Lovie Smith Accepts Blame for Squib Kick ... But Not Playing Cover-Two

From the perspective of a Bears fan, I can vouch that the end of the game was like a swift kick to the jewels. The kick on everyone's mind now, however, is the squib kick which granted the Falcons unbelievable field position at their own 44 with six seconds to play. The Bears were obviously scared of Jerious Norwood, who had taken the previous kick all the way into field goal range on his own. Head coach Lovie Smith is willing to cry mea culpa on the decision.

Smith said after the game the reason for the squib instead of a conventional deep kick was what he perceived as the state of the injury-riddled coverage team.

"Hindsight is always a lot better," Smith said. "I feel like I could have helped our team a lot better if we had just kicked the ball off deep, but it just didn't work out that way."

I agree with the hindsight call. Many people have been pointing out how stupid the squib kick is in the aftermath of this game. I don't totally agree in this case. Norwood was a huge threat, and the last thing you want is to allow a huge return in that situation. Immediately after the play, I was more aggravated with Robbie Gould.

That kick looked more like an onsides kick than a squib. If he at least squibs the ball farther down the field, you keep the ball out of Norwood's hands and leave a longer field. But whatever, Lovie knows his team better than me.

I did also question the use of cover-two in the situation where Michael Jenkins caught a 26-yard pass to set up the game-winning field goal. You knew the Falcons had to get out of bounds and throw the ball deep enough to get into field goal range. The holes in cover-two are the deep corners, so you are leaving the one area where the Falcons needed to throw the ball open. I wasn't alone in this thought, because Smith was questioned about that as well.

"That's the coverage we like to run in that situation," Smith said. "We didn't execute it the way we need to ... but you don't all of a sudden start changing things you believe in."

I guess he didn't want to start accepting blame for everything, but this mistake seemed much more egregious to me than the kick. Anyone who knows anything about cover-two knows the vulnerable areas.

It's alright though, I still believe the Bears are headed to an NFC North division title. As I told Brinson after the game, the team is good, but not great. They're in the 10-6 range, which should be good enough to make the playoffs.