Does Lovie Smith Need To Get Canned?

What makes Lovie Smith a good coach? What makes him deserving to keep this job? And I don't buy the proposition that "Well, at least the Bears have never been Cleveland Browns bad." In the wake of this season and coming off of a horrible fucking loss to the fucking 49ers, it may seem that we all jump to rash decisions. But I'm trying to analyze this from a rational perspective. Plus, the term "winning cures all woes" applies to the latter, losing means someone needs to get fired. The team in not good, and frankly someone needs to be blamed and be at fault. In baseball, usually the hitting coach or conditioning coach or someone gets fired. And when of course that doesn't work, the manager gets canned soon after. Yet nobody blames the GM who can't draft and trades for guys who can't walk or play defense but have "a good average". Anyway, I digress. So when a football team, especially the Chicago Bears, does shitty and doesn't seem to get any better, who should get blamed. Does anyone deserve the blame. Yes, and that person is Lovie Smith.

Football, unlike most major sports, actually requires a lot of skill and effort from the managerial position. With baseball, if you have above average to great players, even managers like Joe Girardi and Joe Torre can keep there jobs. But in football (as all Ron Zook teams can show you), having great players doesn't necessarily means your team will do well. In fact, great coaching is able to heighten a teams strength and diminish the teams weaknesses. Have a great O-line but your using your back up QB that hasn't played in five years and no running game, dink and dump and do short passes to set up the long game (see Bill Belichick). Have a QB that can't throw 20+ yards, a shitty O-line, but great RBs, use a formation that no one has ever used before called the Wildcat and win 11 games (see Tony Sparano). Now every coach can't be great, but if you want to keep your job, you need to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. And Lovie Smith hasn't done that.

In Smith's case, he designs the schemes (especially the defensive ones) and gets/ demands players for it. GM Jerry Angelo essentially works for Smith, he gets players that will fit with his system (and even better example see what Scott Pioli did for Belichick. Why draft a LB when you get get a "washed up" one in the free agent market that's much cheaper and will do the same job?). For the Bears, and I'm sure most teams, the players on the field are the result of the coach.

For Lovie, he wanted players to fit his Cover-2, or Tampa-2 scheme. He got lucky because he inherited Brian Urlacher- who fit his scheme perfectly for a while, Lance Briggs, and Tommie Harris and Alex Brown (when they were good). He then went out and traded for Wale Ogunleye, a guy coming off of a 15 sack season (I believe). For a while, Smith had the players to fit his system. His defense was young, in their prime, and he helped lead the team to a Superbowl. Plus, the team managed to make Nathan Vasher look like a pro bowler. Smith also inherited the offense to fit his scheme. He didn't need a QB, but he got a RB (Thomas Jones) and a damn fine rushing offensive line headed by Reuben Brown and Olin Kruetz. And for a while, this team was good which helped compliment the coaching. But then this team got old and Lovie's draft picks failed. I will give Lovie credit for Devin Hester and Johnny Knox, but two players doesn't make up for years of bad drafting.

Guys like Cedric Benson (trust me, he would have still sucked had he been a Chicago Bear this year), Mark Anderson, Dan Bauzin, Garrett Wolfe, and every safety the Bears has ever drafted under Smith have all not been very good. Even Greg Olson isn't that good and while Chris Williams is fine, he was injury prone in college and OL that went after Williams, like Jeff Otah, are far better plays than Williams is. Which leads me to my first point- Lovie Smith is terrible at drafting.

I hate when people condescendingly use "what have you done for me lately" Well, why is that a bad thing? I'm glad for what you've done in the past, but if the Bears are to keep Smith around, it's because he'll be able to help this team in the future. Keeping Smith around is like keeping Andruw Jones around for your baseball team because he was great once or starting Chris Chelios at age 75 because he was one of the greatest hockey players. Is the past accomplishments great? Absolutely. But if you're building a team for the future, you need personal for the future, not from the past. And if you can not draft to help keep a team good for the future, why keep you around.

Plus, the players that Lovie knows have been god awful. Adam Archeleta and Orlando Pace, guys that even the St. Louis Rams thought weren't good enough to play for them, have been just awful for the Bears. I've never seen Pace actually successfully block his defender and Archelta was so bad, the Bears benched him midway through the season.

My second point is coaching strategy. I hate this Cover-2 now. As I've said earlier, it used to work. But the players are not good now. Urlacher's out/ old and not good when healthy, Brown and Wale can't get to the QB anymore, and out DT's aren't doing shit. This enables opposing QB's to make better throws which emphasizes the weakness of our secondary. Lovie Smith flat out can not keep his precious Cover-2 because every team knows how to beat it, and does. This causes Cutler to look bad and the Bears to lose games... it's just not good. In fact, this is the quintessential time for Lovie to design a different scheme that highlights the defense's strengths and diminishes the weakness. Philly and New England are great at designing Blitz packages to get to the QB to make up for their diminished talent. Lovie tried to do this last year, but essentially all the blitz packages failed and it just meant less defenders in the secondary and easier for QBs to make throws. If Lovie truly wanted to keep his job, he'd find a way to make his defense work.

And lastly, Lovie is awful at in game preparation. I never see him make changes to the scheme during the game/ after half time. Good coaches realize and can see what isn't working and what is, so they change their plan, But Lvie doesn't do this and thus you never seem to see a Bears team do better in the second half. Also, Lovie is awful at challenging. This causes the Bears to lose time outs and gives the team less plays to work with. Although, with Lovie, he wouldn't be able to use his extra time outs wisely anyway. A perfect example of this is Thursday's game. How the fuck do you drive down the field to try and score a game winning TD as time expires and still have a time out left when the game is over.

I'd like to think I'm being rational and not overreacting to the Bears awful loss. In fact, I've written a post back in the day on what it takes to be a good coach, and wrote before the season started that Lovie Smith is a bad coach. I think if the Bears don't make the playoffs this year (which they won't) that the Bears need to find a coach that will help maximize Jay Cutler and can actually make the Bears good for the future