My Friends,

 

I was going through some of the local papers this evening, and I read Dan Pompei's piece in Friday's Trib about the Steelers deserving to be in the picture for "best defense ever."

I won't debate which defense was best, having my own bias, but I was struck by one paragraph toward the end of his column:

"The current Steelers defense is more scheme-driven than personnel-driven, courtesy of the brilliance of Dick LeBeau. The defensive coordinator is respected as one of the premier game-planners and play-callers in the league. Like Bill Belichick, Rex Ryan and Jim Johnson, he creates confusion and dictates to offenses."

Dictates. There it is, in a nutshell. The biggest difference between the Bears' defense now and what Chicagoans want to see is that Lovie Smith's defense is designed to react to what the offense does, rather than line up and let the offense figure out how they're going to beat them.

The Bears catch. They don't throw. And if you're catching, you have to go where the ball is thrown.

It's pretty simple when you think of it like that.

And for the record, I think Ron Rivera would be a thrower.

LBF

1/30/2009