Bears GM Jerry Angelo Turns Up Heat on Head Coach Lovie Smith

About four hours after his boss failed to offer a vote of confidence Sunday, Bears coach Lovie Smith understood the reason.

The scoreboard told that reason: Ravens 31, Bears 7.

“We’re disappointed in our play, disappointed in our record,” Smith said. “I’m the head football coach so I’m sure a lot of people aren’t knocking down the door wanting to pat me on the back.”

Smith had said the Bears had three “legitimate losses” among their eight heading into Sunday’s contest. Make that four out of nine.

In other words, they got hammered four times in ways that only bad NFL teams get beat. In a league built on parity, few decent teams lose by double digits often. The Bears aren’t a decent team.

Sunday they committed six turnovers, including three more Jay Cutler interceptions. It brought his total to 25 on the year, the second highest total in Bears history. He’ll have to do some work to match Sid Luckman’s record of 31, though, with only two games remaining.

“Their running game got going a little bit, passing game...The game looked like one team was playing for something and the other one really wasn’t,” Smith said.

While this was certainly the situation, it’s anything but a positive for Smith’s future here that this is the case.

A few hours earlier, general manager Jerry Angelo said the Comcast Sportsnet report that Smith was returning is “speculation.”

He said a review will be conducted after the season and pointed to the final few games as important because he needs to see the Bears continuing to play hard or even win.

“We need to get a win,” Angelo said. “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.”

Angelo said he wants to talk to Smith during their review about the decision to be both defensive play-caller and head coach and the effect it might have had.

“I’m sure that’s going to come up and then we’ll see,” Angelo said. “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.”

Two things Angelo said won’t have any impact on whether or not Smith comes back are the season-ending injury to linebacker Brian Urlacher and Smith’s remaining contract—two years at an $11 million cost to the McCaskey ownership family.

“Everybody has injuries,” Angelo said about whether losing his best player crippled the Bears from the start. “I'm not going to blame injuries on our season. “For the most part we stayed pretty healthy. Losing Urlacher right at the beginning [hurt] 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.”

The cash would seem an obvious McCaskey excuse for not wanting to let Smith go—even if it shouldn’t be in a perfect world.

“It’s not about money,” Angelo said, “It’s about doing what we feel we need to do to be a better football team.” One way to achieve that would be stop turning over the ball. With the heat turned up both internally and from media and fans, it appears Smith and offensive coordinator Ron Turner are not quite as willing to absolve Cutler of blame.

“Every call’s not going to be perfect, there’s a lot of times you’d like to have something back and that’s just part of the process and learn,” Turner said. “When you have a good look and have what you want defensively, then you have to execute.

“When you don’t, then you have to manage the bad plays.”

There’s that word again: manage. They got rid of the game manager when they shipped Kyle Orton out in the trade for Cutler. Now they have Cutler nearly doing an even trade: receptions for interceptions. His 7.9 passer rating Sunday was Grossmanesque.

Going 10-for-27 for 94 yards won’t beat anyone but yourself.

“I think you can look at what has been our team’s biggest problem,” Smith said. “Jay’s been a part of that. We’ve turned the ball over too many times. We’ve had the opportunity to make plays and we haven’t. You know when you’re not a good football team there are a lot of things that have gone wrong.”

What can be done about it? “We’ve been talking all year,” Smith said. “It’s about action and trying to take care of some of these things.”

The receivers and offensive line have absorbed a lot of the blame for Cutler’s problems. Angelo doesn’t think the receivers should necessarily be scapegoats. In fact, he doesn’t believe he should have pursued another veteran receiver stronger than he did.

It has to be remembered that Angelo did pursue Anquan Boldin, even if he couldn’t offer what the Cardinals wanted.

“I thought our receiver position played pretty well,” Angelo said. “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.“ The one guy everyone seems willing to throw under the bus is Turner. Cutler did it last week by failing to give Turner a vote of confidence.

On Sunday, Angelo did it in a way when asked if the offensive scheme could be to blame when a Pro Bowl quarterback comes in and struggles.

“Anytime you don’t see progress throughout it’s not just one thing,” he said. “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.”

Angelo said Smith still has autonomy over hiring and firing his assistants, although he does get to offer input. Turner has one year left on his contract.

Smith, meanwhile, says he isn’t concerning himself with job security questions at this point.

“I come to work same way each day, trying to do the best job I possibly can,” he said. “If you can do that, you don’t think about job security.” The lack of a vote of confidence from Angelo lingered afterward like a foul odor in a crowded elevator.

“What’s a vote of confidence at this time?” Smith said. “I am sure what Jerry said is what I’m saying right now: disappointed in our play and probably let the season play out. That’s the way you do everything.

“You don’t talk about things like that during the year except what’s going on on the football field."

After the season, if Angelo is to be believed, is when the talking will occur—and action, if there is any to come.