Rod Marinelli Promoted to Bears Defensive Coordinator
Published by Bryan Dietzler on February 8, 2010
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
In a move that should really surprise no one, the Bears promoted defensive line coach Rod Marinelli to their open defensive coordinator position. With the move, the Bears have now completed filling the missing parts of their coaching staff and are set for the rest of the offseason. How much does the Bears’ elevation of Marinelli mean to the Bears? Will their defense improve?
Marinelli has pretty much the same philosophy as head coach Lovie Smith when it comes to defense. He will continue to use the cover two defense (or variations of it) and follow Smith’s philosophy. The biggest problem with that is the cover two has not worked well for the Bears the past two seasons and bigger defensive changes could be needed before this team sees a lot of success there.
The Bears touted the hiring of Marinelli last year as being a huge upgrade on their team and a “savior” of sorts for the defensive line as he was supposed to help Chicago’s line get more sacks. However, whatever he did didn’t work that well and the Bears only had two-and-a-half more sacks than they did the previous season. Was Marinelli the best acquisition of last offseason?
Bears fans will hope that with Smith no longer calling the shots on defense the team will be that much better now that he can focus on the whole team and not just the defense. So in perspective, this move is a good one. Marinelli also knows the Bears defense so there won’t be any kind of learning curve involved in it either. However, there may not be any changes to the defense despite the fact that they need some changes there.
It will be interesting to see if there is anything new that happens with the Bears defense now that Marinelli is in charge of the defense and to see how he uses the current group of personnel that Chicago has on defense. Will he be able to get the most out of linebacker Brian Urlacher? Will he still get the same kind of production out of linebacker Lance Briggs?
Time will tell.
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