4th and goal from the 1

[lemonej]

Lovie falls into this category as well. He's having success because he is surrounded by great assistants. Martz, Tice, Marinelli. These guys have changed the identity of the "Lovie Smith" team. A good head coach creates a tree of assistants that go on to other jobs and take the identity or mental approach they learned, with them. The head coach passes on his wisdom to the subordinates, who then copy them and go on to success themselves. In the Bears case, the new coaches came in and implemented their strategy, wisdom and identity to the piss poor one that Lovie had out there. Rivera tried pushing some of his own strategy and identity and even though it worked, he was run out of town. Lovie wanted this team, especially on the defensive side of the ball, to be about him. Well he certainly got it…he put his puppet in charge of the defense and watched him fail as he pulled the strings. He then came out from behind the curtain to pull the strings for the world to see. What we saw wasn't pretty. A stubborn coach who showed no passion or aggressiveness. A coach who lacked the creativity or the ability to adjust a scheme, not only on the fly, but also from week to week. A coach who had the balls to say 'trust me' yet didn't have the balls to hold lazy, senseless penalty taking and unproductive players acccountable.

 

I think Lovie learned something and now realizes his lack of tenacity, lack of accountability and lack of overall leadership with the players is not the way to go. What Lovie can do and to his credit, what he is doing, is allowing his assistants to grab the reigns and lead a little. The players are taking on their identity instead of Lovie's. Those 4th down calls….that's all Martz. Lovie has the power to overrule, but the call to go for 6 instead of 3 is coming from the OC who brings the mentality of "you can't stop us" That mentality is not Lovie's…never has been and never will be. The problem is, there's supposed to be a happy median there between letting your Assistants run rampant(Martz) and meddling so much as to undermine their authority(Rivera). Lovie needs to know when to put the brakes on his OC and make the smart play. It seems pretty clear he won't do that. I honestly think he has zero input right now with regard to the Offense and very little with regard to the Defense. He's just the face of the team… the guy in front of the mic on interview day, the guy in charge of the red flag on game day and the guy to give the speech after the game. That's it. Not sure that's worth the 5.5 he's getting paid, but what can you do.

 

I don't think any of these guys are HC material, but they might be able to get by like this for a while, cause I think they all see each other as equal, regardless of title.

I agree about your assessment that Lovie fits in the forever coordinator category like Martz,Kevin Gilbride..., but I disagree with you about who is making the go for it on 4th and goal decisions. That is totally Lovie especially when it is 4 runs. Then the this last one was Lovie's decision to go for it with Martz's play that basically was wide open and Des Clark dropped regardless if it was a little behind him because he had his hands on it. The first one was being stubborn the second one was the right call because they had the right play called.