It’s a good thing that Dick Jauron’s personality has kept any of us from hating him as much as we hatted his hair-lipped predecessor. If we really did have the same deep seated hatred for Dick that we have for Wanny, this stuff where he saves his job at the end of bad seasons would be getting old by now.

I actually kind of feel sorry for Jerry Angelo, given that he wanted to fire Jauron in 2001 and Dick won 13 games and was NFL coach of the year. He wanted to fire him this year and now it looks like the Bears might end up 8-8 and finish the season playing their best football.

Does that mean Jerry can’t fire Dick? No.

Does it mean it’s less likely that he will? You bet.

Jauron has some pretty blatant faults. He’s blindly loyal to veteran players and his assistant coaches. It’s that loyalty that kept RW McQuarters in the starting lineup far too long this year. It kept throwing Kordell Stewart and Chris Chandler onto the field even though they were both epically terrible. And, most damningly it has kept slow-learner Greg Blache employed and no-learner John Shoop employed, too.

You can make a pretty sound case that Jauron deserves to be fired because of those very faults. A head coach has to make tough decisions. If he has to fire a coach or bench a player, he has to be able to do it.

Maybe Jauron used perfect timing and played Charles Tillman and Rex Grossman and the rest of the young players at just the right time. But I think we all see now that every one of the impact rookies sat a few weeks too long in each instance.

Chicago sports radio wonks keep lauding Blache for the improved Bears defense. Well, of course it improved. The Bears were dead last about eight weeks ago. It’s hard to not improve from that. They are currently the 14th best defense in the NFL out of 32 teams. Ahh, sweet mediocrity.

The offense is still dead last. But at least in the last couple of weeks it’s showed some promise.

The Bears aren’t going to fire Dick Jauron. They’re going to make him fire John Shoop, and probably just elevate quarterbacks coach Greg Olsen offensive coordinator.

They’re not going to fire him for simplistic reasons (the team is still playing hard), for bad reasons (they don’t want to pay him $2.4 million to not coach the team next year) and a good reason (they just got done embroidering Coach Jauron on his parka). If we know anything about the McCaskeys…we know they’re cheap.

Yesterday’s game was an exercise in hope and frustration. You watch Grossman run the offense and look not only un-rookielike, but just un-Bears like, and you wonder “Why did we wait 12 weeks for this?” If you had to do it all over again, wouldn’t you have liked to played those games in Detroit and Green Bay with Rex at the helm? I know I would have.

Grossman just doesn’t look like a Bears quarterback. He doesn’t panic in the pocket and shuffle his feet like Gregory Hines on an ice patch (the alive version of Gregory, not the current dead one–that’s who Chris Chandler resembles), he doesn’t lock onto one receiver and force the ball into him come hell or high water. He throws slant passes that allow the receiver to stay in stride and actually run the last two or three yards for a first down. His deep balls don’t float hopelessly in the air. He doesn’t run much, and that’s good because you and I are probably faster than he is, but it’s impossible not to watch him play and see him actually use all of his receivers (nine different Bears caught passes yesterday) and not feel pretty good about the quarterback position in Chicago.

Defensively, the Bears were a sieve in the second half. As good as they were in the first quarter, when Tim Hasselbeck was the worst quarterback in NFL history, they were miserable in the second half. If not for a glorious third quarter in which the offense embarked on not one, but two long scoring drives, the Redskins might still be scoring. The same Redskins who got shutout last week and looked as though they were more concerned about Christmas shopping than playing.

Hasselbeck wasn’t even good in college, so I can’t imagine why anyone would allow him to take an NFL snap, but after a 6-26 performance against the Cowboys (for a laughable 56 yards and a 0.0 QB rating) last week, he was competent on Sunday against the Bears. Even if Steve Spurrier would clearly rather have wide receiver Rod Gardner throwing passes.

The only thing Hasselbeck has going for him is, well…this:

He’s married to the cutest, most loveable Survivor of all-time the former Elisabeth Filarski. Even if Elisabeth is best remembered for dry humping Rodger.

As for the Bears, they got a great game out of the A-Train, Anthony Thomas and another fine effort from Justin Gage, even if Justin did fumble his first catch away.

They even got bailed out of some absolutely Bob Davie-esque clock management at the end of the game. Only the Bears could manage to run only two plays in the last :32 of a game and still use both of thier remaining time outs. But, when psychotic kicker Paul Edinger duck hooked the game winner through, nobody cared.

The best thing to the happen all day to the Bears was the return of “Expert” Brian Baldinger to the booth.

Baldy is the best of a bad lot of Fox color announcers (which, is like being the most talented Osmond) and the most unintentionally hilarious football announcer, ever.

He went from castigating the Bears for horrendous clock management to proclaiming Dick Jauron’s job safe in the span of eight seconds. He went on for a half hour about how much fun the Bears are to watch and how he’s so glad he got to do their game. Maybe he’s lobbying for the new coaching position? Anyway, as annoying as he can be, I hope he’s in Kansas City on Sunday. It’s just not the same without him.

What is with the wannabe deejay spinning the hits on Fox during the Bears game? How many songs did that guy play for no reason? I mean, sure, they were witty and humorous, like when he played “Kicker” as they showed Edinger and John Hall shanking kicks or when he played the Beatles “Loser” every time they showed Steve Spurrier. OK, I don’t think he played that song, but it’s probably because he wasn’t witty enough to come up with it. Memo to Fox, make it stop. Besides, that guy should have been canned the moment you heard, “I believe the children are our future…”

The Bears have won three of four and five of their last seven. They may need to score 40 points on Sunday to beat Kansas City, but even a 7-9 finish leaves some optimism.

Even if it looks like it’ll also leave the same old coaches.

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Despite a win in Buffalo yesterday, the Miami Dolphins were eliminated from the playoff race yesterday and therefore, any hope Dave Wannstedt had of keeping his job is probably gone. Rumors persist that he could be in line for an interview for the Nebraska job. Excuse me while I laugh so hard my spleen aches.

Can you imagine Wanny standing on the sidelines in Lincoln, Nebraska?

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How’s this for a nice stroke to a guy’s ego? On Saturday the mighty Cincinnati Bearcats football program put out a statement assuring their fans that they did not and would not ever offer their head coaching job to Bob Davie. Ouch.

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By the way, Notre Dame’s basketball team is the early front runner for “most overrated piece of crap” in the country right now. They’re back over .500 thanks to a 78-74 rout of American University (3-6). Oh, somebody pinch me! A four point destruction of American! Whoo!

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Saturday’s triple overtime North Carolina-Wake Forest game was terrific to watch, even if it was some of the worst basketball…ever. Neither team could make a free throw. They combined to score four points in the second overtime. tHom Brennaman was the lead announcer on Fox, along with Mike Gminski! What, Mark Alarie’s not available?

But I learned something very important. I hate Roy Williams no matter where he coaches. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

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The Cubs had quite a weekend. In the span of about 26 hours they signed four of the worst hitting players in the big leagues! How does the fearsome foursome of Jose Macias, Ramon Martinez, Paul Bako and Michael Barrett grab you? Look out pennant, here we come!

OK, it wasn’t that bad. The Cubs traded for Macias to put pressure on Ramon to re-sign for less money than he was demanding. The only problem is, now Dusty will use both of them.

Barrett came cheap (just the way the Cubs like them) and has some actual talent, so who knows?

But Bako? Oh, for chrissakes, is there a worse player in baseball than Paul Bako?

However, when the Associated Press’ Nancy Armour wrote up the story of the Cubs sending Damian Miller and cash (not Johnny Cash’s rotting corpse, but $800K) to the A’s for a player to be named later (ostensibly to complete the Barrett trade) she lauded Miller as being a fine game caller. She even pointed out that in 2003 Cubs pitchers had a 3.88 ERA when Miller was in the game.

That’s awesome!

Only problem…the Cubs pitchers as a whole had a 3.83 ERA for the season regardless of who was catching. Oops.

So let’s look at this. On Thursday, the Cubs traded a player to be named later to the A’s for Michael Barrett. On Sunday they traded Damian Miller and $800,000 to the A’s for a player to be named later.

They traded Barrett for Miller, but…thanks to the archane player to be named later rule, Miller could not be the player to be named later for Barrett because both Barrett and Miller played in the National League last year. So they had to do a separate deal to send Miller and some money to Oakland. This had us, both teams and the league office confused.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Cubs and A’s don’t use the same player for the player to be named later. For example.

Transactions
Monday, December 22
Chicago Cubs trade minor league infielder Buck Coates to Oakland to complete the Michael Barrett trade.

Oakland A’s trade minor league infielder Buck Coates to the Chicago Cubs to complete the Damian Miller trade.

If I were Jim Hendry and Billy Beane, that’s what I’d do.

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You can break down the numbers every which way, but this trade makes little sense for the Cubs and no sense for the A’s.

Barrett could be a good player, but then, I could be an astronaut, too. But Miller has nothing left. He’s got a bad back, his batting average has dropped forty points the past two years and he’s 34 years old. Oh, well. Billy Beane’s a genius. Right?

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The Orioles and Javy Lopez agreed to the parameters of a three year, $23 million deal yesterday and expect to finalize it today. That leaves, for the second straight year, Pudge Rodriguez on the outside looking in. He turned down two years and $24 million from the Marlins because he wanted a three year deal. His agent, the great Scott Boras, says he needs four years and $40 million to sign. He’s not getting that. From anybody.

Last year at this time, Pudge was taking offers from Japanese teams, and it might go that way again. He settled for a one-year, face saving $10 million from the Marlins last offseason, but all but $2 million of it was deferred.

There’s only one team left with a pile of cash and a glaring need at catcher, and they just traded for Michael Barrett.

Hendry has said that he’d be open to a short term (i.e. one year) deal for Pudge.

The only other option for Pudge also involves the Cubs. The Dodgers and Cubs talked about a Paul LoDuca trade, and still might. That would open a spot in LA for Rodriguez.

The Dodgers seem to be his last hope of a multi-year deal. If they can’t get Magglio Ordonez in the residue of the ARod trade, they could sign Rodriguez and move LoDuca to first.

Confused? Me too.

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And finally, a memo to the ESPNews morans who acted like Kobe Bryant hitting the game winning shot against the Nuggets after arriving late to the game because he was in Colorado at a hearing involving his rape charge, was a great thing: Shut the hell up. This is not Willis Reed in the NBA Finals. This is a horny adulterer (at the very least) you’re getting all fired up about. It should have been mandatory that the voice over for the highlights include: “And Kobe bends the Nuggets over a chair and does what he knows best!”

David Huh wonders if Mr. Ed’s kick didn’t save the day…and Jauron’s job.

Rex was asked if he should have playing earlier. When, like 11:30? Kickoff wasn’t until noon.

Seabiscuit’s original jockey Paul Sullivan on the Cubs and Barrett.

It’s official, Javy’s an O.

Jamal Crawford can shoot. Just not lately.

Oh, those pesky Americans.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut and heads out to the ledge.

Mike Kiley trots out the “Dick Pole loves Mike Barrett” crapola.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! The Knicks just hired Isiah Thomas to run their franchise…into the ground.

Peter Gammons with a lot of hyperbole about the ARod trade.

Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback.

The Sun-Times says the Sox let Scott Schoeneweis go.

Oops. Maybe he will.

A British paper reports that some Kurds actually caught Saddam, and then they drugged him and put him back in his hole so the US could find him. Uh, sure. Whatever.

Governor Milorad Blagojevich (really–Milorad) wants to get his dope in Canada.

Joe Namath likes Suzy Kolber. A little too much.

Little Al Gore likes the ganja.

The doctor will see you now…and he’s going to give you a complimentary beej!

Tara Reid and Cindy Margolis got in a fight? Was there any pudding involved?

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