Kreutz: Bears need leader to step up, get in players' faces

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You’ve heard the old expression, “You can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs.” Well to build a better offense, the Bears may need to hurt some feelings. At least that’s what the Football Aftershow crew insinuated after the Bears’ loss to the Titans on Sunday. If not that, then they say the offense needs a leader to step up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

“You have to get in the room and just admit what you are,” said Olin Kreutz. “And demand out of each other, ‘Look, we got to stop making mistakes.’ And they’ve got to find leaders on that offense… You’ve got to get in people’s faces sometimes. It’s not okay. It was okay two weeks ago, it’s not okay anymore.”

It’s not okay anymore, because the Bears are in the second half of the season and constant mistakes should have been cleaned up by now. It’s not okay, because after getting out to a 5-1 start, the Bears now find themselves at 5-4. They now find themselves outside the playoff picture, after looking like shoo-ins.


To prevent things from spiraling out of control, Alex Brown said one player needs to embrace a leadership role and put his foot down.


“I need somebody to stand up and not worry about stepping on the next person’s toes or I need somebody to stand up and say exactly what Olin was saying. Fortunately for us, and all of our teams, we had OG (Kreutz). We didn’t have to worry about nothing else. If it needed to be said, OG was going to say it. He was going to say it.”


So just what would Kreutz say to this team?


“I never question football, NFL guys’ effort, but I don’t see the effort that they need to be successful,” Kreutz said. “They need guys-- you can’t go out of bounds every time, you gotta put your shoulder down, you gotta get one, two more yards.


“Try to let a fire under your offense. Offensive linemen, get down the field, clean the pile. Push the pile. Pick your running back off the ground. Look, great offenses don’t have to do this. If you are a bad offense that lacks talent, that’s all you have to cling onto. You have to get after it. You have to give effort, and you can’t make mistakes.”


At the end of the day, however, Brown said the buck has to stop with the head coach. Players can call each other out, but if problems continue it’s Matt Nagy who needs to make a change.


“There’s gotta be something different when we keep seeing the same thing over and over and over,” Brown said. “A lot of times that’s put on the players because the players are the ones going and making the plays or messing up the plays. But if the coach keeps sending out the same players doing the wrong thing week in and week out, well then it goes back to the coach. To me it goes back to the coach then. Stop sending-- I can send anybody out there to do it wrong. I need some guys to do it right each and every time.”

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