Will the Bears Reintroduce Tackling To Their Training Camp Program?

Over the past several seasons, Bears fans everywhere have been destroying their television sets in fits of rage.

So what is the culprit?

It isn’t roid rage, demonic possession, or even people doing their best Elvis impersonation. The problem stems from the overwhelming frustration in watching the Bears try to tackle.

Now normally when players, or anyone for that matter, struggle with something the motto has always been “practice makes perfect”. 

Not Lovie’s Bears. You see, Lovie doesn’t believe in tackling in practice. Every time he is asked about it, Lovie’s response is “the guys know what they have to do.” 

If that works, why practice at all? Why not just talk about your blocking scheme or your special teams coverage?

Yet the Bears continue to not tackle in practice. In the immortal words of Ned Flanders beatnik parents “we’ve tried nothing and were all out of ideas.”

Lovie claims this is to reduce injuries, but I don’t buy it. We still have injuries every training camp.

On top of that, when guys start the season having not been tackled in eight months, or in the case of rookies having never been tackled by a pro, there is bound to be some trepidation about taking a hit.

I know people who support the no tackling policy will say that these guys have been learning how to tackle since Pop Warner, but we’ve also learned since that time, playing like you’re scared to get tackled will get you hurt.

Baptism by fire is not the answer for a lot of these young players. Part of getting into “football shape” is getting used to getting hit.

Perhaps a bigger, yet unexplored, issue is how it affects our draft and development.

The Bears scouts tend to fall in love with hitters. Chris Harris, Joey LaRocque, Brandon McGowan, the list goes on. Even Craig Steltz drew comparisons to the great Doug Plank when he was drafted.

The problem is, coming out of college,  many of these kids are hitters, but not tacklers. They were able to get away with it in college because most of the guys they were tackling would never see a football field on Sunday, but in the pros it causes problems. We have seen our share of missed tackles and unneeded penalties.

So should we stop drafting these guys? Absolutely not.

The right thing to do is to develop and coach these young players. There is nothing stating a guy can’t be a hitter and a tackler, but in order to become that, they have to actually tackle.

Waiting for game time to try this leaves us in a bad predicament. Most of these guys either never adjust, or end up playing with less passion.

It is hard to play with passion when you have to think about breaking a guy down because you have never had a chance to do it. Tackling should be a reaction, not a thought process.

Could you imagine what would happen if your favorite boxer had to think about how to react to every punch?

We have lost too much talent over the years because we failed to develop a player.

Look at Chris Harris; everyone wonders how we let him go when we don’t have any consistency at safety. When Harris was here he was undisciplined, constantly missing tackles and constantly drawing penalties for illegal hits. Lovie decided he couldn’t work with him so he went to Carolina where he was promptly coached, developed, and became a terrific starter for their secondary.

The bottom line is that veterans and rookies alike will benefit from tackling in practice.

Injuries can occur at anytime. We know they can occur when they don’t tackle.

There is even a school of thought suggesting that not tackling in practice may increase injury to players who are entering the season unprepared. Most importantly, this is another example of playing not to lose instead of playing to win.

Angelo has finally gotten aggressive, the time is now, the Bears can no longer afford to wait and see, they need to go and take. Lovie needs to stop acting like an emissary ready to negotiate the outcome of the game and start acting like a conqueror who is prepared to dictate the outcome of the season.