Chicago Bears 2008 Search for the Guilty: Coaching Staff

So now that the season is over, it's time to take a look back, all the way to 2008, to find out exactly what went wrong. Well, I mean I could just type "everything" and call it done, but that wouldn't be nerdy enough. So I'm down to be the third broken individual in this place to delve, position by position, into why his chosen team sucked so bad. And before we get to the big position-by-position thing, it would probably be best to start with a quick summary of the guys in the polo shirts who made it their job to ruin everything the players couldn't ruin on their own.

Head Coach Lovie Smith: A deluded stealth-egomaniac whose idea of an adjustment is to tell the players that the gameplan that got them down by sixteen at halftime is perfect, and to win, they just need to execute it better. Best known for hiring friends who just happen to be football coaches, as opposed to hiring football coaches who happen to be friends. Signature move: Staring up at the scoreboard slack-jawed, as the opposing team's lead grows. Also, he reminds me way too much sometimes of a bald, clean-shaven version of Cleveland from Family Guy.

Offensive Coordinator Ron Turner: His entire offensive strategy is a bizarre blend of Air Coryell and 1910s "we just sort of figured running any play other than a run up the middle was illegal" olde tyme power football. The result is not so much forcing square pegs into round holes as it is grabbing a square peg, missing a round hole completely, and slamming it into the wall, followed by an hour of vicious diaper-shitting. A man who ran a practice squad fullback up the middle against the Williams Wall repeatedly, about a year after he tried the same thing with a forty-pound rookie scat-back. Norv Turner has a career as a terrible head coach solely based on the fact that over a decade ago, he was the offensive mastermind behind the groundbreaking strategy of making sure a running back ran inside the 75 foot wide holes his line was opening. Meanwhile, Ron Turner has a job as a terrible coordinator based solely on the fact that he's that idiots's brother. Fuck Ron Turner.

Defensive Coordinator Bob Babich: The mastermind of the "Mug" defense, which consists of walking all the linebackers and the strong safety up to the line of scrimmage, walking the cornerbacks and free safety all the way back to the end zone, then praying furiously that the opposing team has an offensive coordinator who doesn't notice the 75 yards of open field in-between. He takes the "concede the short gains to prevent the big ones" strategy of Lovie Smith's half-retarded version of the Tampa Two defense to a psychotic extreme, resulting in what's basically the Babich Cover Zero defense, where you readily allow 15-25 yard gains, to keep the big ones from happening.



As you can see, it works really well. He's still the D-coordinator in name, but Lovie Smith is apparently going to call the defenses this year, meaning that Babich now goes back to being a linebackers coach with a coordinator's salary.

Special Teams Coach Dave Toub: Dave Toub is a wonderful man, and when he leaves for a head coaching job someday, it's going to break my heart.


Defensive Line Coach Brick Haley: Under his watch, Mark Anderson effectively disappeared from NFL football, Tommie Harris turned into a bullshit malcontent, and somehow, I'm sure he's to blame for Darwin Walker. A guy so bad at coaching that Rod fucking Marinelli, he with the blood of the Detroit Lions franchise still wet on his hands, looks like a huge upgrade, now that Brick's skulked off to LSU.

Linebackers Coach Lloyd Lee: Currently out of a job, as another one of Lovie's old Tampa Bay friends turned clueless first-timer football coaches, who all startlingly got fired after this season. Fuck Lloyd Lee.

Defensive Backs Coach Steve Wilks: Also gone. See also Lloyd Lee, Brick Haley, and the absolute disintegration of Nathan Vasher's career.

Pep Hamilton - Quarterbacks Coach: This guy is named PEP. Fuck anyone named Pep. And if anyone named Pep reads this and is offended: Fuck you, your name is Pep.

Tim Spencer - Running Backs Coach - Speaking retardedly in Rickey Henderson style third-person, Cedric Benson said that Tim Spencer "didn't like Cedric." So Tim Spencer is a fine king of men, in my book. Didn't he play for the Chargers back in the day? Huh. Also, he has to get some sort of credit for Matt Forte.

Darryl Drake Drank - Wide Receivers Coach - Quite possibly the worst position coach in NFL history. Responsible for turning Muhsin Muhammad and Marty Booker into dropped-pass factories, creating the notion that Rashied Davis is an actual NFL wide receiver, and the rapid descent of Devin Hester from all-time-great kick returner to shitty returner and fair-to-middling #3 receiver. This guy is like the Matt Millen of receivers coaches.

Everyone Else - Fuck them, probably. Except for whoever the tight ends coach is and Gill Byrd, although I can't remember what exactly he coaches. I totally have that dude's rookie card. Actually, stuff like that just makes me feel really, really old, so fuck Gill Byrd, too. With his stupid yellow Charger pants.

Overall Grade - D: Half of these people shouldn't be coaching in the NFL, and a quarter of them probably shouldn't be coaching at any level. I'm starting to wonder if Lovie Smith being named Coach of the Year a while back wasn't more just because he had a decent set of assistants around to make him look good, because once he fired them all to hire his old buddies to cushy NFL jobs, this team went to shit faster than you could say "why in the green hell did we fire Ron Rivera?" I couldn't give the coaches a failing grade, since the Bears did end up with a winning record and all, but god damn, they still just utterly fucking failed.

Next: Quarterbacks.