Linebacker Coach New Bears Scapegoat

Forgive us for making an overdone The Dark Knight reference. (Believe us. We love that movie, and there's nothing more overdone than TDK references.) But in one scene in the film, just before they're all arrested, the various mob bosses are gathered for dinner. Upon realizing The Joker's prescience, one says "He was right. We have to fix the real problem: Batman."

We're assuming Lovie Smith didn't see the movie.

Why? Because it's clear to almost everybody that if there was a problem with the Bears defense beyond the fact that several of its key players are aging, it was coordinator Bob Babich. For whatever reason, Babich's interpretation of Lovie Smith's Tampa-2 defense didn't work. It was soft on the outside, it couldn't cover up the middle -- it was a mess. So instead of firing Babich -- the real problem, as it were -- the Bears have laid waste to nearly every defensive position coach on the team. The latest: linebacker coach Lloyd Lee.

Maybe Lee wasn't very good at his job. Maybe he's part of the reason Brian Urlacher had a very mediocre year. Were that the case, it would follow that Lance Briggs would have seen a similar drop-off in production. He didn't. But hey, seriously: Maybe Lloyd Lee was bad, and deserved to be fired. Fair enough.

But even if so, it's fixing a small problem, dealing in the minute when the infinite is more pressing. We don't know if Lloyd Lee was bad. We know Bob Babich was. And yet he remains employed. Lovie has yet to fix the real problem.