Angelo: Nothing has been decided on coaching staff's future
BALTIMORE - Bears general manager Jerry Angelo addressed the media before Sunday's 31-7 loss to the Ravens and did not guarantee that Lovie Smith would be back as head coach next year as was reported earlier in the week at Comcast SportsNet Chicago.
"I don't know where the report came from," Angelo said. "I heard that; (it's) speculation I'm not dealing with.
"At the end of the year, we sit down and we talk; that's what we do. I understand where you guys are going, (but) I'm not going to talk about anything prematurely. It makes no sense to do that; we've never done it in the past, (and) we're not going to do it irrelevant of how the season went."
Smith has two years remaining on his contract for a total of $11 million, but Angelo said money would not be a concern as he conducts his postseason evaluations and makes decisions.
"We have three football games left," Angelo said. "I know we're not in the playoffs; obviously we didn't meet expectations. We did have some problems, and I want to make sure that I focus on them first and foremost to make sure we understand what went wrong, and then what we need to (do to) fix it.
"I don't look at money in those times. It's not about money. It's about doing what we feel we need to do to be a better football team."
Asked to clarify Smith's status, Angelo was blunt: "Well, he's here. He's our head football coach. I don't know what else is there to clarify."
But Angelo did not say that Smith would be back for a seventh season.
"All I am saying is that at the end of the year we sit and we evaluate everything," Angelo said. "That's all I'm saying. Where you run with that, how you talk about it, you're going to say what you want, you're going to spin it the way that you want to spin it,
"I'm just telling you right now that at the end of the year we will evaluate everything."
Told that it would be difficult to put any spin on a guarantee that Smith would return next season, Angelo said: "You got the point of my answer."
Because there is an unprecedented collection of highly regarded NFL head coaches available - Bill Cowher, Mike Shanahan, Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden and Tony Dungy - Angelo was asked if that would play a role in his decision-making.
"No, it doesn't," he said. "Not at all. We're going to do what we feel we need to do to win and become the kind of team that we know we can be.
"We'll go through an extensive evaluation process like we have every year. There probably will be more things to talk about this year in the off-season, yes, I'm not minimizing that. And we'll do that, and we'll do that rightly."
While Angelo said he was disappointed with the Bears' 5-8 record going into Sunday's game, he is not displeased with the talent.
"I like our roster," he said. "Your record is your record. This is who we are. I'm not going to get into that game. We didn't play well as a team this year. We were inconsistent.
"We just seemed to never get the offense and defense playing well on the same Sunday. That's very hard to do and (very hard to) win if that's not happening. So we like the roster; we have a good nucleus of young players.
"So pretty much our roster will be intact next year. But I look at that as a positive, not a negative."
Any personnel and coaching decisions will be made with concern given to building around quarterback Jay Cutler, a Pro Bowl player last season with the Denver Broncos but a disappointment in his first season with the Bears.
"It's our starting point," Angelo said. "It's about our offense. We came into this year, and we felt like we were going to have a pretty good offense or have the ability to be a pretty good offense this year.
"I should say it that way. We had young receivers; it was a new system. I said this way back when, that there going to be some growing pains and it was a process. So things didn't quite come together on offense.
"Things didn't quite come together on defense like we wanted either. That's an important part of what we need to make happen to have the success that we all want."