I believe in Toub & Martz

[bradjock]

Dave Toub's the best special team's coach in the league. Granted out ST's have mostly sucked, but I have 100% faith we'll right the ship on opening day.

 

Ditto with Martz. I might be foolishly optimistic, but I think he's playing his cards close to his chest. IMO, once the season starts, the blocking schemes work, and we'll carve the defense apart. You won't see the Wild-cat and you sure as hell won't see Dez Clark lined up as a FB on a run play.

 

I belive 2 of the 3 can get it together. I wish I felt that way about the defense. In the pre-season, we can't get to the quarterback, we can't stop the pass, our safeties suck, and we can't get off the field. We've had 3 years of this. (although the one year we sold out to stop the pass but couldn't stop the run . . . ) Seemingly, no matter who we add, or what we do, it all amount to the same.

[jason]

Completely agreed. Aside from an errant pass or two from Cutler, the Bears offense looked good against the Cardinals in the first half.

[Bears4Ever_34]

Special teams will be alright. We never played with the real starters for much of the preseason anyways.. Martz will only be our OC for a year anyways after Lovie is fired. His offense won't work with a bad offensive line and Cutler isn't the smart quarterback you need to run that system. If I were to play to Cutler's strengths then it's obvious you do what Shanahan did when he was Denver's coach. The West coast offense is perfect for Cutler because he gets rid of the ball quickly and alot of the routes make for easier passes. IMO in order for Martz to be successful here he's going to have to run screens more than your usual NFL team runs them. Also have alot of roll outs to allow Cutler to avoid some of the pressure in his face.

[Mongo3451]

Completely agreed. Aside from an errant pass or two from Cutler, the Bears offense looked good against the Cardinals in the first half.

Ihope you Brad are right. I'm just not a believer. Big Toub fan. Not much of a Martz fan. I do like Martz's coaching style. He was asked if he talked to Cutler about picks and his response struck chord with me. It was something along the line of "we don't want to teach second guessing into a player". He almost won me over as a teacher. I just don't like the scheme.

[Alaskan Grizzly]

Ditto with Martz. I might be foolishly optimistic, but I think he's playing his cards close to his chest. IMO, once the season starts, the blocking schemes work, and we'll carve the defense apart. You won't see the Wild-cat and you sure as hell won't see Dez Clark lined up as a FB on a run play.

 

I too have much faith in Martz and his way of coaching. I think there is something to be said about a guy who has been to the Super Bowl twice and this resume: Martz is best known as the offensive coordinator behind the St. Louis Rams high-powered 1999 team that won the Super Bowl. As a head coach in the NFL Martz was 56-36 in 5⅓ seasons as the St. Louis Rams head coach. He won two division titles, had four playoff berths including a NFC championship and a trip to Super Bowl XXXVI. - courtesy Wikipedia.

 

Martz has been coaching long enough to know that he doesn't need to display all of what is in store. I feel too that he has worked with Cutler to tailor his talents into his (Martz') scheme. And despite what others have said, Cutler is not that much a dullard that he can't figure it out.

 

I reviewed some of the last game in particular and watched what many have said over the years about Cutler's favor to roll out on the pass. In fact I almost was sure that the way the offense was working that Martz was previewing for a future showcase of roll out passing and the "zone-blocking" that Shanahan favored when in Denver. Evidenced by the fair number of screen plays that were put in. When Eric Kramer, and he did this a few times, commented on the screen plays, he noted that it took an athletic type of lineman in order to pull that off. Lineman that are better at pursuit blocking or scheme blocking are not necessarily going to be all that good at straight up maintain the pocket blocking. I don't care what history has said about Martz' offense schemes where the 7-10 step drop back passing is the norm, I don't see that here. Again, I am willing to bet that Martz has a lot in store and will be working to more of Cutler's strengths.

 

Another interesting point to notice was LeFeavour's (sp?) improved play. Where Cutler prefers the roll out of the pocket passing, LeFeavour stood stoic in the pocket to make most of his passes. In that time he was pretty successful, especially against Arizona. Now I know it contradicts everything I just said about Cutler but at the point of the game when LeFeavour was playing not only was the offense much more "vanillaized" but the o-line was the 2nd and 3rd stringers. The big monsters (both the LT and LG stand at 6'8") who are probably not going to be as well adapted to the roll out blocking.