GM Jerry Angelo Interview from ESPN 1000 Part I
Published by Brett Solesky on April 28, 2009
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
Jerry Angelo joined the Waddle and Silvy show yesterday to talk Chicago Bears football after the NFL Draft on Sunday. It’s one of the first interviews Angelo has done with local sports talk radio in a few years and it was great to hear where some of his motivation lies in regards to making this team better.
In part one of the interview we cover what steps the Bears made to trade for Anquan Boldin and cover the motivation behind trading down out of the first day of the draft.
To start things off it’s fair to say that everyone should recognize and mostly does recognize that this draft wasn’t about any of the players taken, but rather about Jay Cutler. The talk of the draft and it’s impact essentially starts and stops with Cutler.
A point that should be made that maybe hasn’t been touched on as much as it perhaps should be, is that lack of overall great talent in this draft. The value in the players from the Top-5 arguably all the way down to the top of the second round wasn’t all that much different.
Evidence in this can be seen in some of the players who fell out of the first round and into the second. Ray Maualuga considered by many as a Top-5 talent fell out of the first round. Everette Brown precisely the same thing, arguably a top-10 level pick who fell to nearly the middle part of the second round.
So the talent and the depth not being as strong as it was in past years made it all the more easy for the Bears to trade out. There are players in this draft that are hard to project and have a very high boom or bust factor that was likely taken into consideration when the idea to trade for Cutler came around.
The Bears also made a trade phone call to the Arizona Cardinals about Anquan Boldin. Angelo could not and didn’t want to get into all the specific details surrounding the trade talks (Boldin is still under contract) and he wants to be able to keep a solid reputation around the league with other GMs.
Angelo could have said explicitly what prevented the trade from Boldin from happening, but that in turn would hurt any future endeavors he may have in the trade market. He wants to keep a good solid working relationship so the refusal to go into specific details is easy to understand.
A certain level of respect needs to be maintained and he didn’t want to throw the Cardinals under the bus or affix any blame for any possible outrageous demands the Cardinals may have made etc.
However the point of emphasis should that Jerry Angelo did everything within reason, and within his power to explore the possibility of landing Anquan Boldin. Angelo definitely feels that Boldin would make the Bears a better football team and with the line of thought being that the Bears want to win now, Boldin is a player that would help him achieve that goal.
The next segment flowed into the decision to trade down out and out the first round of the draft. Angelo was pretty explicit with this answer as well in that the Bears had an idea of what player they would take at 49 and what type of player gave them the most value at 49.
The focus obviously being on the big three receivers that we had all hoped would slide into the second round. In my Chicago Bears Draft Day Thoughts Blog I touched on the exact line of thinking that Angelo went with. The dream scenario being all three receivers fall into the second round, giving the Bears a better chance to grab one at 49.
The more likely scenario I gave obviously is the one that panned out and I was right on target with where I thought the Bears could target either Massaqoi or Iglesias. Iglesias turned out to be the player taken at 99th overall in the third.
Angelo did the best thing for this football team by trading back and picking up an extra third and an extra fourth round pick. The third round pick netted him high value prospect Jarron Gilbert (arguably a first or second round worthy target).
This immediately boosted the position on the team that cause the most losses on the team in a direct way. The pass rush defensive end problem that was again addressed in the fourth round with the Henry Melton selection.
Angelo touched on the Jarron Gilbert selection by talking about a few points:
A) Jarron Gilbert is a player that they plan to play at defensive end “versus the run but when we get into our third down situation he’s going to shift inside just as he was in his senior year. He’s been exposed to playing defensive end a bit.”
Dick Tomey (San Jose State’s head coach) as Angelo went on to explain has been a college football coach for a number of years. Tomey has been a specialist in developing defensive lineman for a number of years at schools that he’s coached. Tomey is probably most famous for the Arizona Wildcats’ “Desert Swarm” days when the UofA had one of the best and most consistent defensive lines in the country.
Tomey is unquestionably a good football coach and any NFL coach or GM (Angelo in this case) receiving advice from him should take it to heart because he’s one of those coaches that’s been around the block a few times. Tomey feels that Gilbert’s best potential is still ahead of him and he’s just beginning to scrape the surface of what he can do on the football field.
I think some of the points to look at here regarding Jarron Gilbert and Henry Melton is the the idea of getting a lot of speed and athleticism up front. The big fad right now in the NFL is the 3-4 because it’s the defense the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl with.
However what is consistently overlooked is the New York Giants won the Super Bowl title merely a year ago with the 4-3 defense in place. The Giants led the NFL in sacks with a 4-3 defensive scheme.
The point is and always will be to get the most pressure you can from your front four. This is always accomplished best with speed off the edge and athleticism up the middle. The song remains the same and you could argue that it has since the days of the Bears’ dominating pass rush utilizing the 46 scheme.
It’s about getting to the quarterback plain and simple, giving him little no time to throw the ball, it doesn’t matter if it comes from the 3-4, 4-3, 4-4, 5-2, 46, flex-eagle look, ANYTHING that you want to throw out there. The song remains the same get to the quarterback on third down.
Adding speed like Gilbert to the middle of the defense and speed of the edge with someone like Henry Melton is geared specifically towards that idea. The Bears don’t need to switch to a 3-4, they just need to have more speed and with a front four of Israel Idonije, Marcus Harrison, Jarron Gilbert and Henry Melton that is a very fast and athletic front four geared to get to the QB on third down.
Much the same way the New York Giants focus their defense so much on speed, the Bears are attempting to do the same things.
With Juaqin Iglesias the Bears wanted to get an established receiver. With Mark Bradley they looked at his ceiling and where he could go. Bradley was a defensive back and was moved around before he was the third best receiver on a team that had two other WRs drafted.
Iglesias was THE man at Oklahoma, the established number one target and Angelo felt he really compliments what they are trying to do on offense. It’s not taking an expert to see why the Bears targeted these prospects based on what we saw and what the Bears lack on offense and defense.
