The Chicago Sun-Times, the Gift That Keeps on Giving

You know when I said in last week's column that the hack writers would come out firing, I didn't realize that I was going to be handed a twofer by the Intrepid Ricks of the Sun-Times.

Not to be outdone by Telander's vague ramblings and misapplied talents, Morrissey stepped up to the plate to remind us all that you can never be sad if you just don't hope for anything. Don't let the title "MORRISEY: Bears look like an 8-8 team" fool you. This column is not about the Bears. This is about Rick Morrissey's inability to feel joy until at last an intrepid adventurer returns the Casket to its ancient home.

As is our custom, Rick will be in italics.

The Further Adventures of Ace Reporter Rick Telander: At This Point, It's Almost Impressive

As the sun rises on a world that is once again warmed by the presence of football, so too do we who talk about the Bears rise from our ancient slumbers. Rejuvenated by the healing rays of training camp, we seek out fresh news. Even throughout the offseason, I'll admit that I checked the big sites almost daily in the hope of fresh news. Seeing as you're reading this, I assume that you too care about Bears news.

And so we turn to the reporters. Those who can swing by training camp every day. Those with access to players and coaches. And they come out of their caves firing; making wild conjectures about the most simple training camp occurrences and laying down bold predictions for the entire season based on an errant pass or stiff exchange between players.

This year is no exception. In fact, furious over the death of his beloved Pro Football Weekly, our ancient nemesis Hub Arkush launched his very own website more or less dedicated to overreacting to Bears news. And I fully intended to bring you a fresh offering from him today.

But as is his wont, Rick Telander just will not go down without a fight. Where there is baseless conjecture to be made, they say he will never fail to appear. In our direst need for totally irrelevant and almost certainly inaccurate coverage, he comes forth into the light. And so, Hub must wait. For Telander has spoken.

Oh My God, It's Getting Closer

I woke up this morning in a damn good mood. You know why? Because Bears training camp starts this week, with players beginning to arrive today. Now, I'm not crazy about reading the news articles related to camp (ZOMG. DOES JAY CUTLER HAVE A LOT TO PROVE THIS YEAR? NO WAY and OH MAN IT IS SO WEIRD WITHOUT URLACHER HERE INNIT), but I am glad that football is starting. From the moment that first practice snap occurs football once more ascends to the top of the ladder of our national interest, we can all keep pretending baseball doesn't exist, and we can begin our breathless countdown to a preseason game that we'll stop watching after the starters leave by the third series. Most importantly, we can overreact to all of these things listed above. It's a great time to be alive.

Bears camp has been a pretty hot topic most of the last few years, with the arrival of Cutler in 2009, the signing of Julius Peppers in 2010, and the Marshall/Jeffery acquisitions of 2012 providing yearly buzz along with the seventeen or eighteen different offensive coordinators used in that time period. This year, however, takes the cake, with the following overplayed storylines sure to dominate:

1) Jay Cutler. Frankly, based on the way this offseason has gone with regards to Cutler columns, I hope Jay has changed his license plate to "NO XCUZ'S", because that's the unofficial motto of his 2013 campaign. Never mind that we've yet to see if any of the additions to the offensive line can play, or if his wide receivers can actually stay healthy for once, or whether Marc Trestman still knows how to call an NFL offense. The additions of Martellus Bennet and Jermon Bushrod mean that Jay's now guiding an offense equivalent to the 1999 Rams and anything shy of that vague and nebulous concept of an elite season he's been haunted by will result in him being run out of town on a rail.

This is bullshit, of course. Jay Cutler has to be better than every other quarterback on the market next year. Unless you're really fond of the Ryan Fitzpatrick's of the world or you're foolish enough to think Emery and Trestman are willing to sacrifice good chunks of the prime years of Marshall, Forte, etc. to build around a rookie QB next year, that's not going to be hard for Jay to do. It's likely all Jay has to do to get an extension is survive 16 games without a major injury. What he hopes to determine with his play this year is how much money that extension will pay him.

2) Urlacher. Leadership. Identity. Lost. Scared (Related: How does Jon Bostic/DJ Williams/James Anderson feel stepping into Urlacher's shoes, besides the uncomfortable burning on their feet?).  Some combination of those words will be used in a number of stories about how odd it is for the team to get together without Urlacher. Most of these are just recycled articles from 2011 because it's easy to use a find and replace to switch "Olin Kreutz" for Brian Urlacher. In the end, the transition will be as relatively easy as that one was because players are not that stupid, and they tend to accept the guy who can play football over the guy who no longer could.

3)Meet the New Boss, He's Weird as Shit and has a Bad Combover. Marc Trestman's a weird dude.  I tried reading his book. In the intro his ghostwriter says "Marc and I realized we basically had content for two books, one about strategy and X's and O's, and one about bullshit coaching cliches and maybe a mention or two of God" (I may have loosely paraphrased there). Much to my chagrin, the book was a collection of weird, empty coaching patois instead of the insight into his offense I was hoping for. Long story short, Trestman is odd. He just escaped from Canada, for fuck's sake. That'll change a man. He's going to do things differently than Lovie, and many things, positive and negative, will be said about this. We have no idea of measuring whether his weirdness means anything until the games matter, however, so just ignore Dan Bernstein on this one.

4) Kyle Long Did (X) Today. This one's actually kind of interesting. It'll be worth noting whether Long looks absolutely lost or not given his concerning lack of experience in college. That said, Gabe Carimi was the star of two consecutive training camps so take all of this with a grain of salt.

5) Contract Extensions. Jay. Tillman. Melton. Jennings. These guys are on the last years of their deal. It stands to reason that Emery, the general manager, is aware of this fact. He will still get asked 75 questions a day about it like he's fucking blind, and someone (probably Telander) seems to think they will eventually get Phil to say "Holy shit, dude. Not sure how I missed that. I'll get right on it." Never mind that there are roughly 80 ways that NFL contracts are skewed in favor of teams retaining players, and that the absolutely earliest that any of these situations would actually be problematic is next fucking March, this will be treated as some kind of massive dark cloud hanging over everyone.

6) Josh Lenz. I don't know whether this guy will be overrated or not. But he's fast, scrappy, white, and went to Iowa State, so...well, yes. He's going to be overrated. Ignore anything you hear about him.

That said, enjoy this day. Bear football is now a light at the end of this miserable offseason tunnel. We're getting close. Go Bears.

Episode 10 of the SKOdCast Now Up!

Podcast Tonight at 6:15 PM

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127741

Listen Live as we discuss:

-What a Director of Analytics is, and why it's a good thing
-Stupid shit Bears and NFL coaches do that we hope will go away.
-Erik's hilariously failed attempt at defending the honor of Aaron Hernandez.
-Goddammit, Bears Fans.

SKOdcast Episode 9: Tourney Final and Chicago Sports Outlook

In tonight's episode we finish the tournament and discuss the current Chicago sports outlook. We also somehow weasel Anne Frank, Roman Polanski, and further discussions on Chris (OR IS HE?!) Long into there. Check it out on iTunes and leave a review! Enjoy!

MoneyBears? Phil Emery, Marc Trestman, and the Evolution of the Bears Organization

The Chicago Bears entered the twentieth century in 1974. That was the year they hired Jim Finks, the General Manager and architect of the Minnesota Vikings 11 division titles and 4 Super Bowl appearances in 14 years. In his first draft Finks brought in Walter Payton. He was the one that drafted Doug Plank, Mike Hartenstine, Dan Hampton, and many others who formed the backbone of the successful Bears teams of the 80s. He oversaw the hiring of Buddy Ryan. Under his guidance the Bears made the playoffs in 1977 and 1979, breaking a postseason drought going back to 1963.

More important than all of this, however, was that Finks was the first person to run the Bears that wasn't part of the Halas/McCaskey family tree. The Bears had been surpassed in the division they used to rule by the Vikings, and it wasn't even close. Driven to desperation by a decade of futility, George Halas loosened the reins of control, and the result was the resurrection of the franchise.

Then, in 1982, Mike Ditka wrote George Halas a nice letter asking if he could be the head coach of the Bears. Without consulting his GM, Halas hired Ditka. Finks responded as any GM who had just been publicly neutered would: he walked away. Personnel control went to Jerry Vainisi, the team's long-time treasurer, who continued largely in Finks' stead for the next several years as the team built upon the foundations laid by Finks' overhaul and turned into a championship organization. Just as quickly as this turnaround began, however, it fell apart. Vanisi clashed with Mike McCaskey, and McCaskey, always quick to credit himself for the success of a team he had no hand in building, fired Vanisi and assumed total personnel control for himself. After a decade of improvement, the Bears were back to being a small-time mom and pop organization.

The results are well-known. The Super Bowl champion Bears fell apart, McCaskey's drafts failed to come close to replicating the quality of Finks and Vanisi's, then McCaskey made the ill-fated decision to hire Dave Wannstedt and grant him personnel control. Finally, after the team's second consecutive 4-12 season in 1998, McCaskey botched the hiring of Dave McGinness, turned the entire franchise into a laughing stock, and forced his own family to fire him.

After the firing of McCaskey, the Bears slowly took steps towards becoming a respectable franchise once again. They hired a search firm to find them a real general manager, and for some reason that search firm settled on Jerry Angelo. Angelo eventually hired Lovie Smith, and together the two of them built a team that competed regularly and garnered respect, but still came up short.

 Lovie and Jerry represented a comfortable middle-ground for the always-conservative McCaskeys. Angelo valued his scouting department, his gut feelings, and the evaluations of his coaches. Lovie Smith talked of getting off the bus running, promoted a closed-door policy with the media, and spoke with reverence for "Chicago Bears football." While both were steps forward from the lunacy of the era before them, they were still thoroughly old school types, determined to build the Bears on a tried and true playbook written long ago.

Enter Phil Emery and Marc Trestman. What the two of them are trying to accomplish right now has rarely been attempted before in the NFL, and certainly not in Chicago. In a press conference he gave back in January, Emery referenced the extreme statistical analysis he uses in order to evaluate a player:

Yes we’re going to pay attention to the coach’s grades. Yes we’re going to pay attention to our internal scouting grades. But let’s look at this another way. I went to STATS Inc., went through all the numbers. Went to Pro Football Focus, did all the numbers. I’m familiar with STATS Inc. We’re one of their contracted teams. Spent quite a bit of time with their people, not only their programmers but went to their offices, watched how they grade tape, how they triple check all their facts. So I trust all their data, that’s it’s unbiased, that it doesn’t have my hands in it, that it doesn’t have our coach’s or scout’s hands in it, or anybody else in the league. They are simply reporting fact. Some ways to look at it is in a very Money Ball way, crunching the numbers.

That evaluation process right there is a big step forward from Mike Tice telling us that J'Marcus Webb "graded out well" in the team's evaluation process while every other statistical metric and our own eyes told us otherwise. Just today, Emery took this process a step further by appointing Mitchell Tanney as Director of Analytics, a new stat-oriented position in the front office.

Another sign that Emery valued statistical analysis and an unbiased evaluation of player performance was the decision to move on from Brian Urlacher. Urlacher said it all when he stated that he believed he'd still be a Bear if Lovie Smith was the head coach. Emery was unswayed by Urlacher's history, his presence, his leadership, or the historical importance of MLBs in the Bears defense. He simply saw what any statistician or objective evaluator would see: a washed up football player.

This new mode of thinking also shows up in Emery's draft strategy. It's clear from his statements on the importance of versatility and the drafting of players like Shea McClellin and Kyle Long that Emery understands the changing nature of the NFL, and the need for fast, athletic "tweeners" who can fit multiple schemes without substitutions.

Kyle Long is also an example of the Bears new forward-thinking approach. Aaron Kromer, explaining why the Bears put Long at guard instead of tackle despite their assertions that he is their most talented lineman, cited statistics that demonstrated that most pressure on quarterbacks actually comes from the interior, and stated that the Bears philosophy would be to build their pass-protection from the inside out.

The last, and most important, change that Phil Emery has brought to the Bears is Marc Trestman. As mentioned nearly everywhere, Emery took a huge risk bringing in a guy from the CFL to coach the team. Trestman is regarded as a guru and an innovator, a guy who has witnessed the evolution of the West Coast Offense practically since it's birth, who has incorporated elements of the spread offense, the read option, and other recent trends, and who was brought in to give the Bears a counter to the machinations of the Packers and other offensive juggernauts. While it remains to be seen how Trestman will fare in the NFL, it's clear the Bears are going in a very new direction.

When Phil Emery was hired last year he was more or less an unknown. Some questioned how much power he would even wield, considering he was forced to keep Lovie Smith on as head coach. Since then, however, it's become painfully obvious Emery has complete control of this team. He fired Lovie, despite Lovie's stellar reputation and relationship with the McCaskeys. He moved on from Urlacher, despite McCaskey conspiracy theorists' fears that George McCaskey's comments about Brian meant they would pressure Emery to keep him. He made a bold and unorthodox coaching hire after a lengthy interview process, passing on several "safer" picks. Regardless of what anyone thought in the beginning, Phil Emery right now IS the Chicago Bears.

There's no guarantee, of course, that any of this will work. Numbers are imperfect, and both Emery and Trestman remain unproven quantities in the NFL. The fact of the matter is, however, that the future seems more hopeful for the organization now that it's finally free of people who appeared to be more concerned with the past.

SKOdCast Update

Hello,

As you may have noticed, if you're looking for anything Bears related amidst the Blackhawks in the Final and baseball, there's not terribly much to talk about in the dry-period besides "so and so said Joe Anderson looked good in mini-camp," and we refuse to talk about mini-camp. So from here until the preseason we'll be doing the SKOdCast bi-weekly. So see you next Tuesday!

Episode 8 of the Podcast Now Up!

Enjoy!

And as promised, here's the David Terrell interview with RedEye: http://articles.redeyechicago.com/2013-06-12/sports/39931743_1_redeye-opinion-gabe-carimi

Episode 8 of the Podcast at 6:15 PM

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127741

Before we all stop paying attention to watch the Blackhawks, join us as we discuss:

The Sweet 16 of the Worst Bears Players Ever (Since 1997)

Goddammit, Evan Rodriguez

Goodbye, Gabe Carimi

Goddammit, Bears Fans

Episode 7 of the Podcast is Now Up!

Episode 7 of the Podcast Live at 6:15

Do not fret, part two of round one of the Worst Bears Players of All Time (Since 1997-ish) is on the way.

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127741

The Ghost of Lovie Smith, Apparently

I apologize for our lack of content in recent weeks, but after the draft there just isn't much to talk about until actual football starts happening again. Fortunately for me, this doesn't stop the good folks of the Chicago sports media from trying.

Before I start this one, I want to say that I actually respect Dan Bernstein. His radio stuff is pretty good, despite his sometimes inflammatory opinions, and he always offers sources and numbers to back his shit up on air. Plus, his defense of Jason Collins and gay rights in general on the day Collins came out was truly inspiring. He seems like a standup guy and a solid radio host. Unfortunately, whenever he sits down at a keyboard, terrible things happen.

Today's drivel is titled "Briggs' Response Shows Bears' Identity Challenge." And let me tell you now, it is extremely difficult to follow. The essential thrust of the column, if it has one at all, is that Lance Briggs' refusal to answer questions about Brian Urlacher not being signed means half of the team doesn't respect Marc Trestman and will play poorly.

And so, with a heavy sigh, I turn on the italics.

The Bracket, Halfway through Round 1:

Click to enlarge.

Episode Six of the SKOdCast is Up: The Tournament Begins!

Episode Six of the SKOdCast: The Worst Bears Players of All Time (Since 1997), Tonight at 6:15 PM

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127741 Listen live as we discuss, tournament style, the worst Bears of players of our recent collective memories, and Brian Urlacher's retirement.

This Week's Episode of the SKOdCast has been Postponed!

Due to conflicts, we'll be seeing you next week. Don't worry, we have something very special planned.

Episode Five of the SKOdCast Now Up:

Episode 5 of the SKO Podcast Tonight at 6:15 PM

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127741

Follow along live as we cover:

-The Draft, Part Two: Other teams did stuff, too:
           - Seriously, what the hell is Jacksonville doing?
           - The Plight of Geno Smith
           - Seriously, I'm still laughing at the Jets
           -Oh hey, turns out nobody wanted Manti Te'O

-The Horiffic Condition Afflicting Rookie Quarterbacks on a Yearly Basis

-What did the rest of the NFC North do?

-Goddammit, Bears Fans.

The Dead Period Home Stretch: How to Identify the Danger Signs

It's the worst time of year right now, Bears fans. You got past the February-May lull where the only football news is draft conjecture that (as we especially have seen) is largely completely goddamned worthless. But now what to look forward to? We have May, June, July, and half of August to sit here and think about football without actually seeing any. And you know what that does to people?:

Yeah. So instead of that, most people just start reading the ESPN NFL tab for offseason news. This, my friends, believe it or not, is even MORE dangerous than taking care of a cavernous hotel, infested with ghosts, cut off from civilization, being directed by Stanley Kubrick. Lucky for you, I'm here to attempt to steer you clear of the many Second Dead Period pitfalls. Without further ado:

1. The "I saw this in practice and it is sure to be a focal point!" wave.

Remember every article you ever read about how Devin Hester "finally got it" and he was going to be a "big part" of the offense? File that here! The most important thing to note about this category is that Michael C. Wright and the rest of the guys who watch practices open to the media have exactly as much evidence and insight into the Bears this upcoming season as we do, they just get paid to write about it.

Consider this: You are coaching a football team. You have hundreds of people surrounding you with high-tech video and audio equipment. These people's jobs are quite literally to lay bare your entire operation. Are you going to give anything away? Yes?... should I bring out more Shining videos to show you what you turn me into?

An interesting note: last season before the preseason Michael C. Wright hosted a chat. He had just reported that Hester would be the #2 receiver, with Alshon in the slot and BBE presumably eating Skittles. I asked, why, why would the Bears do that? It makes no sense! His reply: "I don't know, but that's what I saw!"

So, case closed.