Ten reasons why the Urlacher move was bad

[AZ54]

Blast the list all you want, but here's a list of reasons why the Urlacher move was bad:

 

1) It hurts the clubhouse. Urlacher was an undeniable leader to the team.

2) It hurts with potential free agents. Urlacher is a respected figure in the NFL and his opinion has weight with other players.

3) His leadership will be gone on the field. Now the Bears will have to transition to another play-caller who doesn't understand the calls or personnel as well.

4) The Bears are hindered in the draft. Where before they could flexibly target a LB, now they pretty much have to get one in the first two rounds.

5) A majority of the fanbase is not happy. Like it or not, but that matters.

6) It makes the Bears, a team with a reputation for being cheap, look cheap. The fact that they couldn't find an extra 1m for a guy who was the leader of the team, the face of the franchise, speaks poorly to agents who want to deal with the Bears.

7) For a team paying multiple bad or lesser players equal to or in excess of what was offered to Urlacher, it looks like poor money management. Maybe next some ocean-front property in Nebraska?

8) It makes the Bears look like a team that doesn't respect their leaders/vets. Contrast what the Ravens did with Lewis to what the Bears did with Urlacher; it's a stark difference.

9) Urlacher wasn't as bad last year as some pretend he was. The fact of the matter is, he was tied with Briggs for the team lead in tackles when he got injured. On top of that, the last 6 games Urlacher played (splitting his time in half), he had more tackles than Briggs.

10) The comment about Urlacher being a "two-down" linebacker makes the coaching staff look inept. Out of the things Urlacher did well, pass defense and coverage of the deep middle was probably one of the best. He had no TDs given up, had 5 passes defensed, and I can't remember him getting burned. His biggest issue has always been fighting off blockers who get to the second level, not pass defense.

*Bonus* There have been enough bad moves by the Bears in recent history that simply saying, "The team/coach/GM thought it was a good move, who are we to say otherwise?" is just stupid. We have just as good a shot of successfully picking talent as the team does. This could very well be a bad move, and it reeks of a "new management"-move where someone values making their mark as a manager more than what is good for the organization.

 

Urlacher was not only the clubhouse team leader and the on-field defensive leader, but he was also the statistical leader.

 

***EDIT***

I just read on ESPN Stats that when Urlacher was on the field, their yds/rush given up was 4.0. When off, 4.3. For passes it was 6.6/6.8. This reaffirms point #9.

 

 

Maybe it confirms that teams ran at 225lb Geno Hayes and he wasn't good at stopping the run? Or Blake Costanzo, or the 6th guy off the bench?

[AZ54]

The same reason the NFL draft provides NFL-unknowns with millions of dollars even when it's a 50/50 crapshoot. The same reason the NFL managed to put in a rookie pay-scale system because the salaries were getting out of hand with unknown quantities. The NFL Owners have their hands firmly in a bucket of "what if," and a known quantity with some upside and years left in the league is about a sure a bet as they can expect to see.

 

You completely lost me in that argument. At first you compare signing Roach who has several years of NFL film for teams to evaluate versus college players who have none? I see no correlation there and I believe the odds of Roach performing at a similar level to what he did in Chicago are much higher than 50/50.

 

These are the same people who have film to watch on Urlacher, playing alongside Roach no less, yet don't call him because ....?

 

Then you say "The NFL Owners have their hands firmly in a bucket of "what if," and a known quantity with some upside and years left in the league is about a sure a bet as they can expect to see."

 

Is Roach or Urlacher the sure bet?