
Originally Posted by
Dagan81
First of all, Tice brought some semblance of order to the offensive line last year. I watched the game against the New York Giants, and that had to be the worst pass protection as well as run blocking I have ever seen. What we saw come out of the Bills game on through the rest of the season except for the Packers game on January 2 indicated to me that Tice knows what he's doing as far as getting the best five guys he has into position as an offensive line. True, even in the second half of the season, predominantly skewed by the six sacks we gave up in the second Packers game, the line didn't block well, but you can't expect Tice to polish five turds and make them do a complete 180 about face in terms of performance. You are being seriously unrealistic if you think that Tice, who is one of the best offensive line coaches in the NFL, can do that.
Secondly, let's focus on one player in particular. He worked hard to make J'Marcus Webb at least passable as a blocker. While Webb never did well in pass protection, he treaded water as a run blocker. Webb was Tice's pet project in 2010, and apparently he's so high on him that the Bears are willing to start 2011 with him as their RT; there have even been talks of moving Carimi to RT and swapping over Webb to LT. Personally, I want Webb used as a backup because I don't think he's good enough to play on the line; I want the Bears to sign Tyson Clabo to play RT and thus shore up that end of the line with a Pro Bowler. But back to what I was talking about - Webb was Tice's pet project, and we saw great improvement under Tice's direction as the season went on.
Third, the reason I want Tice as the offensive coordinator is because I think he had great input on how the offensive was run from the Bills game on through the rest of the season. What we saw after the loss to the Washington Redskins was not vintage Mike Fartz football, but rather a balanced attack that saw the Bears run to set up the pass. This modus operandi worked to perfection in setting the Bears up for a big run at a division title and deep run into the playoffs. Tice was noted for this style of offense up in Minnesota, even talking up the "Randy ratio" to the dismay of Randy Moss and his supporters. Mike Martz's offense is not conducive to be run by the current crop of blockers and receivers that we have, and until we have adequate time to get him the pieces to the puzzle it takes to run his 3:1 pass to run ratio offense, we are going to go through quarterbacks like crazy. Look at it this way: we had what one site I looked at called "a cadaver" as the second-string quarterback in Todd Collins while he had a pretty decent quarterback buried down at the third-string slot in Caleb Hanie. If he can't adapt the strategy AND get the right guys playing at the proper points on the depth chart that it takes for this team to succeed, Fartz doesn't need to be the coach. I guarantee that Tice had a great deal to do with the total restructuring of our offense, and I bet you that had we had him calling the last two games against the Packers, we would have probably won those games.