Bears fire GM Jerry Angelo
Comments (...)We can now say that Jerry Angelo never addressed the wide receiver position the way Bears fans wanted him to.
ESPN's Chris Mortensen first reported several minutes ago that Angelo has been relieved of his duties. It was initially not known if Angelo had retired, as he'd been rumored to have been considering for years, or if he was forced out. Now the Chicago Tribune's Brad Biggs is tweeting that the Bears are saying team president Ted Phillips "informed Jerry Angelo" he was fired.
Since Angelo took over in 2001, the Bears went 95-81. They made the playoffs four times, going 3-4 there and making one Super Bowl in 2007. It's tough to give Angelo much credit for the flukish 13-3 season the Bears enjoyed in his first season, but he then must be absolved some of the blame for them slipping to a tenure-worst 4-12 the following year. What I think are the two biggest bottom-line indictments of the Angelo era is that it took him until 2005 to build them back into the winner again after that first season and that he constructed back-to-back winners just once.
We all know the criticisms of Angelo that will make this a very popular move in Chicago. His draft records are poor; he's always struggled to find young impact offensive talent, and it's been a while since he drafted a defensive star. Other than signing Muhsin Muhammad in 2005, Angelo never even made a serious effort to upgrade what's almost always been a poor wide receiver corps. Quarterback was a perennial problem until Angelo traded for Jay Cutler in 2009, and even after that, Angelo's judgement in a backup at the position was proven fatally faulty when Caleb Hanie destroyed a promising 2011 season.
And, above all else, Angelo didn't construct a single Super Bowl champion in 11 years.
But let's face it, 14 games above .500 is a pretty successful showing. Angelo did it mainly by building good defensive teams around a player (Brian Urlacher) that was drafted before he got here. He deserves the credit for drafting Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman, Tommie Harris, Devin Hester and Matt Forte; the big-money signings of Julius Peppers and John Tait were also big successes. Angelo almost always did enough to keep the Bears decent, even if he never did enough to make them great.
I'll not remember Angelo as the colossal failure some Bears fans will ... but I'm not shedding any tears that he's gone. He had his chance, and while he didn't exactly blow it, he didn't hit it out of the park, either. The window is closing fast on this Bears core, and I do not want Angelo to be the one building the teams that aren't centered around Urlacher, Briggs and Peppers.
It may have made even more sense for Angelo to leave after next season. He'd enter 2013 as a lame-duck GM, so the timing seemed right for his departure to happen then. That would give him one last chance to turn the core he built into a champion, something that's obviously a longshot but is not at all inconceivable. But given Angelo's history, it would be silly to expect he could find the kind of impact receiver or real left tackle that might separate the Bears from a real shot at the Packers in 2012. Maybe management felt someone else needed to put the finishing touches on this team before its window is finally shut.
Anyway, Angelo's departure leads to a ton of new questions for a Bears team that was heading for an interesting offseason as it was. Who will replace Angelo? What does this mean for Lovie Smith's future? If Smith goes (it seemed he'd certainly be back ... until this morning), would it possibly mean a new defense that would displace guys like Urlacher and Briggs? Does Smith, even if retained, still get to decide the future of Mike Martz?
We may find out more at a 4 p.m. news conference today. I suspect it'll take days if not weeks to answer most of those questions, though. Guess things won't be as quiet around the Bears during the playoffs as we thought they would be.
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