Thread: Here's One More Nail in the Coffin of Angelo's Demise............

Originally Posted by lklrlolnlilklsox

Whether you admit it or not, we already have one and his name is Chris Williams. He was nothing short of beastly this year and I look forward to seeing him grow as he finally gets to spend extended time at one position. I feel the need to mention that the Bears averaged an entire yard more running through the left side 4+3 gaps than Atlanta. It should also be mentioned that before Chris went down, it was nearly 1.2 yards more.

His swing and miss on Bushrod, a Franchise LT, looms large, though.

And the miss on Bushrod gets laid directly at Angelo's feet. NO resigned him for 2 years for about $10 mil. There is no way we shouldn't have been able to better that by enough to land him. The rumors of Angelo lowballing his free agent offers was obviously true and once again an opportunity is lost.

CWill will be back and along with Carimi the line will improve by that alone. At least the byproduct of these injuries has been getting enough playing time out of our OG's that we should see both improvement and depth all across the interior of the line. That should allow us to forego using a high pick on any OG's or OC's for another year and focus on a guy who can play LT either in FA or the draft.

Originally Posted by soulman

And the miss on Bushrod gets laid directly at Angelo's feet. NO resigned him for 2 years for about $10 mil. There is no way we shouldn't have been able to better that by enough to land him. The rumors of Angelo lowballing his free agent offers was obviously true and once again an opportunity is lost.

CWill will be back and along with Carimi the line will improve by that alone. At least the byproduct of these injuries has been getting enough playing time out of our OG's that we should see both improvement and depth all across the interior of the line. That should allow us to forego using a high pick on any OG's or OC's for another year and focus on a guy who can play LT either in FA or the draft.

Soul, would you draft a LT in the first round or go after one in free agency?

Originally Posted by Dagan81

I feel like some hot girl just gave me a hummer, and I don't mean the SUV variety.

But all kidding aside, it just seemed like Jerry Angelo and Martz were always in bed together, like they left Lovie Smith completely out of the loop when it came to how they wanted the offense to look. True, we had a good draft, but the one offensive area that we addressed, the drafting of Gabe Carimi, wound up on IR after Week 2. Lovie and Tice might have had something to do with the drafting of Carimi, but Martz was in all the way on Nathan Enderle.

The wave of this league is going towards offense. Teams that give up more than three touchdowns per game in each of the past two seasons (Green Bay, New England, and New Orlreans) are winning big because they have big time offenses with big time quarterbacks, receivers, and decent to very good offensive lines. The Bears have a great QB along with the most complete RB in the NFL, but what we don't have are, as we all know, an offensive line and a big WR. This needs to change in the draft this year and in free agency. Hopefully, the GM that will be signed by the Bears will proactive enough to procure the players at these needed positions who are proficient at what they do so we can go about the business of competing for a championship.

In the final analysis Dags it was Martz and Angelo's arrogance and lack of an ability to see the "big picture" or the cause and effect of their actions which led to their downfall. Lovie may stubbornly adhere to certain strategies but even he made better adjustments this year defensively than Martz was willing to make with his offense. Plus, despite his stubborness at least Lovie isn't arrogant and he has the full support of his players.

I got the feeling all too often that any support Martz got was more a token "go along to get along" kind than a full committment to his gameplans and playcalling. I think Cutler demonstrated thay when he began to defy Martz and run the offense to his strengths. I give the credit for the offensive resurgence before he got hurt to Cutler, not Martz. It's very easy to see than when you look at the offensive performance thereafter and that's not all Hanie's fault. McCown's performance was marginal at best and only accepted because it was so much of an improvement over Hanie.

I don't know if anyone else picked up on it but Martz's playcalling for McCown was vastly different and more conservative than it was for Hanie. It's almost as if Martz set out to prove his intial contentions about Hanie right by setting him up to fail. When he didn't have the time to victimize him in last years NFCC Game Hanie played much better with far less prep.

If we're smart we'll court Orton this offseason to see if he'd be willing to return as a #2 of if he insists on going somewhere that he can start. I think for the right price we can persuade him to do it and I'd also make an offer to McCown and bring them both to camp. I think you can pretty much count on Enderle being gone too. He's obviously not shown enough to even merit consideration for a backup to McCown instead of Hanie which tells me that no matter how bad Hanie looked Enderle was worse. Wherever Martz ends up he can take Enderle with him. I'd be fine with having Orton and McCown behind Cutler next year.

Originally Posted by Dagan81

Soul, would you draft a LT in the first round or go after one in free agency?

Dags, I don't see anyone in the draft that could come in and start at LT besides Matt Kalil and we won't get within sniffing distance of him. We need to look at FA for now even if it's a guy who only has a few more miles left on him. Webb is still just too inconsistent to allow him to continue protecting that blindside. We need to start getting TE's out in the pattern not lining up to double team DE's that Webb has trouble holding up against.

I don't know what's with that kid other than my perception that he's not too bright. He did a pretty good job against Allen in the first Viking game but last Sunday Allen was eating him for lunch every play......every play. He beat him inside, he beat him outside and forced the Bears to double and triple team him in order to stop him. Allen was right. Webb gets paid to stop guys like him all by himself and he's proven time and time again that he can't do that every game.

At best Webb will be a reasonable swing OT. Louis started out pretty well at RT but eventually guys solved him with an inside rush and once that happened he was toast. I think Webb could have done better. So we get Carimi back healthy, move Louis back inside to compete with Spencer where they both belong right now and we find the LT of the here and now. Not the LT of the future. Jay Cutler deserves to spend a season or two upright for a change instead of on his ass.

Originally Posted by soulman

Dags, I don't see anyone in the draft that could come in and start at LT besides Matt Kalil and we won't get within sniffing distance of him. We need to look at FA for now even if it's a guy who only has a few more miles left on him. Webb is still just too inconsistent to allow him to continue protecting that blindside. We need to start getting TE's out in the pattern not lining up to double team DE's that Webb has trouble holding up against.

I don't know what's with that kid other than my perception that he's not too bright. He did a pretty good job against Allen in the first Viking game but last Sunday Allen was eating him for lunch every play......every play. He beat him inside, he beat him outside and forced the Bears to double and triple team him in order to stop him. Allen was right. Webb gets paid to stop guys like him all by himself and he's proven time and time again that he can't do that every game.

At best Webb will be a reasonable swing OT. Louis started out pretty well at RT but eventually guys solved him with an inside rush and once that happened he was toast. I think Webb could have done better. So we get Carimi back healthy, move Louis back inside to compete with Spencer where they both belong right now and we find the LT of the here and now. Not the LT of the future. Jay Cutler deserves to spend a season or two upright for a change instead of on his ass.

Where is there a list of free agents that will be available this offseason, soul? I'm interested in seeing how this will work. Does NFL.com have a list or has it yet to have been compiled?