Now that the Bears have completed their game of musical chairs surrounding front office and assistant coaching changes, the important task at hand is to improve their on the field talent via free agency and the NFL draft.
The draft is not until late April, a time when the Cubs and White Sox will already have played themselves out of playoff contention, the Blackhawks will be planning for tee-times and the Bulls might be able to field a healthy roster.
But with only the #19 pick in the first round, new GM Phil Emery probably won’t get a case of the yips as his predecessor, Jerry Angelo, commonly did and wind up trading down because the pressure of picking a legitimate talent that high is just too much to handle. However, picking that far down in the draft will not yield a stud-muffin, but only a muffin top, at best.
Better choices await the Bears via free agency which occurs in March, a time when every basketball fan without allegiance to any Illinois college, gets excited over NCAA tournament prospects.
Bears’ fans might get excited over the prospect of their team acquiring one of the available wide receivers, be it Marques Colston of the Saints or Dwayne Bowe of the Chiefs, GM Emery’s last employer. Several other proven NFL wideouts would be a dramatic improvement over what Jay Cutler was forced to look at all last year, be it the ever wayward Devin Hester or the overmatched Johnny Knox, whose career comeback from a severe back injury might be in jeopardy.
Anything would also be an improvement over last year’s free agent acquisitions, Roy Williams and Sam Hurd, the latter engaged in criminal behavior off the field and the former a thief every time he collected an NFL paycheck last season.
The ongoing soap opera of running back Matt Forte’s contract status will probably be resolved by management making him the same multi-year offer his agent rejected last fall and eventually ending up with Forte becoming franchised. This means he will get paid handsomely for a single season as opposed to having his name attached to a string of fast food restaurants run by people similar in ability, if not legacy, to the McCaskey Family.
Various minor decisions surrounding who among their own lot of free agents the Bears decide to keep and who they decide to release, seem so relatively self-explanatory that even a tic-tac-toe playing carnival chicken (or the equivalent on-line blogger, if you could find one that intelligent) could probably guess right most of the time. Perhaps that same carnival chicken could even get a first round draft pick right more often than so-called “war room” management has done recently.
To wit, the Bears’ worrisome lack of depth and development regarding their aging defense might be cured if said defensive players were either cryogenically frozen during the off-season or else administered a series of hormonal injections usually reserved for aging Hollywood actors and GOP presidential contenders who don’t want to end up looking like Ron Paul. In any case, if Lovie Smith doesn’t find a reliable back-up plan for his almost over-the-hill gang, the whole Bears boat will sink faster than an Italian cruise liner.
Optimistic fans hope next season’s Bears will duplicate what this year’s Giants did and take a so-so regular season team and turn it into a champion come Super Bowl Sunday. The glass half-empty prognosis would result in the smartest guys in the room holding brooms and cleaning out desks to make way for an entirely new coaching regime come 2013.
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