FanHouse Lovie Smith

As the Chicago Bears look to break a skid which has found them losing four of their last five games, they are apparently not in a very outgoing mood. As NBC gears up for Sunday Night football this week -- which pits the Bears against the Philadelphia Eagles -- they requested "access" to Bears general manager Jerry Angelo, head coach Lovie Smith and quarterback Jay Cutler. The Bears declined.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the reason a Bears spokesman gave for the denial is that the team needs to focus on winning games instead of talking to the media.

This is a couple days old, but it still merits a mention because Fran Tarkenton is suddenly the angriest, unintentionally funny quote on the planet. Plus, it's one more opportunity to clown frowny-faced Jay Cutler after his pick-tastic performance against the 49ers Thursday night.

Back in May, when the "Favre is RE-UNRETIRING ... AGAIN!" talk began in earnest, Tarkenton, who took the Vikings to four Super Bowls during his career, appeared on an Atlanta radio station to make his views on the idea crystal clear.

Though most had the Minnesota Vikings as the favorites to win the NFC North heading into the season, nearly everyone agreed that either the Chicago Bears or Green Bay Packers -- or both -- would at least pose a challenge to the Vikes' second straight division crown. Instead, we're taking this division race off life support and putting it to rest after Week 9. The 2009 NFC North champions will be the Vikings. They can now focus on securing home-field advantage in the playoffs.

The reason for the above sentiment is that both the Bears and Packers were abysmal, in different circumstances, Sunday afternoon. The Pack went into Tampa Bay and lost to the formerly winless Buccaneers, while the Bears were absolutely manhandled for the majority of the afternoon by a fickle Arizona squad.

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Lovie Smith has a 49-38 record as the head coach of the Chicago Bears. In his first five seasons, he guided the Bears to two division titles and one Super Bowl. The Bears are currently in the 2009 playoff race at 4-3. Yet, among fans and Chicago-area media, Lovie is just as maligned as the pathetic offensive line.

The complaints range from Lovie's penchant to avoid showing any emotion on the sideline to his not properly preparing players for games to his almost scripted non-answer answers in press conferences. Regardless of the reason, Lovie is not particularly loved, at present, in Chicago ... except by his Bears.

NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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Bengals 45, Bears 10. It was 45-3 before the Bears finally got into the end zone, but the game had long been over at that point. It was one of those games that makes you wonder -- were the Bengals that good or the Bears that bad? As is usually the case when you ask that question, it was a combination of both. You have to give the Bengals credit, especially Carson Palmer for his precision passing. Well, really, the entire team deserves loads of credit.

Still, this game was more about how pathetic the Bears played. For a team with Super Bowl aspirations, that was a simply despicable attempt at playing football on nearly every front. More games like that, and the playoffs won't even be a possibility come late November.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

Consider this hypothetical: what if two coaches met in a dark alley and threw down in a no-holds-barred brawl? Who would emerge victorious?

First, some background: back when I was in high school, when my friends and I were pretty creative in finding ways to avoid actually paying attention in class, we'd create brackets (think NCAA Tournament) where we'd pit our teachers against each other**. Whoever we thought would win in a fight advanced to the next round. It always ended with our offensive line coach against our wrestling coach in the finals and a huge argument as to who would come out on top.

Anyway, last week, the Back Porch staff somehow ended up discussing whether Rex Ryan or Tom Cable would win in a old school playground scrap. I passed along the above information, and shortly after that, an idea was born -- NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament.

CHICAGO -- Words aren't necessary. The images alone Sunday are sufficient portraits of why football might be the ultimate gratification mind game. There was Jay Cutler, managing a rare laugh as an official accidentally knocked his helmet off his head, punching the air in victory after a hellish week in which he threw four interceptions and was crucified again by the NFL coaching establishment. There was Robbie Gould, as in gold, calmly making yet another game-winning field goal in a volatile meteorological swirl on a cow-pasture surface pockmarked by two U2 concerts.

And there, on the Pittsburgh sideline, was Jeff Reed, literally looking ready to cry. Few professions in sports, or life, are more thankless than that of the placekicker. When you convert a kick, it's taken for granted. When you miss a potential winner, you're a bum. Reed, whose 82.8 percent conversion rate makes him the league's 10th-most accurate kicker ever, missed two such biggies on the oversized Brillo pad that is Soldier Field. And with those blunders came the first loss of the season for the Steelers, your defending Super Bowl champions, who might have begun to make their case for repeating if even one of Reed's kicks hadn't swerved wide left.

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Brian Urlacher stood near midfield on a warm evening last month during Bears training camp in Bourbonnais, Ill. He said that, come what may, the Bears defense will always be easily identified. He said it like he meant it, which is certainly Urlacher's way

"We're never going to change,'' Urlacher said. "I mean, this is how we play and what we do. We're physical. We're hungry. We get as excited about defending the run as we do the pass. And we've always got a history to live up to around here.''

Well, the spirit may be willing but the tools are now certainly weaker for this Bears defense

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