Rex giveth, and Bears' D taketh away
Bears stand 7 shy of Rams' 46 turnovers forced under Lovie in '03
The always outwardly optimistic Smith let his mask fall a bit this week with the devastating news that defensive tackle Tommie Harris has a ''severe hamstring pull'' that's nearly certain to keep him out for the rest of the season and threatens his availability for the playoffs.
''No one in the league has a player like Tommie,'' Smith said. ''So now I see us being like everybody else.''
Clearly, it's not the sort of subject-changer Smith was hoping for in the midst of a quarterback crisis. And ''crisis'' is the correct word given Rex Grossman's disintegrating play and caustic shouts for reserve Brian Griese to take over the reins. Smith has resisted making a move and the Bears have said they're sticking with Grossman, but now comes word that Griese has been taking half the snaps in practice.
Is it really happening again? Are the Bears on the verge of a quarterback change heading into the playoffs for the second straight year?
When last the Bears found themselves on the national-television showcase of ''Monday Night Football,'' a couple of things happened that are still impacting the team. For one, Grossman single-handedly was involved in six turnovers, throwing four interceptions and losing two fumbles.
To put that in perspective, only four NFL games have seen one team with six giveaways, and the Bears have done it twice. The six are the most by a single player all year. The Bears' defense, which leads the NFL in takeaways with 39 and is the only team to produce at least two in every game, has yet to force six by a single opponent.
The other thing that happened that Monday night in Arizona is that the Bears won the game -- using a combination of never-say-die defense and a punt return by Devin Hester -- and went into the NFL record books by overcoming a massive deficit without the help of an offensive touchdown.
Smith referenced that game last week when talking about his team's penchant for taking the ball away from opponents. He said the Bears took a simplistic approach to creating turnovers by emphasizing it in drills and team meetings and then getting top-level athletes to buy into the plan.
''You have to see it work, too, and for us, our guys have the Arizona game to look to,'' Smith said. ''Things are going bad, but you can win by stripping the ball, taking it away and scoring. Once guys see it, they start buying into it even more.''
Smith was something of a football vagabond before making a leap up the food chain when he went to St. Louis. He'd worked as a position coach with linebackers or defensive backs while moving through the college ranks from Tulsa to Wisconsin to Arizona State to Kentucky to Tennessee to Ohio State before jumping to the NFL to coach linebackers for five years in Tampa.
He became a defensive coordinator with the Rams in 2001, eventually being promoted to assistant head coach to Mike Martz before landing his first head coaching job with the Bears. It was in St. Louis, under his old friend Martz, that Smith got to run his own side of the ball for the first time and implement a lot of the ideas and philosophy he had developed.
''That was the final piece,'' Smith said. ''I have gotten something from every place I have been, from every coach and every player, but that was the final stop that boosted me a little over the top. It happened there in St. Louis, no doubt. It will always be a special place for me. It's always fun when you come back home, so I am looking forward to [Monday's game].''
Smith brought his pursuit drills and loaf chart and his emphasis on turnovers to the Rams, and they became the kind of opportunistic defense the Bears are now.
''I remember in St. Louis, we had 46 takeaways one year [2003] and I said, 'Man, I will never be on a team that has 46 again.' Now we have 39 with four games to go. I have really enjoyed watching it, too. Each time one comes up, it's not like they are turnovers to me. Most of them are takeaways.''
The Bears go into their defensive huddle, Brian Urlacher calls out down and distance and gives the personnel group, and the team breaks with a yell of ''Strip the ball!''
''The mind-set has to be that way,'' Smith said.