Professor

Daily Herald | Chicago Bears

When Lovie Smith was hired as the Bears’ 13th head coach on Jan. 15, 2004, he talked about winning world championships.

No one took him seriously.

Why would they? The Bears had gone 11-21 in predecessor Dick Jauron’s final two seasons, and Smith’s first Bears team went 5-11. Excluding the 13-3 aberration of 2001, the Bears’ record from 1997 through Smith’s first season was 35-77.

Fast forward to the present and it’s difficult to rebut talk of a return to the Super Bowl for the 2007 Bears. Now when the Bears talk about winning it all — which they do often — they’re taken seriously.

Obviously, the talent level has been elevated. Eight players were voted to the Pro Bowl last season, but only two went in a seven-year stretch from 1994-2000. But there’s more to the team’s transformation from perennial loser to perennial Super Bowl contender than just better players.

“It’s everything,” said center Olin Kreutz, a third-round draft choice in 1998 who has played through the good times and the bad. As a six-time Pro Bowler, Kreutz is an example of the upgrade in talent, but there’s more to it.

“It’s talent, coaching, everything coming together, (strength coach) Rusty Jones, Lovie and his coaching staff,” Kreutz said. “We expect to win now. Winning’s a habit, and so is losing, but we’re used to winning now.”

Winning also is a state of mind, and that mentality was absent when Smith took over. It was more an attitude of, “What can go wrong next?” So Smith set about changing it.

“A lot of times, your environment dictates what you are,” Smith said. “You have a few people who get out of tough environments, but a lot of times your environment is what is expected of you. As we came in, we wanted to let the players know, ‘This is where we are, and this is where we need to be.’

“So we started talking about winning the world championship right away when everybody was laughing at us, and we just stuck with our plan.”

Safety Mike Brown was chosen in the second round of the 2000 draft and experienced losing records in four of his first five seasons, including three seasons of double-digit losses. But the Bears are 24-8 over the past two seasons.

What’s the difference?

“The whole culture in general,” Brown said. “We definitely had a losing culture when I (came) here. Sometimes you expect to win, but the mood in general was one of expecting to lose.

“Even when you were playing well there was that feeling of something bad was going to happen for us to lose, but it’s totally different now. No matter what happens now, we feel like we’re going to win.”

It helped that Smith was the choice of general manager Jerry Angelo, and they always have been on the same page.

They also have defined roles. Angelo procures the players, and Smith coaches them.

As an organization, the Bears have found ways to hang on to key players as determined by Angelo and Smith. Since Jauron was not hired by Angelo, there often were doubts about their ability to pull in the same direction.

Only Kreutz has been in the organization as long as 10-year veteran long snapper Pat Mannelly, and Mannelly says there is a tangible feeling now that everyone at Halas Hall is of the same mind.

“It’s the whole building from top to bottom,” Mannelly said. “There are people in leadership positions who know what they’re doing. (President and CEO) Ted Phillips has gotten everybody with the same vision, same goal, and everybody seems like they’re on the same page and fighting for the exact same thing.

“There’s not a bunch of strings being pulled from different sides of the building. Everybody wants a world championship, and that’s exactly what everybody’s working for, whether they’re in marketing or equipment or whatever.”

It didn’t happen overnight, and it took more than a single victory to reverse tradition.

But Smith targets as a turning point a 19-13 overtime victory against the Lions at Detroit on Oct. 30, 2005, in which Charles Tillman’s interception and 22-yard return provided the winning points. The teams began the day tied for first place in the NFC North, and the victory was the Bears’ third of 8 straight.

“We’ve been in first place ever since,” Smith said. “I told the team the night before, ‘If we win this game, everybody’s getting a game ball because this is what’s going to start us.’

Starting with that Lions game, the Bears have gone 21-5, giving legitimacy to the message Smith first delivered to his new team before the 2004 season.

Smith said he sensed a group of players confident in their own talent but needing to know how his methods would help them achieve more success as a team.

“They believed in themselves as players,” he said. “Most of them said, ‘Hey, we’re OK, but something else is wrong. What plan are you bringing in to help?’æ”

So Smith laid it out: schedule, expectations, scheme, etc. He spoke bluntly.

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