No Love For Lovie Smith

We all took part of the same roller coaster on Sunday. The roller coaster ride that had the Chicago Bears impressively drive down the field in under 30 seconds to allow Robbie Gould to kick the game-tying field goal against the Seattle Seahawks and send the game into overtime. In overtime, the roller coaster took a dive as the Seattle Seahaws essentially drove the length of the field and scored a touchdown on the first possession of overtime, thus giving them the victory over the Bears.

Dec 2, 2012; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith prior to a game against the Seattle Seahawks at Soldier Field. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

Now, after the Bears loss to the Seahawks on Sunday, I did something that is unheard of during this new age of tweeting and Facebook. I stayed silent. I decided to reserve my opinion until after my initial feelings subsided. I promise you that my initial feelings would have been quite combative, too much so to fit with the FanSided theme. My initial feelings were similar to those of Eminem’s at the end of the movie “8 Mile”; though my F-bombs were geared to many of the players on the Bears’ roster. In the span of last night and Monday morning, those feelings passed. That is not to say that I’m overlooking the naive excuse that some were giving in saying that the Bears’ defense was tired; or the fact that the Bears’ bend but don’t break defense is indeed broken; or the inept offensive play-calling; that is just say that one thing in particular stood out to me more than anything that happened during the game. That one thing was the comments that head coach Lovie Smith made after the game.

"“That hasn’t happened to us very often around here,” Bears coach Lovie Smith said. “Terrible job I did (of) getting our football team ready. Once you get a lead, you’ve got to be able to hold a lead at home with our defense. We had opportunities to make some plays late. We didn’t.” ESPN Chicago"

Re-read the second sentence of Smith’s comments after the game, the head coach–whose sole duty is to have the team ready for each game they play during the regular season and playoffs–admits that he did a terrible job at doing one of his main functions as a head coach. That is embarrassing for Smith to make those comments as the head coach of the Chicago Bears. This is not the first time that Smith has made those comments. In fact, that has become the cliched response from Smith after a loss. If I’m a general manager of a team, I do not want my head coach saying that he did not have his football ready. Then what the hell was Smith doing all of last week? It’s clear that he wasn’t preparing the Bears for the looks that the Seahawks’ offense would give, as was the case when the Bears played the San Francisco 49ers. Comments like the ones that Smith made on Sunday is not only an indictment of the head coach, but an indictment of all what is currently wrong with the Bears’ philosophy.