Assessing the State of the Chicago Bears Franchise

As the Bears head into the bye week, the team will be assessing their situation and making adjustments to begin the post-bye stretch and make a run at the playoffs.

We're already seeing some adjustments taking form, such as the release of veteran safety Chris Harris and the signing of rookie LB Jabara Williams.

Many of the adjustments made from what the Bears assess over the bye week won't be evident until we see them play the Eagles on Nov. 7.

The Bears, as a team, are in a better position than most would have expected after they dropped division games to the Packers and the Lions. After consecutive wins against Vikings and Buccaneers, the Bears are now currently in the NFC's sixth-seeded position for the playoffs, if the season were to end today.  

This means the Bears' destiny is in their own hands. They, at this point, need no help to get into the playoffs. But that's not to say that they will just walk into the postseason now.

Their schedule includes the Chargers, Raiders, Lions and Packers, all of whom are in good playoff positions themselves, as well as the Eagles, who have the talent to beat anyone if they get their act together. 

So the Bears will have a tough road ahead to ensure their position in the playoffs, and much of their success or failure will depend on evaluations they make this week and next.

Just as the Bears are evaluating their situation, so shall we.

Today we're going to take a look at the state of the team from a personnel prospective. But we're also going to look at the team from a coaching perspective, as well as taking a gander at the front office.  

Personnal

Let's take a moment here to be real. The Bears roster isn't going to change much more than it has in any significant way.

For better or for worse, the Bears will have to make do with what they have.

Now, no team can be made up of star players at every position. Make no mistake about it, Madden 12 is not indicative of real life in the NFL from a personnel standpoint. 

Keeping that in mind, the Bears have fewer holes in the roster than most would credit. But there are holes nonetheless. The level of talent on the roster is hard to assess at times, because of the youth that is starting in large blocks at certain positions. It's rare in the league for teams to start so many young players in the same unit.

Take the offensive line, for instance. Chris Williams leads the offensive line in the number of starts at their current position. Think about that for a minute. Garza may be getting up there in years, but he has started all of seven games in his current position.  

That aspect makes it excruciatingly difficult to assess the potential or the future of this offensive line. And that is the situation that exists at the safety position, and the wide receiver and the defensive tackle spots, as well.

There are obvious positions that are set, at least for the near future and aren't of concern. Quarterback, running back and linebackers are all as solid as it gets in the NFL.

The Bears are going to have to settle down their movement of players and show some patience if these players are ever going to develop at these spots. And patience has been an Achilles' Heel for this team since Lovie Smith took over the team in 2004. Remember that this is the same team that has started more than 50 different safety configurations since Smith took over the team.

That might be the single biggest development issue in Chicago.

As to free agents available that could help the team? Offensively, it is difficult to bring in a player in any system who can make an impact in mid-season. A new player has to learn the offense on the fly. Combine that with the complexity of Martz's scheme, and you get a situation that isn't conducive to success through free agency.  

Terrell Owens might be the most likely free agent in the field to create an impact. The man has a big mouth, but has shown over the past few years that he can play nice and contribute. And he's seen it all, as far as schemes go, so he will have the least adjustment to do to learn a new system.

But the likelihood that the Bears sign T.O. or any other impact player isn't high. In the end, teams rarely bring in players who make a difference in the current year after the season starts, and exponentially rarer that it happens after the trade deadline.

And we've likely seen the end of addition by subtraction after Chris Harris was cut. The Bears won't want to shake things up too much when they are already in a position to make a playoff run. Simply put, more can go wrong than can go right.

So the current roster won't see many changes and the Bears will focus more on improving the execution of the players they already have under contract than acquiring new toys. But the roster is deep enough to get the job done. Remember that this team made the NFC Championship Game just last year with effectively the same roster.

Coaching

Here's where things get a bit complicated.

First, let's tackle the always stoic Lovie Smith.  

There are two schools of thought on the outwardly passionless coach from Big Sandy, Texas.  The first is the thought that Smith is a bumbling nincompoop who refuses to see that the league has passed his vaunted defense by, who cannot develop talent, who can't figure out when to throw a challenge flag and who deals more in "Rex is our quarterback" and "We get off the bus running" than he does in real evaluation and adjustment of the team.

The second school  of thought is the polar opposite. Smith is a great coach who's had more playoff success that any Chicago coach since Ditka, who is third on the Bears' all-time win list and who has made lemons into lemonade in Chicago with sub-par talent and an idiotic front office.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Smith is third on the Bears' all-time win list for coaches. But he's eighth on the list of the Bears 13 head coaches in win percentage (the Bears had three more head coaches in 1919, but there is no record of the teams win-loss record and the season isn't recognized by the NFL), and that is decidedly less impressive.  

And Smith has been successful with lesser talent. But that begs the question of why he has lesser talent. First, he has to answer for development. The "musical chairs" approach to development has not served him well, nor has it served his players well.  

The term DMS—or Danieal Manning Syndrome—was coined to described his development technique, which involves constantly moving players around to different position in the name of versatility rather than developing players at one position and providing them stability.  

Some players who have fallen victim to DMS include Mike Gandy, Israel Idonije, Devin Hester, Devin Aromashodu, Johnny Knox, Corey Graham, Frank Omiyale, Chris Williams, Nick Roach, Trumaine McBride and, of course, Danieal Manning.

Additionally, after his contract extension in 2007, Smith was granted increased power over personnel. Is it a coincidence that the Bears' drafting success has taken a serious tumble since then? Of course, there were flops when Angelo had complete control. Michael Haynes comes to mind immediately.  

But look at the list of players who were drafted since like Dan Bazuin, Jaron Gilberrt, Jaquin Iglesias, Marcus Freeman, Michael Okwo and Josh Moore, all of who never saw even a little success in the league. While Angelo was no draft genius before Lovie's power expansion, the draft has taken a decided turn for the worse since 2007.

But to be fair, he didn't create the Krenzel/Hutchinson situation in '04, nor was he the guy who refused to provide an adequate backup to Rex Grossman in '05, when the team still won 10 games under rookie Kyle Orton.

But Smith does have a winning record and has had the Bears competitive nearly every season he has been coach. He has brought the team its only Super Bowl appearance, its only NFC Championship and its only two NFC Championship Game appearances since the Ditka era. 

In reality, Smith is an average coach how has his good qualities and his bad ones. The other reality is that Smith isn't going anywhere any time soon. Love him or hate him, the Bears will be headed by Lovie Smith for at least the next couple of years.

Now, being fair to Smith, with all of the above issues, his in-game coaching skills are still vastly under-rated. Consider the position the Bears are in now. Consider what they overcame in 2010, 2006 and 2005. With personnel and development issues galore, Smith still managed to coach this team to the playoffs each of those seasons. Credit should be given where it is due, and it is due here.

At this point, Smith will have to buckle down on his coaching staff and take control. While he isn't an offensive guru, as a defensive coach, he knows what offenses do to beat a defense. Ultimately, it is his job to direct his assistants and he must do so now.

Now, the other coach who is notably on fans' collective minds is Mike Martz.

Martz isn't going anywhere either, folks. Not this year. No matter how much clamoring the fans do, the Bears will not part ways with Martz before the season is out.

No matter how poorly Martz calls games, the Bears have a better chance of making the playoffs with him and his system than they do if they scrap his system mid season and try to learn a new one on the fly. The call for Martz to be fired is a call for the Bears to fall flat on their faces.

It may be frustrating to watch Martz ignore the run with a lead in the second half. But it would be far more frustrating to watch the offense try to learn a whole new system mid-season. It's really that simple, folks.

So it comes down to adjusting the scheme rather than the coaching staff. And to be fair, Martz has done that. He has called shorter drops, faster developing plays and has kept more blockers back in an attempt to give the offense a chance to succeed.

But when he starts flailing around and throwing the ball constantly when ball control is called for, Smith has to have the awareness and leadership skills to step in and demand Martz adjust accordingly.

Jerry Angelo

At what point does Angelo actually have to take responsibility for many of the problems that have hampered the Bears this season?

At what point do we stop accepting comments like  “We did everything you could possibly do to that position [the offensive line]. Nobody did more than the Chicago Bears.” from Angelo?

At what point does Angelo get held accountable for the unrest in the locker room?

The bottom line is that Angelo has stepped in it. After the Bears exited the playoffs because they couldn't protect franchise quarterback Jay Cutler, Angelo did little to fix the problem besides adding a rookie first-rounder and bringing in a first-round bust to replace an aging legend.

He has failed to provide the franchise quarterback he traded for with help at the receiver position, instead bringing in has-beens and never-were's to address what many called the worst receiving corps in the league.

He has failed to provide young talent to replace aging veterans on the defensive side of the ball.

The team drafts a massive number of defensive linemen and safeties high in the draft, and yet the positions are the two most unstable on the defense.

He created unrest in the locker room by failing to pay Matt Forte, Lance Briggs and Chris Harris and by [according to Olsen] lying about Greg Olsen requesting a trade. The way that Tommie Harris, Rashied Davis, Danieal Manning and Olin Kreutz were dealt with didn't sit well in the locker room, either.  

Now he releases veteran safety Chris Harris mid-season with poor play coming from Major Wright and Brandon Meriweather. Granted, Harris hasn't played up to his performance expectations this season. But to be fair, Harris is coming off of a leg injury.  

This move stinks more of politics than performance. Harris is very active in social media and has been outspoken about problems in the locker room.

All of these moves bring to the front the question of whether Lance Briggs was correct when he said, before backtracking, that the rift between the players and the front office "takes away from wanting to go out on the field and just play."  

Are the problems with execution on the field directly related to problems that Angelo is fostering in the locker room? And why is Angelo suddenly taking such a different approach to player negotiation from what he has in the past?

All the while, Angelo has held everyone accountable but himself. At what point does Angelo come under the 8-ball?

If the Bears are going to make a staffing change mid-season, this is the direction they should be looking. Fans have called for Smith and Martz's heads, but Angelo has put them in a position to fail, just as he did to Jauron in the early 2000's.  

Bears legend Mike Ditka famously called Angelo out then, as well as the rest of the Bears' front office, for a lack of accountability and for funneling the blame at Jauron. It seems his arguments are still valid now.

It seems that Angelo is still trying to redirect the blame in 2011. And in this writer's opinion, the Bears ditched the wrong veteran today.

And now it's your turn, ladies and gentlemen. Step up the the soapbox below and let your voice be heard.