Bears star kick returner Devin Hester was visibly upset that the Bears fired Lovie Smith. Not long after Smith informed the team of his departure, Hester cleaned out his locker at Halas Hall, defended his only coach in the NFL and criticized the media and fans for wanting Smith's ouster. But Hester also said he's contemplating retiring. "I'm going to go home and get away from football right now," Hester said. "I don't even know if I want to play again, man. It's [been] on my mind now for two years now." Asked if football was still fun for more him, Hester said, "It's not." "I've got my workers' comp papers in my pocket," he said. "We'll see how I feel. I'm gonna go home and talk to my wife, my family. We'll see where we go from there. I have two beautiful kids, man. Two boys. A lot of stress has been on my mind lately." Hester said the most frustrating thing has been "not being able to showcase my talents the way I wanted [them] be showcased" this season. In his regular-season career, Hester has 12 career punt return touchdowns, five career kickoff return touchdowns and one missed field goal returned for a touchdown in 107 games played. Source: Chicago Sun Times
maybe he will get a head coach who knows how to use him.............lovie getting fired could be a blessing for him.
LS/JA ruined the best returner in history with their going cheap & trying to make him a WR also. Hester never understood that the reason he came out of college as a returner was cuz he had marginal talent at CB & WR.
Also if he wasnt constantly running routes with the offense or focusing on the offensive gameplan he would be much fresher and the returns would be better. When your putting that much on your plate you usually cant be effective at both. Sometimes it's better to be great at one thing then average at everything. He needs to go back to just doing returns. Focus on that and all that extra stress and crap from the other duties will go away.
He sucked this year. I was really disappointed because he's one of my favorite players. I hope he doesn't retire after such a crapty season. He really is the best return man in history. He needs to finally own up to that and stop trying to be something he's not.
Very true... Hester's greatest talent was returning with a sandlot mentality...running free w/constant cutbacks against the grain. Once they tried to turn him into a 'thinking man's' WR, he lost that unstructured return style. I'll never forgive the Bears for that.
I understood what they wanted to do with him but like you said he had a sandlot mentality and you cant be sandlot in one phase of the game and a true wr in another I mean if they used him spariingly in the passing game to go deep and get a bomb or something but being a wr is a different mindset. They had a perfect thing going and they shouldnt have missed with it.
While I honestly wouldn't be heartbroken to see Hester go, I honestly believe his days in Chicago are numbered anyway. If any team is stupid enough to try Hester as a WR, I question your brain because Hester is not cut out to be a WR, period. It was bad enough that Lovie Smith was trying to shove him down our throats as a #1 WR for quite a few years when Hester wouldn't be a #4 WR on another other NFL teams depth chart.
Dude should've never gotten moved to Wide Reciever, he was a great returner that is what he was great at, yeah maybe throw him in on 1 maybe 2 plays max in a game and just tell him to freaking sprint down the field, using him as a #1 was the biggest mistake the Bears ever made and now they got this guy contemplating retirement, way to go Lovie.
