Posts tagged LovieSmith at FanHouse

If anyone had the pleasure of watching the Seahawks first defense obliterate the Bears' pathetic offensive line Saturday night, you'll know why I put win in quotes in the title of this piece. The Vikings and Packers pass rush units have to be licking their chops at the chance to face this line twice during the regular season. It was an embarrassing display until the Seahawks called off the dogs.

Make no mistake about it, the Bears inability to effectively patch a decent offensive line together is going to kill any chance some of the talented, young skill players -- Devin Hester, Earl Bennett, Matt Forte, Greg Olsen, etc. -- have to show their stuff.

Now, speculation is rampant in the Chicago papers that Lovie Smith's demeanor and some of his statements are pointing towards Kyle Orton taking the starting job over Rex Grossman.

Some of the reasons provided are listed after the jump:

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is a month off, and to get you ready for 2008, FanHouse previews all 32 teams, "heat index" style. We'll rate each club in 10 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Quarterback: It's an open competition between Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton. Cue the laugh track. I'll try to be positive. In 2006, Grossman led the team to a 13-3 record and an NFC Championship to boot. He led the NFL in 100+ QB rating games (yes, I know he led in games below 40 and also had a zero rating once ... remember I was being positive), and threw for over 3000 yards with 23 TD passes for a running-and-defense team. Orton went 10-5 as a starter in the previous season with atrocious numbers (seriously, he didn't even throw for 2,000 yards or ten TDs in 15 games). Look for Grossman to start, unless the Bears want to completely take away the threat of Devin Hester. And they can't do that. Heat Index: 2

In sports, the losers take their cues from the winners. Whether they hope to copy the style of play or organizational philosophy, when one way is successful it inspires a legion of imitators. The Chicago Bears can't copy much about the Boston Celtics, different sports and all, but they do hope to borrow their worst-to-first turnaround and co-opt it as their own.

"It's good to see a team like the Boston Celtics come back from a disappointing year and hold up the championship trophy the next year," Lovie Smith said. "We've been in last place and we've climbed that mountain. So that's the message going in."

As if Devin Hester playing quarterback wasn't enough of a trip to fantasyland for one week. Who is going to be playing the role of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in Chicago this season? Brandon Lloyd and Marty Booker? Booker may be on the older side but I doubt he'll give the Bears as much as P.J. Brown.

The Celtics of 2007 had very little to do with the Celtics of 2008. They didn't just magically start winning games. No, they overhauled the roster of a putrid team and were successful because of it. The Bears, on the other hand, haven't added any veterans of consequence and may be even worse offensively. They do have plenty of off-field intrigue and embarrassment, though. That smells a little bit more like the Knicks than the Celtics.

The Bears had questions up and down the roster when the 2007 season ended. Offensive line, running back and wide receiver have been addressed, in part, anyway, and the biggest issue heading into 2008 is the quarterback position. Which has been the same "biggest issue" in Chicago since the team drafted Rex Grossman five years ago.

Head coach Lovie Smith has contended all spring that the job is up for grabs and he doesn't plan on naming a starter anytime soon.

[B]oth [Grossman and Kyle Orton are] coming into the competition on equal ground. As far as how we're going to conduct it, we're going to let them go play. ... They both know that we've been evaluating them since we started offseason workouts and it'll continue up until it's obvious to us that we know which guy should be the starter. When that'll happen, it's hard to say. I don't think you can necessarily gauge exactly who the guy is based solely on practice. There isn't anything live in practice. So to me I see it going into the preseason, seeing what happens during the games and then making a decision from there.

I think Smith is right -- it's hard to tell much just from practice, particularly when wearing pads and hitting are off limits until training camp. The downside, of course, is that waiting until the preseason doesn't leave much time for evaluation.

Two years ago, the Bears signed Ricky Manning away from the Panthers to be the team's nickel back. Chicago front-loaded his contract, which, in terms of the salary cap implications, is good news should they decide to "Adam Archuleta" him in the coming months.

Manning currently finds himself on the third team, and last season, the Bears opted to go with rookie seventh-rounder Trumaine McBride when Nathan Vasher missed time with an injury.

The Chicago Sun-Times' Brad Biggs points out that head coach Lovie Smith is fond of using the depth chart as a motivational tool. Sometimes it works (Mark Bradley was allegedly the team's fifth wideout at the beginning of the '07 season), and sometimes it doesn't (see Cedric Benson ... any example will do).

Manning gives the response we've come to expect from players who could be losing their jobs:

'I try not to worry about things I can't control. What I can control is I will be out there making plays. I will be a playmaker in this league. Whether it's here or somewhere else, I can't control that. Whether it's this year or next year, I can't control that.''

You know, this wouldn't even be an issue if the NFL played it's games inside Denny's. When it comes to Moons Over My Hammy and nerds, Manning's unstoppable.

When the Bears drafted Matt Forte in the second round of the draft, it seemed to signal the start of a competition for the starting running back job. Cedric Benson, despite being handed the job on a platter 12 months earlier, hadn't done enough to ensure he'd stay in the job. When Benson got arrested, it looked like the battle had tilted in Forte's favor.

That case still needs sorting out, though, and Benson's still got one guy who thinks he can do the job. During a Q-and-A with the team's web site, Lovie Smith said that it was Benson's job to lose.

Matt Forte has never played a down for us here. He's like all other rookies, starting from the bottom and working his way up. Cedric was our starter last year, and he's our starter right now. For someone else to be the starter, they're going to have to beat him out.

It would be impractical of Smith to view things any differently. It's bad form to have players lose their jobs without at least a chance to keep them. It's the opposite of what the team's doing at quarterback. The Bears keep saying it's an open competition but if Rex Grossman's healthy, he's starting on opening day.

Running back is less clear but Benson being the starter on May 17th means very little come training camp. That's the real open competition in the Chicago backfield.

It looks like Adam Archuleta's NFL career could be nearing its end. The Redskins forked over $10 million guaranteed before the 2006 season for the former first-round pick only to see him lose his starting job in training camp before an injury put him back in the lineup. And then, last off-season, Washington traded Archuleta to the Bears, a team that had pursued him the year before.

Bears head coach Lovie Smith had coached Archuleta in St. Louis, and figured the safety would be comfortable in the Cover-2 defense he grew up with playing for the Rams. Didn't happen. And today, Archuleta is looking for work.

So what happened? No idea. But the Bears have a glut at safety and Archuleta became expendable. The team drafted LSU's Craig Steltz in the fourth round of the 2008 draft, and he joins Mike Brown, Brandon McGowan, Danieal Manning, and Kevin Payne.

Archuleta, 30, is an unrestricted free agent. And yet Rex Grossman, who has arguably been just as big a disappointment as Archuleta, is still gainfully employed. I'm pretty sure the Bears' '08 season wasn't going to hinge on Archuleta's role with the team; can't say the same thing about Grossman.

Hat tip: Pro Football Talk

There's an argument for not getting drafted and it goes something like this: sometimes it's better to be a free agent because a player can choose where he signs; a sixth- or seventh-round pick has no such luxury and if they end up on a team deep at the position they play, chances are, come August, they'll be looking for a new job.

This explains why former Florida quarterback Chris Leak, after going undrafted in 2007, signed with the Bears. Rex Grossman, Kyle Orton and Brian Griese weren't names that screamed "franchise players" even if Lovie Smith won't admit it. Leak was released midway through the '07 season, which might indicate that his professional calling lies somewhere outside the NFL.

Not yet. Another team with a young unproven quarterback, the Kansas City Chiefs, want to give Leak a look-see. From the Kansas City Star's Jeffrey Flanagan:

"He's been around, and we'll take a look at what he's got," Chiefs coach Herm Edwards said. "He's an excellent athlete who's been in some tough spots and has won."

Edwards said he will view Leak as a quarterback rather than trying to convert him to another position. "We're definitely looking at him as a quarterback," Edwards said. "He's got the arm strength. He's kind of got a different game than the other quarterbacks we have. So we'll check it out."

If you spend time perusing the myriad mock drafts filling web tubes this month, you'll see quite a few that predict the Bears will take Rashard Mendenhall with the 14th pick in the first round. FanHouse has been doing one of their own but the Bears don't pick until next week and I don't believe in spoilers so you'll just have to guess what we think.
Far more important than our opinion, though, is Lovie Smith's and the coach was more than willing to share his thoughts with Dan Pompei of the Chicago Tribune. Smith addressed the need for a better running game in '08 but intimated that the best way to get there is by taking an offensive lineman in the first round.

"It's probably better getting linemen earlier [in the draft]," Smith said. "More running backs have turned out later in the draft than have offensive linemen or even defensive linemen."

More specifically, good tackles come early in the draft and good running backs come all over the place. For every LaDainian Tomlinson there's a Cedric Benson while the track record of tackles has been much stronger.

The bad experience of Benson (and Curtis Enis and Rashaan Salaam) shouldn't stop the Bears from picking the right back but it may make them keenly aware that there's a lot of pieces that go into creating a successful running game.

Sometimes you have to wonder if NFL coaches go on all these pre-draft visits because of genuine interest in the players, as a smokescreen to occlude their real plans or because they're looking to load up on frequent flier miles to take their wives to Tahiti. Lovie Smith's trip to Fayetteville for lunch with Darren McFadden and Felix Jones seems like the latter.

McFadden isn't going to be around when the Bears pick at 14, unless he's planning to spend the pick gained in the Lance Briggs tampering decision to trade up. That plus the general desire for McFadden around the league makes it an ineffective manuever to throw teams off their scent. Jones, on the other hand, might be a bit of a reach at that spot, especially when you look at the Bears substandard offensive line.

There could be another reason for Chicago's interest. Cedric Benson isn't a guarantee to keep his job if healthy but if his fractured left ankle hasn't healed sufficiently, the team would need more than competition for him this summer. That immediate need wouldn't quite justify the Bears taking a back before addressing their needs up front but it would make it a bit easier to understand. I still think Mrs. Smith's just angling for a drink with an umbrella in it, though.