Bears banking on another Tice turnaround

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Bears Banking on Another Tice Turnaround

 

The Bears wanted new offensive line coach Mike Tice badly enough that they hired him even before they got around to bringing in Mike Martz as a replacement for fired offensive coordinator Ron Turner.

 

The reason? Tice has a proven track record working with linemen. The Jacksonville Jaguars didn't want to let Tice go, but he had an agreement with coach Jack Del Rio that if an opportunity to return to coaching a line somewhere came up, that Tice would be allowed to pursue it.

 

Now, he's charged with doing what Rod Marinelli really wasn't able to accomplish a year ago: make a line better with the same personnel. Marinelli, now the defensive coordinator, was brought in to coach the defensive line in 2009 and it's difficult to say there was a marked improvement over what the unit had done previously under Brick Haley. Certainly it didn't look like the 2006 line that Don Johnson coached before he was abruptly forced out

But Tice has his own challenge, reloading with a unit that was maligned last season and probably blamed more for offensive woes than was appropriate. That's not to say the line didn't have some real issues, but at least the Bears weren't sending out Qasim Mitchell at left tackle.

 

Mike Kurtz, who wrote the Bears chapter for Football Outsiders Almanac 2010, made an interesting comparison. He pointed out that the offensive line Tice took over in Minnesota as a position coach in 1997 was performing at about the same level as the Bears.

 

Kurtz compares center Olin Kreutz, an aging performer near the end of his career, to Randall McDaniel, the 2009 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee. He says the Bears' collection of older but less-established veterans in Roberto Garza and Frank Omiyale compare with Jeff Christy and David Dixon, and then he draws a parallel between left tackle Chris Williams and the late Korey Stringer, who was an emerging, dominant performer for the Vikings.

 

"Tice picked up an established, relatively experienced line and almost overnight turned a mediocre group into one of the league's best units," Kurtz wrote.

 

During his tenure, the Vikings sent a lineman to the Pro Bowl 10 times in five seasons. Then, Tice directed a changing of the guard where the Vikings brought in young linemen and excelled quickly.

 

Quarterback Jay Cutler will be the key to the show. But a big part of him improving will be improved line play. Tice hasn't shied away from trying almost every imaginable combination, even as Kreutz missed nearly the entire offseason program and minicamp recovering from surgery to repair an Achilles tendon. The Bears will head to camp with Josh Beekman battling Johan Asiata for the starting job at left guard. Garza looks to be the starter at right guard, but if Lance Louis, a seventh-round draft pick in 2009, can shine at that position in camp and preseason, Garza could potentially flip over to left guard.

 

The only spots truly set are Williams at left tackle and Kreutz at center. Tice believes Williams is an elite player in the making, and the statistical work done by Football Outsiders shows real improvement in the running game for the Bears to the left side after Williams replaced Orlando Pace in the second half of last season.

 

Omiyale will be in a position at right tackle to play a spot he is more comfortable with, and how quickly he adapts will be key in an offensive scheme some say requires two players with the athletic ability to be left tackles. So, if Tice can recreate some of the restorative work he did more than a decade ago for the Vikings, perhaps the Bears will be better off than some imagine.

[madlithuanian]

Lot's of optimism.

 

I'm not sure my glass is that full...