Bears just refuse to be fat and happy

Chicago is a big fat town.

Look around and you'll find big fat burgers and burritos and big fat bellies and butts.

What you won't find anymore is big fat defensive tackles.

That's just another thing that bugs me about the Bears and head coach Lovie Smith.

They reject the concept that fat is where it's at, preferring run stoppers who could fit into a Miata, or at least 300-pounders as opposed to 350-pounders.

Now, this shouldn't bother me today. It's February. The Bears' next game isn't until September.

But Monday I came across a USA Today story on the Lions, accompanied by a to-do list:

"Field a bigger, more physical D: Gone are former coach Rod Marinelli's Cover-2 schemes, which relied on smaller faster players - Too often players were in position to make plays but were overpowered for big yards."

Yes, that's the same Cover-2 the Bears employ. Yes, he's the same Rod Marinelli the Bears now employ as defensive line coach.

When Marinelli was Lions coach he had sumo wrestler/defensive tackle Shaun Rogers, who was listed conservatively at 340 pounds and ate the entire Denny's menu for breakfast, running backs for lunch and sides of beef for dinner.

"He better slim down," I told a Detroit columnist, "or he'll be gone."

Sure enough, the Lions traded Rogers to Cleveland a year ago, partly because he couldn't keep his weight down. He proceeded to make the Pro Bowl while Detroit finished 0-16.

When Marinelli arrived there, Detroit was a big fat town just as Chicago was when Smith arrived here. Now they're together coordinating the Bears' defense.

To be fair, it should be noted that the Bears did reach the Super Bowl playing the Cover-2, and other teams have won NFL championships with the scheme.

If players are good enough they can win in any system, even the Cover-2, even with defensive tackles built like male models.

Or built like female supermodels, for that matter.

But it's asking a lot of linemen to be that good, to be perfect nearly all the time, to be in the proper gaps on nearly every play.

More reliable is having a couple of Shaun Rogers in the middle of the line, like the Bears had when they made the playoffs in 2001 with jumbo tackles Ted Washington and Tractor Traylor.

I remember looking down at the red zone when the Bears played Minnesota the next season. The Vikings, trying to run the ball in for a score, double-teamed Washington. They were like flies on a landfill. He didn't budge.

Washington and Traylor made life miserable for blockers and easier for middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, who at 250 pounds doesn't have much body fat himself.

Anyway, 700 pounds of Washington and Traylor are my kind of defensive tackles. You know, the kind that a ball carrier runs into and it takes a search party an hour to find him amid the folds of flab.

The least the Bears could do is put one big fat, 350-pound blob of blubber next to the 295-pound Tommie Harris.

Ain't going to happen, however. The Bears are committed to the lean-is-large look based on the South Beach Diet instead of the South Side diet.

This isn't appetizing to football fans in a big fat town.

mimrem@dailyherald.com