Too many similarities between Emery and Angelo
Comments (...)Here's hoping there is more substance and less predictability to Phil Emery the football executive than there was to the press conference introducing him as Bears general manager.
When Emery spoke Monday, he delivered one tried-and-true cliche after another. He thanked everyone from the McCaskey family, to his wife and daughter to his previous hires. He seemed polite and gracious enough as he fielded questions ... though he offered an actual, concrete answer to few of them.
It was very much what I expected from a general manager who is himself exactly what I expected the Bears' contrived search to produce. The ringing endorsements have come in about Emery from those who know him around the league. He's a "good football man," a "tireless worker" and "ready for the opportunity" ... though I didn't hear of teams other than the Bears lining up to give Emery that opportunity.
You know, it's been a while, but I seem to vaguely remember the Bears making a similar hire once before. Like Emery, the previous hire had a background in scouting. Like Emery, the previous hire was well-respected in the league, but wasn't exactly a hot commodity to become a G.M. until the Bears came along. Like Emery, the previous hire didn't exactly seem comfortable sitting behind the microphone at a presser.
Does the name Jerry Angelo ring a bell?
The similarities between Emery and his predecessor are a bit too eerie for me. They have bring similar resumes to Chicago, and they enter similar situations. Ted Phillips is the guy responsible for conducting a much-maligned search to bring each to town. Like Emery with Lovie Smith, Angelo inherited a coach he didn't choose in Dick Jauron. How many Super Bowls did the Angelo/Jauron pairing win again?
OK, there is at least one major difference between Angelo and Emery. When Angelo was hired in 2001, he'd most recently served as Director of Player Personnel for the Buccaneers. Emery comes to the Bears fresh off a stint as Director of College Scouting for the Chiefs. That is a reason to hope that Emery will be more adept at drafting than Angelo was.
Then again, the Chiefs once used the third overall pick in a draft on Tyson Jackson. The second phrase Google auto-fills in when you type his name in its search box is "tyson jackson bust." On second thought, it sounds like Emery might draft exactly as Angelo did!
Forgive me if it sounds like I'm declaring the Emery era a disaster when it's a few hours old. He could be a rousing success. We don't know that Emery will devote as few resources to key offensive positions like wide receiver and offensive line as Angelo did. He could very well blow Angelo's track record in the draft out of the water; Lord knows that wouldn't take much.
Emery could very well become the NFL's next great general manager, and the point of this column isn't to declare that he won't. Obviously the Bears fan in me hopes very much that will happen. But if it does, it will be in spite of the process that brought him to Chicago, not because of it. His greatness will be the product of a blind squirrel (a fitting description of Phillips the football man if I've ever heard one) finding a nut.
By forcing the new G.M. to keep Smith — and, presumably, to follow a bunch of other mandates from above — Phillips ensured that the list of finalists was lacking in both hot up-and-comers and Bill Polian-like proven commodities. While I'm personally not upset that the aging Polian was never in the running, I would have liked for the Bears to have gotten more than a brush-off from guys like Reggie McKenzie, who jumped straight from Green Bay to Oakland without seemingly giving the Bears a second look.
How sad it is that an infamously dysfunctional franchise like Oakland can land a McKenzie without him even giving the Bears a second look. Phillips was left to pick from the leftovers and the under-qualified, and here we are.
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