This is my final coaches discussion.
Lovie Smith is the head coach of the Chicago Bears. Why!? How does he still have a job, he sucks! Let me explain.
In Part I, I listed the four qualifications of what it takes to be a good coach. Let's go through these and see how Lovie Smith fits into these four qualifications.
1) Overall game plan. Lovie is defensive minded. So course his signature is punch-you-in-the-mouth stingy smash mouth defense, running the ball, and really good special teams. His defense is the Tampa 2. The cover 2 with an awesome middle linebacker to cover the middle of the field on passing plays yet still able to stop the run on running plays. The key to this is having an awesome front four.
Lovie has this plan and then asked his GM, Jerry Angelo, to get the pieces to have this work. For the beginning of Lovie's tenure he did have the pieces. He inherited Brian Urlacher and Angelo went out and got players like Thomas Jones, Wale, and helped get a good rushing O-line. And with this the Bears were able to go to the playoffs and the Superbowl.
But the big problem with this is two things. 1) YOU NEED A QUARTERBACK! Lovie was so caught up in running the ball that he neglected the QB position. This has turned costly to the Bears in the long run. 2) When the front four doesn't work, you need to shift your game plan. For the past two years our front four has not been able to get to the QB. This disrupts the whole Tampa 2 scheme. When this happens, YOU NEED TO ADJUST. Lovie failed to do this.
Also, his type of offense causes a lot of three and outs which puts more pressure on the defense. For a long while the Bears defense were able to handle the workload but now it's causing long term negative effects.
Let me tell you an example of Lovie's game planning. In 2005, when Lovie actually managed to make it to the playoffs. They faced the Carolina Panthers. The reason the Panthers made it to the playoffs that year was Steve Smith. Everyone knew this. Everyone. So what does Lovie do? He uses a single coverage on Steve Smith. While granted Peanut then was a great defensive back in coverage and did goof up and trip on the first play of the game (which IS NOT Lovie's fault), YOU CAN"T PUT ONE GUY ON STEVE FUCKING SMITH. YOU JUST CAN'T! What did Steve Smith do that day? 12 catches, 218 yards, 2 TDs. Of course Carolina won.
Overall grade: C+
2) Second half adjustments. Lovie is god awful with this. He can not make adjustments if his life depended on it. I don't have exact stats but I can tell you by watching a lot of games during Lovie's tenure I can tell you our fourth quarter play is fucking awful. I don't know what Lovie does during the halftime but it doesn't work
Overall grade: F
3) Ability to keep a cohesive locker room. Lovie is a cool, calm, collected guy. He's not an authoritarian by any stretch of the imagination. This causes his players to love him. And Lovie loves his players. But at some point, you need to be the bad guy and need to be a dictator and Lovie is not able to do that. He loves his players to a fault. The biggest example of this is Rex Grossman. While granted Grossman really was a rookie on a phenomenal Superbowl caliber defense, it is clear now Orton should have started. But how many times did we hear "Rex is our quarterback"? No, no he shouldn't have been. But to his credit, Lovie's job as a babysitter and making sure everyone plays nice and buys into his system has been excellent.
Overall grade: B+
4) Random game time decisions. Lovie is also terrible at this. I mean god awful. He doesn't know how to properly challenge plays, he is terrible at determining what to do on 4th-and-1, and he makes terrible decisions in the fourth quarter. Let's just take this year for example. Using the prevent defense in the Bucs game and the squib kick in the Atlanta game cost the Bears easy wins. Again, I don't have any stats to prove my case but I can tell you from watching lots of games that Lovie is bad at this.
Overall grade: D+
Now in all fairness the Bears record is not entirely on Lovie. The McCaskey's are terrible fucking owners and Jerry Angelo is a bad GM. Angelo is really bad at drafting (see Dan Bauzin, Garrett Wolfe, Chris Williams), really bad at trading and picking up free agents (see Chris Harris, Adam Archuleta), and really bad at distributing money (see Brian Urlacher, Tommie Harris). This doesn't help Lovie one bit. Ron Turner is also the worst offensive coordinator, probably ever (However, Lovie is not totally off the hook on this because he does have a lot of say in what plays Turner runs and whether Turner deserves to keep his job). But Lovie Smith does a bad job at the things he can control.
But in all fairness, I only pointed out the bad things Lovie has done. He really has done some great things. The Tampa 2 worked out so well in 2005 and 2006 which helped the Bears win the NFC North and make it to the Superbowl. The ability to run the ball has worked out well for the most part in Lovie's tenure and our special teams has really been an underrated part of the reason the Bears have won so many games. Lovie's game planning is also not terrible in every game. Like in the Tennessee Titans game this year, he knew Fisher would run the ball and that Kerry Collins sucks. So what did Lovie do? He put Mike Brown on the line to absolutely destroy the Titans running game and they forced Collins to put the game on his back. Unfortunately Collins did put the game in his hands and he did win the game but it was absolutely the right game plan to do.
But for the most part, every coach does do some good but you have to weigh it against the bad. In Lovie's case, the bad outweighs the good and Lovie deserves to get fired. He hit his peak in 2006 and it doesn't look like he can get the Bears back any time soon. Therefore, he needs to go.
another major thing with the tampa 2 is they try to get the opponent in to a lot of 3rd and long situations, which often leads to bad plays like turnovers. the bears actually had an awesome run defense and had many 3rd and long situations, but we absolutely sucked it up when it came to stopping people on 3rd down. we gave up 15 yards passes into the "soft" part of the cover 2 at will. i dont even know why teams tried running on us. everyone should have done what the bucs did and throw 70 times against us without getting sacked once.
ReplyDeleteWith any sport I think the coach or manager only can do so much. The talent and the players need to be there. The Bears don't have the players and talent level they need.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, Lovie did a terrible job managing what he had and game calling. All of these players who were good and they gave the big contracts to played terrible now that they had their pay day and don’t seem motivated. This all falls on Lovie! He may not have a team to win the super bowl, but they should have been much better than they were.