Phillips make sense? Chances are remote

The more you think about it, the more club president Ted Phillips' very premise for keeping the Bears' management team intact is illogical.

No wonder that the remote control couldn't locate the Bears as the NFL playoffs started Saturday.

Cedric Benson was there but with the Bengals. Thomas Jones was there but with the Jets. Doug Plank was there but as a Jets assistant coach. Buddy Ryan's boy Rex was there but as the Jets' head coach.

Other familiar faces were there but in unfamiliar places.

So where were the Bears? A good guess is that the club's hierarchy, anyway, was self-evaluating at Halas Hall again.

The session might have gone like this, judging by last week's news conference confirming that Phillips, general manager Jerry Angelo and head coach Lovie Smith would return for at least one more season.

Phillips might have said to Angelo, "I'm OK, you're OK."

Angelo might have turned to Smith and said, "I'm OK, you're OK."

The McCaskeys might have turned to them all and said, "We're OK, you're OK. Now let's go collect those season-ticket deposits."

Let's face it, the Bears' organization needed a new roof but wound up getting little more than the carpets vacuumed.

Other teams around the NFL were pursuing heavyweights like Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan and Pete Carroll for their most important decision-making positions.

The Bears decided to look for offensive and defensive coordinators instead.

Listen, sometimes the right move turns out wrong and the wrong move turns out right. The remote control might find the Bears in next season's playoffs.

But you would have more confidence if Phillips' reasoning made sense instead of sounding like he was trying to put one over on Bear fans.

The explanation was that this management team and organizational structure had been successful before, reaching the Super Bowl three years ago.

The more Phillips repeated that, however, the more illogical it sounded.

Angelo wasn't hired - and he didn't subsequently hire Smith - to win an NFC title and miss the playoffs the following three seasons.

Didn't the trickle down from the McCaskeys to Phillips to Angelo to Smith have a bigger mission - to create a culture of self-perpetuating excellence?

By now the Bears should be the Chicago Patriots or Chicago Colts instead of the Chicago Fire Once and Fall Backs.

To be in place together for six years only to lose a Super Bowl and then not even return to the playoffs is more failure than success.

Not many fans or sports journalists are experts on Xs and Os or the inner workings of a sports franchise, but most do understand logic.

That's all most of us ask for: Explain what you're doing so that it translates into sense instead of nonsense.

Like, tell us that money matters and it would cost too much to dismantle the management team. We might not like it but we would understand.

But please don't tell us that Phillips, Angelo and Smith are staying - and the McCaskeys aren't selling - because they once were successful.

That's illogical enough to make a fan click the clicker to off when the Bears play their season opner in September.

mimrem@dailyherald.com