BREAKING NEWS: Frank Omiyale is Bad at Football
Frank Omiyale doesn’t need training camp; he’s already in midseason form. Yesterday, I read repeated tweets about two consecutive false starts by last season’s offensive line scapegoat Frank Omiyale. Today, he raised eyebrows with another pair of false starts. Here’s what head coach Lovie Smith had to say about the falsies:
"“We’re not game-ready yet, but that is too many,” Lovie Smith said. “It’s the same guy a few times and we’ve got to get that corrected.“I think every time you jump offsides, you’re a little over-anxious, ready to play. But you have to be disciplined enough to stay on. We can’t lose a play before it starts. But that won’t be a problem for us; we’ll get that straightened out.”"
The Bears would have you believe that bringing in new offensive line coach Mike Tice will cure all. If Tice can’t teach the Bears offensive linemen to count past two, it won’t matter what else he does.
The Bears claimed that they put Omiyale in a bad spot last season, moving him from his usual tackle spot and tried to shoehorn him in at left guard. The idea was that this season, by moving him to a more familiar spot, he would anchor the right tackle spot. Guess again!
Omiyale was worst in the league among guards with a -8.0 overall penalty ranking according to ProFootballFocus.com. Check out the graphic after the jump.
This doesn’t reflect well on the Bears’ top free agent target from last offseason. Cutler and Pace got the headlines, but don’t forget, they were at Omiyale’s door when free agency opened after the 2008 season.
I guess you reap what you sow. The Bears have largely ignored the offensive line position in recent drafts. Aside from the Chris Williams pick a couple of years ago, they haven’t drafted linemen all that often. As a result, they’ve been forced to try to find hired guns to bring in rather than developing their own talent.
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