While in FRG saw Stones in Frankfurt, Moody Blues in a 1800 seat amphitheater, and Led Zeppelin at the Circus Krone in Munich. Best was Traffic outdoors at the castle in Karlshrue at midnight with laser show. Attitude enhancers were in play. Last off topic post.
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And 5 years from all of us
Boston, in Boston Gahden (the old gahden).
In fairness, Lovie had it going in St. Louis which is why he got the Bears job. I'm sure the Rams were perfectly happy with the money they gave Lovie and the subsequent championship.
What was the Rams defense ranked in 1999?
That season, the Rams were fourth in the NFL in points allowed per game (15.1), first in run defense (74.3 yards per game) and tied for the league lead with 57 sacks. They also finished sixth in takeaways with 36 and scored eight defensive touchdowns.
Minny going with co-oc. Hopefully conflict in the future.
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r/CFB - Minnesota announces that former TE Coach Greg Harbaugh Jr will serve as Co-OC/QB Coach alongside current Co-OC/ WR Coach Matt Simon
22 votes and 20 comments so far on Reddit
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the concept of stealing... but there's no way Lovie waa stealing from TB or Chicago. He had the team on a relative upswing in year 2 in TB and I honestly have my doubts the Bears will ever be good again. The last coach to win double digit games was Nagy now half a decade ago already.
6-10 isn't that much of an upswing, particularly when they won 9 games the year after he left.
Ransom Stoddard
Ordained Dudeist Priest
- Bloomington, IL
He was fired from both and continued to get paid. Thus stealing.
That's the upswing. They would have probably done that if he was still there that year.
He was paid according to a signed contract. Thus not stealing.
He did not provide the product / consideration as expected in the contract. Thus stealing. Morally, not legally.
Lovie Smith is the best coach the Bears have had in the last 30 years. The only other coach the Bears have had who was as good or better in the 55 years since Halas retired is Ditka. Smith was fired after going 10-6, a record they’ve matched only once in the 10 seasons since.
I just don’t understand the bitterness some Bears fans have towards him.
As a Bears fan I'm not bitter. As an Illini fan I am bitter - he was pretty much worthless here
I can't argue Bears results (other than hindsight being 20/20), and to your point, maybe that's all that matters.
But I have never liked his style of coaching. Indifferent vs. involved / excited (from outside looking in anyway). The 100% concentration on defense at the expense of offense. Seemed like every Bear high draft pick was on defense, with very little obtained for the offense (Rex is our QB). Saw this same pattern again at Illinois with recruiting.
And then the stuff around hiring his son, etc. Certainly not exclusive to Lovie / Illinois (Ferentz) but a horrible thing to do.
Similar to @bluemountain, I did not like Lovie as a Bear coach, but the deep bitterness came after his Illinois tenure.
Agreed- Lovie is obviously Whitman's worst hire and while you can understand JW's logic of wanting to make a splash and get an NFL coach in Champaign, Lovie was just collecting checks and had no real desire to build the program or frankly win on the field.
I'm pretty sure Houston hired him as their "Ted Lasso" hire to get them the #1 pick and he even failed at doing that by going for 2 late in the last game.
Doesn't necessarily matter because the Bears don't need a QB. However, if I'm the Bears and I don't need a QB, I'm trading back and cashing in big time.
While it's true that Lovie somewhat underperformed given the defensive talent he had, it's worth noting that both Trestman and Nagy were "Offensive Minded" HC's who underperformed way more than Lovie did.
Also, get that Lovie's aloofness rubbed aome the wrong way, but I doubt anyone lasts in the coaching business if they are indifferent. Keep in mind we saw a lot more of Lovie's team through the media whereas all we get from Bielema is a presser report or inside sources. There's just different styles of coaching.
I still think that hiring Smith in March of 2016 instead of letting recruiting stagnate another season under interim Cubit was the better choice. I still don’t think Whitman was going to find a better option given the timing outside the normal hiring cycle.
I still think Beckman, Thomas, and the U of I admin bore way more responsibility for the dismal state of the program over the subsequent few years after.
I think Smith was brought in for his professionalism and stability. He brought that for long enough to improve the Illini program from a complete dumpster fire to merely a bad football team, and then was let go at the exact right time. I don’t think Illinois gets a coach of Bielema’s quality if not for Smith’s efforts while here.
I don’t think Smith is a great coach. I don’t think he should have been retained. I do think he did here what he was hired to do and left the program in far better shape than he found it.
I think Lovie’s failure at Illinois was primarily driven by 2 factors: failure to adapt his coaching style for the college game and 2. Excess loyalty/nepotism.
For #1, his style, which I agree for lack of a better term is “aloof” I do think works well in the NFL because he’s dealing with professionals, and I think the professionals liked and respected that he was less hard assed and just had the expectation that they do their jobs. As a general rule he was popular among the players and as an employee I appreciate that management style much more than a micro manager/hard !!!. So I get it.
College is a different dynamic. You’re dealing with kids who probably need more structure/discipline, whereas in the professional setting a failure to show up, be prepared, not make mistakes, be in shape etc, will result in being out of a job pretty quick. It was always my educated guess as to why his defenses struggled so and there was always a lot of standing and pointing while a Wisconsin tight end ran unguarded up the seam, was that he expected the college kids to understand/figure it out like pros are expected to do.
For #2, he’s always been that way and it probably cost him his job in Chicago. Never replicated the success on defense once he let Rivera go who seemed in sufficiently loyal and a yes man. And kept bringing in O coordinators who he had a good relationship with personally but maybe weren’t a fit for the offensive pieces. Martz comes in and immediately trades Greg Olsen for peanuts because he wants blocking tight ends. Runs deep drops with cutler despite a leaky o line etc.
And at Illinois, brought in Nickerson and other guys who I really don’t think knew how to build/establish a college program. Night and day between Lovie and BB in that regard.
All that being said, think Lovie is a good man who did well for the bears despite his flaws, but ultimately wasn’t a fit for the college game and we moved on.
I agree with this, but I think a lot of Lovie's connections were at the NFL level, and no one was coming to be an assistant at Illinois at the time if they had a gig in the NFL, even a low level one.
I can't speak to how much he looked outside his own network, but if he didn't that was absolutely a problem.
A barnyard epithet would be about the only appropriate way to describe that type of logic
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Reason #3: He took over a program with a hollowed out roster that had basically lost 2 whole recruiting classes while the administration dithered with its Beckman investigation, waiting to fire Thomas, inexplicably extending Cubit, and waiting nearly 6 months to finally hire Whitman.
Smith’s 2nd team had so few upperclassmen it was basically a Ju-Co team. Remember, the change to the immediate transfer rule didn’t change until Smith’s 3rd year.
Reason #4: Smith was behind the 8-ball from the start in filling out his staff.
The same off-cycle hiring that made it so that he was the best guy available also applied to his first coaching staff. Basically ensuring that he wasn’t able to immediately bring the best in and also obligating him to give guys more than that first year since no one wanted to move their families for only 6 months of work.
By the time year 3 came around, his seat was already hot. So he still wasn’t able to bring in the top flight guys who were looking for more security.
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