The Emasculation of Lovie Smith

"Rex Grossman is my quarterback."

In my own scientific way of looking at things, there are three kinds of head coaches in the NFL. First, you have your geniuses. These are the guys who have spent hour and hours poring over footage, analyzing strengths, weaknesses, patterns, and tendencies until they finally formulate some master plan to either get that little ball down the field or prevent it from doing so. Most of these guys are assholes, and they've got children whose names they can't even recall, but they win a lot of games, so unless you're the dude's tortured wife, you can't argue with that. Then, you've got your motivators. These guys might not have a fiendish plot to destroy the other team, mainly having to rely on assistants for that kind of thing, but they have a knack for getting their players to do great things, either by inspiring them or simply by making them fear chainsaw-death, should they return in defeat. They probably don't win as many games as the geniuses, but their players like them, and they manage to make bad players passable, decent players, good, and good players great.
Then, there's the third group, which is actually two more groups, but I'll slam them together, because this whole thing bubbled up in my brain as three kinds, and you have to stay true to yourself, you know? But these are pretty much pretenders. They've managed to be in the right places at the right times, so that they can convince a team owner that they're either a genius or a motivator.
You've got the completely hopeless guys who just managed to pull a horsehoe out of their ass and land on a team with an impossibly good collection of players, and through those players' execution, they can convince team owners that they're some sort of god damn genius. Off the top of my head, Brian Billick and Norv Turner fit in here, where they basically sat on their thumbs, watching Emmitt Smith run through ten-foot-wide holes and Randy Moss catch everything Daunte Culpepper heaved in his general direction, until someone got convinced that the offensive coordinator had anything to do with this happening and gave them a job.
Then, there are your system guys, guys who coached underneath one of the genius motivator coaches, memorized a lot of what they did, and basically became Head Coach by Association. The problem with this is that when your whole coaching career is based on someone else's system, once the other team figures you out, you have no ability to adjust, and things just get worse and worse, shittier and shittier. You know, like when Tony Dungy came up with the Tampa Two, and when it eventually got figured out, Lovie Smith was left with nothing but two hands, a flashlight, and his ass. The problem here was that he had no clue as to where is ass was located, or how he might go about finding it.
Things got worse after the Bears made it to the Super Bowl, and Lovie decided that if something isn't broken, fix the shit out of it until it is, and started firing every assistant coach he could find and replacing them with a combination of friends, acquaintances, and in the case of hopeless defensive line coach Brick Haley, random dudes with awesome names. So once things started falling apart, there was no hope in hell of him fixing it, as his "Cleveland from Family Guy during a gas leak" motivational styles weren't going to fire the players up to overcome a busted game plan, and he had no knowledgeable or even competent assistants to lean on:

Lovie Smith: "Okay gentlemen, things are getting pretty bad, but there's a lot of football left to play. We need to figure out how to get this offense firing on all cylinders again. Coach Turner, what have you got for me?"


Ron Turner: "I, uhhh... Jeez, I dunno, we could, ah, run it up the middle? I mean, ah, we got that McKie kid back there, and you know, uh, he's got to break one sooner or later, right? I mean, uh... You know... uh... right?"


"Well, that's, uhh... Sure, sounds good to me. We do get off the bus running the football, after all. But we've still got the passing game to worry about. These receivers have been dropping far too many passes. Coach Drake, what have you been doing to work on this?"


Daryl Drank: Corn oil! Corn oil, dammit! I got those bitches slathered in it!


I... Wait, what?


Listen to coach, dammit! If you can catch a football covered in corn oil, with your well-toned body glistening in the sunlight, you can catch anything!


Well... I guess that makes sense... somehow. But why corn oil?


'Cause I ain't using no goddamn canola oil, dammit! You know where that comes from? The rape plant! You can't catch no footballs when your body is covered in rape! Listen to coach, dammit! Because the stain of rape never washes off! It stays with you forever and ever! You lie awake awake at night shaking!


Yeah, I... I know how that is...

So scenes like this continued for a few years, until some of the assholes who inherited the team from George Halas finally figured out that their living, 53-man trust fund might not appreciate in value as much after enough 7-9 seasons. At this point, someone informed general manager Jerry Angelo that if this kept happening his ass would be on the line, so now, we've got a coaching overhaul of epic proportions. Every single offensive coach outside of the inexplicably employed Daryl Drake was fired and replaced, shockingly, with coaches who hadn't all been Lovie Smith's former roommates, former assistants, or former bridge partners. Between defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, offensive coordinator Mike Martz, and offensive line coach Mike Tice, the Bears now have three former head coaches on the staff, two of which with arguably better track records than Smith, and the third, um... Well, he's a good man or whatever. But in the end, you've got Lovie Smith left no longer hand-picking his own assistant coaches, no longer calling the shots on defense, and completely uninvolved with the offense.

Alright, gentlemen, first, we need to get this offense right, and figure out how to get more production out of the fullback and get the ball to our tight ends more effectively, because with Greg Olsen and Desmond Clark, I think we can-


Mike Martz: We don't throw to tight ends anymore, Smith. And we don't use a fullback. Clark is an H-back now, and if your boy Olsen doesn't learn how to block, he's out on his ass.


Well, uh, alright. Moving on, I think the offensive line can use an overhaul, and if you ask me, Kevin Shaffer is a good candidate to take over at guard, now that-


Mike Tice: No, we're keeping him at swing tackle. That guard spot's gonna go to that Louis kid with the assault charges. That's what we need more of on this team. Assaults. Vicious, brutal beatings. You ever kill a man, coach?


Wait, what are you talking about!? I thought we were going to put Shaffer there. We decided that all the way back in January! Listen, I think he's the guy for the job, and gosh darn it, this is MY TEAM!




Alright, whatever. Drake, how are things going with the receivers?


I'm gonna take those motherfuckers out back and whip them into shape! The problem is that they have a problem keeping their eyes on the damn ball! How the hell you gonna catch a pass when it's hitting you in the face like that? Listen to coach dammit! You look PAST the ball, so that you can -


Issac Bruce: No, we're not doing any of that. I've been working with each of them individually, so that not only can they learn the new system, but they can focus on basic fundamentals. Also, I've actually taught them a few new techniques that I believe will-


WHAT!? WHAT IS THIS!? WHO ARE YOU!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? Listen to coach! Fundamentals lose games! There is no system! I AM the system! I coached Hines Ward!


Hines Ward: LOL I have almost eleven thousand receiving yards.


I had over fifteen thousand.


;_;

So here we are, the 2010 season just over the horizon, this is a pretty severely different team that it was a year or two ago. Lovie Smith is no longer an up-and-coming former Coach of the Year with the power to build a team in his own likeness and image. Instead, he's just hanging on for dear life, having not made the playoffs in three years, knowing that another one of the Bears' signature at-or-near .500 seasons more than likely spells the beginning of the Mike Martz era in Chicago. Hopefully, it doesn't come to that, since it'll mean another wasted season, but it's nice to know that ownership is at least pretending to care for once, and the last time Lovie was on a short leash, it ended in an NFC Championship. So I have more hope than usual. But that's still not much.