Improving the Bears

For all but Saints and Colts fans, football season is over. This is a great time to look back on the positives and negatives of your favorite team. Looking back on the Bears season, the positives were that they beat Brett Favre and the Vikings and…um, shit, not much else.

The negatives were:

Trading For Jay Cutler and Giving Away a Bunch of High Picks

Brian Urlacher’s Injury

Giving Jay Cutler a Big Guaranteed Contract Through 2013

Our Offensive Line Being Swiss Cheese

Jay Cutler’s Interceptions

Matt Forte Taking a Major Step Backwards

Jay Cutler’s Stupid Look On His Face

Tommie Harris Having an IQ Lower Than 70

Jay Cutler Missing Wide Open Receivers

The Gaines Adams Trade

Not Getting the Real Jay Cutler

Lovie Smith Showing He Knows Nothing About Defense

Jay Cutler’s Leadership

Also, the off-season has gotten off to a stellar start with nobody wanting to be a coordinator for the Bears. On offense, they are going after a bunch of people with no proven track record, and none of them will even consider the position. Meanwhile, the one person with a proven track record of always having great offenses, Mike Martz, is practically begging for the job, and the Bears refuse to give him an interview.

But back to Jay Cutler. He sucks. The guy has never won. He didn’t win in college; he didn’t win for the Broncos. He is a loser. He has a very strong arm, and people really get excited about that, but he can’t read a defense to save his life (I’m not sure if he could read a book to save his life either).

Most people have jumped on board with the Jay Cutler Sucks Bandwagon, but there are still those people that feel he just needs a #1 Receiver to be great. I have great news for those people, the Bears first round pick this year is currently projected to select: Dez Bryant, WR, Oklahoma State. Dez Bryant is arguably the best receiver to come out of college since Calvin Johnson, as most scouts prefer him over last year’s top wide receiver, Michael Crabtree. Holy shit, that’s awesome news for the Bears, but, what? Wait a minute. Oh, that’s right; they gave that pick to the Broncos.

My personal plan would be for the Bears to blow everything up and get rid of everyone. Trade every valuable player they have for future draft picks, and I would prefer to not even get 2010 or 2011 draft picks, I want them to look into 2012 and 2013, because this team is going to suck for a while, so the key is to focus on 2014 and beyond. What many people don’t realize about the salary cap is that it also creates a salary floor, and since there will be no cap this year, the Bears could technically go down to a $60 million dollar payroll if they wanted (This year’s salary floor was 112.1 million). This would be awesome, but there is no way that Jerry Angelo would do this, because even as cheap as Bears’ ownership is, they won’t stand for the team to be Detroit Lions bad.

My realistic plan would be to first try to sign Brandon Marshall as a restricted free agent. He is clashing with McDaniels, so there’s a chance the Bears could get him for just a first rounder or just a second rounder, but even if they gave up a first and a third, the plan still works. Get Marshall at all costs. Put a clause in there that if he plays 6 or more of his games at above 5,000 feet above sea level, then his contract becomes guaranteed which means the Broncos won’t even have the choice of matching it.

Next, trade for a bunch of 6^th and 7^th round picks for these next two drafts. Preferably, I would like the Bears drafting somewhere between 8-10 times in the final two rounds. The NFL could easily go to a 12 round draft and teams would happily be selecting quality players with those picks. I want the Bears to strictly draft offensive linemen with these picks. People are really piss poor at scouting linemen, so there are always quality guys in later rounds that end up making multiple pro bowls. If the Bears find two starters, then they’ve done well with their picks as far as I’m concerned (Also, depending on the level of tender, Jammal Brown of New Orleans might be a good restricted free agent to get as he has been out for the year and replaced by Jermon Bushrod who is cheap and has been very solid this year. If it’s a second round tender, then they should definitely go for it).

I don’t think the defense is nearly as bad as they played this year, but they aren’t too good either. As long as Hunter Hillenmeyer doesn’t play, they are guaranteed to look better. If they can stay healthy and get a run stopping defensive tackle. This class is extremely deep in defensive tackles, and some good ones should fall to the second round, oh wait, the Bears traded their second round pick for Gaines Adams. Nice job, Bears. Nobody great is going to be there in the third, but the Bears do a good job of finding quality cornerbacks late, so maybe they can snag a quality guy there. The Bears should also abandon the Cover-2, and hire somebody from Baltimore, Philly, New Orleans, or the Jets and go blitz crazy on people. They don’t have the talent to get pressure with a straight up defense anymore, so they need to start to scheme any way that they can.

They would not have a dynasty with these changes. Nowhere near it. But they would have a rich man’s Jake Delhomme in Jay Cutler, and the Panthers managed to make a Super Bowl by having Delhomme strictly throw to Steve Smith, maybe the Bears can do the same when reuniting Marshall and Cutler.

Will the Bears do any of these things? Probably not. Will they suck for the next four years? Probably. Don’t worry Bears fans, 2014 is just around the corner.

-Joe

P.S. If they decide to sign John David Booty, they could definitely have themselves a dynasty. For anyone not familiar, JDB played varsity football in SEVENTH GRADE. I think the only other people to do that were Shane Falco and Willie Beamon. Hence, a recipe for success.

P.P.S. Draft Edds and Angerer too.

P.P.P.S. I almost titled this EmBEARassing.