Final Thoughts on 2011 Chicago Bears: Not the 8-8 I imagined

While I indicated early on this season that I felt the Bears were going to be fighting to be a .500 team this year, the fact that the team ended up with same number of wins as losses does not represent the oh-so-brief span of potential there seemed to be midway through the year. Indeed, there was once a point this year where some of us Bears fans might have been feeling a bit more confident that things were going to be different that next time we ran into the Packers. And in this NFC, why couldn't Chicago compete again?

And the answer, of course, was first an injury to your star quarterback and then your star running back. Follow that with an abysmal losing streak that varied in levels of pain to witness, and you get a Bears team that naturally missed the playoffs.

Unlike a few years ago when the team held a press conference to commit sweeping changes while simultaneously retaining the exact same staff, general manager Jerry Angelo was gone and Mike Martz was out as offensive coordinator. So at least this off-season, there will be some new faces that can hopefully begin getting to work trying to figure out how this third place team is going to get back to the top of a pretty competitive division.

There was continued speculation for what seemed like more months than it actually was before the Bears introduced their agent of change as ...

This guy to the right, Ray Emery.

Wait ... I mean Phil Emery. Sorry.

Previously employed with the Chiefs and the Falcons ... as director of college scouting for both. So there's an eye on the future, I suppose. What happens next year with the team you already have, well ... that remains to be seen.

We've needed a wide receiver for how many years now? No offense to the inspired efforts of one Earl Bennett, but there seems to certainly looks to be some guys becoming available this off-season that could be genuine, bona fide No. 1 receiver. How badly do you want to lean on that first draft?

I know there were some calls that Lovie Smith should have lost his job too, but I just don't think you can completely throw that much blame at his feet. The man has gotten this team to do nothing if not consistently overachieve in his tenure, and scraping by at 8-8 this year will at least allow him to say it wasn't a losing season.

This was a pretty rough year, and I can't honestly say that I could have imagined Caleb Hanie would be as disastrous as he was. There were some pretty brutal losses in this year's campaign, but after a nearly injury-free year I guess it is fair to expect you were due to have something like this happen. I can't say that softens the collapse all that much, but now you hope that's the worst that happens for a while now.

The one thing that's clear is the pressure is on Lovie next year. We'll see what team he's actually given to work with, but there's no more blaming Jerry for whichever draft pick or screaming about Martz's playcalling. Nope, any problems next year are probably going to be pinned right on Lovie.

So of course the Bears will go 14-2 or something.