Door open for McCaskey to make major Bears changes

It is right there for George McCaskey.

This miserable four-game losing streak has done more than ruin the Bears' season.

It's given the new Bears chairman an opportunity to make sweeping changes.

That's right, complete and total regime change in Lake Forest.

If George McCaskey is much like his older brother Mike, the Bears will blame only injuries for their downfall and take the simple route, which is to acknowledge Jerry Angelo and Lovie Smith have two years left on their contracts — and that all is well.

But I hear that George McCaskey is different. In the past, ownership didn't want to eat contracts and look bad doing so. It was much easier to stand pat.

How different is George? Well, that's a good question. Maybe he's willing to eat two years of both, or maybe he's willing to eat one year of both. Maybe neither. Maybe it's business as usual, but that's not what I'm told about him.

The easy way out would be to say the Bears were cruising at 7-3 before injuries to Jay Cutler and Matt Forte, that they reached the NFC title game a year ago, and that the franchise has never been in better hands.

Or the Bears could face reality, which is that Cutler was playing so well he masked the utter lack of NFL talent throughout the offense.

The Bears have been exposed for what they are, a team that gets by on luck, the occasional huge defensive turnover and gifts from Devin Hester.

What we've seen the last month is that when Hester disappears, the entire formula falls apart.

On top of that, the Bears have gotten old at crucial spots, especially on defense, where Brian Urlacher has been a rumor since early in the season.

So if ever there were a time to blow it up and start over, now is that time. This is the opportunity, before Cutler turns old and gray and they've wasted his talents.

They could recognize that 2010 was a fluke and that defeating 8-9 Seattle in the postseason was no grand accomplishment.

McCaskey could see a GM in his 11th season here and the head coach his eighth with a grand total of 3 playoff victories, including the win over under-.500 Seattle last winter.

The chairman could acknowledge that the team has made the playoffs once in five years and has a single playoff victory during that time.

He could also wonder why Ted Phillips let Angelo extend Smith last off-season when there was no logical reason to do it. Smith could have gone into the final year of his deal with something to prove and scored huge if the Bears had done well.

That's a risk the Bears should have taken.

On the other hand, McCaskey could insist the record says the Bears made the NFC title game a year ago and were 7-3 a month ago.

He could look around the NFL and see worse coaches and GMs keeping their jobs and easily justify keeping things the way they are for at least another year.

Or McCaskey could look at the Bears' atrocious draft record, inability to build an offensive line and lack of a receiving corps — and the continued fantasy that Hester is a No. 1 receiver — and wonder why the Bears paid such a high price in draft picks and salary to acquire Jay Cutler and then gave him nothing with which to work.

He could praise Smith for teams that never give up, or point out how this team has quit. In fairness to Smith, it's a case of the defense giving up after the offense was such a failure the last month.

Nevertheless, the Bears win with special teams and defense and now they've gone missing, too.

McCaskey can point to the failed Mike Martz experiment, Smith's inability to rein in his coordinator, poor clock management and in-game coaching.

Or he can say Smith is 70-56 (.555) as a head coach, a solid record and better than half the active coaches.

He can look at how the Bears have collapsed under the weight of injuries, lack of depth, failed free agents on the offense, no backup QB, age on defense and a ridiculous offensive scheme that the head coach has approved and encouraged.

Or he can ignore it all.

So something can change or the Bears can slog their way through another season, while the calendar turns another page on Jay Cutler's career.

Having lived through generations of the family business in Lake Forest, I'd have to see regime change to believe it, but I do hear that George McCaskey is different and that he won't wait forever.

Does that mean he would do something when this season is over? Would he wait until a year from now, when both GM and coach have a year left on their deals?

Perhaps not even George McCaskey knows the answer yet.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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