February 18, 2009
Bears will miss Tait more than Brown
At the risk of altering the Mike Brown parade route along Town Line Road or nixing plans for a statue of the safety outside Halas Hall, remember this, Bears fans.
As much respect as Brown earned in nine seasons with the Bears, the Mike Brown Era in Chicago really ended a couple of years ago when he stopped being the player everybody remembers from 2001. It didn't end Friday when Brown received a phone call making official what he and the rest of the league already knew about the Bears not extending a contract for 2009.
That move was a mistake, by the way, but more about that later. Brown's long goodbye already has hogged too much attention away from the player whose recent career development actually came as a surprise.
Marking the Bears' worst weekend since they squandered a playoff spot in Week 17, offensive tackle John Tait informed the team he plans to retire. If newspapers and Web sites had scratch-and-sniff capability for stories, surely this one would stink for Bears fans.
The Bears will miss Tait more than they will miss Brown. They are used to missing Brown. Since Lovie Smith became head coach in 2004, Brown has missed more regular-season games (44) than he has played in (36). Tait has started 73 games in that same span and been the Bears' most important offensive lineman of Smith's tenure.
When the team positioned itself for a Super Bowl run before the 2005 season, Tait's ability to swing from the right side to the left side precipitated a key signing in veteran Fred Miller. Without that move, do the Bears win the NFC without a dominant running game?
Nobody who made $11 million his first season on a new team, as Tait did in 2004, really can be described as taken for granted. But Tait was like a good paper boy in that you really don't appreciate the job he did until somebody else tries to do it.
Critics will rightly point out that Tait struggled mightily at times in 2008, and some of that was age and some of it injury. Not all of it was awful. Tait provided a professional effort the Bears no longer know they will get, not yet anyway.
Plan A should involve calling Tait to appeal to his soft spot for charities and see if he will change his mind and help the lost cause that is the Bears' offensive line. But Plan B probably involves re-signing John St. Clair, who was going to be given the chance to unseat Tait.
The beauty of that original plan was in the luxury of having a proven veteran serve as the backup either way. St. Clair filled in serviceably last season on the left side. But is it realistic to think de facto rookie Chris Williams on the left side and St. Clair on the right would give the Bears the bookends necessary to win the division? To say yes is to be overly optimistic.
Maybe the Bears can find a better option in free agency or they will draft one of the right tackles on display at this weekend's NFL combine. Regardless, history says quarterbacks will feel less safe in the pocket without Tait protecting them. In the seven games Tait missed in five seasons in Chicago, the Bears gave up an average of one more sack per game (3.35) than in the 73 he played.
The Bears now will pay dearly for neglecting the offensive tackle position in the draft between first-rounders Marc Colombo in 2002 to Williams last year. The only two tackles taken in that span were seventh-round projects Kirk Barton in '08 and Aaron Brandt in '07.
Speaking of miscalculations, the Bears should have offered Brown a contract worth the veteran's minimum loaded with playing-time incentives.
That would be appropriate given Brown's decline. He wasn't even the best safety on the Bears last year and has only six interceptions since Smith took over five seasons ago.
But Brown still has value as a backup and emergency starter, especially against the run in a division where Vikings running back Adrian Peterson still works. The intangibles he could have offered a team such as the Bears are too abstract to include in any contract language.
Consider the numbers the Bears obviously ignored when deciding to part ways with Brown. In 44 games without Brown since Smith arrived in 2004, the Bears gave up an average of 345.3 total yards and 21.3 points per game. In 36 games Brown suited up, the defense gave up an average of 290.1 total yards and 15.25 points per game.
That's an average of 55.25 more total yards and six more points in the games Brown missed due to injury. In that same span, the Bears were 20-24 without Brown and 25-11 with him.
It would be overstating it to say Brown alone was responsible for how different the results were with and without him. But it's no exaggeration to suggest that psychologically the Bears defense now has some major rehabilitation work to complete.
Yet even scarred, the defense still could be in better shape than the offensive line.
dhaugh@tribune.com
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