That he's a decent coach was never in doubt, but we got to the end of the road with Lovie and the Urlacher/Briggs/Tillman Tampa 2. The team got really old, really fast, and neither the scheme nor personnel were going to be able to keep up with a changing league. Realistically, you probably could have squeezed one more 7-9/8-8/9-7 year out of the gang, but to what end? To maybe finish sixth in the conference and roll the dice from there? You do that too long and you're the Eagles, who got to the end of the road and spectacularly careened off the cliff. The Bears have drafted fuck-all for years now, and it's really starting to show in the fact that Jay Cutler has about three times more concussions than he has playoff games. I think it's too bad that people took for granted that the Bears have always been more or less in it under Lovie, but the lack of outright god-awful seasons was kind of obfuscated by his unrepentant smugness and stubbornness. Nine years of this guy being so cocksure in his system and his players through numerous failures got to be too much. And really, when you consider that they missed the playoffs five out of the last six years--including those three straight misses that usually guillotines any other coach but spared him--they were "less in it" too much after all.
I'm sure his whole Dad They Never Had act will go over well with another team, even if his tired-ass scheme won't, but he really had to go. If we can't do better than five misses in six years, fold the team.