Thread: Chicago Bears' Lance Louis hopes he’s on road to respectability

Good read.
I just hope they let him settle into one position and keep him there so he can grow into it. That will be the key.

Lance has come a long way since he arrived and I've been pulling for him to finally settle in at RG where he can team up with Carimi and give our running game the blocking it needs. To me those two should be a perfect duo for that side of the line. Both run block well and both play with a little bit of "the nastys".

It's a shame that we've been having to move guys like him and CWill around so much because you know in both cases it's hurt their development at any one position. Just like trying to play CWill out of position Louis suffered some when asked to play RT but he gave good effort and was a far better solution than OMG.

It looks like Tice is pretty happy with what he has over on the right since there's really been zero competition for either spot there so maybe, health permitting, we finally have the future of that side of the line in place. We just need them to stay healthy and keep getting better.

I'm not worried at all about the right side of the line. Will it go through some growing pains? Sure it will. But it, along with the C position, are the strengths of the offensive line.

I'm worried sick about the left side, though. We've had so much time to address this over the past several years and have thus far failed to do so. We had the chance to sign Bushrod, who is a Pro Bowl LT. We could have drafted Reiff or DeCastro in the first round last year as opposed to going with Shea McClellin. While I won't argue that we needed to get a DE somehow this past off season, much like the S position, DE is a position that we find ourselves having to address all too often. We had something good in Mark Anderson before we began to misuse the hell out of him and therefore cutting him loose. Now look where he's at - in New England, sacking the shit out of quarterbacks. Our defensive linemen did well, and Peppers had a pretty good year, but that's another story. I will try not to hijack the thread as I seem to be so adept at doing.

That said, I'm confident that Garza, Louis, and Carimi will prove to be the strength of this offensive line. As far as LT and LG are concerned? Unless we keep Webb at LT and do the smart, intelligent thing by putting Chris Williams in at LG where he belongs, we are going to suffer yet again. It's ridiculous, again, to think that we could have sewn up this bad boy at Pick #19 in the first round of this year's draft for at least one of the two left side positions.

Originally Posted by RochBear

Makes sense to say a player will get better if left in one spot, but it also makes some sense to say that if a player gets wide experience he will be the better for it once he settles down to one spot. I suspect it depends upon how long it takes to learn the small things about the specific spot, and how fast a learner he is. CWill is reported to be a very fast learner so it is possible that his time at G actually helped is T play if it made him better at handling pure bull rush and rooting DLs out (*not* his strong point).

LL, might not be a fast learner. Anybody know? I do remember seeing him playing LT in preseason his rookie year and you could just see how good his movement was. Impressive as heck for a 7th rounder. Does anybody know if the struggles in pass protection we saw from LL in the last portion of 2011 was only with Hanie? Some of the complete misses might have been from Hanie setting up in the wrong spot and not LL's bad at all? LL seemed okay at RT with Cutler but I don't remember if LL faded even in Cutler's last few games.

I think that a lot of the problems the offensive line incurred last year after Cutler went down were as a direct result of Hanie not getting rid of the ball and because Cutler knew how to tuck it, run, and get down when it would become apparent that there was no escaping the opposing defense's onslaught of pass rushers. The whole dynamic changed once Cutty went down, and the offensive line went from a line that was, for a while, one of the better pass protecting units in the league to one where there was little order. I think, also, that part of it was because Mike Martz went back to his crazy seven step drops instead of sticking with what was working in the first place after Lovie and Tice got a hold of him.