We made it to the superbowl last year with Lovie, Turner, and Rivera as the main coaches. Now, this year we lose Rivera and bring in Babich and on paper this current team looked better than last years. As we all have seen, this team has regressed from years previous and there are reasons for it but It seems everyone is overlooking the coaches, and blaming it on the offensive line, and Cedric Benson.
Remember this summer? Remember John Clayton reporting on ESPN that Hester reminds him of Steve Smith with his receiver abilities and the way he has looked in camp? Remember hearing about how Olsen's athletiscm and his play making ability will help Rex Grossman immensely? I also remember hearing how Adam Archuleta was going to be our big run stopper to help out Mike Brown. Where has that all gone? I give you the 07-08 coaching staff of the Chicago Bears.
Maybe no more than 5 times all season have the Bears looked deep to Hester and though he blew one huge oppurtunity, its rather obvious that a guy with his speed should be used as a down the field target in passing situations. Another thing with him is that whoever it is, wether it be Turner or Lovie, never ever have put him in one full series. Its always, 1 or 2 plays, then sit. That will never work because everytime he comes in on a play you hear "23, THERES HESTER" the whole defense knows where he is. Then to make things worse, he comes in and they throw a quick screen or a reverse that gets -6 yards guaranteed everytime. I can only remember one time where I saw Devin get a 10 yard gain on one of those quick pass plays. I'm no coach but I don't understand the logic of bringing in a guy for one play and then sitting him out when he was suppose to be the big play threat this season for the Bears.
If I were Greg Olsen I would be so dissapointed in the way he's been used this year. All the hype for nothing. I still don't understand why we continually see Clark take the deep routes while Olsen goes on the short out patterns. Olsen is bigger, stronger, and faster than Dez so he should be used as the deep guy but we haven't seen that more than a few times this year. The Packers game is the only game I can remember him going deep most of the time for big plays. The coaching staff has failed the Bears on this..
I don't think I have to spend to much time on Ron Turner. We all know how bad he is but I'll give you my 2 cents. We have a guy in Cedric Benson, someone who is listed as a "Power" back. Why were we running stretch plays for him? Those are for guys with great vision and quickness which Cedric has none. To give you an example, who are two teams that are known for running these kind of plays? I give you the Colts and the Eagles.. What do you notice between both running backs? Yes, they are both quicker, faster backs that have great vision and hit the RIGHT hole. You would think the Bears would have more of a variety of running plays than they do. I can't recall a lot of counters, I don't remember seeing many toss plays except for one game. There are more things to do than running straight ahead dive plays or stretches. Yet again, the coaching staff has failed us on this..
A team has to develop some sort of Identity, and to this day I still don't think Turner has figured out what Identity his team is. It is rather simple, your either a running team or a passing team with some sense of balance. One game Cedric got 14 carries the next he'd get 23, then back to 8 while Peterson gets 7.. Yeah there are gameplans but you base your gameplans around your identity. You don't go away from what you are. The Packers are obviously a passing team, yet they still get alot of good runs from Grant and he winds up with 100 yards before you know it. Why is that? Because they are succesfull in one area it opens up holes for the other area. If your passing alot, it makes sense to run a draw play or if your running alot, you can go play action. Simple things like that irk me while watching the Bears this season. We won games last year because we stayed commited to the running game. Do we miss TJ that much?
The defense I understand a little bit more than the offense in terms of productivity. Any time you lose your best play maker (Mike Brown) for a whole season and you lose a good cover corner in Nate Vasher, your going to struggle a little bit. Tommie Harris has never been healthy all year and Dusty was lost before he was in for more than a few plays. Not to mention we have an Arthritic Middle Linebacker playing through the pain day in and day out. We may have bitten off more than we can chew in this situation so I expect a bit of a drop off except I never thought we'd be this inconsistent. One week the defense plays great and the next were giving up too many big plays that costs us games. The Seattle game was a perfect example of this.
So all in all I believe the coaching staff is the biggest problem of all this season for the Bears. No where in hell did I expect us to have this kind of season, not with the team we had, with all the additions. I find it hard to believe that Chris Harris and Thomas Jones were the reasons we can't have a good team this year. Sure they were missed but you would think a team that just went to the superbowl could adjust and be ready for next year. Hopefully we get this all figured out before we come into camp hearing about the same players making plays in camp yet they don't see the field during the season again.
