“Ring, ring.” I answered, “hello.” The voice responded, “Yo, it’ s John. I got a new number.” I answered, “nice, now you can stalk people from a different number.” After a polite chuckle (as the joke wasn’t that funny), I heard a set of words that I didn’t expect to hear for a few more months, “Do you wanna go throw the rock around?” “Which rock?” “The football.”
Ahhh, finally… it begins. After a long 6 month offseason, training camps all over America are opening, including the Chicago Bears. And as I tuned in to listen to the usual topics of quarterback controversies and ineptitudes on offense, I heard the following words, “Devin Hester did not report to camp and is holding out.” After running off a set of 4 word expletives, I calmed down and went over why I continually allowed the Chicago Bears to cause me so much stress. And the only answer I could come up with was, I love football and I live in Chicago. If I was from Miami, I’d be a Dolphins fan and I’d probably be teetering on a ledge of a building right now.
But just because I’m hooked for life doesn’t give this organization a pass, after all this isn’t the Chicago Cubs. Over and over the Bears have handled situations poorly and continually make wrong decisions. Over and over and over again. In fact, I can’t think of one particular area where the Chicago Bears excel. Even the defense that was once exceptional is now filled with injuries and underperforming players. Bottom line: the Bears manage their players poorly, draft poorly, and downright play poorly.
And it all points to one man, Jerry Angelo. Since his tenure as general manager, the Chicago Bears have been put together back to back winning seasons just once. Let’s discuss why. First, Angelo has missed over and over again in the draft with players like: Michael Haynes, Rex Grossman, Roosevelt Williams, Tank Johnson, Dusty Dvoracek, Cedric Benson, John Beekman, Dan Bazuin, Dusty Dvorcek, etc… All those players were selected in the first 3 rounds.
To be fair, Angelo scored big with Tommie Harris, Devin Hester. Still you cannot spend millions of dollars on scouts and salaries and be so wrong, so many times.
And honestly, it would be okay if you missed on picks once in awhile if you were good at managing your team and keeping everyone on the same page. But Angelo hasn’t even been able to keep them in the same book. And although it’s not an easy task keeping 20 year old multi-millionaires happy and out of trouble, there hasn’t been a team (except the Bengals) more inept at this than the Chicago Bears. Every year there are several players that hold-out, get arrested, father illegitimate children, crash their Ferraris, refuse to talk to the media, and get arrested. Every year. And what’s the Bears solution to these problems? Support them til the media gets angry enough and then cut em. “Tank, we stood by you through the drug charges, weapons charges, and jail time, but your speeding violation at 3am is the last straw. Peace.” “Cedric, true that we don’t have any real information on the validity of your arrests, but a DUI is just too much for us to handle. Later.”
You may be thinking, well that seems like an appropriate course of action. But this is what the Tennessee Titans did: “Pacman, clearly you’re a distraction with the gun charges, felony vandalism, assault, gang associations, WWE stint, and about 14 arrests, but we’re gonna make you out to be a great player and we’re trading you to the Dallas Cowboys for a 4th round pick.” The Titans took a guy that was suspended from the NFL for a year and wasn’t even reinstated and traded him for a 4th round pick! The Bears, however, get nothing for the 4th OVERALL pick (Benson) and an early second rounder (Tank Johnson)??? Something isn’t right? Why? Simple. The Bears publically undervalue players they don’t want anymore and overvalue players they plan on keeping. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If you don’t want Benson or Tank, then you can’t tell the world they’re worthless. The only choice you’re left with is to cut them and take the cap hit. Similarly, if you publically tell Devin Hester that you plan on him being the number 1 receiver, then he won’t be satisfied with $425,000. That’s about 6 million dollars short of what a number 1 receiver in the NFL should be getting.
The difference between bad organizations and great organizations is the ability to maintain the cohesiveness of your team by turning dire situations into successful ones. The Bears are content with keeping hopeless situations hopeless.
General manager Jerry Angelo said after the first day of training camp that he was surprised and disappointed that Hester was a no-show. "Unexpected. We thought Devin was going to be here. As you know, we've been negotiating with Devin for a while and we are continually negotiating with him as well. So I really don't know why he isn't here today," Angelo said.
Hmmm, is that something you should know, Mr. Angelo? Isn’t that kind of your job. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s not such a good thing that the season’s starting.
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