Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Angelo was fired on Tuesday after the Bears fell out of playoff contention and finished their season with an 8-8 record.

Speaking of the decision Chicago Bears president Ted Phillips called it a “a difficult day” before naming director of player personnel Tim Ruskell as the interim leader for the team.

In a statement Phillips revealed:

“It was almost 11 years ago that I hired Jerry Angelo as our general manager. I was proud of that decision then, and I think Jerry achieved a lot as our general manager in the last 10-plus seasons,” Phillips said. “On a personal level, I knew him very well. He’s a wonderful man, high character. I’ve enjoyed every day working with him. I’m gonna miss him. But at the same time, we need more. The decision was made that we need to keep up the pace with our division rivals.”

The Chicago Bears are not giving exact reasons for their decision to fire Jerry Angelo, although they have hinted at bad NFL draft day choices, instead the club is focusing on the future with a GM search already underway.

In a vote of confidence for head coach Lovie Smith the Chicago Bears front office are said to be looking for a new GM that will mesh well with Lovie while providing a “strong character and work ethic.”

According to Phillips the team will not rule out any candidates as long as they agree to keep Lovie Smith as the Chicago Bears head coach for the 2012 season.

Jerry Angelo was in his 11th season with the Chicago Bears as the teams general manager and the season was off to a quick 7-3 start until quarterback Jay Cutler broke his thumb, quickly ending the Bears playoff hopes.

Do you think the Chicago Bears needed to fire Jerry Angelo in order to build a better team for the future?

LAKE FOREST — Quarterback Jay Cutler thinks they’re doing enough.

Free-agent acquisition Roy Williams insists they’re where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there.

And offensive coordinator Mike Martz places no blame on them.

Yet the Chicago Bears’ wide receivers corps has yet to make its mark, resulting in an up-and-down passing attack.

It says a lot when running back Matt Forte has led the team in receiving in four of the first five games.

No one from the Bears’ wide receiving corps has stepped up. Rookie Dane Sanzenbacher had the most catches Monday (six for 64 yards), and he leads the squad in receptions (16) and touchdowns (two) for the year. But he’s in there only because of a chest injury to Earl Bennett. The rest of the receiving crew has been pretty quiet.

“Nobody’s really breaking out or anything,” said Devin Hester, the team’s former No. 1 wide receiver. “It would be nice if one of us could really step up and make teams pay.”

The Bears have been without Bennett, the starting slot receiver, for three straight games. He practiced Thursday, and head coach Lovie Smith said he hopes to have him ready for Sunday night’s game against the Vikings.

Cutler knows what Bennett means to this offense.
“He really calms that unit down,” he said of his former college teammate. “Without him, obviously we took a little bit of a step back. But Dane, I thought, is doing is a great job of stepping in there and filling in for him.”

Well, he’s doing a good job. Great is what was expected of Williams. Martz had him pegged for a “70-80-catch-a-year guy” in training camp. Right now he has six grabs for 81 yards through five games. On Monday night, he was targeted once, while the rookie Sanzenbacher was targeted 10 times.

Williams had one catch for 11 yards in the loss to the Lions, and though it was one of the four third-down conversions for Chicago, it’s still not what the Bears hoped for when they signed him in the offseason. The 29-year-old insists he’s fine with his role, but is he really?

“We’re 2-3, trying to find a way to win,” Williams said. “My role is to try and make as many plays as I can. If it’s one play a game, I’ve got to make that play. That doesn’t bother me. We have so many weapons, so that doesn’t bother me.

“If I was the Lone Ranger out here and we didn’t have all these weapons, and I’m getting one target, then I’d be (mad).

“One is fine. I’d like two. If I could get two or three, that would be better, but I’ll take my one.”

Smith hopes the improved play of his quarterback will help lift the play of his receivers.

“A lot of it starts with Jay, and what our quarterback is doing. He has to bring everyone else along with him,” Smith said.

“Hopefully, we’ll see more of those changes and improvements this week.”

Only one Bear receiver — Johnny Knox at 254 yards — is in the top-50 in receiving yardage, and he’s 47th. The next best is Hester (171 yards), who’s 95th, and Sanzenbacher (146) is tied for 109th.

Though the coaching staff, as well as general manager Jerry Angelo, have insisted all along they don’t need a No. 1 receiver if they get everyone to pitch in, it’s hard to believe this is what they had in mind.

“As far as speed, we want all the players to speed up. We want Jay to get rid of the ball as quick as he can and things like that,” Smith said. “We have to do some things to help (Cutler).”

Right now, his wide receivers aren’t doing much to help him out at all.

Reach staff reporter Jay Taft at 815-987-1384 or jtaft@rrstar.com.

In the NFL the offensive line has three major jobs score touchdowns, score field goals and defend the quarterback, when any part of that equation falls apart so to does the chance that the team will make it to the playoffs let alone win a Super Bowl. That’s why it’s odd and perhaps even a little bit amusing that Chicago Bears general manager Jerry Angelo on Thursday actually defended his teams horrendous offense.

To put the Bears offensive line into perspective, Jay Cutler was sacked last season a league high 52 times, while during the first two regular season games of 2011-2012 he has already been taken to the ground on 11 occasions while being hit 16 more times during the Saints game alone.

When asked what the team did to improve their offensive line this season Angelo responded:

“We did everything you could possibly do to that [offensive line] position,” while he went on to add, “Nobody did more than the Chicago Bears.”

Angelo was speaking directly about acquisitions made during the off-season including a 29th pick for Gabe Carimi who is out with a subluxation of the right kneecap. The Bears also secured Chris Spencer from the Seattle Seahawks after losing Olin Kreutz to the Saints. Spencer for his part couldn’t land a starting spot but ended up at right guard for the injured Lance Louis.

In a conversation with NFL.com Angelo said:

“We drafted a player in the first round,” and “We brought in a player with a lot of NFL experience who is still in his prime. We developed young players who are going into their second and third years, including another high draft pick in Chris Williams.

“We like our eight linemen. That’s not an issue. Injuries happen, and then you have to adjust accordingly. Everything bad that happened on Sunday wasn’t all because of poor offensive line play. Believe me when I tell you that. It was a collective failure. The defense and special teams share part of that as well. So let’s not beat up on the offensive line.”

Let’s be clear about something, the Chicago Bears defensive line only shares part of that blame because they spent so much more time on the field with Chicago’s defense playing 36:14 and the offense accounting for quick turnovers and lousy drives that placed the ball in Chicago hands just 23:46. If anything the 79-yard bomb from Brees to Devery Henderson was the biggest fault of the night by the defense and occurred during a moment of oversight, not during a night on unbalance.

In defending the Bears offensive line Angelo also failed to take into account the completely unbalance performance during Sunday’s game when Cutler threw 45 passes while only 12 rushing attempts were made. You can attempt to draft or sign as many players as possible but when you allow Cutler to drop back for passes and your line is completely incapable of stopping the defense you’re going to lose yards, end up with intentional grounding calls and place your opponents in a better position to score. Throw in the Bears inability to adjust for a rather constant blitz and attack game and it’s easy to see that their line is simply incapable of making quick decisions during game play.

In giving a half-answer for his team moving forward head coach Lovie Smith revealed:

“We want to protect him more,” while adding, “He took too many hits the other day. He acknowledged that, and we’re working on protecting him more.”

A 29th pick in the first round, losing Olin Kreutz who is now anchoring another team’s offensive line and an unbalanced rushing/passing game hardly seems like the type of offensive line that anyone should be publicly praising, especially with an average of 5.5 sacks on your QB only two games into the season.

In fact Martz admitted that the offensive game he conducted on Sunday was awful:

“If you’re looking for blame, just blame me. It was one of those things that happened. I did a poor job of coaching, and we didn’t play very good.’’

As I reported yesterday Jay Cutler isn’t sure the offensive line can protect him enough to finish out an entire season. When asked if he can play through the constant barrage of hits Cutler said:

“I don’t know,’ I don’t know.’’

I’ll say it again Jerry Angelo has done gone and lost his frickin mind if he thinks the Bears have everything they can to provide the best offense available to them. Heck they couldn’t even sign a “veteran” who could make the starting lineup, that hardly seems like the best they could do, especially after losing Olin Kreutz.

Do you think the Chicago Bears did everything they could to improve their offensive line over the off-season?

Ten things to take away from the Chicago Bears’ convincing 30-12 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in the regular-season opener Sunday:

1. Since Lovie Smith arrived, the thinking has been the Cover-2 scheme he brought from Tampa Bay is defined by two positions: the three-technique tackle and the weak-side linebacker.

The defense was led by two players at those positions for the Buccaneers — Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks — and when Smith showed up here, one of those positions was set with Lance Briggs. To fill the other spot, the first two draft picks of the Smith era were used on three-technique tackles – Tommie Harris and Tank Johnson.

Fast forward to the eighth season under Smith and it’s apparent the scheme is now defined by an entirely different position: the edge pass rusher. Julius Peppers turned a defense that had broken down in the previous three seasons into one of the league’s best in 2010. The expectation is the Bears will be in that upper echelon once again and if Sunday’s 30-12 throttling of the Atlanta Falcons, the NFC’s top-seeded team a year ago, is a sign of things to come, the defense could be even better.

Once again, Peppers is the man who drives the unit. He’s the first player opposing offensive coordinators are going to adjust to in creating game plans. He’s the guy who keeps opposing offensive line coaches up all week. For the defense to take the next step, it’s got to find complementary players on the line to add pressure. Israel Idonije stepped up with eight sacks at the opposite defensive end spot last season. Henry Melton announced himself as a player to watch against the Falcons with two sacks and seven hits on Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan. It was a superior effort.

“I left a few sacks out there,” Melton said. “I was working to get those. It was fun. The D-line, we were all communicating and on the same page, and we were just relentless.”

Before we get carried away with Melton’s emergence in his third season, let’s consider one key part of the analysis: The Bears had a big lead playing at home with a hostile crowd behind it. The Falcons quickly became one-dimensional and the Bears were able to pin their ears back and go. It was the perfect storm for defensive linemen who didn’t have to concern themselves with the run.

“At the end, we were just so pumped like it was the Super Bowl, we were having a good time,” Melton said.

It must have felt like a Super Bowl for pass rushers. Either that or the Indianapolis 500 because they were simply racing into the backfield. The Bears tallied five sacks against a quarterback that was sacked less than two times per game in 2010.

Here’s what Melton has going for him: He’s athletic, he plays with good leverage and balance and he delivers high effort. That’s the key at the position and it’s really everything Harris didn’t provide the last few seasons. If Harris’ first move failed, he was done on a play. The Bears cut him one year too late and there wouldn’t have been an uproar in the football community had he been let go following the 2008 season. They did everything possible to motivate him and none of it worked. With no edge rush to speak of at the time, the defense was collapsing because the line couldn’t generate pressure. Smith’s defense became a shell of what it once was. Smith and general manager Jerry Angelo kept seeking the Harris they knew from the 2006 Super Bowl season prior to his December hamstring injury and he never resurfaced. Every effort was made to salvage him, a few too many when you really evaluate it.

Along comes Melton and maybe the Bears are on to something here. They drafted him as a defensive end in the fourth round in 2009. He’d played the position for only two seasons at Texas and was raw. He sat out his rookie season on injured reserve, so really this is just his fourth season playing defense.

The Bears drafted Melton when he was close to 265 pounds to play end and now he’s a lean 292 pounds and still able to play with the quickness needed to be a disruptive force.

“I looked at the game and he was playing great,” said former Bears college scouting director Greg Gabriel. “(Seven) is an outrageous number of quarterback hits for one game. He’s a talented guy but he’s been inconsistent. He’s got to carry it over from game to game to game.

“But he had to go through the maturation process and learn. He’s starting to come around and he flashed some of that last year but he didn’t carry it over. He still has to prove he can do that on a weekly basis.”

Melton, who had 2 1/2 sacks last season when he played on 33.1 percent of the snaps, has to remain active and disruptive vs. a balanced offense that has threats running the ball. When that happens, defensive linemen are slowed down. But for an opening effort, this was a revealing game. The Bears haven’t had a force at the position since 2006. Melton might not be as instinctive as Harris was in his prime, but if he plays with a high motor he’s going to be a playmaker and that could propel the defense to new heights.