The Chicago Bears made one of the most surprising moves in their team history since 2000 when they fired Lovie Smith after 2012.
The Monsters of the Midway have paid the price for their lack of vision with just two playoff appearances and nary a win after Smith qualified them for two NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl in his time from 2004-12.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers thought they were getting Smith on the rebound in 2014, but he posted a 2-14 record that year followed up with a 6-10 mark in 2015 with rookie quarterback Jameis Winston, a No. 1 overall pick. The Bucs defense was hardly smothering as the Bears were in Smith’s time.
After coaching the University of Illinois from 2016-20, Smith returned to the NFL in 2021 as the defensive coordinator for the Texans under first-year coach David Culley. He thought his time as an NFL coach was done.
“I’m from a little hick town in east Texas,” Smith told Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated’s MMQB. “So, I think the odds of me ever being an NFL head coach were greater than me having an opportunity to do it again. But if the opportunity didn’t come back around, I was going to be okay with that.”
The opportunity did come when the Texans fired Culley after a 4-13 record and spent nearly a month looking for his replacement. The more Smith consulted on the interviews, the more general manager Nick Caserio realized the fifth full-time coach in team history may already be inside NRG Stadium.
Smith, who admits he loves “the purity of the game and coaching it,” realizes he had unfinished business in Chicago and Tampa Bay, and he can’t let the same mistakes follow him to Houston.
Said Smith: “I felt like I had a lot more to offer, and the situations, how they played out at my last stop in Tampa Bay, Chicago, again, I thought we could do some things if we got another opportunity.”
The Bears Wire and the Bucs Wire provided valuable insight as to what went right and what went wrong in Smith’s time with those respective franchises.
