Super Bowl Preview: Volume I
Been a long time since DBB has dedicated space to a single piece but Rich Campbell’s interview with Ernie Accorsi is one of the most insightful football pieces I’ve read in a long time. There is tremendous detail regarding the hiring processes, the relationship between Ted Phillips & George McCaskey, why this opportunity at this time was perfect for Ryan Pace and the difference between Chicago and other football markets.
Some of my favorite stuff was a look inside the Giants offices. An excerpt:
What did you admire about John from your experiences with him with the Giants?
“His office (as defensive coordinator) was right next to mine, so we interacted. In a lot of places, the GM and the coach are at two different ends of the building. We were right beside each other, and (Fox) happened to be in the office next to mine. We interacted every day. First of all, he’s just a great football coach. Second thing, he has a way with people. He’s not going to lock himself in the office and draw up plays and be aloof. Players love to play for him.
“When we lost him, Mr. Mara actually said these words, and they were printed. When we lost him and he became head coach of Carolina, Wellington Mara said, ‘I feel much the same as I did when (Vince) Lombardi went to Green Bay.’ He said that.
“I’ll just give you an anecdote about John. We’re going to play Minnesota in the NFC championship game (in 2001). They have Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Robert Smith, Daunte Culpepper, and they’re scoring a million points a game. Now, all week they already scored 50 touchdowns in my apartment while I was trying to sleep.
“Finally we get to Friday, and I bump into Fox, and Fox says, ‘You’ve been ducking me all week.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I’m afraid of what you’re going to tell me.’ He said, ‘We may just shut them out.’ And we did (41-0). I thought we had a chance to win because we could score, but I thought we were going to win 45-38. He said, ‘We may just shut them out,’ and we did. And John doesn’t say that kind of stuff … to be boastful or bravado or anything like that.”
To read the entire Tribune piece, and you absolutely must, CLICK HERE AND DO IT.
(1) Jay Cutler throws interceptions. He has started 119 games. He has thrown 130 interceptions. If you think having Cutler throw fewer passes is going to result in fewer interceptions, you’re just not paying attention. Cutler, if he plays all 16 games in an NFL season, should be expected to throw between 14-18 interceptions.
(2) Throwing interceptions does not automatically equate to losing. Eli Manning has thrown 185 interceptions in 167 starts. He’s also won two Super Bowls. Joe Flacco has thrown 90 picks in 112 games but raises his game in the postseason. These two quarterbacks are big game hunters. They raise themselves up at the big moment. They are only allowed to play in the big moments because they have complete teams.
(3) When has Jay Cutler ever had a complete team? Honestly ask yourself that question without any bias. When has he had a better than average defense, offensive line and skill guys? Not great. Just better than average. The teams Jay Cutler has played on have required him to carry them and he’s not that guy. I wonder if Pace and Fox will recognize that and do in 2015 what the Cowboys did in 2014: take the pressure off their mistake-prone quarterback.
(4) What turning the ball over DOES mean is sustained postseason success is unlikely. Eli has had a couple brilliant postseason runs. He’s barely gotten to the postseason otherwise.
(5) People say Jay Cutler is not a winning player. Well, factually, he is. 61-58 as a starter (44-38 as Bear). He has also only had one season where he’s been more than a single game below .500. (The Bears just completed that season.) You know who isn’t a winning player? Matthew Stafford. Is he being run out of Detroit for being 7 games below .500?
(6) Over his last three seasons with Lovie Smith as head coach and the combination of Martz/Tice at offensive coordinator, Jay Cutler was 27-13 as a starter. Interesting that when the team played solid defense he was not drawing “not a winning player” label.
(7) Jay Cutler is never going to be a rah rah leadership type. Remember when he used to shout at offensive coordinators (like Tom Brady) and shove offensive linemen (like Phil Rivers) and get angry when receivers ran the wrong routes (like Peyton Manning) and get lambasted by the national media for it? Well, he stopped. Now you get Jay Cutler, the father. Watch a Ravens or Giants game and find me the moments Eli and Flacco display these emotions Bears fans want from Cutler. You can watch every snap of their careers. You won’t find any. Their emotions never change. This is not to say a quarterback shouldn’t be be a rah rah type. This is to say you don’t necessarily need this attribute to win.
From Twitter, yesterday:
Many like to use the phrase “meatball” to describe a certain kind of fan. In Chicago I am going to refer to those people as “Score-ons”.
It is on all of us to make this phrase happen.
Because I tend not to forget and choose to hold others accountable, from the opening of a New Year’s Eve piece in the Tribune by Brad Biggs:
In announcing the massive housecleaning Monday at Halas Hall, President Ted Phillips called the Bears’ head coaching job prestigious.
He stands nearly alone in that opinion in light of a Tribune poll of NFL front-office employees and coaches who ranked the Bears barely above the Raiders in terms of attractiveness.
Quarterback concerns left the Jets at the bottom, but the Bears job wasn’t considered much better even with Jay Cutler, the passer in whom they have invested so much money and whom Chairman George McCaskey said he is a fan of personally and professionally. Elsewhere, Cutler is classified as a coach killer.
The Bears landed an in-demand (young) GM, a head coach who has been to two Super Bowls, the best defensive coach on the market and an offensive coordinator who interviewed for just about every head coaching vacancy. Rumors have it that if the Bears job were prestigious, Vince Lombardi would have climbed out of his grave and agreed to a five-year, $35 million contract.
Two things on this hire.
I thought John Fox called Jay Cutler “Jake” during his introductory press conference. I paused the TV, rewound and watched it again. Yep. Jake. Jake Cutler. Maybe Fox was channeling his Carolina Panthers days and remembering with nostalgic glee the days of Delhomme. Maybe he’s a fanboy for the work of actor Joe Penny. In any case, the symbolism of the moment could not be missed. With his non-committals on the future of Cutler in front of the Chicago media, the new Bears head coach made it clear that the much-maligned quarterback is no longer the franchise priority.
Does that mean Cutler will not be the quarterback in 2015? No. Does it mean Cutler will not be the quarterback in 2016? No. But it does mean that unlike the hiring two years earlier the Bears hierarchy is no longer making decisions with Cutler in mind.
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Editorial Note: There will be some advertising emerging on the site in the coming weeks. DBB is entering into an exclusive advertising agreement with a not-profit organization I’ve worked with a great deal over the last two years. The goal was to make them a partner on the site and create a role for them that does not, in any way, take away from the reader experience. I think we’ve done that. You’ll start seeing their presence after the Super Bowl.
Vic Fangio is one of the best defensive coaches in the league. His performance in 2014, in the wake of an injury flood at key positions, was just as impressive as anything Todd Bowles did in Arizona. Now he is the Bears defensive coordinator and the Bears have arguably the best defensive room in the league.
Photo appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
The press conference set to begin at 11 AM CT to introduce John Fox as the 15th head coach in the history of the Chicago Bears. You can watch the press conference live on NFL Network or at ChicagoBears.com and listen live at ESPN 1000 (we don’t promote the other station round these parts).
Remember as you’re enjoying the press conference, these were jobs nobody wanted according to your local media. And they were filled by a young GM in-demand and a head coach with two Super Bowl appearances. You will hear today what I’ve written all along, “head coach of the Chicago Bears” means a great deal to those men who fill the NFL’s coaching ranks.
