Will Tampa combo click for Bears?

Bears general manager Jerry Angelo and director of player personnel Tim Ruskell worked together for 14 years with Tampa Bay before they were reunited a year ago, when Ruskell replaced departed pro personnel director Bobby DePaul and director of college scouting Greg Gabriel.

Angelo was the Buccaneers’ director of player personnel from 1987-2000. Ruskell started in Tampa as an area scout in ’87 and from 1991-2000 was the director of college scouting. When Angelo left to be the Bears general manager, Ruskell took over as Tampa’s director of player personnel.

But Angelo wasn’t looking for a yes man when he hired Ruskell.

“We used to have a sign in the draft room for all of us to look at,” Angelo recalled. “It said, ‘If everybody is thinking alike, there’s not much thinking going on.’ The goal isn’t to get people to patronize your thinking. The goal is to stimulate your thinking, get honest opinions and independent thinking but obviously based on research.

“We feel good about that. We’ve been together a long time. The commonality helps.”

The opinions, evaluations and critiques of Angelo, Ruskell and the Bears’ scouts and coaches will all be factored into the selections that are made later this week in the draft, starting Thursday night. The final decision will be Angelo’s, as it has been since the 2002 draft, when he chose offensive tackle Marc Colombo with his first pick.

While Angelo and Ruskell don’t always see things the same way, they have the advantage of a long working relationship. That Tampa connection also included Bears head coach Lovie Smith, who was the Bucs’ linebackers coach from 1996-2000 and Bears defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli, who was the Bucs’ defensive line coach from 1996-2005.

“That’s what was great about when Jerry and I worked together before, and (we were) working with Lovie and working with Rod,” Ruskell said. “But it’s done in such a professional way. Everybody has their say, and we’re open to, ‘OK, I didn’t look at it that way (before). Let’s look at the film again with that perspective.’ I think that’s healthy, and that’s a good thing.

“That’s where our success in Tampa came out of. (We had) a lot of adversity early. A lot of things didn’t go our way. As Jerry likes to say, ‘We survived our mistakes.’ But we learned from them. When we finally got together with the coaching staff and implemented that philosophy with what we were trying to do personnel wise, the thing kind of took off.”

Saying the Bucs “had a lot of adversity early,” is an understatement, but in the four years before Angelo and Ruskell were hired the Bucs were a combined 12-52. It took awhile, a long while, to get things turned around. The Bucs lost at least 10 games in eight straight seasons and nine of 10 from 1987-96. But they made it to the playoffs in five of the next six seasons, culminating in a Super Bowl championship after the 2002 season.

Since leaving Tampa, Angelo has spent almost 10 years with the Bears. Ruskell spent one year as the Falcons’ assistant general manager and then five years as the Seahawks’ president of football operations and general manager. He says combining his experiences and Angelo’s will be a smooth blend.

“With all 32 teams there’s going to be little things that are different,” Ruskell said. “A lot of the things that I incorporated in Seattle are things that Jerry and I worked on in Tampa. Some of those we’ve reinstituted, things that Jerry is familiar with in terms of (setting) the (draft) board. There are no earth-shattering changes. But we’ve talked, and the best of both worlds is what it’s felt like. It’s felt good to the scouts, and it’s felt good to the coaches in terms of the way we’ve gone about our business.

“Everybody got their say, and the work was thorough. No matter how you get to that point, that’s the goal.”

With selections in the first two rounds of the draft for the first time in three years, the Bears will have a great opportunity to demonstrate how well their system works.

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