Strange Happenings in Chicago
What, exactly, are the Chicago Bears doing?
Do the people running the show inside Halas Hall realize the team just reached the Super Bowl and, if not for the erratic play of quarterback Rex Grossman, might have won it?
This is a time for stability.
Instead, the team's upper management still has not signed Coach Lovie Smith to a longterm contract extension. He was the league's lowest-paid head coach this past season with a salary of $1.35 million. He has one season remaining on his contract and the Bears have negotiated with him but haven't completed a deal.
By waiting as long as they did to get serious in negotiations with Smith, the Bears lost all leverage. He's a Super Bowl coach now. He's had consecutive excellent seasons. He's one of the best coaches in the league. It's time for the Bears to stop messing around and give him a contract worthy of his status.
But Smith isn't blameless, either, if it's true that, as he and Ron Rivera said Monday, it was Smith's decision not to renew Rivera's contract as the club's defensive coordinator.
How much of the credit for the Bears' success on defense over the past couple seasons should go to Smith, a former defensive coordinator in St. Louis, and how much should go to Rivera?
Who knows?
Who cares?
All you need to know is that things were working just fine and nothing should have changed.
By Mark Maske |
February 20, 2007; 9:37 AM ET
| Category:
Bears
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Posted by: Icarus | February 20, 2007 11:29 AM
I'd remind you that the defense of this team was installed by the head coach. The defensive coordinator on this team is not nearly as vital as it would be with an offensive minded coach. As a Bears fan, the thing that is most disappointing about this is how they are treating a former player- a member of the 1986 Super Bowl Championship team.
Posted by: Clint, Olympia WA | February 20, 2007 12:16 PM
Is this "Insider" analysis based on anything? Smith obviously is going to get a new contract, or the Bears wouldn't have let him decide he didn't want Rivera to stick around. The Bears were going to lose Rivera to a head coaching job anyway after next year, and they have an in-house replacement ready to go. I think Smith also wanted to cut ties to the over-hyped 1985 Bears.
Posted by: Mark | February 20, 2007 12:54 PM
Over hyped would be what this year's team turned out to be - Not the team that won the only Super Bowl in Bears history.
Posted by: Prophet | February 20, 2007 1:07 PM
Trying to read the tea leaves like everybody else, my guess is that Rivera wasn't that good and/or didn't fit well with the Bears. Everybody inside the organization knew it, including Rivera, and thats why Rivera was looking for a new job. The Bears tried to help land another job by keeping him on staff. When that failed, they let him go.
The Ravens did the same thing with offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh a few years back. When he was interviewing for the head coaching job at Pitt, while still employed with the Ravens, Brian Billick had nothing but wonder things to say. But once Cavanaugh failed to land the job, the Ravens gave him the boot. Fortunately for Cavanaugh (and unfortunately for Pitt fans), Pitt eventually hired him as offensive coordinator.
Posted by: Steelers Fan | February 20, 2007 2:02 PM
The Bears upper management still consists of the group that QB Jim McMahon characterized as committed to being competitive -- i.e., not committed to winning. Expect them let go key coaching staff and players this year the same way they let go Willie Gault, Wilbur Marshall, etc. because the team could still be competitive without them and it would cost a lot less money.
Posted by: geneva | February 20, 2007 2:47 PM
Many people in Chicago acknowledge that the reason the Bears lost the SuperBowl was very poor tackling. If Rivera deserves credit for the Bears defense, which was strong for many of the 15 games they won this past year, he deserves responsibility for how poorly the defense played against the Colts.
Posted by: Scott Weil | February 20, 2007 4:38 PM
Lovie Smith is about to be rewarded with a multi-year deal, and he has decided that he wants his D Coordinator to his man -- Bob Babich -- not Ron Rivera, who is a very good guy and coach but would have been gone after another season almost for sure (although compare Gregg Williams, who couldn't get a sniff this year, after being flavor of the month last year). This is not that big a deal, but reflects Smith's solidified position with the Bears.
Posted by: Johnny Morris | February 20, 2007 5:49 PM
Nice to see even the top teams in the league have trouble extracting their heads from their nether regions. Lovie (still not extended) lets Rivera go and AJ Smith does Marty a solid by seting himself up as the fall guy should things go south for the Chargers in 2008 (or they *gasp* go one and done). Is this what Pete Rozelle meant by (mental) parity?
This just goes to show there is always hope,
Browns Fan
Posted by: FL | February 21, 2007 3:50 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
I'm curious what effect Rivera's interviewing for NINE jobs has had on the bears. Although I'm partly of the opinion they're being cheap, it's curious that nine other teams haven't seriously considered Rivera head-coaching material. Perhaps his head is getting too big, or perhaps if things with Lovie's contract get dicey, Rivera becomes "the coach in waiting." Plus, I have to think Rivera wants Capers/Williams D-Coordinator type money (even HALF of that salary would still be significantly more than Lovie has been making). The Bears are "bucking the trend" treating coordinators the way Pioli/Belicheck treat players. That's been a rather successful formula.