The following is a piece from ProFootballTalk in its entirety.  I don’t have a ton to add Michael David Smith’s commentary so I figured I’d just throw it out here for discussion. 

Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris says he and his teammates need to
get to the playoffs not just for themselves, but for coach Lovie Smith
— who, according to Harris, has been so good to the players that they
must repay him by playing well.

“We owe it to him,”
Harris said Monday. “That guy has been great to us from training camps
to what he’s done with the facilities. Different things that you see
other coaches really don’t care about, but this guy has come in and
helped us out tremendously, and we owe it back to him.”

It’s a
little surprising that Harris, of all players, would be the one who
would step forward and speak up on Smith’s behalf. It was just three
weeks ago that Harris was an unhappy camper, publicly criticizing the
team for keeping him inactive for the game against the Cincinnati
Bengals.

It’s also interesting that Harris thinks a coach having
“been great to us” is a reason that coach should keep his job.
Ultimately, a coach isn’t judged by whether his players like him; he’s
judged by whether his players win. A critic of Smith’s could just as
easily point to that “great to us” comment and say it’s evidence that
the Bears need someone who’s less a players’ coach and more of a
taskmaster.

Whatever the case, maybe it was Harris and other Bears players whom Charley Casserly of CBS was referring to when he said the Bears are 100 percent committed to Smith.
But just because the players like Smith, that doesn’t mean his job is
safe, and Harris seemed to realize that the Bears, at 4-5, need to turn
the season around.

“Now, the back is on our walls,” Harris said. “I mean the wall is on our backs. So we really have to do something now.”

No
matter where the Bears’ backs are relative to their walls, it’s time
for them to start winning soon, or else Smith will be out of a job, no
matter how great to his players he is.

For those of you who have frequented this site over the last couple years, you know I have one simple rule about being an NFL fan: you’re only given sixteen games a season.  That’s it.  Sixteen.  So you better enjoy the hell out of each one because there’s eight months of arid land on the horizon. 

The Bears have played nine of those sixteen games and while their season should be over, it’s not.  Even Sportscenter classified the Bears last night as “In the Hunt”.  Are the Bears in the hunt?  Yes they are.  They are in the hunt for guts.  They are in the hunt for some damn heart.  They are in the hunt for fifty-three professional men who are capable of delivering a complete game effort.  If they can’t find those things, they’ll be in the hunt for a new head coach and front office.

Still, Sunday night’s game does matter.  Not just symbolically either.  If the Bears can show up and beat the Philadelphia Eagles, without Brian Westbrook for the second straight year, then they’ll step into the wildcard discussion.  They’ll step in quietly and without fanfare.  

The Bears are bad.  They’re awful.  They’ve lost five games this season and in three of them they outplayed their opponent significantly.  The other two are the poorest defensive efforts of the last twenty-five years.  The Bears make more mistakes than any other team in the league while seemingly lacking in all fundamental areas of the game.

And they’re one game out of the wildcard race.  Whatever the reason – and there are many – that is a fact.  The Chicago Bears are one game out of the wildcard race.  They are tied with San Francisco and Carolina at 4-5.  They are chasing the Giants, Philadelphia, Green Bay and Atlanta at 5-4.

I’m not making an argument for the Bears making the playoffs.  No Bears team has turned me off more than this one.  But Atlanta is playing the Giants this week and one of those teams is getting a fifth loss.  So if the Bears were to defy what will certainly be long odds and beat Philadelphia at home on Sunday night, they would find themselves right in the thick of the playoff race.  (They also have a home game against the Packers left.)

Do I believe the Bears are going to make this happen?  No.  I won’t be able to come up with a single reason the Bears should beat the Eagles.  But the NFL stars have aligned and allowed this porous excuse for a ballclub to have a tenth life.  The question is will they take advantage?  The answer has been “no” for three years.    

I had a dream last night that I was attending some kind of sports charity event at Radio City Music Hall and Jerry Angelo was giving a speech.  During the speech, they showed headlines of his accomplishments on the monitors throughout the place.  When he mentioned his “friend” Lovie Smith, I stood up and started booing. 

I’m telling you this because it’s important to verbalize – even if only over the magic box – one’s own levels of dementia.  And also because after a lengthy conversation with a particular New York City bar owner last night, I came to a conclusion. I think I want everyone fired.

That means Ted Phillips.  Jerry Angelo.  Lovie Smith.  Ron Turner.  The guy who parks the cars at Soldier Field.  I want them all fired.  Because I’m beginning to think that the 2010 Chicago Bears are not going to be better than the 2007-2009 Bears.  They have plummeted from the heights of a Super Bowl run into an organizational funk that has led to shoddy play-calling, mistakes on both sides of the ball and blown victories late.  They lack confidence and fire – which can be easily linked to their bland-faced, fireless head coach.

All that and worse.  The Bears are now something they should never be with the amount of talent on their roster.  They’re terrible.  That’s right, kids.  They’re awful.  They seem to select a different thing to be awful at each week but they are awful nevertheless.  They could enter into the 2010 season with the same regime, instituting a playoffs-or-bust mandate and reading Haugh’s weekly hot seat updates but what’s the point? 

The coaches are available now.  The real deal coaches who can stabilize an organization’s sideline and front office.  Mike Holmgren.  Mike Shanahan.  Possibly Jeff Fisher (my dream coach for over a decade).  Hell, even Super Bowl winners like Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden. (I’d be willing to take Gruden if only to get him out of the Monday Night Football booth.)  Guys who will relish the opportunity of coming to a team with this kind of history and fans, this core of offensive talent and a supremely gifted quarterback.  Holmgren made Favre a real football player.  Shanahan loves Cutler.  Fisher, though injured at the time, was a member of the 1985 club.  If the Bears play the waiting game with their leadership, they’ll end up with a second-tier assistant next year.  How many more decades of that can we really handle?

It is time to move on for the Chicago Bears.  Maybe they don’t realize it yet but I think there are a couple ballgames against Minnesota and one against Philadelphia that might prove the point.  Move on.  And save the 2010 season from becoming an ugly repeat episode of 2009.   

You can’t play quarterback like Jay Cutler played quarterback last night.  It’s simply not allowed at the professional level.  He was erratic, mindless and disastrously inaccurate.  He was everything we’ve seen at quarterback for the better part of three decades.  The same guy who seemed to single-handedly beat Pittsburgh, single-handedly threw the season into a San Francisco toilet.

Cutler is the Goat.  Devin Hester is Goat 1A.  Last night’s ballgame confirms what I’ve been arguing for the past two seasons: moving Hester to wide receiver is the biggest error of the Lovie Smith era.  Hester was the most exciting and dynamic weapon in the sport and the Bears stripped that excitement away by forcing too much onto a limited player’s plate.  When he was needed to play like a number one receiver, he looked like a guy still learning to run routes.  How many more years of this must we watch?

Today is not the day to call for firings.  It’s not the day to yell about anything.  Today is the day to look the role of spoiler in the eyes and embrace it.  Today is the day to forget about the 2009 season but it’s forgotten about you.  Without a number one pick, there’s no reason to route for the club to lose.  Hopefully this team will fight like hell through the next seven games and make us proud.  But the next important game won’t be until September 2010.  

It is over, kids.  And it wasn’t very much fun.

Let’s talk tomorrow.

R.I.P. 2009 Chicago Bears

One thread for the entire day.  Will be here late night or early morning to either write the epitaph for a fallen season or a call to beat Philadelphia.

The proud and mighty forty-niner must fall.

Because I always like the Chicago Bears.

Only one note on this game.  The news that Tommie Harris will not be suspended by the league against the 49ers will make this entire ballgame about him.  When he places his hand on the ground, he puts his reputation right beside Lovie Smith’s: on the firing line.

Chicago Bears 40, San Francisco 49ers 38

I have to admit it.  I’m fascinated by Thursday night’s game in San Francisco.  The Chicago Bears are only a few inches from plummeting off the cliff of the 2009 season and now, on only a three-day turnaround, must ignore the media’s call for accountability and fans’ call for pink slips to provide a major effort in front of a national audience.  The much-hyped Chicago Bears are underdogs against a team that just lost to Vince Young.

What can we expect from the coaching staff, specifically on defense?  Without a full (or even half) week of practice, Lovie & Co. will have very little time to address the issues that plagued the pass rush and secondary against the Bengals and Cardinals.  (And by “address issues” I mean stubbornly refuse to deviate from a pre-determined plan even after steady and consistent in-game failures.) 

What can we expect from the players, often the chattiest bunch of underachievers around?  Will Adewale Ogunleye show up?  Will anybody show up in the middle?  Will the young linebackers stay in the right gap?  Will any defensive player do anything mildly productive? 

The truth is that the Chicago Bears need to begin operating with the knowledge that they can’t stop anybody and that places the pressure squarely on Jay Cutler and the offense.  Starting Thursday night, the game plan must shift to “outscore everybody”.  That means the old-timey, antiquated ideology of running the ball and controlling the clock needs to be thrown into the trash along with the fade route in the corner of the end zone, the end around, the wildcat formation and the bubble screen to anybody not named Devin Hester.  Shotgun formation.  Toss it around.  Endlessly.  Because unless the Bears have a two-score lead with under five minutes remaining, they are not safe.

It is Jay Cutler’s job to save the Chicago Bears season from Lovie Smith.  Simple as that.  And if that means casually mis-hearing the play calls, I’m all for it.