Things Are Bad All Over?

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Dirtbag359

I said it before early in the year but it's worth saying again. The Bears built their team exactly the same way as the Redskins, yet somehow ended up in the NFC Championship. I guess part of that is they matched their big name QB acquisition with the right coach but other then that we're pretty damn similar. Big contract to a defensive lineman, draftpicks for someone elses QB, top notch MLB, porus OL, big name coach, Beat the Packers, etc.

While the Haynesworth and Peppers signings are superficially similar, the Bears didn't sign Peppers with the idea that they would plug him in somewhere and hope. The Bears had a coaching staff that really, truly understands it's defensive scheme, and so when they signed Peppers, they released Alex Brown and opted not to resign Adewale Ogunleye.

Those were eye opening moves, but in hindsight, somewhat necessary to make sure Peppers could succeed in the scheme. When we signed Haynesworth, we didn't release Griffin or Phillip Daniels or something similar, we dropped the one guy who might have benefitted from Haynesworth the most (Jason Taylor) for $8 million dollars of cap space. [Although we were in cap hell and needed that $8 million to have a draft.]

Our coaches didn't understand defense very well (and we still don't have coaches as good as the Bears coaches, which is why the 2010 Haynesworth thing happened).

Originally Posted by Dirtbag359

I should point out that the Redskins-Bears comparison is more of a poor attempt at comedy on my part rather than actual hard hitting analysis.

Noted for accuracy.