Jerry Angelo Needs to go
Yards allowed per game: 355.9; league rank: 26th. Yards allowed per game rushing: 126.8; league rank: 27th. Yards allowed per game passing: 229.1; league rank: 25th. Points allowed per game: 22.8; league rank: 20th. Yards gained per game: 300.0; league rank: 23rd. Yards gained per game rushing: 85.3; league rank: 30th. What team putting up those atrocious numbers? The New York Jets? The St. Louis Rams? The inept Miami Dolphins? No, no and no.
It turns out those are the numbers of the greatest NFL team of all time, the sub-.500 Chicago Bears, a record that’s good for last place in the Norris Division of the Junior Varsity Conference known as the NFC North. What’s going on here? I thought the Bears were supposed to have the best defense ever assembled – one that was supposed to be better than the ’85 team. I also thought that the Bears were supposed to have an explosive offense that would be led by the second coming of Joe Montana, all-world quarterback Wrecks the Wonder Bear Grossman.
What we have here is one of three things: false advertising, bad player evaluation or a GM on stupid pills. I’m going to go with that last one. That’s right folks: Bears GM Jerry Angelo is not the great GM y’all think he is. I don’t care that the team he built last year made it to the Super Bowl. Going to the Super Bowl (or winning it, for that matter) does not make you an automatic success nor does it give you a free pass to do whatever you want. He is a phony GM who got lucky. It’s time to fire Jerry Angelo.
Twelve games into the 2007 season, it is clear that this team is not built to be a playoff team. The poor play is not due to a Super Bowl loser’s curse. It is because this team has been poorly built on both sides of the ball, but more on the offense. Furthermore, two of this team’s wins have come due to the stupidity of the other team’s decision to kick the ball to Devin Hester.
I was led to believe that this team was really deep on defense. So deep, in fact, that Angelo traded away Chris Harris for a late-round draft pick. Chris Harris sure would look good in a Bears jersey right now, with injuries to Mike Brown, Nathan Vasher and Kevin Payne, the man who replaced Harris in college, which led Angelo to believing Harris was expendable. These injuries have forced the Bears to go out every game with a makeshift secondary that has played sloppy, missed tackles and allowed big plays.
What happened to that linebacker depth? I certainly didn’t see it when Lance Briggs was out. I thought the Bears were going to be ready if Briggs decided he didn’t want to crash into people the way he crashed his $350,000 Lamborghini.
The worst moves Angelo made, however were on the offensive side of the ball. He did nothing to address the aging offensive line, which has since lost Ruben Brown for the season. And what about the skilled players? I thought draft pick Greg Olsen was going to be the second coming of Mike Ditka. Reports from training camp said G-Reg’s play was as good as his rap. I haven’t seen that so far this season.
However, the worst of them all was the clump of lint Angelo received after trading away Thomas Jones, moving up 26 spots in the second round of the draft. Recently, Angelo said he was pleased with the 196-carry, 674-yard performance of Cedric Benson, good for 3.4 yards a carry. Uh, Jerry, how come you couldn’t wait to get rid of the Bears best running back since Walter Payton, yet the new Curtis Enis is suddenly an all-world force?
What this really is is Angelo’s ego talking. He took Benson with the fourth pick and paid him $16 million. He wants to see Benson play. It was not about not being able to pay Jones. Jones’ agent was on ESPN a few weeks ago and said the trade was made simply because Jones and Benson did not get along. He said the Bears had the money to pay them both but Angelo wanted to play Benson in the leading runner role and didn’t want Jones around. What kind of a reason is that to trade away someone because you don’t want him around?
It’s time to fire this moron and hire a competent GM who can actually turn the Bears into the Super Bowl contender Chicago knows they can be. Jerry Angelo must go!