Brian Urlacher on the current state of the Bears
Everyone knows the name Brian Urlacher. Even those who aren’t Chicago Bears fans. Plain and simple, Urlacher was the type of player that teams would have to gameplan their team around when playing the Bears each week from 2000-2013.
For thirteen seasons, he patrolled the middle of the Bears defense. After being forced out of the door by the Bears in 2013, Urlacher recently sat down for an interview with CBS Sports and talked about what the Bears state of mind currently is, while also offering thoughts on Lovie Smith, his former head coach, and Jay Cutler, his former quarterback.
He offered some interesting thoughts:
“I like to say it’s the Lovie Curse – because since he left, (the Bears have struggled),” Urlacher said. “He got fired being 10-6. I think they fire him either way. Even if we go to the playoffs, I think they fire him. I don’t think the GM liked the way he coached the football team. The guy’s a winner. I love playing for him. I don’t know what the identity of that team is. They sign (Mike) Glennon, then they draft a kid No. 2 – I don’t know what (they’re doing). It’s confusing.”
Interesting piece of information Urlacher offers there. Had the Bears even made the playoffs in 2012, ex-Bears GM Phil Emery probably would have fired Smith. Besides missing the playoffs, Lovie Smith’s coaching philosophy probably didn’t match with Phil Emery’s.
The former Chicago Bear also offered interesting thoughts on another former Chicago Bear: Jay Cutler.
“He was just different,” former Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher said in studio on CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney. “He wasn’t very talkative, is that the word? He was one of the guys. There was a couple years there where we played dodgeball on Saturday mornings. We had a good time in the locker room, but it just didn’t ever seem authentic, I guess. I’m not sure the way to put it. But he was a good teammate. Never had any issues with him. The media always made him worse than he was, I believe, because of the way they got him on the sideline making those faces. But off the field, he was okay.”
Those words from Urlacher regarding Cutler show that he wasn’t as bad as we thought him to be, rather he was just overly criticized by the media for different incidents. Too often, Cutler was labeled as someone who lifeless, had all the talent to play quarterback, but unfortunately, didn’t possess the qualities like leadership to play the position. Sure Cutler had his ups and downs with the Bears, but none of us truly knew what he was like behind the scenes. I guess we’ll never know what Cutler was like off the field.
As we sit here five years later, things have changed in Chicago. Brian Urlacher, Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman, Julius Peppers, Devin Hester, and Olin Kreutz are gone. The Bears hired Marc Trestman in hopes of turning the team into an offensive juggernaut, which never happened. Phil Emery and Marc Trestman are gone, only to be replaced by Ryan Pace and John Fox, a regime that has won just nine games combined in two seasons.
