Q and A with Bears GM Jerry Angelo: What's Coach Lovie Smith's Fate?

In a wide-ranging interview with media Sunday afternoon prior to the Bears-Baltimore Ravens game, Chicago general manager Jerry Angelo answered questions about the team's disappointing 5-8 season and some about the future.

Angelo suggested that a Comcast Sportsnet report saying Smith would be retained might be premature, and that an evaluation process will be made with the final few games having an impact.

The Bears' general manager said the $11 million still owed to Smith over two years and injuries the team suffered this year, like the early season-ender to linebacker Brian Urlacher, will have no impact on decisions about the team's head coach. 

Angelo confirmed Smith will have final say in who will go and stay on the coaching staff, provided he is still head coach next year, and expressed disappointment in the way the offense has played around quarterback Jay Cutler.

Here is what Angelo said: 

Q: With the season lost, when does the evaluation process begin for coach Lovie Smith and his staff?

A: At the end of the year, obviously, we’ll sit down and we’ll talk through everything like we have every other year, so the protocol in terms of how we go about our evaluation won’t change, and that’ll be at the end of the season. You know Lovie and I talk predominantly about our players/personnel during the year, focused on each and every week, winning the game so to speak, as well as talking about some of the younger guys, particularly now, where we’re at, out of the playoffs. So that’s been our dialogue through the season and no more than really what it’s been in every other year.

Q: Lovie is owed a lot of money for 2010 and 2011. Will money factor into the decision on his future?

A: I’m not going to get into that. At the end of the year we’ll talk. We have three football games left, I know we’re not in the playoffs, obviously we didn’t meet expectations, but when we sit down and we go through everything that we need to talk about because we did have some problems, and I want to make sure that I focus on, first and foremost, to make sure we understand what went wrong, and then what we need to fix it. I don’t look at money in those times. It’s not about money, it’s about doing what we feel we need to do to be a better football team.

Q: There was a report with unnamed sources that Lovie would definitely be back next year, was that inaccurate, premature, accurate ... ?

A: I don’t know where the report came from, I heard that, again speculation, I’m not dealing with. At the end of the year, we sit down, we talk as I’m saying, so I’m going to keep circling back to this because that’s what we do. I understand where you guys are going. I’m not going to talk about anything prematurely. It makes no sense to do that, we’ve never done it in the past, we’re not going to do it regardless of how the season went.

Q: Does this team need to be competitive in the final three weeks?

A: I fell very much so. We need to get a win, that’s very important right now, and I feel like we’ve been competitive, we just haven’t been able to win, and that’s the bottom line in our business as we all know.

Q: In retrospect, did Lovie’s duties as defensive play caller hurt him as a head coach this year?

A: I can’t answer that. Again, I want to talk to Lovie about a lot of things. I’m sure that’s going to come up and then we’ll see. Things didn’t come together like we wanted and there are a lot of reasons why. It’s not just any one thing and he may bring that up, I don’t know. All this is premature, but we could get a real laundry list of things that didn’t go quite the way we wanted them to go this year.

Q: Does the roster have to be better?

A: I like our roster. Your record is your record. This is who we are. I'm not going to get into that game. We didn't play well as a team this year. We were inconsistent. We just seemed to never get the offense and defense playing well on the same Sunday. That's very hard to do and win if that's not happening. So we like the roster, we have a good nucleus of young players. So pretty much our roster will be intact next year. But I look at that as a positive, not a negative.

Q: What is your biggest concern about this team?

A: It's the consistency. We just didn't have the consistency throughout the year. Again, I have my thoughts and at the end of the year, I'll share them with Lovie. And you have to be able to do that. And we had some veteran players so it wasn't that we had too many young players, but we just weren't able to get that week in and week out. So for the most part it didn't bode well for us on Sunday and we just weren't able to finish.

Q: You've been here a while, is this the most frustrating season?

A: Any time you lose it's frustrating. Is this any more so than that? I don't know. Maybe it is if I really sat down and thought about it. But again we'll address everything that needs to be addressed at the right time and we will get our problems fixed.

Q: Does Brian Urlacher's injury impact on the decisions you might have to make about the future of the coaching staff? Does it have to be taken into account when reflecting on what happened?

A: Everybody has injuries. I'm not going to blame injuries on our season. For the most part we stayed pretty healthy. Losing Urlacher right at the beginning was big, sure, but we were able to overcome that. Like I said, injuries are a part of the game. If you have a rash of injuries that's one thing. We never really had a rash of injuries.

Q: Do decisions about the future have to be based on how best to build around QB Jay Cutler?

A: It's our starting point, yes. It is about our offense. We came into this year and we felt like we were going to have a pretty good offense or have the ability to be a pretty good offense this year. I should say it that way. We had young receivers, it was a new system. I said this way back when, that there going to be some growing pains and it was a process. So things didn't quite come together on offense. Things didn't quite come together on defense like we wanted either. That's an important part of what we need to make happen to have the success that we all want.

Q: Considering reports about Lovie Smith the last few weeks, can you clarify what his status is from now going forward?

A: Well, he’s here. He’s our head football coach. I don’t know what else is there to clarify.

Q: Bringing in a Pro Bowl QB and having an offense stagnant indicates to some that there's a big problem with the offense, not just one or two people. Is there validity to that argument?

A: Yeah, there is. Anytime you don’t see progress throughout, it’s not just one thing. We have our issues as a football team and certainly we do as an offense too. But again, we’ll evaluate those things. I’ve been doing that. I have my thoughts. I feel very good about going into the offseason, but I want to see these next three games. I’m not going to minimize these three games and see how we continue to develop.”

Q: Fans see an unprecedented quality of head coaching candidates available like Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, maybe Mike Holmgren and Mike Shanahan. Does that have any impact on your decision-making process as far as what to do with Lovie?

A: No, it doesn’t. Not at all. We’re going to do what we feel we need to do to win and become the kind of team that we know we can be. We’ll go through an extensive evaluation process like we have every year. There probably will be more things to talk about this year in the offseason, yes, I’m not minimizing that, and we’ll do that and we’ll do that rightly.

Q: Everyone is talking about Lovie's situation and his evaluation process. What about your own evaluation process, how will that go? Will that be any different than in any previous year?

A: I’m evaluating myself too. But I do know this: We all share into what happened this year. I’m not going to sit here and put blame on any one thing. When we sit down and visit and I talk to ownership as well as the coaches, our personnel people, it will be an organizational decision on what we do going forward on everything. I can’t say any more than that, because we haven’t made any definitive evaluations on anything right now. All this right now is premature talk. I understand these questions are out there. I’d like to give you answers right now, but I can’t because we still have some football left to play.

Q: Does Lovie have control over who he keeps and who goes on the coaching staff?

A: Lovie has always had control of his staff, determining his hires, and I have always felt that the head coach has to have that autonomy with his staff. That’s never been in question. Do I have input? Yes. Like Lovie has input on personnel, he’ll ask, as he has in the past, about assistant coaches that we’ve brought in. That won’t change, I’m sure, because we’re working in unison on that.

Q: Just to clarify, the one thing you can't say, and again to address the sepculation, is that Lovie will definitely be back next year?

A: All I am saying, guys, is that at the end of the year we sit and we evaluate everything. That is all I am saying. Where you run with that, how you talk about it, you’re going to say what you want, you’re going to spin it the way that you want to spin it. I’m just telling you right now that at the end of the year, we will evaluate everything.

Q: Not to be argumentative, but if you said he is back, you would end speculation.

A: You got the point of my answer.

Q: You mentioned young receivers. Do you regret not getting an established NFL receiver before the season?

A: Do you think the receiver position has been our problem?

Q: I'm just asking.

A: I don’t think it could have helped. I thought our receiver position played pretty well. There are other things that maybe we didn’t do as well, but I felt that turned out to be a pretty good position of strength. I want to see it continue in these next three weeks because we have a lot of young guys.

Q: Everyone thought the offensive line would be better. Are you disappointed in the line? 

A: I am disappointed that we weren’t able to play consistently on offense. That’s all. As I said, I could say the same thing about our defense. We weren’t good on third down on defense. We spent too much time on the field on defense. We weren’t good in the red zone on offense or on defense. I can go down and give you a list of things you might want to ask me the next go-around. I understand the issues. I know what didn’t happen this year. You know it, I know it. Some of the things are correctable with personnel and those are the things we will be talking about. We will be talking about schemes, we will be talking about everything, guys, so nothing will go unnoticed, untalked about in any area because we failed expectations, it’s the bottom line. We didn’t do the things that we felt we were gonna do. So we will go back, we’ll evaluate and we will come out stronger for it.