Mike Tice will continue to call the Bears’ plays

SHARE Mike Tice will continue to call the Bears’ plays

Forget about the notion that Bears offensive coordinator Mike Tice should focus more on fixing the struggles of the offensive line and relinquish his play-calling duties.

It’s not going to happen. Coach Lovie Smith made sure to squash that idea Wednesday at Halas Hall.

“There’s no consideration at all on that,” Smith said. “I don’t know where you [the media] got that from. I doubt if Mike really said that but if he did, I can stop that right now. That’s not part of it at all.

” Mike works with the offensive line quite a bit with [offensive line coach] Tim Holt. We need to do a better job with it, like we all need to do a better job. Beyond that it’s just business as we’ve been doing.”

The idea of having quarterbacks coach Jeremy Bates call the Bears’ offense was floated to Tice prior to Smith meeting the media.

“We’re looking at everything. How is that?,” Tice responded. “I’m not going say something that’s going to create a story. We’re looking at everything.”

Tice’s play-calling has drawn criticism recently for being predictable. But the offensive line’s struggles have definitely played a huge role in the Bears being 30th in total offense. It’s hard to run and pass when no one is blocking consistently well.

The San Francisco 49ers, notably linebacker Aldon Smith and defensive end Justin Smith, had their way with the Bears’ line on Monday night.

“What we’ve got to do is block better,” Tice said. “It really doesn’t matter who is calling the plays. If you’re not blocking people, we’ll bring Joe Gibbs out every time and have him call the plays. He couldn’t call the plays. So you’ve got to block.

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to block. If you’re assigned a guy to block, you’ve got to block him. Bottom line, that’s what it is. Let’s call it what it is. We all saw the same game.”

Wide receiver Brandon Marshall defended Tice’s play-calling on Wednesday.

“It’s on all of us,” Marshall said. “When you look at where we’re at as an offense ranked No. 30, that’s on all of us. It starts with us just preparing, our preparation.

“Sitting at 30 out of 32, that leaves a nasty taste in my mouth; didn’t expect that. I’m the type of guy I like to look at myself first. I’m always gonna look at myself first because I’m not a perfect guy. I know that I make a lot of mistakes. So it’s really hard for me to point the finger.

“But I think coach Tice does a great job. We just have to do a better job of executing when we do have an opportunity.”

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