[quote]By Prashant Shankar
Online Writer
Photo courtesy of Mike Morbeck[/quote]

As a Bears fan, it’s painful to look back at what happened in the 2014 season. Fans were promised a playoff team with big signings and a high production offense, but the Bears ultimately fell to 5-11, good enough for the seventh pick in the draft. There’s no single person to blame as to why the Bears have been a recent mess, but the blame can be directed toward a multitude of decisions.

In an interview for the Chicago Tribune this past July, former linebacker Jared Allen expressed his disappointment with the 2014-15 season. “Last year sucked; I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Allen said. “There are always circumstances around it, but it is what is is. I want to have fun. Last year wasn’t fun. It was miserable.”

Building a championship team starts with good drafting, which the Bears have failed to do. They have just one player on their roster drafted from 2002-2011, which is Matt Forte. Just one. For perspective, the Green Bay Packers have drafted 11 players in those ten years who were nominated to a Pro Bowl, while 50 out of 53 players on the Packers roster were drafted by Green Bay. Players from these drafts are supposed to be the reliable veterans that you can depend on for years to come. In the 2005 NFL Draft, the Bears chose Cedric Benson (who lasted only three seasons with the Bears due to injuries) over former Cowboys linebacker Demarcus Ware, Chiefs linebacker Derrick Johnson, and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Mistakes like these change the future of a franchise for the worse.

“This year’s draft, I think they didn’t do that well,” junior Vishal Prakash said. “We see Kevin White still on the sideline; he’s still injured from spring training. They got a lot of potential, they just need to carry it out.”

Poor free agency contracts have also led the Bears to their doom. In 2009, the Bears traded for Jay Cutler from the Broncos, and lost two first round picks, picks they could’ve used to draft young talent. They’re paying a 32-year-old Jared Allen more than $12 million this year due to a large contract, a player not even on the team anymore since being traded to the Carolina Panthers for a sixth-round pick. They’ve dug themselves into a hole with bad contracts and constantly going the cheap route by hiring unsuccessful coordinators to be head coaches.

“The defense has been really bad; it hasn’t regained the Bears defense that we’ve known for many years under Lovie Smith and before,” junior Praneet Chakraborty said. “Even though the offense was good under the first season of Trestman, it crashed a lot because of the dependence on Jay Cutler, and his erratic decision making. The over reliance on Jay Cutler and the really bad defense [were] the things that crashed our team.”

Despite all the criticism the Bears deserve, give them credit for learning from their past mistakes, and hiring a successful coach in John Fox, and trading away players for future draft picks. And the improvements are starting to show.

“Well this year you can obviously see that even with the lack of talent throughout the team, the coaches have put the players in the right position to succeed,” said Chakraborty. “I’ve seen coach Fox and Vic Fangio and Adam Gase; all three of these guys, they’ve been really coaching this team to a point where everyone knows what to do in what situation, and they’re getting the work done. Even with the lack of talent, they’re getting it done.”

After winning two straight, the 2-3 Chicago Bears travel to Ford Field to face the 0-5 Detroit Lions next Sunday.