Let's Fire Everybody - Lovie Smith Edition

After another disappointing football weekend in the city of Chicago, we're once again hearing that old familiar call echoing through the city streets.

FIRE EVERYBODY.

The Bears got rocked again at home against the Cardinals on Sunday, giving up over 40 points for the second time in three weeks, and have now lost three of four.  Their lone win being quite possibly the ugliest 24-point victory ever over the woeful Cleveland Browns.

In South Bend the Irish carried on a new tradition by losing to Navy for the second time in three years after previously taking 43 straight from the service academy.  The loss leaves the Irish at 6-3 and given that they have a pretty tough schedule to finish the season -- why is it that when Notre Dame's winning against easy opponents nobody shuts up about it yet when their schedule turns out to be tough you don't hear a word? -- with games remaining against Pitt, UConn and Stanford.  Two of whom are ranked.

So, in Chicago, when our football teams are struggling our initial reaction is to fire the coach -- it used to be blame the quarterback with the Bears, but that's no longer the problem -- and it's completely understandable in both cases.

What I'm wondering, however, is if it would be worth it.



While I'll get to the prospect of firing Weis tomorrow, today I'm going to focus on the idea of letting Lovie Smith go.

I get that everybody wants rid of Lovie Smith considering that the team hasn't done anything of consequence since going to the Super Bowl in 2006, and he's now in charge of a defense that looks worse every week.  On the surface, I wouldn't mind getting rid of Lovie either.

It's just that the longer I think about it, I don't see a real point to it, or a chance of it happening.  First of all, the McCaskey family isn't exactly known for paying people a lot of money to not work for them, and the $11 million Smith is owed over the final two years of his deal is a lot of money to the McCaskeys.

Not to me because I'm a blogger and live a life of luxury.

Furthermore, even if the Bears did fire Smith and decide to replace him, his replacement wouldn't be who you want him to be.  Oh sure, Bill Cowher, Mike Holmgren, and Mike Shanahan are all out there waiting to be courted, but the Bears won't court them.

How do I know this?  Well, aside from the fact that those three names would like a lot more control over the whole production, which would mean Jerry Angelo would have to go as well so now the Bears are paying two people not to work for them, they'll also be more expensive than Lovie currently is.

Now take a moment to go through this list of Chicago Bears head coaches and tell me the last time this organization hired an established coach.  Go ahead, take your time.

Haven't found one yet, have you?  That's because there are none.  Since Papa Bear Halas stepped down for the final time in 1967 the Bears have hired Jim Dooley, Abe Gibron, Jack Pardee, Neil Armstrong, some guy named Ditka, Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron and Lovie Smith.

All of whom were coordinators or assistants of some kind before they were brought on to run the Bears.  A pattern that would definitely continue because if you honestly think that the McCaskey's are going to pay top dollar for an established head coach while still paying Lovie Smith you're quite delusional.

So, really, what kind of difference would a new head coach make?  Especially when that coach isn't a proven field general just yet.  Plus, the new coach is likely to have a whole new system in place, which means that many of the Bears current players -- particularly on defense where most aren't capable of playing the scheme in which they were drafted to play -- would be useless and need to be replaced.

How do you suggest they go about replacing them when they have no draft picks thanks to the Cutler trade?

So what your options essentially boil down to is getting rid of Lovie and enduring a couple of 4-12 style seasons and hoping they can turn it around a few years from now (And let's be honest with ourselves.  We're Bears fans.  After two 4-12 seasons we'll want the new coach fired too.) or keeping Lovie for another season and hoping that there aren't so many injuries next year and that by adding some free agents on the offensive line and defensive side of the ball the team can compete.

I don't like either option, but that's what we have to deal with, and I'm leaning towards the latter.  My opinion is that if the Bears can manage to fix their offensive line, that would alleviate a lot of the team's problems.  This offense may not have a ton of stars on it, but if Jay Cutler actually gets time to throw the ball, he can pick apart any secondary in the league.  He'd also be helped by being able to rely on a run game, which I think would return as well.

I really don't think Matt Forte just suddenly sucks.

A change at the offensive coordinator position would probably help out as well.  I know that Ron Turner hasn't had much to work with here in Chicago, and it's damn near impossible to run a consistent offense behind this abortion of a line, but he also hasn't shown an ability to adapt to what he does have.

So at the end of the day, while it may make us feel better to get rid of Lovie Smith and the entire coaching staff, it probably won't help all that much in the long run.  So we're going to have to settle for what we can get.

It sucks, but it's reality.