Past the Point of No Return

"Slants don't beat you." That's what Lovie Smith said the other day, after his team got beaten by a team who can't pass very well. And just like the Buccaneers, the Falcons, and the goddamn motherfucking Indianapolis Colts of February 2007, they did it by throwing slants. But I suppose I should be used to that sort of thing by now. All last year, when the running game was falling flat on its ass, "we get off the bus running the football." When Rex Grossman was making a living by closing his eyes and hurling the ball almost vertically into the air, vaguely in the direction of a crowd of defenders, "Rex Grossman is still my quarterback." Once the season was basically lost, and it was clear that the guys who had been in the games to that point were utter bullshit, and that putting some of the guys who had been on the bench might be a good idea, if for no reason other than to see who to keep the next year? "We go with the players who give us the best chance to win." That's some Baghdad Bob shit right there.

Coach Smith is pretty much gone at this point. He was already too stubborn to ever admit that anything he ever does could possibly be wrong, and this was only complicated further when that fat new contract drove him insane with hubris. So here we are now, watching Ron Rivera work to fix what's been wrong with the Chargers' defense, while Lovie's Boy Bob Babich torpedoes the team with his diabolically psychotic need to stop the run by putting eight men in the box, even if it means leaving the other 90% of the field wide-ass open for Brian Griese and Dan Orlovski to look goddamn Montana-esque in. We watch in horror as teams make easy adjustments in the second half, knowing that what the Bears do will not only be the exact same thing they did not just in the first half, but also in the previous eight entire games. We get to wonder what Brandon Lloyd to get in Lovie's infamous doghouse, to the point where even fully healthy as the team's only established receiver, he still has to sit on the sideline in street clothes. And we have to wonder if it was along the lines of what Mark Bradley did to get in the same doghouse to make him stay on the sideline for two years before finally getting cut, where's he's gone on to catch as many TDs for the Chiefs in three games as any Bears wideout has in nine games. It's become clear to me that either firing Lovie outright or someone putting their foot down and making him cut loose all of his old running dogs like Babich, Ron Turner, and Darryl Drake Drank, and both humbling his ass and getting some real assistants in there in the process is the only thing that can save this team.

But the thing is, it's pretty much far too late for anything to be done. A while back, I predicted that this would be some horrible downward spiral of a death-season for the Bears, and the more I think about it, I think that I subconsciously wanted that to happen. I remember telling someone after the Super Bowl that this was the first 13-3 conference champion to be headed into a rebuilding year. But the Bears' brain trust was too smugly satisfied to admit that Rex sucked or that the offensive line - being made up of old men and washed-up castoffs - rendered this a team built for nothing more than a one-year run, so they sat on their hands in the off season, with their only big move being trading Thomas Jones away for nothing, so they could start Turner's boy Cedric Benson. Then, a 7-9 year wasn't enough of a disaster to make anything change, and if they manage somehow to keep limping toward the playoffs this year, I'm in for another three to five years of pain. An apocalyptic 4-12 season was the only thing that could have ever fixed this team, and now, it's probably too late for anything like that to happen. And even then, this would be a massive reclamation project, which would be absolutely crippled under the weight of all the goddamn contracts they handed out like candy in the last year or so. And there were some real smooth moves in there, like Brian Urlacher getting an extension on a contract that would already end when he was in his seventies, inked after one of his worst years as a pro, or Tommie Harris getting Tommy Kelly money (lol Harpo) to play on the same legs and knees that left him unable to finish a season in two years. I think what I'm getting at here is that the 2008 Bears might finish with a winning record or even a division title, but as a whole, we are fuuuuuuucked, and in a roundabout way, it's because they might finish with a division title.

The hurting never stops.