Rozner: Bears blame game? Starts at the top

All that's left now is the blame.

As another Bears season goes up in smoke, there is a rush to put it all on one person.

Sure, you can blame Jay Cutler.

He's the easiest target and at $18 million annually he's responsible for many of the problems this year.

Cutler set the tone with an inexcusable interception against Buffalo in the opener that cost the Bears the game in regulation. Cutler is supposed to be the best player on the team. He's not even the best quarterback in Illinois.

Sure, you can blame Brandon Marshall.

He hasn't been nearly the player this year that he's been the last few years while battling injuries from the start. He's been more distraction than destruction, but Marshall can only catch what's thrown to him and he's not the reason the Bears have lost three straight.

Sure, you can blame Jordan Mills.

The Bears' right tackle received a lot of help his rookie year and for the most part the offense got away with it, but having to help Mills in passing situations has hurt the offense in 2014 and Mills has regressed.

Sure, you can blame Lance Briggs.

Briggs has been hurt and bad when he doesn't look old, but he was all of the above last year, too, and there should have been no expectations as Briggs ends his career just as Brian Urlacher did two years ago.

Sure, you can blame Jared Allen.

Another aging veteran, Allen has been invisible most of the year and his early-season illness did him no favors. Cartwheels accompanied Allen's signing, but if he was still a great player the Vikings wouldn't have let him go any more than the Bears would have cut Julius Peppers.

Sure, you can blame Shea McClellin.

On this one, we can't help you. McClellin is bad whether he's hurt or healthy, a lineman or a linebacker, a rookie or a veteran. Only the delusional thought McClellin would be any better this year.

Sure, you can blame the players all you want, but players are what they are. You put enough bad players on one team at one time and you're going to have - wait for it - a bad team.

So sure, you can blame Mel Tucker.

The defensive coordinator wasn't good in his last stop and hasn't had much success in Chicago. But Tucker actually had the Bears in the middle of the pack defensively when they were 3-3 and that's all the defense needed to do this year if the offense had done its job.

The reality is the Bears have no linebackers, no safeties and one corner, Kyle Fuller, who's been playing hurt for a while. There is little presence on the defensive line.

So what would you suggest Tucker do with that pile of, um, talent? Blame Tucker if it makes you feel better, but there's no chicken salad to be discovered here.

Sure, you can blame Marc Trestman.

The head coach should get much of the blame for this and he will have a hard time explaining why he should keep his job. He's also the offensive architect and the structure has imploded, which is entirely on Trestman.

But Trestman didn't hire himself. He was chosen over better candidates and he was a gamble that has cost the Bears several years and tens of millions of dollars.

Sure, you can blame GM Phil Emery, and he deserves more than any name previously mentioned here. He selected Trestman. He paid Cutler. He made the draft picks. He signed the free agents.

Speaking of delusional - as we were a few moments ago - it's Emery who continues to believe that McClellin is an NFL linebacker, or lineman, or whatever.

Sure, you can blame Ted Phillips.

The team president is responsible for the Byzantine Bears' bizarro hierarchy that continues to operate as the Cubs and Blackhawks did for decades before finally being brought into the modern sports world.

Phillips is a holdover from a different era, getting his job because Michael McCaskey couldn't do his. Phillips made hundreds of millions - maybe billions - for the family by completing the stadium deal, but he has been an impediment ever since.

Which brings us to George McCaskey, who seems like a guy capable of shouldering the blame. He's far less patient than those who have preceded him and he can't like the direction of the franchise.

The Bears, for decades, have resisted bringing in a Jim Finks or Ron Wolf type - someone capable of leading the football operation and finding a GM and coach without a search firm and a search party - because the family has never wanted to give up that kind of control to an outsider.

Thus, you endure decade after decade of circus clowns and the mess left behind by horses and elephants.

If George McCaskey really wants to fix this disaster, he will eschew the family policies that have dominated the Lake Forest landscape since Finks threw up his hands and threw his resignation on the doorstep.

He will ask someone like Bill Polian to come in and dig the Bears out of this hole and set them on the right path.

Until then, George McCaskey will have to watch bad football.

And take the blame.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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