Thread: If Lovie pulls a miracle finish and we go deep into the playoffs....

Anything short of a super win, Lovie needs to go...anything short that, its just more smoke and mirrors imho....

This just posted:

LINK to the article


Lovie's not going anywhere


Bears coach may miss the playoffs again, but that doesn't mean he'll get fired


By Scoop Jackson | ESPNChicago.com



His face did not look like that of a head coach who was on the verge of being escorted out of the city.
Instead, Lovie Smith looked as if nothing was wrong. As if the news/talk/rumors/suggestions/demands for his departure from Chicago aren't orbiting around him like planets. As if the new reality of his possible end game here either doesn't faze him or he simply doesn't care.

To the man who displays the same amount of facial expressions during a game as Kristen Stewart in a photo shoot (one), the fact that this is happening to Smith -- most of the discussion this week has been about him and his limits and flaws as the head coach of the Bears -- seems so trivial to him. So next year.On a day when the word "accountability" was being constantly repeated around Halas Hall, Smith simply remained accountable for the only thing within his immediate control: his team in this moment.

"In the locker room," he said to reporters after Wednesday's practice, "guys know what's at stake this week and know exactly what they need to be concentrating on. And that's Arizona."

Supreme focus or supreme denial? If you use Smith's expressions and demeanor as a gauge, you'll never know the answer.

But what is really at stake? Something more than the chance of missing the playoffs for the fifth time in the last six years of his tenure? If anyone took the pulse of the heart rate and rhythm of the city, they'd discover that Smith's job might not officially be at stake, but the desire for him to remain here is at the lowest point it's ever been.

Truth is, unless the Bears totally fall apart and don't come close to winning the last two games of this season, then Lovie will be back. His entire coaching staff might not be, and there will be some movement (finally!) on the roster to improve the offensive line -- maybe even a Devin Hester trade? -- but the organization will give Smith at least one more year to succeed.
Or fail.

What's on his side, and what the McCaskeys will use as a reason or excuse as to why things went so bad so fast the last two seasons, are injuries. To ownership and upper management, it would be unfair to hold a head coach responsible when injuries eat away at the core of a team.

Last season remains self-explanatory. This season has been a lot less dramatic and drastic but just as damaging. Whether the players not suiting up over the past six games could have made a difference or not is open for heated discussions, but losing clutch kicker (Robbie Gould), potential all-pro (Tim Jennings), future Hall of Famer (Brian Urlacher), No. 2 wide receiver (Earl Bennett) and No. 2 running back (Michael Bush) and Jay Cutler for nearly two entire games (concussion in second quarter in Week 10 then missed Week 11, both losses) inside of this 1-5 stretch is what the Bears front office will use as the main reason for keeping Smith.
Justification? Cop out? Or both? I'm just saying ...

So despite what Phil Emery said when he took over as the new GM about not guaranteeing Smith anything past this season, Smith will last past this season.

Maybe the coach knows that his ice is not as thin if he doesn't win these next two games as, say, Jason Garrett's ice is in Dallas if he doesn't win his last two or the NFC East; maybe Smith knows these far-reaching reports of Sean Payton replacing him (because he has Chicago ties) or Mike Singletary getting a second chance as an NFL head coach here (because he's a Chicago icon) have no merit because the Bears really don't have anyone in mind at this point to replace him; maybe Smith knows that as long as Urlacher has his back and Cutler hasn't turned on him, his job with the Bears is as safe as Tom Thibodeau is with the Bulls.Even if he's only one of the very few in Chicago who knows it: Smith is safe. He's going nowhere.

Put the #OccupyLovieSmith (OLS) movement on hold, it's not going to work until either the middle of or toward the end of next season. Depending if the Bears win the NFC North or at least beat Green Bay.

Which is the real reason why Smith can look and remain and be so unassuming and unaffected by all of this skepticism, rumor, innuendo, hearsay, insinuation and wishful thinking going on around him. He knows words can never hurt a man when his doubters don't have sticks or stones to throw at him.
And a franchise quarterback has your back.

Pretty good read:

LINK to the article

TELANDER: Bears coach Lovie Smith doesn’t know ‘O’


I think I went over the simple rules about coaching respect in a recent column. To wit: We love you when you win, we hate you when you lose.

The end.

So with the Bears having lost five of their last six games and scrambling to make the once-assured playoffs, coach Lovie Smith isn’t much-loved. That’s an axiom.

But what, besides the losses, is it that is soiling Smith’s legacy in this town? Besides the losses, what is it about him that infuriates us the most (and this one time we won’t count the drained-of-all-plasma sideline stare)?
It is this: Smith doesn’t know offense.

He might know defense. Well, at least he might know his punch-and-rip-at-the-ball, attacking cover-2 defense, essentially the same one he used more than a decade ago as the St. Louis Rams’ defensive coordinator.

But offense?

Smith doesn’t call the plays. He has had three offensive coordinators — Ron Turner, Mike Martz and Mike Tice — in the last four seasons. He has had four quarterbacks coaches since 2006. He recently has had good offensive players brought in or re-signed — quarterback Jay Cutler, receiver Brandon Marshall and running back Matt Forte — but the offense only has become worse.

Facts: In his nine seasons at the helm, Smith has had offenses that ranked 32nd, 29th, 15th, 27th, 26th, 23rd, 30th, 24th and, currently, 29th in total yards in a 32-team league.

That comes to an average of 26th. That would be an F on any report card. When sustained for nearly a decade, it would be grounds to have a student flunked from school and steered into something such as ditch-digging.

Oh, did you notice that No. 15 ranking in Smith’s third season, 2006? Did that — gasp! — almost make you sit down and ask for oxygen? Well, that was the Super Bowl season, a season that earned Smith the rest of these years.

In 2006, Rex Grossman passed for more than 3,000 yards, Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson ran for a combined 1,857 yards and 12 touchdowns and Muhsin Muhammad, Bernard Berrian and Desmond Clark caught passes for 2,264 yards and 17 touchdowns.

How it happened, we don’t know. But it hasn’t been repeated. And as the trend in the NFL continues toward high-octane offenses led by star quarterbacks such as Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers, the Bears have devolved into an offensive machine more resembling a Model-T — or, perhaps more distinctly, a ‘‘funny car’’ that can’t make it halfway up the track before flailing across the lanes, over the fence and into a cornfield.

The Bears’ loss Sunday to the Green Bay Packers was one of the saddest displays of the offense’s ineptitude so far. The offensive line isn’t very good — we know that — but you might have thought the blockers were on loan from a doughnut shop for all the movement they created and protection they provided. Yet Cutler spent most of his time making faces of disgust toward any and all, as though he was surprised by their lack of skill. In Game 14!

Then there were the wrong routes run by receivers, the bad passes by Cutler (even his snidest scowls couldn’t hide some of his mistakes), only 12 first downs and 190 net yards. This was against a banged-up Packers team playing on a hostile field.

Through it all, Smith stared.

No matter, though, because what’s missing isn’t hellfire and brimstone but an intuitive knowledge about how a complex pro offense works and an understanding about how to make it work in tough conditions.

There always is a trickle-down effect from the coach.

Many coaches are offensive experts, and they need to pay a lot of attention to their teams’ defense or have a masterful coordinator taking that task away from them.

Smith can’t pretend to care deeply about that which he does not. The Bears and offense just don’t seem to go together. Maybe it’s history. Maybe it’s heritage.

What the Bears have shown during Smith’s tenure is that they can beat average and below-average teams consistently. But when they need three-touchdown quarters, 400-yard passing games, one-minute drills or swift attacks that overwhelm, they’re just not there.

And under Smith, they never will be.

Originally Posted by Riczaj01

If that were to happen, Birds will spontaneously spring to life in my backside and shoot forth to the world.

Man Ric, that's more information than I need (hellish mental image too).

Lovie doesn't know O, yada yada yada. Is that whay they are wanting him to go? ANyone going to say anything about players playing like they are on remote control? Or NONE of the TE's being productive, or NONE of the WR's other than BM being necessarily productive? Or an O-Line that he blessed as being good at the beginning of the year being even worse than last year? And the fact that the people responsible for all of them work for him, and none have been replaced? Or his own inability to make adjustments, control the clock or even get close to outhinking good opposing coaches?

So many reasons... it goes way beyond his inability to pick good OCs. He can't pick too many of his other coaches either.

Other than that stuff, he's great.