Past time for some tough Lovie

Is this how Lovie Smith wants to go out? As friend to the players? As the Great Enabler?

Does he want his professional tombstone to read: He got off the bus refusing to throw anybody under the bus?

If Smith doesn't do something about it soon, a combination of bad football and a culture of unaccountability is going to be his undoing as the Bears' coach.

Forget the bad apples he used to support at every turn and at every pretrial hearing. This isn't about that. This is about the most unpardonable sin in pro football: Smith's players aren't playing hard for him. And he's to blame.

When the head coach acts at all times as if everything is cool, even when it's not, it's not surprising that his players follow suit.

And so Bears starters approach exhibition games with a shrug and a roll of the eyeballs. Linebackers can't or won't get off blocks. Defensive linemen and defensive backs miss tackles. No big deal. The Bears will show up when the games really matter.

Just like last season.

The defensive starters whom Smith protects like a mother Bear respond by playing as if their next meal doesn't depend on it.

Why should they put everything on the line when they know their coach will shield them in his public comments? Smith has misread the modern professional athlete in a very fundamental way. They know how to take, but they don't like to give. It's why a head coach has to demand a lot. If it's not demanded, it won't be received.

Last week a radio guy solemnly declared that Smith's anger was clear the day after the Bears' lazy starting defense got abused by the 49ers, who had the worst offense in the league last season. Do you know what Smith said?

He said the defense was bad.

It's the kind of penetrating analysis we've come to expect from the Lovester.

"But we won't point fingers," he said. "We'll make the corrections, and we'll play better defense."

Just like last season.

After three years of getting patted on the back by Smith, the players have an outsized sense of their worth. They also have dents in their backs.

Mike Brown gets it. You can always count on the safety to say what the head coach should have said. Problem is, you can't count on Brown's body to hold up. But attributing the San Francisco debacle to the meaninglessness of an exhibition game is a bad excuse, Brown insisted.

If you have a leader who concocts alibis for you, who tells you how good you are at every turn, who ignores the facts ... well, bad things tend to happen.

Sometimes you get the feeling Smith spends his spare time checking up on his Facebook friends, Tommie and Peanut and Lach.

He has to change. He still thinks it's 2006, when the Bears made it to the Super Bowl and his defense was trying to tell the world why it was as good as the '85 Bears. It wasn't.

And now his team is looking down the barrel of a sub-.500 season, which is a nice way of saying the Bears likely are going to be bad.

It's a given that Jerry Angelo, despite his personnel gaffes, isn't going anywhere. General managers generally are the last to go. So that leaves Lovie.

In response to the 49ers game, Smith said he's going to run "training-camp-style practices" this week. The man is a taskmaster, isn't he? Bear in mind that this still is the preseason and therefore the team technically still is in training camp, just not in Bourbonnais. But will there be real, live tackling in the training-camp-style practices this week? God forbid, no.

Everything is good at Halas Hall, other than, you know, the bad football. The defensive coordinator Smith inherited, Ron Rivera, the one the players respected so much? Ousted 18 months ago in favor of Smith's old buddy, Bob Babich. No more distractions because of Rivera, who was popular with the media and who was a perennial head-coaching candidate. So he's gone, along with that great defense the Bears used to have.

Remember what Smith said with a knowing look when he decided not to bring back Rivera? Trust him, he said.

We'll give Babich a little more time. We'll go along with Smith's excuse that injuries decimated the defense last season, even though people get hurt every year on every team in the NFL. If the defense doesn't turn around, it's on Babich.

And thus on Smith.

If things don't change, he'll soon be able to look at his scrapbook, point to a player, any player, and say, "That guy really liked me. He helped cost me my job by not playing up to his abilities, but he really liked me!"

That will be Smith's legacy. Trust me.

rmorrissey@tribune.com