Lovie Smith loves Adam Archuleta

February 21st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

A lot of things went south for the Bears last season. Let me count the ways:

1. The defense was exposed as the relatively lucky unit it had been in two previous years, and the turnovers that characterized those years were gone.
2. The offense failed to improve, including Rex Grossman. He’s officially bad at football.
3. Muhsin Muhammed’s play went even further south. (Moose was released earlier this week.)
4. Bernard Berrian’s play also, suprisingly, went south; Berrian should be coming into his prime, not looking he’s coming out of it.
5. Tommy Harris was never 100 percent.
6. The secondary was awful, especially the safeties.

And so on. It was a brutally frustrating year for the Bears, so frustrating that I actually gave up on watching by, like, Week 7. It was that bad.

So the Bears have a lot of work to do in the offseason. Among the fixable issues on the list above, one very obvious solution presents itself: To correct the secondary, start by removing Adam Archuleta from the playing field. Archuleta was easily — easily — the worst Bear last year. He can’t run, he can’t cover, and he really doesn’t even hit people hard anymore, which is about all he was good for in the first place.

Yet Lovie Smith stuck with him throughout the year. And he’s sticking with him in 2008, too:

1. He reiterated the club’s desire to re-sign Rex Grossman.

2. He had optimism about the club’s attempts to re-sign other impending free agents, including Bernard Berrian and Lance Briggs. 3. He said he wants Mike Brown back for 2008.

4. He said Adam Archuleta is expected to return this coming season.

Nooooooooooo!!