About Loving Lovie Smith

Is Lovie Smith a good coach? I've spent the better part of a decade wondering.

I don't think he's particularly great on gameday. He treats timeouts like sarcastic suggestions, has wonky challenge habits, and their gameplans rarely get adjusted to the point where you'd call it a creative response to what the other team is doing. In 2005, he famously didn't double team Steve Smith en route to Smith shredding the Bears for about 220 yards in a playoff game. He throws assistant coaches under the bus and has had more offensive coordinators than Kim Kardashian has had boyfriends. His core defensive principles were innovative in 2002. His core offensive principles were all the rage in about 1940. And remember when everyone was asking "Who can stop Devin Hester?" It was Smith that took him off returns to transform him into Jerry Rice. Didn't work out so well, and wasted at least two seasons of Hester's prime, which appears to be a thing of the past at this point.

What makes him a good coach? Players play hard for him, veterans respect him. That may not seem like much, but it goes a long way in the NFL. He stresses takeways, and they go get takeaways. He never takes grudges to the media. Based on wins, he's one of the most successful coaches of the decade. They always have one or two signature wins per year, and always seem to have a couple more wins than everyone thinks they should have, and you could easily give him a B+ for 10 wins this year, given the talent assembled on the offensive line and defensive backfield.

So, do I, as a fan, want to see him fired? Yes and no. I'm not sure I trust the McCaskey family to get a head coaching search done right, after they royally screwed it up during every search in my lifetime. I remember when Dave McGinnis was going to be the coach, but they got in a contract dispute AFTER the announcement and suddenly Dick Jauron showed up at the press conference. I remember them taking what felt like 2 months too long to hire Lovie. This is the family that hired a search firm to hire their first GM. And what they have in Smith is that coach that you fire and he goes somewhere else and wins the Super Bowl. It's the devil you know vs. the devil you don't know argument.

Yet, they've been to the playoffs once in 6 seasons. They were 7-3 last year and tanked, they were 7-1 this year and lost to every single NFC playoff team on their schedule. On both occasions, you felt like if they got in, an elite QB would slowly eviscerate their Cover 2 defense while Cutler got sacked into a concussion and three picks.

My verdict: Lovie Smith is a good NFL coach, but he's not great. It's time to move on and take a chance on someone else. Your best players are Brandon Marshall and Jay Cutler . . . call up Washington and get Kyle Shanahan on the phone. Build the team around your young offensive stars and hope that the defense hangs on for another year or two before they fall apart from age.

If you really want to think big, Sean Payton is gettable, but he'd have to be the highest paid coach in the league and that's simply not happening in Chicago, especially with Dallas's checkbook in play. The Bears love to hire cheap assistants and hope they pan out. Lovie, like him or not, panned out. They got to a Super Bowl. They were competitive for a decade under his program. I won't remember Lovie the way I remember Wannstedt or Jauron, that's for sure, and that's about the highest compliment I can give a guy that teased Bears fans with greatness for the last 8+ seasons.