Thread: Mike Martz will cost us a couple of games

Originally Posted by 4th and 26

Nobody can overcome the garbage we have on that field. Even Belichick, Cowher, Lombardi would fail with this crapfest of offensive talent we have.

Those guys would not allow this kind of crapfest in the first place. Cowher would have ripped Martz head off and punted through the up rights.

Bears' 52 pass plays, 11 handoffs doesn't cut it
Smith: 'We can't win football games with that kind of balance'


By Brad Biggs, Chicago Tribune reporter

10:21 p.m. CDT, September 19, 2011
Seven times in 91 seasons, the Bears offense has run the ball 12 times or fewer in a game.

Four of those have come during the career of Matt Forte that spans 50 games, most recently Sunday in a 30-13 loss at New Orleans when offensive coordinator Mike Martz called 52 pass plays (45 Jay Cutler passes, six sacks, one scramble) and 11 handoffs.

"Surprised?" Forte said Monday morning. "Yeah. Ten rushes is not really a whole lot. But when you get behind pretty quick in the second half, I think the mindset was to pass the ball and try to get big chunks of yardage back or get a quick score in the passing game."

Thing is, offensive coordinator Mike Martz went pass happy way before the score got lopsided. At the point the Bears allowed their first sack with 10 minutes, 2 seconds remaining in the third quarter, they trailed the Saints 16-13 and Martz had dialed up 29 pass plays and 10 runs.

Forte had a 42-yard gain on his second carry and had just eight more rushes the rest of the game in a one-sided effort that looked suspiciously like Martz's early-season work from 2010, when the Bears had 14 carries in one game and twice rushed only 16 times.

"I know the balance wasn't there," coach Lovie Smith said. "All I can say is we'll get it better. We can't win football games with that kind of balance."

Smith has seen it before. Three times in 2009 under former offensive coordinator Ron Turner, the Bears ran the ball 12 times or fewer. Turner was fired after the season by the coach who once talked about his team getting of the bus running.

Martz must have forgotten about the subtle roster moves made during the offseason to make the Bears more run-oriented. Tight end Greg Olsen was dumped to allow the offense to feature more effective blockers.

The game plan only aided the Saints' pass-rushing effort, allowing them to feast on Cutler, who couldn't slow them down with any hot reads behind a makeshift offensive line missing two starters after right tackle Gabe Carimi was lost to a right knee injury at halftime.

"Happens like that sometimes," Smith said. "We'll clean it up."

Ultimately, Smith is the man in charge and oversees all the decisions made. Play-calling didn't even out a year ago until after a meeting during the off week. In eight of the 11 regular-season games since, the Bears have had more rushes than passes.

"Yes, I have (spoken to Martz since the loss)," Smith said. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you the reason why, I'm just going to tell you we have to get the balance a lot better and we will. We didn't do that for a lot of different reasons."

Was one of them for fear they would not be able to have success running against the Saints?

"I'm going to tell you again, we didn't have the balance we needed," Smith replied. "I'm not going to give you anymore reasons why. We'll have it better this week. That's my answer."

Perhaps Martz will have some answers when he speaks Wednesday. Until then, you're left to wonder why the Bears would so clearly abandon Forte, who they regard to be maybe their best offensive player.

"If they know we're passing the ball just like (Sunday), they'll pin their ears back and bring everybody," Forte said. "It's hard to pick up everybody when they're blitzing like that. And when they do, you've got to hurt them in the passing game. We didn't get the ball off or when we threw it, it wasn't completed.

"You can't put blame on any one person or one position. It's a team effort. So everybody has got to be better at blitz protection and blitz pickup and notify who to get and how to get them and all that good stuff. You can't put all the blame on the offensive line."

You can start with the coordinator though.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports...,7820564.story

Originally Posted by short faced bear

I just don't want to hear ever that Martz is a genius. A mad genius would work on contingency plans for the OL. A genius would try his flair in the other direction-ever see him call a game where the team he coached basically just RAN the whole time? No Martz is a pass-specialist nothing more nothing less.

A true genius can improvise, adapt, and overcome. Using the tools he has not forcing a screwdriver to become an impact wrench. Jay won't survive the season if there aren't any adjustments let alone audibles.

Windy thanks for the thread and shorty you hit the nail on the head here. If I had gotten to the board yesterday I would have put up a post asking for Mike Martz head just I did with Terry Shea many moons ago. This really isn't meant to be an "I told you so" because most everyone would have and did agree with me when I said this before. Mike Martz is about the poorest choice for an OC we could ever have made.

Just like Terry Shea before him he's running an offense without the personnel to make it successful and it is not even anywhere close to Chicago Bears football. Why they hired the guy is beyond me with the singular exception of the fact that it seems no one else wanted the job and of course Martz was available because no on else wanted him. That debacle in Detroit should have nailed the lid shut on his career. The only positive I can find from this is that her didn't sign the extension he was offered and the Bears should count their lucky stars that he didn't. He needs to go and the Bears should look into hiring Jeremy Bates now that Seattle let him go as their OC. Bates was Cutler's guru here in Denver and I think he was the guy the Bears really wanted but being a former USC coach he went with Pete Carroll instead. The offense Martz is running will never be a consistent winner with this team and he's getting a very good QB killed with his arrogance and insistence on doing things his way.

You could see how pissed off Cutler was getting with the play calls he was being handed and with no chance of calling audibles he was screwed almost every time he stepped to the line and saw an unblocked blitzing LB coming from his left. How many time outs did he have to call to keep pointing that out. Even old stone faced Lovie was caught on camera with a very pissed off look (for him) on his face looking up at the booth where Martz was calling plays. The guy is not a genius. He's a bullheaded old fool and he needs to either change his ways or I would fire his ass this week and let Tice run the offense until a suitable OC can be found. This is two years in a row that we've had this problem with him and I think by now we all know that it's not gonna change.

Jimmors summary aside the reality comes from watching what was happening not just from counting up the number of runs versus passes. The only thing that's accurate is that we were very close at halftime but the handwriting was still on the wall. The Saints knew we were gonna pass and they were ready for it. This was a $500k loss because that's what it would have cost us to keep Olin Kruetz from handing Greg Williams Martz playbook. The Saints had a better idea of what Martz would do than our own offense did. The consistently bumped our smaller WRs off routes (no surprise there huh?) and blitz virtually every down and against this what did Mike Martz call? He consistently called pass plays which required 7 step drops and went with an empty backfield when anyone who was watching could see that they had an unblocked LB coming from the left side every time he did it. Was he watching a different game than we were?

When Kellen Davis completely blew his blocking assignment on the fumble where was his call out to Cutler to cover up because he was about to get nailed from his blindside? Nice lookin' out there Kellen. How long have you been playing this game? Some of you want to blame Webb but most of the time the rush from the left wasn't coming from his man! He was blocking his guy be there was no one assigned to the blitzer. No tight end most of the time and no RB left to pick up the blitz since the formation had everyone on the line of in the slot. That's a pretty good tip off that you're gonna flood the zone with receivers so all NO did was put a time clock on Cutler just like Buddy Ryan did in the 80's. Not once did I see them make an adjustment in the blocking scheme to compensate for it. Basically the line looked like the same Chinese Fire Drill that we saw during the first preseason game.

That line has a long way to go as far as reading and understanding pass blocking assignments so it makes no sense at all to subject than and Cutler to plays that constantly test them to the point of failure. Mike Martz in an arrogant fool and no matter what has been said to him by Lovie or Tice when in doubt he will always go to the pass. You can't tell me that he didn't see what NO was doing to counter him and yet he did nothing to adjust or even attempt to back them off. After a while the whole offense looked confused and even what has been working wasn't anymore. You can't give any team the kind of TOP advantage we gave NO and expect to win. Actually with the exception of Wrigh'ts fuck up on that long pass to Henderson they played fairly well but it's pretty obvious that we missed Chris Harris. Wright seems lost without him playing next to him and even his tackling was tenative.

I'll just finish this by saying that Sundays game was a great statement as to why Chris Harris should be offered an extension and why Matt Forte is worth a whole lot more to the Bears offense than they're probably giving him credit for. What did he have, about 60% of the total offensive output? The only time we moved the ball successfully is when he had it in his hands.

Originally Posted by 4th and 26

Jerry Angelo is a bum, he is the reason we are in this position to fail on offense. He best pick in the draft is gone for a month and his top WR is injured garbage. How can anybody expect this offense to be successful if Jay has no weapons other than Matt Forte. We can't run the ball worth a crap. Take away Matts 42 yard run and you have 9 carries for 7 yards. Second why is Tice not getting his ass handed to him for constantly changing the OL. Why is J. Webb still playing because he can't block worth a shit. Like Motownbear said he is garbage.

I'm not ready to label Webb a bust yet, and he's still better than OMG who can't even pass block as a RT, but there's no question that JA's failure to sign a more epxerienced LT was a major league fvck up and once again we pay the price because Martz refuses to allow for this. The same can be said for allowing Martz to talk him into Roy Williams instead of going after a more dependable WR like Malcom Floyd.

We lost out in FA at those two spots because JA decided to go cheap and that's exactly what we're stuck with. Second choices. If he wanted Bushrod he needed to make an offer than the Saints could not afford to match and still keep their two allstar OG's, who by the way did an awfully good job of keeping Brees clear of any inside rush so that he had plenty of room to throw. We all know by now that he didn't and than on top of that Tice plays the LT we drafted at RT so now we have two first round LT picks who aren't playing LT and a 7th round project who is.

Where this frugality came from all of a sudden I don't know but when you're team fell just short of making, and very possibly winning, the Super Bowl and what you need to do to take the next step forward is as obvious as this was to have failed at it is pathetic personnel management in my book. If you're gonna hire Mike Martz as on OC you either need to allow a change in your offensive philosophy and get him all of the tools he needs or fire the guy and get someone who can build a top 10 offense with the talent available. JA did neither so in that regard yes, I do find fault with this.

The season if far from over but it's pretty plain to me that we need some serious help on that Oline. Having to once again play OMG is bad enough but also having Webb learning to play LT on the job makes us really weak at OT. I can't wait to see how they propose to handle Matthews this week. If they don't get the run blocking needed to move the ball that way we don't stand a chance. If this Oline couldn't handle the Saints blitzes the Packers are gonna drive them crazy. This is where Cutler needs to go to Martz and tell him that he wants input into the game plan and some audibles to call at the line when needed.

Maybe I missed something, but when Cutler was blindsided and fumbled (which really cost us the game), why in the ************** ********* was Davis the TE and not Spaeth? Isn't Spaeth supposed to be our "6th offensive lineman"? **** like that makes trading Olsen away look even worse.