With Michele Bachman having decided to quit...and Rick Perry deciding to stick around...it was tempting to talk about the results in Iowa, but I think I'll let that simmer a bit longer. Instead, let's look at the Chicago Bears' 2011-12 season.
After three seasons, we finally have a good read on how valuable Jay Cutler is to the Bears. He was valuable enough that losing him ruined the Bears' playoff hopes and cost Jerry Angelo his job. It turns out that having a crap backup quarterback is a fireable offense when your starting quarterback goes down and the guy you have in as the backup loses your season for you.
So what happened? Well, the Bears really had three seasons. In the beginning, they were a middle of the road team that went 2-3. They could beat the weaker teams on the schedule but struggled against tougher teams like New Orleans and Green Bay. Then came the golden age. Offensive Coordinator Mike Martz finally bowed to pressure to adjust his precious system to account for the fact that the Bear's offensive line couldn't handle the system as he designed. Then the Bears suddenly had a offense! They went 5-0 for the next stretch of games, putting them at 7-3 and near locks to make the playoffs as a Wildcard team.
Alas, it was not to be. As mentioned, Jay Cutler got hurt, and his replacement, Caleb Haney, went 0-4. Haney's replacement, Josh McCown, went 1-1. Thus ended the 2011 Bears with a perfectly mediocre 8-8 record. It also ended Mike Martz's time with the team, as he resigned over "philosophical differences" the same day that GM Jerry Angelo was fired. Word online has it that both Martz and Angelo were pushed out the door, with Martz choosing to "resign" while Angelo had to be fired.
So where does that leave us?
The defense was decent, but given its age, tended to wear down in games leading to high opponent scores when we couldn't hang onto the ball. That defense will be a year older come September, and Brian Urlacher got hurt in the last game of the season, so who knows if he'll be as good as he was this year?
The offense will depend on whomever's running it next season. Safe money is that the Bears will just promote Offensive Line Coach, and former Vikings Head Coach, Mike Tice to the position. If he gets the job he'll probably have a system that calls for quicker passes and more reliance on the run, which benefits the defense if you can play it that way.
The Bears have long had one of the premiere Special Teams units in the league. Most of that credit goes to Dave Taub, who's probably the best Special Teams coach around. Taub declined the Bears' offer of a long term contract, though, since the success of former Special Teams Coach John Harbaugh in Baltimore shows that you can go from Special Teams to Head Coach with success. It'll be a dark day for the Bears if Taub gets a Head Coaching gig elsewhere, but it's hard to root against the success of a coach who clearly deserves to go to the next level.
As far as long term, the Bears upper management have already hamstrung their GM search by declaring that the new GM should be "in tune with Lovie's philosophies." and making it clear that Lovie Smith will be the head coach of the Bears in 2012. Hard to see some of the high power GM candidates out there being thrilled about a job where they can't bring in their own head coach.
So, my guess is that Lovie has ascended to to the top of the Bears organization, and that we'll get a weak hand puppet GM to do the busy work of the job while Lovie picks the players. And hell, that might even work out in the Bears' favor, because the Angelo-Smith war that divided Bears management into competing factions in the last few seasons certainly wasn't working.
Overall then, it was a disappointing season. My father predicted that the Bears would go 7-9 this year. I thought they'd do much better than that, as they were coming off a trip to the NFC Conference Game last year. Turns out that I was right...until Cutler got hurt. Then he was right.
I'm not overly optimistic about the Bears' chances in 2012, but this IS the Not For Long league. Just look at the '49s quick return to relevance once they got Jim Harbaugh in as Head Coach, or at the rise of Tim Tebow. Weird things happen in the NFL...a resurgent Bears in the playoffs next season wouldn't be the weirdest by a long shot.
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