...and I believe Bradley was also competent enough to not let his ego get in the way of doing his job...
Bradley had blinkers on at this time. He was obsessed with launching an attack through the Saar region and believed the intelligence reports and the attack itself was simply a diversionary maneuver designed to draw his attention away from his own offensive which he believed the Germans were terrified of.
He was so fixated with his own attack that when Hodges sent his first plea to Bradley for orders, directions and advice on how to deal with the German attack Bradley ignored it and went hundreds of miles behind the front to play cards with Eisenhower in Paris.
In the next four to five days of the battle Bradley continued to dissmiss the German counter-offensive as a diversionary attack and continued to tell Eisenhower that everything was fine and he was well in control and ready to launch he offensive at a moments notice.
In those four to five days he had done nothing to arrest the choas on his left, he had not sent Hodges or Simpson orders or advice or directions, he had not visitied Hodges or Simpson or the front to find out the situation for himself and he continually ignored the intelligence reports he was getting.
After those days Eisenhower took the only course available to him if he wanted to restore order and that was to temporarilly sack Bradley from command of the 1st and 9th US Armies and place Montgomery in control. Not did he do this to make administration in the North easier but he did it because Bradley had shown himself unwilling to deal with battle in the North while Montgomery had, as soon as he knew the battle was going on, pulled all available manpower out of his 21st Army Group and placed them defensively behind the Meuse River (in 12th Army Groups area) to insure that if the Germans got through the Americans they would get no further and sent his LO's forward into 1st and 9th US Armies territories to find their commanders (Army Commanders through to Divisional commanders) and get reports and to judge the front for themselves and report back to him so that he had a clear picture of events.
By December 20th 1944 Montgomery was the only allied commander who had a clear picture of the battle and had shown himself to SHEAF HQ as being willing and prepared to deal with it while Bradley had shown complete ignorance of the battle and shown himself completely unprepared to deal with it.
I have seen some people in the past (though not on this site) say that Montgomery getting command of the 1st and 9th US Armies was a slap to Bradleys face but from where I'm standing if it was then it was no more than Bradley deserved.