(Written by kencraw)

Now that I’ve had a few days to think over the 2007 season, I thought I’d give a few thoughts on what the biggest mistakes made that led to this 7-6 season.

1. Kevin Riley should have gotten more playing time: This is not to say that I think he should have been the starter for the entire time, but I am convinced that Tedford was ignoring how badly Longshore had slipped. The most obvious example is the 2nd half of the ASU game. Longshore started strong and then faded as the hits piled up to where he could barely throw the ball. Riley should have come in after Longshore limped off the field in the 3rd quarter. To be clear, I think Longshore was the right guy to start both the UCLA and ASU games, but Riley should have come in late in the ASU game. After that, it’s hard to know because we don’t know how Riley would have performed or Longshore would have recovered both with less playing time and the QB competition.
2. Tedford should not have been calling plays: This is a tough one to say because I think Tedford is a brilliant offensive mind and a great play-caller. All of that said, calling plays takes a TON of focus and really hampers his ability to be a head coach. Also, from the sideline, you can’t see a lot of the developments that a guy in the box can see. Often what is obviously a great play-call with the benefit of the view from the booth is less than obvious on the sideline. Tedford really needs to find an offensive coordinator that he feels good about and work really hard with him each week to design/script plays that can be used during the game. That’ll allow Tedford to both have the offense he wants and the time to be a good head coach on gameday.
3. Offensive line needed better blocking: This is one of the hardest ones to be very specific about with out spending hours pooring over game film as well as interviewing the offensive line coach. Who was at fault here? Were some players not performing well? Were they poorly coached? Was this just a transitionaly year after losing too much talent? It’s all very hard to know. What I can say is that they did not perform as well as their predicessors and there are a number of problems that plagued the offense that starts with the offensive line play. Just to list a few: Ineffectiveness on the goal-line and 3rd and short situations, Longshore’s frequent hurried throws, rushing difficulties in key situations/games, etc..
4. Defense should have gone to 3-4? Now I’m grasping for a final answer to our defensive weaknesses. There was discussion before the season that the Bears would use the 3-4 more than in the past, but through fall-camp it seemed like enough strong defensive linemen developed to not need that and sticking with the traditional 4-3 would work. However, the injury to Rulon Davis as well as the other minor injuries that plagued the defensive line, along with a couple of the guys not developing as quickly as everyone hoped, it seems in retrospect that maybe the 3-4 would have worked better. The 3-4 was used a lot more in the later portions of the Armed Forces bowl and I think it was a better formation for the talent this team had.

Those are the biggies in my opinion. I can’t decide whether #1 or #2 is really the #1 item because I’m unsure if Tedford would have more easily seen what was happening with his QB’s if he hadn’t been so focused on calling plays. Since it was the QB situation that was the symptom-level problem, I put it on top.

The good news is that I think the above problems can all be fixed and 2008 could be a very successful season if the Bears can just find the wide receiver replacements needed to round out what will otherwise be a very experienced team.