Just don’t see what so many others do in Bears coach
As the Bears navigate through a few weeks of Organized Team Activities, chroniclers of the game better be shaping up, too.
As the Bears hit blocking dummies in Lake Forest, I rehearse bashing Lovie Smith. While Jay Cutler takes shots downfield to Brandon Marshall, I take shots at his head coach.
It’s starting to feel a lot like September already.
I’m not working on new material, just polishing the delivery of old insults. Blessed is The Sporting News for providing incentive by ranking Smith at No. 9 among NFL head coaches.
That’s like Joan Rivers having the ninth-best plastic surgery ever and “Chernobyl Diaries” being the ninth-best movie of all time.
TSN puts Tom Couglin first, Bill Belichick second and Mike McCarthy third. Smith is behind both Harbaughs, too.
The Lovie that I love to not love is ahead of several coaches I would love to at least like as Bears coach.
Give me Jeff Fisher (No. 10), Ken Whisenhunt (14) or Mike Smith (15) … not to mention Ron Rivera (21).
The best TSN could say about the Bears’ coach is, “A straight shooter in the low-key Tony Dungy mold that players respect, Smith now second in NFL in tenure after (Eagles’ Andy) Reid.”
Smith wasn’t characterized as a great game coach, strategist, player developer, talent evaluator, staff assembler or anything like that.
In a strange way, Lovie Smith reminds me of Nicole Kidman. Huh? Allow me to explain.
Ms. Kidman is considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, but her looks do nothing for me.
Smith is football’s Nicole Kidman. Analysts like him, and I simply don’t see what they see in him.
The problem is that Lovie Smith could be the NFL’s most popular coach, maybe even the best, and the winner of a couple of Super Bowls for the Bears, and he’d still not do much for me.
Winning is everything, you know, but it isn’t the only thing. As I have been saying for most of Smith’s eight seasons here, he just isn’t my type any more than Nicole Kidman is.
Read my lips: Just … not … my … type.
It isn’t even that the Bears have made the playoffs only once in the past five seasons or that he prefers to emphasize that they have made it once in the past two.
If a real Bears head coach, one with a pulse like George Halas or Mike Ditka, had babbled that line, I’d laugh and figure he was just Papa Bear being Papa Bear or Iron Mike being Iron Mike.
Lovie being Lovie?
Please, stop it.
I’m working up a literary sweat now.
Smith belongs in a category of coaches that includes the likes of Bruce Weber and Vinny Del Negro.
Guys like that, when their teams win, the players get the credit; when their teams lose, the coach gets the blame.
When the Bears reached the Super Bowl five years ago, the players were responsible; during mediocre years Smith is irresponsible.
Maybe that isn’t fair. Maybe Smith deserves a better critique. Maybe Lovie potion No. 9 is justified. Maybe he’ll have more success this season with new general manager Phil Emery’s roster than he did with former GM Jerry Angelo’s.
If so, Lovie Smith will be more tolerable as a head coach but still not my type for the Bears.
That said, I feel almost in midseason form already.
mimrem@dailyherald.com