Football Friday from On Her Game - To the Bears' GM, Phil Emery: Here’s a Dictionary

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This post for Football Friday for On Her Game is a reflection of how worked up I was following yet another painful Bears game.   

As I sit here stewing over another atrocious Bears game, I find myself wondering why I continue to hold on to my allegiances. I live in my own house in Denver, with the mortgage to prove it, am married to a man with terrible allegiances (Colts and the Manning led Broncos), yet I still root for my Bears with a passion. By personal standards, I came late to the football party (around age eight), and I would always cheer for whomever my Dad was rooting for during a particular game. When we move to the Chicago-land area, he became a Bears fan, and so did I. Nearly 25 years later, I am still at it.

I recently came across a fantastic joke in the latest edition of Reader’s Digest:

 “Three fans were bemoaning the sorry state of their football team.

‘I blame the general manager,’ said the first fan.
‘If he signed better players, we’d be a great team.’

‘I blame the players,’ said the second fan. ‘If they made more of an effort,
we’d score more points.’

‘I blame my parents,’ said the third. ‘If I’d been born in Seattle,
I’d be supporting a decent team.’”

Now, to be clear, I don’t blame my Dad for teaching me to root for the Bears. He also taught me to be a White Sox fan rather than the Cubs, and I know I have a better life because of it. Plus I am an adult, who is now informed enough to make her own decisions on who I want to cheer for during a given game. That will not stop me, however, from blaming both the GM Phil Emery and the Bears players for their continual missteps on the field.

Let’s start with Phil Emery. This is the GM who followed Jerry Angelo, a man who drove Bears fan, namely me absolutely bonkers with mistake after mistake, most notably in the draft. Shall I regale you with tales of running back or quarterback woes? For the sake of my own sanity, I am going to skip the list. Let’s suffice it to say, a majority of them can no longer be found on any roster in the league. So in steps Emery, who appeared to make an immediate positive impact, until he did not; unless you want to count a negative impact? I believe in my heart Emery and I parted ways philosophically when he refused to resign Brian Urlacher. The man who led the defense that resurrected the “Monsters of the Midway,” and took the Bears to the Super Bowl; a championship they would have won if the offense had even a mediocre quarterback. No, Sexy Rexy (Rex Grossman) does not even meet the bar of mediocrity in my mind.

I got off the topic at hand, which is Emery. Instead of signing Urlacher, he decided to spend a majority of the Bears available salary cap monies on the offensive side of the ball. I am not disagreeing with the thought, with the exception that the pendulum swung wildly to the other side. There is no balance! At this point, the personnel on the offensive side of the ball have the potential to be one of the best in the league. Note that POTENTIAL is the operative word in that statement; whereas the defense, marred by injuries and suspect talent, is without a leader or an identity. No, Lance Briggs does not count as a leader, and I will spare myself the personal anguish of thinking about safety Chris Conte. Most every game I scream at the TV, put me in coach, I can play better than him! Yes, at 5’2”, 1—, female, and slow, I still contend I can be a better pro-safety than Chris Conte.

Back to my man Urlacher, a consensus future Hall of Fame linebacker, whom I still miss terribly, who had this to say on Jay Cutler, “Financially, he is one of the elite guys in the NFL ... he just hasn't produced like an elite quarterback. You look at the [Tom] Bradys, the [Peyton] Mannings, the [Aaron] Rodgers, the [Drew] Brees, those guys win every year, even with no one around them. Rodgers has no offensive line. He wins. Brady has no receivers. He wins.”

Fear not my fellow Bears fan; Phil is here to reassure us that Jay Cutler is an ELITE quarterback in salary and talent, “Emery: "Jay Cutler is a winning quarterback in this league and no matter how you analyze the history of quarterbacks in the NFL, if you have a winning record you are an elite player at that position.”

This would be the point in the article where I would call, bull sh*t.

I want to see the Bears’ front office, led right now by Phil Emery to consider how they are delegating their resources. There needs to be an acknowledgement that signing Cutler to a lucrative contract came at the expense of the defensive side of the ball. And until the Bears start consistently winning, or at least playing up to the offensive potential, I am going to send Emery a dictionary so that he can consult it for the definition of the word ‘elite.’ 

For those of you keeping track at home, Dictionary.com defines it this way:

noun
1. (often used with a plural verb) the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.

2. (used with a plural verb) persons of the highest class: Only the elite were there.

adjective

1. representing the most choice or select; best: an elite group of authors.

The recent play of Jay Cutler does not warrant the support from his General Manager, but there is little doubt that his paycheck certainly does.