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Is Jerry Angelo really that stupid? He has a bad habit of demoralizing this team by taking away players who are leaders in the locker room and instead replacing them with guys who could be more talented, but are universally hated. Thomas Jones was a leader among the team, and the Bears traded him away so their prima donna Cedric Benson would stop having fits in the locker room. That obviously worked well as he led the Bears to one of the worst rushing averages among any team last year, and ended up getting cut for failing to stay out of trouble. Now neither of those two runningbacks is on our team, and I bet you can't guess which one still keeps in touch with the team and which one doesn't.

Now the Bears have a guy in Kyle Orton who is both talented and a hard worker. He's a leader among his teammates, as evidenced by overwhelming support from his team to keep him the starter next year. I think Jerry Angelo is making a huge mistake at the same level as the Cedric Benson/Thomas Jones debacle, and risks demoralizing the team by substituting a team leader for someone who might not even play any better under this system. The reality is that there aren't many quarterbacks who would do well with the options provided by the Bears. Besides the tight ends (who are phenomenal in my opinion), Orton didn't have many reliable options. There's old, washed up Marty Booker who drops more passes than he catches, Brandon Lloyd who can't stay healthy, the cornerback-to-wide receiver experiments in Rasheed Davis and Devin Hester, and a third round rookie who had one ball thrown his way all season. There's a reason Forte caught more balls than all the Bears wide receivers put together, because he's a far more reliable option than the wide receivers. How many quarterbacks are going to thrive under those conditions? Certainly not Matt Cassel, who was surrounded by three pro-bowl caliber wide receivers in New England. Angelo should keep a team leader in place, and instead give Orton the weapons to thrive. Bring in T.J. Houshmandzadeh as the major free agent acquisition in the off-season, and continue drafting replacements for our aging offensive line. Angelo's incompetence was clearly shown when he got rid of Thomas Jones, and if he makes the same mistake by wasting money on bringing in a quarterback who will suffer in the Bears' shoddy offensive system, he should just be fired.

The problem lately seems to reside in my mind more in the offensive line than in the quarterback/runningback. No one's been productive behind that offensive line...