Lovie Smith: The Real Reason the Chicago Bears Got Tebow-ed
Published by Micky Shaked on December 14, 2011
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
There isn’t a pie chart of blame big enough in any boardroom in Chicago to give the deserving parties their fair slice for what happened at Sports Authority Field at Mile High Stadium.
Caleb Hanie did his best Caleb Hanie impression, even better than in his two previous Sunday stand-up specials.
Marion Barber proved that he was given the most accurate nickname in the NFL, showing us that he clearly has the football IQ of a barbarian. He also might want to cut his dreadlocks or wear a mask while walking around Chicago.
Julius Peppers and Co. faded into the mist when it mattered most, unable to prevent Tebow Time from coming on the air.
Either Zachary Bowman or Chris Conte likes to call and run his own play without telling anyone.
One guy is getting treated like Milton from Office Space during Bill Lumbergh’s birthday party, not receiving his deserved piece of cake.
Surprisingly, the media’s usual scapegoat when something goes wrong for the Bears has managed to escape the heat this week.
But I see you, Lovie. And you aren’t getting off easy in my book.
All Chicago’s head coach had to do to stay in the lead for the fifth seed in the NFC playoffs was kneel!
It’s the easiest play to execute in all of the Big Four sports, including a pitch out.
Why, with exactly 2:08 left in the game, do you not take a knee? It’s simple math.
The first kneel takes you to the two-minute warning. Kneeling on second down means that you have to snap the ball on third down with 1:20 left. The third and final knee runs the clock down to about 0:35.
So you punt the ball away and give Tim Tebow roughly 25 seconds to drive into field-goal range.
Not even Jesus can get into Matt Prater’s field-goal range in that amount of time with no timeouts.
Sure, Marion Barber’s mistakes were inexcusable. You can absolutely fault Caleb Hanie for being an atrocious quarterback. And I will allow you to be upset with the defense for their soft play at the end, even though they gave the offense every chance to put the game out of reach.
BUT WHY DIDN’T LOVIE SMITH KNEEL?
We wouldn’t even have to think of all the unspeakable things we want to do to Barber for running out of bounds and then fumbling away the game in overtime.
Maybe Mike Martz didn’t think about it, and he’s the play caller so we should blame him. Wrong.
The head coach is the head coach is the head coach. That was a situation where Lovie needed to be completely focused and aware of all of his options to win the game.
Chicago in its current state might not deserve to be in the playoffs. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that a win in Denver would have kept them ahead of Atlanta and Detroit in the NFC wild-card race.
Now the Bears need a lot of help from both of those teams.
But first they need to show us that they remember how to win. And Lovie Smith needs to show us he understands the basic principles of being a head coach.
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