good CB's who can do this but we don't even have safeties to overcompensate for their lack of production which results in those zones being so open play after play. every receiver we face virtually runs an undisturbed/untouched route from the snap into empty intermediate zones and even if we blitz the hot receiver is never even touched thus resulting in a lot of receptions and moving of the chains!!!

believe me i am not defending lovie. this entire system run in chicago is obsolete.

here is the biggest problem we face.... the quality of the players we have under contract. what we have is a collection of drafted special teams players or backups that are forced into the starting lineup. we have drafted UNTOLD defensive linemen over the last 8 years. we have drafted 3 first day RB's. we have drafted numerous safeties and linebackers. we have neglected offensive linemen in the draft for nearly 8 years. in all this we have traded down for quantity over quality and this is what we ended up with. a team that will take 3+ years of GOOD drafting just to get back to average. there is basically no position we couldn't use an upgrade at and in the future it is going to get worse. you CAN'T build a team that will be healthy by free agents alone. your first day picks have got to produce. not to give our coaching staff any reprieve, but just who has put us into this mess? everyone calls for lovies or turners head and neglects who really driven us into this position.... JERRY ANGELO!!!

this is one of lovie's worst traits. his loyalty to his players even when this hurts the team as a whole is a serious downfall. another is i am not really sure how much lovie really KNOWS about offenses and what to do about correcting problems.

heard on the score that lovie took the defense to task on the sideline when they were down 14 zip. also heard, though not confirmed he ripped em a new one in the locker room at halftime. i don't really see this as a great problem as LONG as he is involved DURING the game in changing things around.

i disagree. the defense is certainly a problem and has been for years. this is one of those instances where statistics and rankings are so misleading that many people can't see the forest for the trees. if you want to really judge how this defense (or scheme if you will) compares to really GOOD defenses you have to look at whether it can or CAN'T shut down an opponents offense and specifically a passing attack when the game is on the line. to me it matters little if we hold a team to a total of a hundred yards total offense if they still beat us by a single point in the final 3 seconds of a game. we can't "finish" a game because we can't even get mediocre pass offenses off the field in clutch situations. again i don't agree. oh don't get me wrong, i don't believe we are bristling with talent in 2009 (thanks angelo) but 3-4 years ago we had numerous pro-bowl talent and players on this squad yet we STILL could not CONSISTENTLY stop opposing offenses when it counted the most running this type of defense!! if we had the dead guy from philly in chicago the last 4 years where would our defense be ranked even with what we are fielding now? doesn't coaching players count for something also? who have we coached that has excelled since lovie came here or is it angelo just dumping his draft garbage on smith? this i can tell you and i am going to throw this into the face of lovie smith, if you HAVE to rely on turnovers by your defense to win, you will more often than not LOSE the big games against very good teams.

these are just a few of the plays i DO question... 1. a fade into the corner of the endzone by the SMALLEST receiver on our squad. isn't this where you put the jumbo sized players in? like 6'6" greg olson, 6'6" k. davis, or EVEN the 6'3" d. clark??? hmmmm, i have seen this call at least twice this season with hester running the route from inside our 5 yardline fading into the right corner. wouldn't our qb be better received by our speed guys like knox and/or hester in slants or crossing patterns over the middle and put our LARGER receivers in position to grab these usually high touch passes? 2. if it's 1st or 2nd and goal and you are on the 1/2 yardline what play do you call first? seriously, what call? since bart starr ran a qb sneak in the mid 1960's this has usually been the normal play call if your center isn't a 2 foot tall midget. 3. i also have to ask this question to the board... when it's 3rd down and 1 at your opponents 1 freaking yard line do you call a play that pulls your left guard to fill the 5 gap where your RT and RG have just downblocked and he follows the fullback who seals off the outside at 5 gap, stands there looking around while the running back power runs up the freakin MIDDLE where everyone on the line has pinched the defensive tackles/guards to the middle? 4. and sweeps? there are 11 defenders squashed into a 5 yard area. do you really want to design slow forming running plays inside an opponents 5 yard line? especially when your offensive line is slower than death and is getting pushed back a yard or two from the line of scrimmage at the snap? finally... have we had worse coordinators and seen worse calls from our offensive coordinators in chicago? without any doubt. but even with the poor excuses we have for offensive linemen (thanks to angelo) turner has NOT put the talent he has been FORCED to work with in a position to succeed with any real consistency either as *starters or the type of scheme he is running and finally down to gameday play calling. * people keep asking about the poor play of #68 frank owhatamidoinghere our esteemed LG and frankly i have to agree with them. he has a decent to good block about every 3-4 plays. who has penciled this guy as our starter at LG? CERTAINLY not lovie!!! i admit i was no fan of beekman but if frank is truly the best player we can field at that position we might as well fire every lineman we have and just pull some fat clown out of the stands and suit him up for minimum wage.

in three words i can answer this question... cutler would die. as it stands right at this moment cutler is getting killed. forget the statistics, forget the sack count. watch him after the ball leaves his hand (or even before). he is getting freakin ROCKED on numerous plays game in game out. these hits are like heavy body blows to a heavyweight boxer. after a few rounds it starts taking it's toll. the runningbacks are the only thing keeping cutler off the IR and they aren't doing a great job at it either. PLUS, greg olson and our other TE davis are maybe the worst blocking TE's i have ever seen in the nfl. i can't even imagine what our line coaches or TE coaches, if we even have any, are teaching these guys. i find it almost incomprehensible that anyone that has played football nearly all their lives could be this bad. compound this fact with the incredible poor play by our left guard, our center, and throw in the 2-3 bad blocks each by our tackles per game it's simply mindboggling. if we ran a no protection or 5 receiver spread scheme cutler would be scraped off the field. seriously, if we don't give cutler some relief we are all going to be saying after the next year or two... wow, think how good the bears COULD have been if cutler's career had lasted more than 2 years before injury ended his nfl career!!!!!!!!!!

here is something i don't get... 2nd quarter about 2.5 mins left in the half, 3rd and goal at the hawks 1 yard line. turner calls a running play. the LG pulls while our LT downblocks to the right, the right side of the line downblocks to the left pinching the middle while forte drives up the middle toward the endzone all the while the left guard goes around the right end blocking with the fullback untouched. the results? forte stuffed in the middle for no gain and it's 4th and goal. what kind of a call is that? did they really practice this during the week and expect it to work? am i not remembering this right?

from what little i have watched of the lions stafford has the tangibles to become a very good qb. a good arm with zip on the ball, good size and pretty accurate. if he continues to improve mentally he could turn out to be an upper tier qb in the near future. if this happens and stafford has an even average supporting cast in detroit and even a decent defense, the nfc north is going to become very interesting in the next few years with cutler, rogers, favre and now stafford running the offenses.

i am not sure he has looked as bad as you are stating. i have seen him get beaten occasionally and wonder at his run blocking but most of the pass rush from that side he is moving his man wide and back like he is supposed to. the problems i am seeing is that there just is no room for cutler to move up into the pocket due to the collapse of the interior line, penetration over the LT spot or overloading the line with blitzers that we are not picking up (the latter has been a weakness that teams have exploited since the packer game). i think he is doing pretty well for the amount of time he has actually played.

i can't go with the "multiple occasions" as most fines result from conditions that can cause serious injury. maybe one warning but that's my limit.

it seems that cutler spends a lot of time running for his life. we need to get that situation fixed as i would hate to finally get our franchise qb only to see him on IR or worse.

although i don't know a thing about soccer, it sounds good to me. i'm with you guys on this one

i have no problem with that although the game suspension would be considerably more than the fines are.