Thread: Bears focusing on 7 players, GM Emery says

Yes I have loved many of the moves that Emery has done this off-season, but I'm still holding judgement on him as a "savior" for several years down the line. He's plugged some holes in our team with veteran free agency where a rookie usually doesn't have much success (QB, WR, LB), but Philips started they wanted a GM that can run the draft and evaluate talent better than JA. We will have to wait and see how these rookies are helping the team down the line rather than jump to conclusion based on how it looks on paper at the end of the day on Saturday.

I won't call Phil Emery a savior until I see the results of the 2012 season. He's been marvelous during the free agent/trading deadline period, so I'm interested in seeing what he will do with the draft. To think that he has seven players in mind in the first round that he wants to take! It sounds like he's going to go with best player available if that is the case.

If the Bears make the playoffs this year as either a Wild Card or NFC North Division Champions, then I might call Emery a savior. Until then, he's got to formulate the Bears a firmer foundation for them to hold ground on. I don't think he nor anyone else underestimates the task at hand, which is to fix what Jerry Angelo spent ten years fucking up.

Originally Posted by BigBadPapaBear

I agree my friend. I'm excited about what Emery has done so far, but its still way too early to see if he's turned our franchise around. I personally think he's going to turn the Bears into a power house, but we'll also be thanking Jerry Angelo for years for some of the guys that we have ont he roster right now.

I have mixed emotions about Jerry Angelo. While the overall talent of his draft picks wasn't particularly good n that he rarely struck gold in the first three rounds (with notable exceptions being Lance Briggs, Devin Hester, and Matt Forte), the Bears did win four division titles (2001, 2005, 2006, 2010), played in two NFC Championship Games (2006, 2010), and represented the NFC as its champion in Super Bowl XLI during his run as GM, which was the best run this franchise had since the 1980s. He did make the trade to bring Jay Cutler to Chicago and thus solve the long standing problem of the stability and quality of the quarterback play for the franchise, and he did sign Julius Peppers, who is arguably one of the greatest defensive ends of all time. What makes me mad about Jerry Angelo is that he would draft players with nagging injury problems, would mostly focus on defense and special teams players rather than getting us play makers on offense and offensive linemen to complement Jay Cutler or, for that matter, any quarterback who was with the organization at any given time. The fact that despite the obvious failures of his draft picks and the players he would dumpster dive and pick up either via trade, free agency, or waivers, he would sit back and tell the media in both press conferences, interviews with newspaper journalists, or hell, even ESPN Monday Night Football prior to the Lions' game in Detroit, that we had enough talent to win and that the team was under-performing and the coaches weren't doing a good enough job was absolutely outrageous and incredulous. Because of some of his boneheaded moves, the Bears never won consistently from year-to-year, and never posted more than two seasons with a .500 or better record. (The Bears did that twice under Angelo: 2005 and 2006, and 2010 and 2011.)

The scary thing is that had we defeated the Chiefs and Broncos, which were the only two games out of the last six the Bears played that they should have won, we would still be talking about Jerry Angelo as our current GM and his pet protege Tim Ruskell being groomed to be his replacement. Hell, for all we know, Mike Martz might still be the offensive coordinator and we wouldn't have Brandon Marshall and possibly not even Michael Bush. So, for all the things that Bears' fans should be thankful for about Jerry Angelo, I, myself, have more reasons to be glad he's gone than to thank him for what he accomplished as our GM. To me, his negatives outweighed the positives.

Originally Posted by BigBadPapaBear

I have mixed feelings about Angelo too. I knew that we just needed a new perspective on buidling a winner, but I simply can't overlook how he set us up with some real nice core pieces. The Cutler trade is his most bold move and I think he solidified the Bears QB position for a very long time. I also think, that the Carimi, Paea and Conte draft class has the potential to be a great one. And we're going to thank him for that. Shoot if Major Wright and Wooton actually develop, then its going to be hard for anyone to slam Angelo anymore. He did have to go though. It seemed the timing was right.

What bothered me more than the petty excuses Jerry Angelo used to make on why the Bears were winning as often as they should have been after the 2005 and 2006 seasons was that very fact of how the Bears never won with any degree of consistency. Essentially, we have been little better than the Cincinnati Bengals in recent years except for the fact that we have been to two NFC Championship Games and one Super Bowl. Look how bad those teams were in 2002-04, or that the Bears finished with two winning seasons between 2007 and 2001. Things like that bother me. I don't know if you know my favorite sports teams, but I follow all Chicago pro sports teams EXCEPT for Major League Baseball, whereby I was raised to be a diehard fan of the New York Yankees from the time I was a baby until today when I'm less than two months shy of my 31st birthday. As a Yankees fan, I expect the team to contend and compete for not just Wild Cards or AL East titles, but for World Series' and World Championships. The Bears at one time were the New York Yankees of professional football before George Halas lost his edge in the 1950s. With the exception of the 1980s and early 90s, the franchise has been mired in relative mediocrity for the better part of sixty plus years. I'm hoping Emery is the man who will bring about the culture change and return the Bears back to the summit of the NFL. We are the winningest franchise in the history of the league in terms of wins and winning percentage, but we trail the Packers in NFL Championships, and that simply should not be. Being great in the 1980s was, well, great, but even then we underachieved and only went to-and won- one Super Bowl with all that talent on defense and Walter Payton and that offensive line chewing up yards on the ground.

I sincerely hope that Emery builds the Bears into a multiple Super Bowl winner. I think he's savvy enough to pull this trick. There will be a degree of patience required as he goes about his business, but he has the right idea of what the Bears should be all about: dominating and winning championships.