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And So We Wait…

| January 15th, 2010

I hate this day, this morning.  I wake up, check all the paper sites.  ProFootballTalk.  ESPN.  There’s nothing and it gets worse. 

I have nothing to say about the Chicago Bears.  
Does it really matter to you, any of you, who the Bears hire for their two vacant coordinator positions?  Would Tom Clements or Zampese or Tice or anyone inspire you into this long, tortuous offseason, Bourbonnais and the start of the 2010 regular season?  Would Perry Fewell have mattered?  (I’d list others but apparently the Bears had a lot of eggs in that basket.)  
Lovie Smith is not Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden.  He’s not going to step into the background and allow other men to take over the play-for-play football decisions.  So hiring an exciting coordinator – even if the choices were Bills Walsh and Belichick – would be nothing more than material for media men and chum in the ocean for a shark-like fan base.  The Bears, schematically, will look look in 2010 the way they looked in 2009.  They won’t switch to a 3-4 or blitz on every down.  They won’t go spread option inside the red zone.  They’ll do what they’ve done but they’ll try and do it better.
And so the lame duck head coach and lame duck general manager will usher in a lame duck season for lame duck fans.  They could make it happen, win 9 or 10 games, make the postseason and save their jobs.  They could also start 0-4 and play to empty houses for the duration of a limited run.
What the Bears will need is another coup if they hope to generate the kind of excitement they did a year ago.  A Cutler Coup Redux.  A tall order for an organization that is running quite short in the credibility department.