Soul

I don't see how they lure a currently employed OC to be their OC. The only way is to make it clear he's the HC in waiting. That would take balls that these clowns just don't have.

I think the Hawks would have to give up at least and equal amount in salary to get Kovalchuk. So the pricetag is going to be high. I think something else to consider as a Hawks fan is this, if the Hawks dont get him who will? $7.5M in salary isn't that much. Sharp ($4.0), Barker ($3.0) and one of Beach/Skille/Aliu would cover that for this season. But I don't think that Sharpie and Barker would get it done. I think Atlanta would want a cheaper, more plentiful package. Something like Versteeg, Byfuglien, and Baker, plus Aliu/Skille and a pick. To me, I think the cost in players would just be too high for a rental. Plus, If you trade Barker or Sopel, you need to get a defenseman back -- the d-man corps is pretty thin in Rockford. I think the Hawks plan to follow the Detroit/Pittsburgh model and trade their good, but not great, young talent for picks to develop a deep talent pool to allow for pipeline of cheap, young talented players. Ultimately, I think Atlanta will re-sign him. But, yeah, it would be really annoying to see him go to LA or Vancouver. I don't know. This team is great right now. Do we really want to start messing with it mid-stream like that? I think Sharp is a significant contributor to the 2009/2010 Hawks. Maybe his future is with another team, but right now? He's a guy who is doing very good things for us. I'm hesitant to want to upset that apple cart. Give me a goalie upgrade possibility.

Its not Lovie's fault that he has a mediocre running back. If we had a Chris Johnson/Adrian Peterson type of player, would you have a problem with Lovie saying he wants to run the football? Especially coming off a year when we got away from the run, although after hearing the report about Forte's injury, it seems as if there could have been a legitimate reason for it. You really believe that his knee tweak is a legitmate excuse for his crappy year? And yes, Lovie has been given more & more personnel input. Everything that is happening on this team is partially his fault, as well as Jerry's. They drafted Forte, made him the guy. Now he's mediocre at best. That goes right back to both of them.

Yeah. And big changes need to be made, but the system works so it doesn't need to be changed. But we're going to make changes, except that those changes will be to run the old system so they aren't really going to be changes. My brain is fried.

Frustrated at what? I got the impression the writers were lobbing softballs his way. He gets pissed when people question him. It wasn't all softballs. They were asking about third down problems, repeated failures, the contradiction of needing change but keeping the scheme the same, questioning the value of maintaining a scheme that has failed repeatedly. He sounded angry toward the end, and the last words he spoke makes it sound like they offered Marinelli the DC job and he turned it down. "Rod wants to remain in his current position as the assistant head coach, helping me with stuff like that, and coaching the defensive line. That's a full-time job." I think Marinelli found out that power ain't all it's cracked up to be. Yeah, think about that. The Bears want to bring in a guy to run Lovie's scheme. That screams Marinelli. Yet he turned down the job quickly. I don't know about you, but that tells me Marinelli doesn't smell success any time soon for this bunch.

Wow. What a load of malarkey. This is really reminding me of those final Waanstedt years, the meandering around for extra seasons of the same old crap over & over again. Our fearless leaders have no clue what to do, and our owners don't have the stomach to fire them. It's really as simple as that. If the Bears do improve next year, it will be nothing but blind luck. More likely, 2010 is going to be an ugly season of Bears football. Possibly even catastrophically ugly.

"Sometimes you just don't have a good year." :banghead:

What the hell? He just used Green Bay as an example of why you should stick with the same scheme. Huh? Green Bay changed to a 3-4 and turned from a bad defense to a top defense in one season YOU DOLT!

So they couldn't tell us this on Monday? This just just a lot of junk. Why did they need to wait an extra day? This is just status quo nonsense, all the way around.

LOL. "Evolvement." He just said that.

And here's Jerry...

Does anyone have a hook? Pull him off the stage. Sheesh.

Yeah, this is really a load crap from top to bottom. What I'm getting is that nothing will really be done different, but we're going to call it "big changes." People will be brought in, but to do things exactly the same way Lovie has been doing them all along. Oh, and money has nothing to do with why Lovie and Jerry are still here. Yeah, sure. And I'm Santa Claus.

And he just said the coordinators that will be brought in will follow the system Lovie wants.

He actually just said money was not a factor. Good Lord.

Phillips is just blowing a lot of meaningless smoke.

:thumbsup: The Hiestand firing is just as big for me, if not bigger. Maybe we can finally get someone in here who knows how to develop OLine talent effectively.

Relegate Lovie to the role of figurehead. Bring in OC/DC who may very well be the next HC. Sell it to them like that. Lovie is head coach in title only. Essentially a cheerleader for the real workhorses.

Yeah, it's just not enough change IMO. It just falls short of what is needed.

Yes, that's an important point to make. Alot of people just assume that since we aren't winning games, that means the players Lovie has to work with suck, so it isn't Lovie's fault. That logic has a flaw in it: it assumes that all our players have reached their full potential under Lovie Smith. Untrue. There's strong evidence that he's not getting all that he needs to get from these players.

There is zero reason Lovie shouldn't be receiving his fair share of vitriol.

I agree, there's a certain likelihood that it will be Martz based on the relationships and his availability. And then Lovie will be canned next offseason. New coach, 3rd OC for Cutler (4th in 4 years). Yikes. Hope you know what you're doing, Mr. Angelo.

I think your latter statement is more likely.

Bruce, Votto, Stubbs. They also have Dickerson and Janish getting a lot of AB and you could expect improvement probably. Certainly more young talent that could 'break out' than say the Astros or Pirates. The Reds could at least plausibly find themselves over .500 if things go their way. They've had Bruce, Votto for awhile already. It hasn't lifted them yet. The question I would want answered is, why would 2010 be any different for them? I don't see why anyone would be afraid of Stubbs right now. His first ~200 ABs in the majors weren't anything special: .267/.323/.439

I don't get what is boring about it. It's a new game. Some of the games involved 2 teams playing with purpose, some involved one team with much more purpose than the other, and some involved 2 teams playing for next to nothing. I think you are likely to see some different outcomes this week. It is very difficult to beat a good NFL team twice. It's a new game, but it's the same teams. I don't get what you don't get about it. Sameness is boring. Different-ness is less boring.