Thread: Why Can't Bears Safeties Stay Healthy?......................

Originally Posted by soulman

Which is why we keep having to draft "bugs" in the 3rd round every year which the causes some of the "faithful" to protest screaming, "what another bug"? It's getting like Lovie is a sixteen year old kid who keeps wrecking his car but we just go out and buy him another one!

I do understand the "physics" involved but damn we need to do something about this. Conte and Hardin are both a little bigger than a few who have come before them and we still keep wrecking these guys every year and the Mike Brown thing is a little disturbing too.

Maybe that's just a coincidence but speaking symbolically here ya' know if the only time I ever get sick is when YOU come around then I'm not letting YOU come around much anymore. Right? Michael Bush isn't the guy being used as a "battering ram", it's our Safeties by the look of it.

We need to armor plate these guys and start teaching them how to protect themselves from injury or Safety continues to be a revolving door deal in Chicago. It's either that or we draft and play guys like Steltz who has a neck as big as a tree trunk or turn guys like Kyle Adams into 250lb Safeties. Damn, this is getting frustrating!

This got me recalling that when we drafted Urlacher he was a safety at AZ. Maybe Emery will find bigger players to draft for the position upgrade like he did with the WR position.

Originally Posted by MPBears68

That's kind of what I've been hinting at. That it's not all "bad luck" or "brittle players" but there must be some scheme- and/or coach-specific factors at play here. Lovie & Co. seem to squander the health of our safeties like the Japanese air force sending its pilots out on kamikaze missions.

Wtf?

Good analogy !

Originally Posted by MPBears68

That's kind of what I've been hinting at. That it's not all "bad luck" or "brittle players" but there must be some scheme- and/or coach-specific factors at play here. Lovie & Co. seem to squander the health of our safeties like the Japanese air force sending its pilots out on kamikaze missions.

Wtf?

Yep, at what point in time does it stop being merely a coincidence and you start looking at what these guys are being asked to do and are you getting the right players to do it? I know the Bears were interested in bigger guys like Taylor Mays and I think Hardin is a move in the right direction but for the love of God somebody teach the kid how to tackle without getting hurt so often. His injury history scares me.

The play of our Safeties is incredibly important in this defense. Great positioning is really the key to a lot of it and that isn't learned overnight as guys like Manning and Wright have proven. If we can't keep these guys on the field we'll never get that position stabilized like we need to. I was looking at Hardin and Conte as our starting guys before the year is out but now I really don't know what to think.

Wright and Steltz are not bad football players but both give up something the other two have so once again it's like we're stuck with a second string set of Safeties playing first string.

I wonder if part of it might be our physicality. The fact that the Bears have always taken great pride in putting a punishing defense on the field. The Bears have had top-tier defenses for most of their 90 years, that beat up on opponents.

Also, in recent years we emphasize creating fumbles too, so you see some epic hits - especially by our safeties. These are high velocity hits & perhaps the most affected are LB's and Safeties. But the Safeties are smaller guys hitting bigger guys.

This may be something you see more of on the Bears than some of the other defenses. Our guys are always trying to hammer/punish/knock balls loose, more so than a lot of "D"s so maybe this extra physicality by our safeties is resulting in more injuries than the norm.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherBearsFan99

I wonder if part of it might be our physicality. The fact that the Bears have always taken great pride in putting a punishing defense on the field. The Bears have had top-tier defenses for most of their 90 years, that beat up on opponents.

Also, in recent years we emphasize creating fumbles too, so you see some epic hits - especially by our safeties. These are high velocity hits & perhaps the most affected are LB's and Safeties. But the Safeties are smaller guys hitting bigger guys.

This may be something you see more of on the Bears than some of the other defenses. Our guys are always trying to hammer/punish/knock balls loose, more so than a lot of "D"s so maybe this extra physicality by our safeties is resulting in more injuries than the norm.

You're right. The Bears have probably the greatest tradition of defense in the history of the NFL. They have consistently fielded top-tier defenses even in years where they weren't very good otherwise. Those teams in the late 1960s through early 1980s prior to Ditka? We had good defenses. We had Dick Butkus, Doug Buffone, Wally Chambers, Ed O'Bradovich, Richie Petitbon, Mike Hartenstine, Dan Hampton, Gary Fencik, Doug Plank, and later, Mike Singletary and "Mongo." We had very good defenses back then, it's just that our offenses sucked. That 1963 championship team that Doug played on sucked for offense - I think they only scored 21 points a game, and much of those points game from guys in the secondary returning interceptions for touchdowns, like Roosevelt Taylor, Dave Whitsell, J.C. Caroline, and Richie Petitbon - but that defense only gave up 144 points in 14 games! Then you have great defenses in 1985 and 1986, and of course, all throughout the late 1980s and into the the early 1990s. Even the early years of the franchise saw great defenses with Red Grange, Bill Hewitt, George McAfee, "Bulldog" Turner, Ed Sprinkle, etc.

We haven't had a great safety in the mold of a Petitbon, Fencik, Plank, or Duerson come along in decades. Maybe players back then were tougher, or perhaps they were just better coached. I don't know. I'm not an expert on football. I just know what I see and I call "bullshit" at the appropriate time.

All this talk of standard deviations has my head spinning in circles. Wowsers!!!