Bears Geek

It's really not that bad.

2009-06-09T07:56:00.001-07:00

I am having a recurring thought about the Bears, and this is where I put those: There are two things everyone is saying about the Bears this offseason. 1) This has been the best offseason in team history, & 2) it won't matter if the defense doesn't get much better, because the defense has to improve immensely if the Bears want to be a playoff contender.

I'm fine with number 1, but number 2 makes no sense. Last year the Bears were 9-7, and they weren't a vastly improved defense away from making the playoffs, they were actually a young Atlanta team pulling off the most improbable forty-yard pass with like :11 seconds left in the game away from making the playoffs. The Bears defense was the worst it's been in years, and it should be better given the amount of talent on that side of the ball and the amount of contract money Angelo's given to getting all that talent, but at the same time it wasn't quite as bad is it was perceived as being, and the Bears were a playoff contender last season. Yes, the defense should be better and it will be disappointing if it isn't, but even if the defense performs at essentially the same level, with the improvements made on the other side of the ball it's reasonable to expect the Bears to average nearly a touchdown per game better along with several minutes more of ball control, which last season would have given them a record of at least 12-4, and then nobody would be making weird claims about how the Bears defense needs to get so much better before the team can even think about the playoffs.

Cutler value

2009-04-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Much of the speculation surrounding the Cutler trade hinges on the question of value. "Did the Bears give up too much" to get the best quarterback in their history, the chattering heads are clamoring. Obviously this question of value can be addressed in many ways, but however it breaks down I'm immediately inclined to think 'No.'

First off, according to the trade value chart NFL teams use with draft picks, Chicago ultimately sent Kyle Orton and the 4th overall pick for Jay Cutler. This could mean that the Bears lost out on someone like Michael Crabtree to pair with Orton in order to get Cutler. Or it could mean that they saved some money by passing on Cedric Benson. The trade is actually two mid to late picks instead of one high pick, which I think makes it more likely that the Bears traded two more stabs at potential starting O-linemen. The line is a much easier prospect to solve with free agents than qb. The Bears signed Omiyale, Shaffer and Pace already while no one approaching Cutler's ability has ever seen the open market. A great line with an average qb can keep a good team in games, but after watching Bears-Packers in the 90's, I have to think a great qb with an average line can win games outright.

Which brings us to the question of records. Suddenly it's super important that Kyle Orton went 10-5 with the best defense in the NFL and 11-7 from the end of 2007 on. Sure 21-12 looks great, but he's never played in a playoff game and at the end of the season he failed keep the team on pace after Daniel Manning gave up 14 points single-handedly in the Texans loss. Meanwhile, Jay Cutler has a sub .500 17-20 record in three seasons with an atrocious defense and special teams in Denver. He also failed to keep pace for his team in a final regular season loss on the road last season. Denver however conceded 52 points. On the face of it Orton would appear to be a winner who just finds a way to get it done while Cutler can't get over that hump. This could be a worrying statistic if the two teams were even remotely similar. Fortunately, from the Bear standpoint, Denver had the league's worst defense next to Detroit in every category. Chicago's defense has been widely panned since they lost the Superbowl, but continues to function at a minimum top-half level. Which means that Cutler would have won multiple games in the Motor City last season, while Orton left Ford Field trailing.

The final point that people have been parading about in Denver is that despite racking up the most yards in the league last season, Denver only scored the 16th most points. The argument is that Cutler moves the ball easily but has trouble scoring. In five more trips inside the red zone last year Denver managed two more touchdowns than Chicago and three less field goals for a total of six more empty trips. (55-30-14 vs. 50-28-17) Cutler did however account for six more red zone touchdowns than Oroton. (17 pass, 2 rush vs. 11, 2) This of course could have several mitigating circumstances, notably the lack of a short yardage running game in Denver, and even though Denver had six more empty trips, they actually scored more points and had only one less score. (222, 44 vs. 219, 45) More importantly, Denver's offense accounted for five more total touchdowns, passing touchdowns and field goal attempts than Chicago's. (40-25-34 vs. 35-20-29) Denver led the league in average yards per drive at 38.38 a full 14 higher than Chicago's almost 24; conversely the Bears average starting field position of 33.48 led the league again in 2008 while the Broncos were the worst, starting just shy of the 26. Despite this Denver dwarfed Chicago in points, touchdowns and punts per drive. (2.16, .244, .28 vs. 1.67, .182, .485) The only number comparison from last season that favors Orton is interception percentage per throw and drives per interception. (2.6, .071 vs. 2.9, .110) Again mitigating factors abound, Orton played in a safer system with a stable running game and a team that wasn't playing catch-up and didn't need to out-score too many opponents to win, while Cutler was saddled with an inconsistent running game on a team that was either behind or soon would be without putting up points. Denver also had a more successful and talented offense built around Cutler than Orton could have dreamed of in the Windy City.

In the end, Orton did almost enough of the little he was asked to do. He took care of the ball, handed it off and gave the defense and Hester the chance to win with big plays. With the worst defense and special teams in the NFL, Cutler was asked to pass over all the glaring holes. He too fell short. But when I consider if Cutler will be able to do what is asked of him in Chicago, did the Bears over-pay? Certainly not.

Cutler excitement

2009-04-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

When I heard about the Pace and Lucas visits last week I was worried that Angelo was preparing to make a trade for Cutler. Pace would free up this year's first-round pick and Lucas would provide more freedom in trading secondary players. Then Lucas said that he never discussed a contract which made it pretty obvious that his visit was a favor to his agent Bus Cook. Angelo couldn't talk to Cutler, but he could discuss him all he wanted with Cook while Lucas was in town.

Now that the trade has happened and I've had time to bone up on Cutler, I have to give Angelo a ton of credit. Getting Cutler and Pace has added more to this offence than a whole draft could. Basically, Cutler and Pace are the Bears two first-rounders and Orton and a three turned into a five. That is a great turn.

I just watched the NFL Replay of Denver's week 2 win over San Diego. Probably Cutler can't be this good every week, but basically it's ridiculous how much higher his ceiling is than Orton's. Denver hardly ever ran the ball so Cutler won't get as many throwing opportunities as he did last season, but his precision is something I've never seen with regularity, except of course when watching Green Bay march through our defense for years. Orton had a few threaded throws last season, he is capable of it, but Cutler made at least 4 throws in pressure situations in that game that Orton is simply incapable of making. There also was a running play in that game where Cutler outran the back 20 yards down field and threw a block that added 25 yards to the play; Cutler's leadership will not be a question from the moment he puts the "C" on Monday morning.
It is clear that Denver has more talent at the receiver position, but Cutler simply makes the receivers' jobs easier. He has a beautiful spiral with zip and he almost always puts his throws in the perfect place. Furthermore Cutler does this consistently while on the run. Hester and Bennett might not be as good as Marshall and Royal, but the way Cutler throws as long as they can catch the difference will be negligible. And Forte, Olsen and Clark are better than what Denver had to offer.

The Bears upgraded their offense in this deal far beyond what three higher draft picks would have done for them. They also received a fifth-round pick, which is much more of Angelo's money round anyway, and they can still add a receiver with their first selection. I also believe that Pace wouldn't have signed without the Cutler trade. He wants a shot at a ring and protecting Cutler to Hester has to look a lot better in that light.

With the changes already made on offense, and with an entirely new and upgraded defensive coaching staff, and with the draft still to come, it is an amazing off-season in Chicago and it's very exciting to think about watching this team next year.

Gleeful News

2009-01-13T12:42:00.001-08:00

Right now this brief post over at Brad Biggs's flipping amazing Inside the Bears blog is all that's up, but he reports that Lovie's just announced what I thought of as one of the best-case options for next years defense, though one I didn't suspect could actually happen: Lovie is going to call the defense. Babich will retain his defensive coordinator title, but he's going to be more of just the LBs coach--I assume he's retaining the title so Lovie can help his friend save a bit of face. Fine with me.

Lovie calling the defense is wonderful news. Not only does he have a ridiculously solid history as a defensive coach, and his years as the defensive coordinator in St. Louis proved him to be one of the best defensive callers in the league, but it's will mean he overall will be taking a much more hands-on approach to the defense. Essentially, Lovie saw what was happening over the last couple years and decided that if you can't find someone else to do the job the way you want it, it's best to just do it yourself. I frankly haven't been this excited about a Bears move since some time before the 2006 season. Our defense, I predict, is going to be back next year--with a vengeance.

QB LOL

2009-01-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Biggs, here's the list of free agent QBs:

Unrestricted free agents

Charlie Batch, Pittsburgh Steelers
Kyle Boller, Baltimore Ravens
Brooks Bollinger, Dallas Cowboys
Todd Bouman, Baltimore Ravens
David Carr, New York Giants
Matt Cassel, New England Patriots
Kerry Collins, Tennessee Titans
Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cincinnati Bengals
Charlie Frye, Seattle Seahawks
Jeff Garcia, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Rex Grossman, Bears
Gibran Hamdan, Buffalo Bills
Joey Harrington, New Orleans Saints
Byron Leftwich, Pittsburgh Steelers
J.P. Losman, Buffalo Bills
Jamie Martin, San Francisco 49ers
Luke McCown, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Dan Orlovsky, Detroit Lions
J.T. O'Sullivan, San Francisco 49ers
Patrick Ramsey, Denver Broncos
Chris Simms, Tennessee Titans
Brian St. Pierre, Arizona Cardinals
Marques Tuaisosopo, Oakland Raiders
Kurt Warner, Arizona Cardinals
Anthony Wright, New York Giants

Restricted free agent

Jeff Otis, Oakland Raiders

Boy am I glad that we have Kyle Orton. With the possible exception of Matt Cassell (who's gonna be franchised and won't be worth what it'd take to bring him) I'd take Kyle Orton over any of these guys in a second. If you are a team hoping to find your answer to QB through free agency this year, yr frickin' screwed. Garcia might make a decent veteran backup to bring in, but it's not like anyobody's gonna be really itchin' to bring him in. Honestly, I would be kinda happy to see Orlovsky end up here. Despite making the all-time dumbest NFL play ever, he actually settled in pretty well at QB for the Lions, and if he hadn't gotten injured he might have made them look really dumb for bringing in Culpepper. I'd say that if it's possible to bring him in he'd be a better option than wasting a draft pick on a QB, and he just might actually represent somebody worth taking a look at if Orton disappoints next year.

I'm really anxious to find out about the crop of defensive line free agents and free agent defensive backs, though. The team obviously needs a strong pass rusher--and I also think we're one strong pass rusher away from having a dominant line. We've got enough guys that on our line that have all been extremely good before, that having that one overpowering presence there could really open it up for the rest of them. And maybe Tommie Harris will return to form, too, in which case our line could be downright scary. I want that scary line. And we also need a scary safety. That's just not Mike Brown anymore, unfortunately. I hope he stays and gets to play, but we need to find someone else to be the heart&soul back there--it just is a fact that Brown will not make it through a season and we can't have that kind of dropoff there anymore, plus he never looked like the Mike Brown of '03 or even '06 at any point this year. We need a dominating safety to make the other team afraid.

:O

2009-01-06T00:05:00.000-08:00

Wow. Carol Slezak, the same lady who tried to character-assassinate Greg Olsen for making a dumb rap song when he was a freshman in college, just wrote an article for the Sun-Times saying the Bears should look into Michael Vick when he gets out of prison. She's not sure if people will be able to "get past the whole dogfighting thing," though it's obvious she thinks they should. What a complete bitch. Why the hell are people like this paid to write about sports? This is just a terrible idea in every way it's possible for an idea to be terrible...

pathetic

2008-12-30T09:15:00.000-08:00

Look, I hate the Vikings. But I kind of like to hate the Vikings, and so I also have this weird kind of love for them. Which is why I'm a little bit pissed off to learn this morning that they are having a hard time selling out their playoff game. This is their first divisional title in eight years, and even if it weren't that something of a milestone, it's the fucking playoffs! Sure, your coach is kind of a dumb-ass and he's hitched his wagon once again to the floundering Tarvaris Jackson, but your team is in the playoffs! Selling tickets for that game should not be a problem. Maybe Vikings fans really don't deserve to keep their franchise...

2008-12-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

There's kind of two levels of being a football fan. On the one hand, you want your team to play well. You want them to be getting better. You want them to play solid games in which they beat their opponents for entire games. You want them to dominate.

But on another, more sublime level, that doesn't really matter. I know the Bears didn't play all that well tonight, and I spent most of the game really depressed and angry about what I was seeing. But in the end, it was all worth it. No amount of solid play could've felt better than watching the Packers final kick get blocked. Frankly, almost nothing in the world feels better than moments like that.

This is a Bears team with a lot of flaws, and they're pretty much the same flaws they've had for the past several years. It's a little bit frustrating. But, at the same time, what happened tonight (just as I heard Alex Brown saying in a postgame radio interview) maybe even topped the Arizona game in 2006 in terms of pure excitement, in the end.

It is irrational, stressful, and sometimes totally devastating--but when Alex Brown gets his hand on a chip shot field goal to send the game into overtime, when I find myself jumping into the air and screaming (in public!) at the ball's broken careen, when the most improbable shoestring of hope I let myself foolishly cling to pays off, when the coin toss bounces off of Urlacher's head and Orton and then Forte each make the exactly one play they really need to make, when Robbie Gould comes out and calmly continues to live up to his name's symbolic standard--Praise Payton I fucking love being a Bears fan!

Weep On, Blonde Minnesotans

2008-12-21T19:08:00.001-08:00

Today was a good football day for our team. And I'm going to continue to thoroughly enjoy the feeling of having seen the Vikes look inept and clueless until it's time to go to bed.

But when I wake up, that's going to be in the past. Tomorrow, we have to beat the Packers. I don't even remember much of our last game against the Packers--and I don't care to. Tomorrow I expect my team to come out and play their best game of the season. I don't just want a win (I mean, I'd settle for that, but), I want there to be no doubt at the end of the game that the Bears belong at the top of the NFC North. I want a game that I want to remember.

For now, though, this is just beauty:

Fetish

2008-12-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

Magic hasn't worked before, but it's bound to work some time. In preparation for the Vikings/Falcons game today, I've put this photo up as a kind of fetish to ward off a Vikings victory. This photo was taken (there's a StarTribune story about it) after the Vikings loss to the Falcons in the NFC Championship game in 1999. That was the year (the 1998) season the Vikings went 15-1. It was horrible--but in the end, that loss almost made it worth it. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to football at the time--the Bears were awful and the Vikings went frickin' 15-1 bleurgh--but I do remember the night before the game I had a dream that the Vikings lost by a field goal. Sure enough, it came down to Gary Anderson missing one, which sent the game into overtime and ultimately led to one of my favorite all-time Vikings choke-jobs. I seem to remember jumping up and down on the couch when they lost, but I'm not sure if that could be accurate--I was seventeen at the time, a senior in high school, surely I was too big to be jumping up and down and the couch... Regardless, that was how I felt.

Interestingly, the Vikings last three games this season are all against the teams who defeated them in my three favorite moments of Vikings failure. Last week, the new version of the Arizona Cardinals failed to live up to the standard of the 2003 Vikings, who scored two touchdowns after the two-minute-warning to send the Vikings home without an appearance in the playoffs. That was sweet. This week, it's the Falcons, who, as mentioned above, ended the run of the 15-1 Vikings team, the team that set all sorts of offensive (pun intended) records. Next week, it's the Giants, who, in 2001, hosted a favored Vikings team for the NFC Championship and absolutely obliterated them.

As of this moment, I'm still feeling good about the chances for a Vikings collapse. It's really the least they deserve for that fucking goddamn horn-call they play all the time...

Good News

2008-12-18T16:28:00.000-08:00

Vikings to go with Jackson at starting qb. I know he had a good game against Atlanta, and had an alright game the week before. But, c'mon. With two of the toughest games on their schedule coming up, Childress has made his decision. He will not be going with the QB who, tho certainly not an example of awesomeness, did open up the Vikes offense enough that they're in the position they're in. Instead he'll be going with his pet project, who has never yet come close to succeeding on the professional level before the last two weeks, when he "led" the team to victories over the worst team in the history of the NFL and a thoroughly uninspired Arizona Cardinals team. This is why I feel, as a Bears fan and a Vikings hater, as long as Childress is the coach, there's always hope the Vikes could pull off another splendid choke job. This is a decision based on nothing but what Childress sees as a chance to restore his reputation. Everyone knows he's an idiot for investing so much time in Tarvaris Jackson, but he will not give it up. Seriously, I hope the Vikings blow these last two games, and even more I hope the major reason is because of Childress's egotistically stubborn insistence on going with Jackson. I don't get to go home for Christmas, so I'm asking Christmas for this one Christmas present. Please please!

17.5

2008-12-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'm far from ready to look towards 2009, but there is the possibility that come Monday that is exactly what will be happening. Though this is distressing, there is at least one very bright piece of news today.
Albert Haynesworth will be an unrestricted free agent starting 2-27-2009. It's not likely that the Bears will have the most pull in the league, and he's already on one of the best teams, but I have to imagine the prospect of playing for Lovie Smith in a 4-3 next to Tommie Harris and with Lance Briggs isn't totally dismissible.
The Bears will have at least 17.5 million available at the start of free agency and I assume much of that could be used to form a pretty enticing offer. Unfortunately this would probably eliminate the Bears chances of getting Anquan Boldin, but I'd take the best D in the league over a balanced team.
The Bears still clearly need to rethink their offense or at least their wide-outs, but anything like what B. Lloyd was offering before his injury would be good enough to be top 20. And 91 and 92 would immediately take over as the Monsters of the NFL.

Smith's Defense

2008-12-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

There've been various rumors floating around over the past few weeks that Lovie has been getting himself much more involved in the defense lately. I found this snippet from Biggs' article telling:

Babich was solely responsible for the position, but coach Lovie Smith is very involved now, too. Manning goes to Smith's office, where he gets one-on-one film sessions with the man who learned the Tampa-2 in Tampa. They meet before walk-throughs every day.

''Mainly, I am with coach Smith,'' Manning said. ''He's just like a regular coach when it's just me and him. We're there for a good hour, and we get it down.''

It could just be that Lovie knows how important the nickel position is to the defense and felt he needed to do something about how, earlier in the season, practically every time there was a big play given up by the defense you could see Manning was obviously out of position.

But I have thought the defense has started to look a little better over the past few weeks, and that and the other little hints all see to point to Smith having decided to take a much more active role in that capacity. What that means about Babich's future remains to be seen, but it's hard to imagine that even with Lovie's tremendous loyalty he would want to keep a defensive coordinator whose responsibilities he feels he has to take over.

And Smith's seemingly increased role in the defensive coaching certainly bodes well going into a game against a team whose offensive strength plays so strongly to our earlier-season defensive weakness. That is, if we can keep up our dominant run defense, and our passing defense improves to slightly above average, we could be set for this game.

Jared Allen. Great guy.

2008-12-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

"When I first got hit I thought it was done," Allen told KFAN's morning show. "It didn't feel too well. After the pain subsided then the anger took over. All I could think of was, 'I'm not going to let them cart me off this field.' I have a rule [that] I'm going to have to be dead before you cart me off that field. Then I got up and I was so mad, I figured if my season is over that dude's season is over as well. I'm taking him with me. Luckily it worked out all right, and I was able to come back and play."

I admit, I'd feel a little differently if it were a member of the Bears saying this. But whatever. Jared Allen should get fined for saying something like this. Hell, he should maybe even be suspended. He just admitted he went at a guy with the intention of ending that guy's season! How is that possibly an okay thing?

Is there still hope? (I don't know)

2008-12-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

Once again, the Bears came out and looked, for the most part, like the better version of themselves. Turner pretty much shut down the offense for the second half, maddeningly, for no good reason. But the defense kept Jacksonville out of the entire game, and for most of the game looked pretty dominant. And before Turner decided that he'd rather be napping than calling the game, the offense looked effective. So, hurray.

And then the Vikings barely managed to beat the Lions. Stupid Lions. Stupid, stupid Vikings. Of course, they lost Frerotte to a back injury. They lost Allen to a knee injury. They still might lose the Williamses to their suspension this week. Which means, best case scenario:

Over three games in which the Bears play first New Orleans at home on Thursday, then GB (who's lost three in a row and is done for the season) at home on a Monday night, followed by a trip down to Houston (who will be done for the season by then as well), while the Vikings have to travel to Arizona (who, with their great passing offense, will be fighting to still be in the race for a first-round bye), then host Atlanta (w/their strong passing offense, who will still be hoping to make first place in their division), and finally host the Giants, (who, with Eli Manning apparently deciding to live up to his namesake and with the type of defense that makes me jealous, have been the best team in the league for much of the season, but with their loss today and with Burress gone and with Jacobs getting hurt, might possibly be playing for home-field advantage going into the playoffs, but at least showed last year they're not the type of team who will shut it down going into the playoffs), the Bears have to win two more games than the Vikings--either we have to go 3-0 and the Vikings lose two of those games, or we could possibly still even make it if we win two games and the Vikes lose all three. And, frankly, I think either of those possibilities are quite likely. I mean, they certainly could happen. And if there ever was a team you needed to count on to choke, that team is the Vikings.

So, here's hoping. Choke, you suckers.

Confessional

2008-12-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, at this point I've pretty much lost all my faith in this team. I'm on my way out to watch the Jacksonville game, and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Frankly, I don't really expect that I'm going to be watching a Bears victory today. I think the Bears should be able to win, but it's been a long time since I've seen the team I think the Bears should be. The team the Bears actually are has gone 2-3 over the last five games, with both of those victories coming over two of the absolute worst teams in the league. Two of the losses have been against the Vikings and the Packers, and in both games they got absolutely creamed. There's nothing about the team I've seen over the last five weeks that makes me expect very much. Depressing.

So I feel like I pretty much don't care about the game today, for the first time all year. Which is a pretty lame feeling. The Bears could win today, I think--I mean it's pretty likely they'll win today. And in all likelihood they'll still be effectively two games behind the Vikings with only three games to go. I normally try to be optimistic, because I think it makes being a fan more fun, but I just don't have the energy to put that optimism up for this team anymore. I'm still hoping for another epic collapse by the Vikings to put my team into the playoffs. But unless the Bears actually manage to finally turn their season around in the final four games, unless they go 4-0 and actually look good doing it, I don't see any reason to feel like they deserve to make it to the playoffs.

But, then, who am I kidding. There's still a chance we could get the NFC North title! And I fucking want that. C'mon, you slags! Show us what you got!

fucking bullshit

2008-12-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

The federal judge delaying the suspensions today is ridiculous. The language of the bargaining agreement is very clear and the players took a supplement that was neither listed as ok or not ok due to lack of regulation, thus taking said supplement is an unnecessary personal risk and deserves to be punished. The stay of suspension is clearly just a move to help the Vikings make the playoffs and not lose a bunch of money. Its fucking stupid!

Nothing is sitting well about last night.

2008-12-01T16:32:00.000-08:00

Because of last night, I hate the Vikings more than I ever have. It's hard to really hate Adrian Peterson, because I just really appreciate good running backs, but now he's on my shit list. I can never be happy about anything he does ever again. In fact, I hope he never has a good game for the rest of his career (fat chance... but still... one can hope). Much easier to hate is Jared Allen and his dumb-ass calf-roping celebration. St. Clair has done a good job all year--except against Jared Allen. Which is all the argument you would ever need for not even considering him to start the position next year. Chris Williams better be everything he's advertised to be--and he better fucking shut Jared Allen down. I never want to see that stupid calf-roping celebration again. I hope Allen sprains his arm doing it some day...

Beyond all that. Getting burned by Berrian is just about the most pathetic thing to have happened all season. He is just not that good of a receiver, and karma should be punishing the Vikings for paying too much that skinny fucker. Why wasn't Tillman shoving Berrian around at the line all night? That's all you have to do and he becomes completely worthless. Ugh.

Anyway, I know that our chances to make the playoffs are not completely shot yet, but, at this point, we certainly don't deserve to make it to the playoffs, but if the Williams guys get suspended (which they fucking better--if they don't, the league is just making an exception for them because of recognizing how important they are to the Vikings; but the rules, even if they're dumb, are explicit; Metcalf got suspended for the same reason for four games) and if we can just take care of business against some mediocre teams (hardly a foregone conclusion given how we've played all season), well, there's a still a pretty darn good chance of us making the playoffs over the Vikings--which, at this point, is all I really want. Yeah, we'll get creamed in the playoffs by whatever legit team we play, but I don't care; I just want us to go to the playoffs over the Vikings. Because I hate the Vikings. And they don't deserve to go to the playoffs ever.

I've already started thinking about what the team needs to do to get better for next season. But I don't wanna be thinking about that yet. There'll be plenty of time for that in about five or six weeks...

My coach's message for Sunday

2008-11-22T12:23:00.000-08:00

In order to show that the Bears struggles aren't totally schematic, this Sunday it is necessary for the inactive list to receive a bit of a shake-up. These players need to make way for new guys to have a chance to make a mark.
QB Haine - but if the Bears show up and dominate he should see some 4Q time
CB Hamilton
DT Toeaina
LB LaRoque
LB McClover (inj)
WR Booker (inj)
DE Anderson/Baldwin - if 97 doesn't make some plays it should be his last active game for awhile
LB Roach - it's more important to play receivers against a bad D, send the message that being on the field isn't good enough, Bears defenders are expected to make things happen.

Blitz!

2008-11-18T10:13:00.000-08:00

This is the most exciting and frustrating tidbit I've seen this season: "Entering the Green Bay game, the Bears were the No. 1 defense in the league against the pass when they blitzed. Opponents had a passer rating of 52.0, according to STATS Inc., and seven of the Bears' 12 interceptions have come on blitzes."
If Brad Biggs knows this why don't the Bears coaches? I had noticed that the four man rush gets beat all the time but this stat is mindblowing. If you're team is really good at blitzing and really bad at not blitzing then maybe it makes sense to do a lot more blitzing!

In troubled times of psychic distress, I often turn to poetry.

2008-11-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

"Mama!
I can't sing!
Flames are all over the choir.
Blistered little ciphers of words
and numbers are leaping from
my skull like kids. O fear
clutching at sky..."

--V. Mayakofsky

That's about what it felt like today, watching Green Bay beat us 37-3. I can't remember the last time I saw my team get a good ass-kicking like that--and I don't want to remember.

At least--and that's a very desperate at least--it was only one game. It doesn't matter how badly we got beaten, we're still 5-5, just like the Packers and the Vikings, and we still have the easiest schedule of the three teams remaining. I'm gonna guess (and hope, so strongly that I might start sweating blood) that this Bears team is not as bad as they looked today. And I don't care if we back in, I just wanna get to the playoffs.

I want Lovie running the defense!

2008-11-16T18:04:00.000-08:00

Such is my state of upset that I must make a second post praying for the elimination of Bob Babich from ruining my Sundays. Mike Brown wants a new coordinator, at least that's how I choose to interpret this quote. ‘‘Obviously our defense isn’t what it used to be. Everyone wants it to be what it used to be, and it’s not. Once we come to grips that our defense isn’t what it’s supposed to be, we’ll all be better. Our perception is that we have a good defense. The reality is we don’t.’’
Lovie is the only member of the staff who might be able to save the season and honestly I'm really sick of seeing him stand on the sideline not doing anything. It's fine if he's not a yeller and doesn't spend the game getting in people's faces, but he doesn't manage the clock and he doesn't keep Turner from making ridiculous, obvious play calls. What does he do on Sunday?
San Diego's defense played better this Sunday after Rivera took over, there is abounding evidence that changing defensive coordinators can instantly, dramatically improve a team. Chicago needs to become the next example. Lovie absolutely has to take control of the defense for the rest of the season. If the Bears turn it around they could have a shot at making a run, if they don't it will be time for change. I'll take tried and true execution over new ideas for the sake of change any day but there is no execution on the defensive side of the ball. It is time to try some new ideas.
If the defense doesn't improve there is no choice but to turn the focus to Orton and build the coaching staff around him, possibly from the top down. There is no creativity in Chicago's coaches right now. The offense ALWAYS looks better when Orton has more control because he can diagnose problems on the spot and isn't limited by a script. Turner is incapable of adjustments. With Turner, if it isn't working it isn't going to work. The only reason I'm not worried about the offense is Orton.

Observations, desparingly.

2008-11-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

After watching every play of that humiliating display a few things are evident without "watching the tape." The Bears got their assess kicked in every way. The Packers didn't even look that good, the Bears just looked completely and totally inept.
Bob Babich should be demoted back to LB coach or anything that keeps him out of game-planning and play calling. This defense is loaded with talented players and they didn't all just forget how to play. They are not being put into situations to make plays. Lovie needs to run the defense. I can't tell what he does as head coach anyway, he certainly isn't exercising any power over clock management. And what the fuck is Ron Turner's deal? How can you be a coach that long and not understand the most basic strategies of time management?
Along with the coaching change, shich should remind everyone on the team that playing well now is more important than having done so two years ago, Mark Anderson should be inactive and Daniel Manning, Nick Roach and Brad Maynard should lose their respective places. If Hillenmeyer isn't good enough anymore give Williams a shot. Roach hasn't done anything in three games. Likewise Steltz should be seeing some regular action by now. The coaching staff needs to start rewarding players who are actually making plays instead of "staying the course."
On offense this means that B. Lloyd should play every snap as the No. 1 wideout. The switching around shit is stupid. Coaching is supposed to be about maximizing ability first, then versatility.
It's also probably time to give Bennett a game and rest Booker for a week at least, he just isn't offering anything at this point.
On top of this Manning should be the new full time kick returner. Keep Hester on punts and try to actually utilize him on offense instead of just playing him on it.
Finally, since the pass rush has sucked all year why don't the Bears try putting Harris and Idonije at end sometimes. Give teams different problems to deal with instead of just sticking with the same tired formula. It certainly couldn't hurt this defense.

Neckbeard!

2008-11-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

Just as a sort of fetish, I'm posting this picture of Kyle Orton and his neckbeard. This will provide the power for us to BEAT THE PACKERS!

UPDATE: Packers 37 Bears 3 Alright, jeez, fine... I won't dabble in the occult anymore!

Virtuoso, nearly

2008-11-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

David Haugh has once again surprised me, accidentally doing something good he managed to lead me to B. Lloyd top single which I find totally listen-to-able as a Bears fan. Though I'm fairly certain Haugh is a country music fan and he's under the impression that B. Lloyd sings instead of raps, I'm willing to give him the pass this week for his willingness to say he actually wants the Bears to win. Sitting a healthy Lloyd makes no sense and who knows what was really going on last week, but with Orton and Lloyd back this Sunday, and for the stretch run, the Bears can really catch fire. Lloyd looked like he could be the latest 4-5 year wide receiver to finally turn dominant before his injury. I'd love to see him and Orton together for a few years forming a dominant tandem. As an extra bonus it would be hilarious to see what asinine columns DH could come up with if the Bears star receiver had a moderately successful music career on the side. Maybe he'd just quit as all he holds dear crumbles around him. It's just too good not to happen!

Statuesque.

2008-11-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

2008-11-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

Regardless of what the Bears line may think, the problem starts up front. This is the reason Baldwin was promoted from the practice squad and will likely take Mark Anderson's active roster spot on Sunday. Too many times opposing QB's get a free look 12-15 yards down field and find an easy comeback completion. The Bears line isn't getting enough pressure, not sacks necessarily, but pressure that impairs a QB's timing, throwing lane or at the very least comfort. The truly damaging plays are these easy yards on 2nd and 3rd and long, and they usually come when the LB's are back in their zone. This is certainly not the only problem though.

The Bears secondary is playing too soft this year. The corners need to get better jams and start jumping routes instead of allowing easy completions. Take a few illegal contact penalties but don't let offenses get so comfortable. They need to get their arms in and break up some passes. And Nathan Vasher isn't the problem and Corey Graham isn't the answer. Graham started two of the last four games in which they have gotten torched. Vasher has more passes defended and the same interceptions. Graham is a better fit at nickel where he can help more in the running game which is his best attribute.

The LB's are also getting beat far too often. For this D to function the LB's need to be breaking up passes and getting interceptions instead of running behind TE's after missing reads. The final first down Sunday was a pretty obvious call and a terrible play by Roach?.

Which leads finally to play calling. The defense is obviously far too predictable. The execution has been spotty, but every offense seems to know exactly what to call every time the defense has a chance to really turn the game.

All in all though the defense isn't horrible, they're just not great. They need to start being great in the red zone though. The rest of the field doesn't really matter, if they don't give up any TD's I'm sure Orton will win every time. On top of that all they need is a couple big third down plays or turnovers and they'll be the toast of the town.

When the defense has something to prove they usually get it done. They wanted to stop the run last week and they should have won. If they want to stop the pass in Green Bay I have faith that they will get it done. Rodgers is good but if they keep the pack out of the end zone this will certainly be a win.

I honestly don't think I could sleep before I write this if I tried.

2008-11-10T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've spent most of today trying to figure out why every qb looks like a world beater against the Bears defense right now and what can possibly change this trend before Aaron Rodgers looks like 90's Favre this Sunday.

The Titans game was a bit of a fluke. Even with Collins' 289 passing yards I think the Bears had the proper defensive strategy. They almost stole two handoffs and had the Titans totally confused the vast majority of the game, it just happened on the wrong half of the field the whole time. If Orton was behind center clearly the Bears would have put up more than 14 points and the field position battle would actually have been a battle instead of a slaughter. Unfortunately Grossman was back and without a defensive of special teams touchdown there was just no way the Bears were going to win that game.

My main criticism is that all phases of the Bears coaching are simply not creative. They have yet to actually utilize the biggest threat in the league in Devin Hester and the play-calling on both sides of the ball is very predictable. When Orton is back the offense will be fine. But what could it hurt to throw in a few direct snaps or an end around option, something to get Hester more open space. This is needed on special teams as well. Hester is struggling right now. The punt early in the third that he caught on the 10 and stood still while trying to juke and wound up getting tackled easily was ugly. He is clearly pressing and running a reverse or a cross field throw could be another sensible option. The man has talent, it's up to the coaches to do something to help him rediscover his brilliance.

On pass defense there are at least a couple simple answers to help start to salvage the situation. First off, if teams are going to throw short timing patterns the corners need to be jamming every release and actually getting their jams. The Bears have three quality corners, lock them up man-to-man and rotate them to keep them fresh if needed, but stop giving up 12 yard slants every three plays! Also if not for two obvious (one so obvious it was actually flagged) offensive interference plays Vasher would have had two picks and things wouldn't look so bleak. Secondly, why don't Bears linemen ever block passes. Brown used to be especially adept at this but this year it seems they never get their hands up. Also, why is Mark Anderson still playing. The Bears should just activate 5 DT's with Brown and Ogunleye and let them play some end.

Beyond this it's mostly just execution. The safeties are playing a little too safe too often. I like the linebackers on the line but they need to be quicker about picking up their reads. And the corners need to start jumping some routes. The Bears haven't given up a 50-yard reception all year but they've given up the most completions and third most yards. That boils down simply to soft coverage.

I also have to note that DH got one point right, one kind of right, two totally wrong, with one worthless point in his five step fixit column. Also letting Orton decide his fitness makes sense and I'm sure it came after medical clearance, so rest easy Haugh Orton isn't going to ruin his season.

Yeah, I'm still on this...

2008-11-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

And another thing! Yet another reason to stop putting the loss to the Titans at the feet of the defense: holding the opponent to 21 points would have been enough for a win in all but two of the Bears' previous games. In other words, the Bears had scored more than 21 points in six out of their eight previous games. Both of those games were losses. And furthermore! Yesterday was the lowest number of points the Bears have scored all season. Yes, of course, the defense could have played better. But it was because of Grossman's inability to maintain the production of the offense that the game was lost. "Though Chicago’s porous pass defense was probably more responsible for Sunday’s loss," writes Larry Meyer on the Bears site today. Bzzt! Wrong!

Blame Grossman

2008-11-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

"It looks like the continuing deficiency of Chicago's defense will get quarterback Rex Grossman off the hook in the Windy City postmortem this week. Grossman didn't deserve sole blame for the Bears' 21-14 loss to Tennessee, but usually he is a victim of the pile-on factor."

Thus Kevin Seifert at ESPN's NFC North blog. Thing is, this is one of the few times in Grossman's career when I think he really deserves more of the blame than the press is giving him. I know it looks bad that the defense gave up 289 yards to Kerry Collins, but that was on 41 passes, and over the course of 14 drives. Tennesse's longest drive of the game was 56 yards, their first drive of second half, when TN came with their half-time adjustment in place of only passing--it was a six play drive, five of which were passes.

Other than that, the Titans only scored on two other drives, the first of which was a four play, twenty-two yard drive. What set that drive up was three consecutive drives by the Bears of three plays or less, alternating with three six-play drives by the Titans. The Bears ran eight plays over those three drives, five of which were passes, all of which were incomplete except for an interception (it should've been challenged and overturned, but it still would've been an incomplete pass). The Bears moved the ball a total of seven yards during those three drives. Then Chris Carr pulled off his 29 yard punt return, and the Titans only had to go, like I said, 22 yards to score.

My point is this: The Bears defense played really well that game. Their pass defense was not as dominant as the run defense, to be sure. Their pass rush certainly could've looked better, and the defense did completely break down for that TD drive at the beginning of the third quarter. But other than that, the defense kept the Titans from scoring on all but three of their fourteen drives. The Bears, meanwhile, scored on their first drive, and then went 10 drives without scoring. Of those drives, 7 drives were three plays or less. The most plays the Bears strung together after their first, 14-play drive, was seven, which they did three times--once for 25 yards and a punt, once for 30 yards and a blocked field gold, and once for 68 yards and a TD. The two scoring drives were both about seventy yards, but the longest drive for the Bears other than those two was the 30-yard blocked punt drive. In other words, it was entirely the offense's fault that we lost this game, and the difference between the offense this week and other weeks was Rex Grossman. That was one of the least productive outings by a quarterback I've ever seen. The defense, meanwhile, probably had one of their best games of the season. Any time your opponent runs fourteen drives and you only allow them to score three times, that's a good thing. If Grossman had put together only one and a half more drives, nobody would be complaining about the defense's performance--but Grossman wasn't even close.

Of course, the memory of that MN game and the TB game probably hurt the perception of the defense as well. But those games were either a long time ago or with a completely gutted secondary. None of which is to say that the pass defense doesn't need to improve. Teams have obviously figured out where you can throw the ball against the Bears zone. Those are short, underneath routes, and the defense needs to shut them down more quickly so they result in fewer first downs. Some kind of adjustment needs to be made. But the defense simply wasn't the reason for the loss yesterday. The defense came out yesterday and put together one of their best games of the season, and it only wasn't good enough because of Grossman's terrible performance. They simply don't deserve the pile-on they're getting in the Chicago press this week.

Meh.

2008-11-09T16:18:00.000-08:00

Well, that was about as soft a loss I think it would be possible to take. The best team in the league comes to town and you play them pretty close with your second-string QB looking as second-stringy as possible. And they're not even in this conference. It's frankly hard for me to find a whole lot to be upset about in this game, except that it thoroughly convinced me that Rex Grossman is never going to be a good QB in this league. Probably I should've already knew that. Just pray, intensely and to whatever extra-universal structure might be out there, that Kyle Orton's ankle is really healing as quickly as the Sun-Times insists, and that he'll be back with us next week. If Neckbeard would've been out there today we would've won this game. I'm positive. No way Orton lets eight consecutive drives go by without getting a TD or two and some Field Goals.

A lots gonna be said about how the defense let Kerry Collins throw for so many yards--and, yeah, it is a little worrisome that every week it seems like some QB is coming out and having his best game against us. But I don't think it's time to freak out yet. Part of the reason Collins put up so many yards is that our defense completely eliminated the running game for the Titans. That's my little attempt to look at the silver lining. But, yes, something does have to be done to improve the pass defense. It's becoming clearer every week that the only real weakness the team has is it's pass defense. There isn't a single game we've lost that wasn't because of the pass defense. At this point, we're almost like the Vikings defense of last year--nobody can run on us, but people can go up and down the field on as, practically at will, by passing. I'm optimistic this will be fixed, though. We have plenty of good personnel in our defensive backfield, so it's not like we're doomed to have a bad pass defense until we can get some new players. And Lovie has had good pass defenses before. Something needs to be tweaked to get our pass defense to work better, no doubt. But there's time for that change to be made. There's less time every week, but there's still time. I believe it will be done.

2008-11-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Brian Billick takes a look at Chicago's two tight end alignment. NFL.com has some pretty cool video stuff, sometimes. Watch out for the ad before the video, tho: if it's that Casio camera add with the gymnastic babies, just mute it, cover yr eyes, and wait till it's over. It might be the must unsettlingly bubbly/creepy commercial I've ever seen.

Also, just because I'm feeling good about it, I'd like to remind myself that before the season started, when everyone was bemoaning the state of the Bears' receiving core (to the point that the Outsiders even ran an article explaining how the Bears receivers would likely be historically bad this year), I predicted that it didn't really matter much about the Bears receivers because the leading receiver would likely be Olsen. (I'd link to my prediction, but I cant find it... Maybe I actually didn't post that... but I thought it! Believe me!) Well, that wasn't exactly right, but it wasn't really because the receivers have been significantly better than I'd thought they'd be--it's because Forte is the best receiving back in the league right now (with the possible exception of Reggie Bush, but I'm choosing to ignore him). But right now, three of Bears' top five receivers are either Forte or a tight end, and of those top five, Olsen currently has the highest yards/catch at 12.8--a full yard higher than the next highest.

2008-11-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

Do Trib reporters even watch Bears games?

Kickers have missed only two of 597 extra-point attempts this year. Extra points have become so routine that the NFL should consider doing away with them. The PAT adds nothing to the game.

That's Dan Pompei on the Trib site today, not even one week after a Bears game in which a missed extra point arguably had a pretty significant impact on how the end of the game played out.

2008-11-05T22:57:00.000-08:00

"[The Bears] have the worst sideline view in the history of the NFL," said Bulluck, probably going a little too far back with his timeframe. "It's kind of tough. Normally you have an above view so you can see the formations, you can kind of see the splits of the linemen, you can see a lot of different things. With the tape when you play the Bears and get it from them -- it's not like they do it on purpose, everybody gets the same tape -- but it's definitely hard to differentiate linemen splits, splits of the wide receivers, things that are really key to studying an offense."

I've never heard anything about this before, but there's a blogpost at ESPN's NFL blog quoting some of the Titans complaining about the game film provided from Soldier Field. Worth a read.

More hate for the Chicago boys

2008-11-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

It's articles like these that cause me to feel like vomiting so frequently each week.

Apparently Greg Couch has officially taken the Mariotti mantle and he doesn't plan on entering the scene quietly. He takes the electronic space, I can only hope to god that this was never printed in ink, of the first article I've noticed by him this year to say that Devin Hester is washed up. On behalf of Devin and anyone who has any idea what it means to actually support the Chicago Bears, FUCK YOU COUCH! He even has to balls to suggest that 23 is resigned to his fate. Hey Greg, remember when the blocking sucked on that return and Devin tried to take everyone on and lost yards and everyone was like "this isn't college, you just need to hit the hole and break the ones that are available"? I do and you suck! Just wanted to say that again. 23 was very close on at least one return before being stopped illegally Sunday and totally slipped on another one, so I don't think he can really be admonished. He will break one this year and I hope on that day Greg Couch suffers from the worst fucking case of hemorrhoids.

DH is just being his normal self. Paraphrasing: Steltz looks good and I've questioned multiple times if Manning is solid but come this Sunday the Bears coaches, who I assume don't actually go to practice, should start still injured Manning or just signed Holt. Oh, and Babich was on the sideline again, heh he's such a dork. I would've already won the Super Bowl this year if I were in charge. Hehe. And lets put turf in Soldier Field again because I DON'T LIKE MUD! And I think a veteran who has never seen the playbook is probably a better backup QB option than this Haine guy who has been on the team all year.
Douche also recycles my KGB idea which I think is funny because I saw it first and I gave a legitimate way for the Bears to pull it off. Haugh wants two new signings without noticing that a player would have to be jettisoned to bring each one in.

Finally, Thank you Brian Urlacher. You're not as big a factor this year but I still love and cherish you as my MLB. I am so glad that you are asking fans to stop booing the replacement QB who brought this city to Miami and hadn't thrown a pass yet this year but still won the game last week. Seriously Chicago fans WTF!? Rex is clearly on his farewell tour here, you could at least show him some love before he rides off. We'll have plenty of time to boo him next season when he's throwing bombs to BB and living off of simple, effective play action again.

Turn that Frown Upside Down

2008-11-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm well aware that the number of Bears fans who read this blog is the same as the number of Bears fans who write on it, but on some purely metaphysical level, in light of this little snippet from ESPN's NFC North blog,

3. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers has more mobility than most opponents give him credit for, but he was no match for the speed of the Titans' front seven on Sunday. It seemed that every time you looked for Rodgers after a play, he was on his back. He was sacked four times, hurried five others and had eight passes tipped. Assuming he doesn't get faster as his career progresses, Rodgers probably should work on releasing the ball quicker.

I would like to send out this plea to all Chicago Bears fans who are going to be in attendance at the game this week:

DO NOT FUCKING BOO REX GROSSMAN THIS WEEK! The Titan's have a very good pass rush, probably the best in the league right now, and handling a pass rush has always been the thing that Grossman fails at the most. So show the guy a little support! He's going to need every bit he can get! Look, we all know, and that includes the Bears coaches and Rex Grossman himself, that Grossman is not going to be our "starting" ever again. He's a replacement right now. He's going to start one game at Soldier Field. Hold back on yr booing for one fucking week! It won't do anything except make him play worse. What, do you think they're going to put Hanie in? That would be just completely stupid. It made a little bit of sense to boo when Grossman was stinking it up out there and the coaching staff seemed unwilling to consider another possibility that just to continue playing him. But those days are done. Kyle Orton's job is absolutely secure. There is just no reason to boo Rex Grossman. So stop it! Srsly...

That said, I do think there's a chance we can win this game this weekend. The coaching staff has shown three times this season (Indy, Philly, the first Detroit game) that when they really hunker down and put together a game plan, they can look really good. Now is the time to do that again.

Frankly, I think what Ron Turner needs to do is try to take advantage of the fact that we have a different starting quarterback this week. There's plenty of film out there of Grossman, but none of him playing with this offensive unit. Grossman has different capabilities than Kyle Orton, and what he's good at, he's shown in the past, he can be very good at. So go out there with the most Grossman-focused offense you can think of. It only needs to work for about a half. That should be enough time to catch the Titans defense off their guard and to put up a few touchdowns, and if the defense comes out knowing that they have to stop the Titans the entire game--and surely this defense has to have one good game in them--we can take this game from them. The point is not to dominate the Titans. The point is to surprise them, get a lead, and then hold on long enough to leave the field with more points than them.

Please please please.

Orton's down but he and the Bears are not out

2008-11-03T15:29:00.000-08:00

The first first thing I want to suggest is that every Chicago Bears fan who can grow a beard should not shave until Kyle Orton lines up behind center again. This is simply the best way to express our solidarity in wishing for a quick recovery, and maybe all our beard power can unite and hasten his return.

The injury Kyle suffered marked an emphatic end to by far the worst quarter this Bears team has seen. They gave up 23 points, Devin Hester fumbled, Tillman and Vasher were both beaten for touchdowns, Mike Brown limped to the locker room, and Orton was carted off the field after failing to convert on an ill-advised scramble. But something happened at half-time that gives me a lot of hope. The Bears decided that it was finally time for the season to begin, and with their backs against the wall they answered all their Chicago critics and booing fans by beating the Lions 14-0 in the second half.

This team's goal is to win their division. That is all they talk about and throughout the year is has looked like it's all they're playing for. They weren't the team that let up in each of the NFC South games. They came out of the locker room and made sure that they walked back into it undefeated against the North. I'm not exactly sure what this means for the showdown with Tennessee, but I do know that it gives me hope for the game in Green Bay.

I don't want to ignore Lovie's advice and get too far ahead of myself though. If Rex Grossman starts Sunday, I say if because if it isn't a break then it's mostly a matter of pain-threshold for Orton and I don't question his toughness, he will have the chance to make millions in that game. I can't even imagine the prospect of spending a week preparing to win the lottery. This isn't a normal ticket, Rex actually controls the outcome of the drawing. If he puts up points and beats the toughest, undefeated defense in the league, March 1 will not come soon enough for his agent. Sunday's second half looked like the '06 Bears. Hester would have had his first return of the season if not for a horse-collar tackle, the defense was dominant and Forte played well enough to give any quarterback a chance to succeed. I hope we see more of the same this Sunday.

Alienation

2008-11-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

I don't normally worry too much about this sort of thing, because I think the "expert" analysts, mostly former jocks, make a much bigger deal out of it than it really is. But something bothers me about his photo. There's Rex Grossman emphatically spiking the ball after what turned out to be the game winning touchdown. There are John Tait--one of the biggest leaders on the team--and Greg Olsen--who's emerged during Grossman's time on the bench as the most important receiving threat on the team. They're both just watching Grossman celebrate all by himself. They're just kind of staring at him. They're not even smiling. If Orton is really going to be out for four weeks--if he's even only out next week--we need the team to be behind him. But the way he always has seemed to have just been hanging out by himself on the sideline every time we've seen him so far this season, and in light of how strongly the team has embraced Orton, I wonder if the team figures Grossman's already halfway out the door--and good riddance. I hope my suspicions are incorrect, or that they have no actual impact on the playing of the team, because we can't afford to have something like that trip up our season just at the crucial time that the playoff run begins.

Also, did you notice in Smith's press conference, he didn't seem to really be willing to commit to Grossman being the starter in Orton's abscence? It would be bizarre and stupid, I think, for them to throw Hanie in right now, and I can't imagine that's actually what's going to happen, but it just seemed odd to me how waffly Lovie seemed about Grossman being the starter for now...

All I want, regardless of anything else, all I want is for the team and the coaches to come together and pull out a victory against Tennessee next week. Either Green Bay or Minnesota is going to be 5-4 after next week, and I don't think we can afford to be tied with either of them at any point for the rest of the season.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

2008-11-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, there are a lot of reasons to feel not especially ecstatic about that game, but when you boil it down, if that's the type of thing you feel like doing, but we needed the offense to score two touchdowns in a half in order to pull into sole possession of first place in the NFC North, and the person who was responsible for both of those touchdowns was Rex Grossman. He looked about as completely thrilled/angry to be spiking the ball in the end zone, I'm sure the emotion behind that spike was directed more at the home crowd than anyone else. And, yeah, he earned the right to that spike. I hope Orton isn't hurt too badly, but I have to say at this point it seems pretty unlikely that we'll see him behind center again before the 2009 season. I think Rex Grossman is certainly a capable back up, who's probably got a few spectacular quarters left in him, but Kyle Orton's emergence was the best thing to happen to this team in the past two years, and if he's gone for the season it's hard to really see any reasons to put a lot of faith in this Bears team.

Which sucks, because I walked to the bar to watch the game this morning--all of five hours ago--fully ready to finally believe in this team. There's still reason for hope, but no reason for belief.

Speaking of Numbers

2008-11-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

Lots of Bears fans around the internets have been bemoaning the decline in production of Matt Forte, which seems pretty stupid to me. Over the past four games, the focus of the offense has definitely been the passsing game, and Forte's been the best receiving back in the league by a considerable margin. So even though his rushing production hasn't been as much as it was early in the season, it's not like he's been unproductive overall.

But even putting aside his tremendous value as a receiving back, he's still been doing a lot of important things on the ground. The major NFL statistics that everyone pays attention to are pretty much worthless, and this is one of those cases. Forte's running production has dropped mainly because the Bears offense has been using the run game tactically, for immediate advantages (like first downs), rather than to do much of the actual moving of the ball. I'd felt like Forte had continued to be incredibly productive in that respect, but I hadn't really bothered to look into whether or not my perception had any evidence for it. "He has picked up 37 first downs this season, tied for the fifth most in the NFL, and his 17 first downs on third down are tied for the most in the league," says the article on the Bears website today.

Not that it will shut up any of the whiners out there. But we've got a really solid back in Forte, who does far more important things for our offense than just racking up yards. I expect over the second half of the season, now that Orton is being discussed as an actual threat, we'll see less of teams stacking up against the run, and as a result Forte's yards-only production will probably go up, and everyone will be happy again.

KGB

2008-11-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Green Bay Packers released defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila , the franchise's all-time sacks leader on Saturday. KGB only has a handful of tackles and half a sack this year making him expendable in Green Bay. I'm not really a big fan of picking up divisional castoffs, given that I think the Bears are better than the rest of the division at every position, but in this case I think it would be a good idea for Chicago to take a look. KGB haunts many of my pre-Lovie Bears memories and he has a sweet moniker. Mark Anderson has three tackles and no sacks this year. He's just not getting the job done, and with Williams healthy it makes sense to release Fred Miller and bring in KGB to compete with Anderson. Metcalf is off for a couple more weeks so the Bears are going to have to dump him, or more likely, Miller at that point anyway. Why not use the suspension to try and improve the team instead of just waiting for it to end?

The douche returns in DH

2008-10-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I took the time to point out how truly worthless DH is as a Bears writer, but the first answer in today's column cannot go uncriticized. I don't play football but I know enough to know that this is a fucking stupid idea. It's hard to get two good corners in the NFL, its harder to keep them both healthy for a season. The Bears are in a privileged situation to be able to try and use Graham or Vasher at nickel, I remember Lovie saying Vasher was ideally suited to nickel during his rookie season. It makes sense to get them all on the field since they're all good against the run but taking any depth away from the corner position would be a huge mistake. Let corners play corner and stop trying to think of ways to fuck up a good thing.

With Corey Graham emerging and Charles Tillman and Nathan Vasher expected to return from injuries this week, the Bears have three cornerbacks they trust. Any chance of moving one to free safety now or in the future?

It's a good big-picture question. Teams never can have enough good cornerbacks, but Graham's quick development provides them a luxury. He has played well enough at least to split snaps with Vasher at right cornerback. Moving forward, it might make more sense to consider moving Graham instead of Tillman to free safety. They have similar size but Tillman's a proven, Pro Bowl-caliber cornerback and those are hard to find. Graham has shown the smarts and savvy to make such a switch to free safety worth examining either next off-season or even in the second half if Mike Brown doesn't come out of his mini-slump. On the other hand, if Tillman shows any sign of decline after his sixth season then he always could extend his career by changing positions.

what do the numbers say?

2008-10-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

When it comes to sports stats I don't think there's anything more important than points. This is an area that other sports seem to understand better than football. There are indicators as to how a team is scoring but the important point is the points. Footballoutsiders in particular undervalue points in their analysis. There is just no credible way to rank the 4-3 Eagles as the top team in the league. But thats an aside.
When looking at the numbers the Bears are well on top of the division and there's no real reason to think that will change. Chicago ranks second in the NFL scoring 28 points a game. I knew they were good this year but that is still surprising. Green Bay isn't far behind at fourth with 27.7 a game. But the maligned defense offers another surprise. Chicago is 13 not great but not at all bad giving up 21.4 a game. Green Bay again isn't too far behind at 22.7, but Chicago's 6.6 scoring advantage versus GB's 5 is I think significant at this point. Minnesota by the way is at -1.9, they're not going to the playoffs.
Moving beyond points there are three important indicators that the Bears are on a better path than the packers. Chicago has created 16 turnovers, two more than GB's 14; the Bears also have two more sacks than the pack. As well Chicago is only relinquishing 86 yards a game on the ground. Green Bay on the other hand is giving up 141 yards rushing a game. That doesn't bode well for a cold weather team entering November. The Bears are a more dangerous defense for opponents who won't be able to rely on keeping the ball on the ground and shortening the game in cold weather when mistakes become more common.
Ultimately these are very close teams but I agree with Lovie, in November you start to see true separation in the NFL and the Bears look a lot better going into the second half than Green Bay does.

Bring Back Bullet Bob!

2008-10-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Bears entered the bye week with one pressing question, "How do we play defense if our front-four aren't creating pressure?"
The run defense has been fine with the exception of the 54-yard TD by Peterson, but he's the best in the league so that can be allowed for. The problem is that virtually every time the bears play a cover-2 zone they give up a big completion. I hope Harris is healthy following what I believe to be a more significant knee injury than the team has let on. If 91 is back, they don't even have to answer this question. But if he can't be as dominant as in the past what is the adjustment?
The Bears started the season basically playing 10 on the line, covering every gap and jamming every receiver and leaving Mike Brown as the true safety. They've gotten away from that and it has cost them. Even with injuries and inexperienced players, this defense is too good to play a shell. Briggs and co. are attackers and ball hawks and it just doesn't suit them to lay in wait. This is an easy formation to blitz out of, and the secondary should have enough experience at this point of the season to be able to play the system with any of their personnel. On this point, I think the signing of Terrence Holt could prove to be an inspired move. He provides true cover for Brown and fills the absence left by McGowan. Without Manning, Graham or Vasher available for the nickel spot, Babich seemed to think that he didn't have the physical presence and athleticism required to play the system. Thus he reverted to the soft-2. Holt provides that option and Steltz is far enough along that he should be ready to provide further options.
I don't know if it was just Samurai Mike's press conference Sunday, but I want the Burnt and Blue to come on the field and "hit people in the mouth, No. 1." I trust the Lovie 2 once they've already destroyed the other team, but until that point of complete demoralization the Bears need to be attackers.
The other fun point the bye week gave me a chance to ponder is that there is an actual chance, not a great one but certainly not beyond the realm of hope, that the Bears could clinch the division with their 8th win on Nov. 30. It requires that the Packers lose to the Vikings and that both teams lose all their difficult games in the next 5 weeks. But given the current situation, especially if the Williamses get suspended together after the GB game, it is a realistic enough possibility that I'm willing to hold onto hope.

Awwwwwww....

2008-10-26T19:45:00.000-07:00

Kevin and Pat Williams, colloquially known as "the Williams brothers," are so cute! They even get suspended together! Too bad they couldn't "rope" fellow lineman Jared Allen into taking a banned substance with them...

I hate bye week.

2008-10-23T22:21:00.000-07:00

So if you go to the Bears website right now you'll see a featured article with the headline, "Bye week comes at ideal time for Bears." Really? Nice reporting.... Seriously, is there ever a time when a bye week happens, and the team is like, "this is a terrible time to be having our bye week. this sucks..." I doubt it.

But, whatever. It's not coming at an ideal time for me. Wtf am I supposed to do?! There's no Bears game this weekend! And this year, since the NFL in its infinite wisdom decided to make it the bye week for the whole NFC North that matters, there's not even a Vikings game for me to watch and cheer on the Vikings opponent. Same for the Packers. Triple fucking lame.

Which is why I have to send a serious "thank you" out to whoever it is that owns the 49ers for firing Mike Nolan. I mean, I kinda liked the guy and all, but since he's fired it means that this week is the first head-coaching game for Mike Singletary! I may not be able to maintain this level of enthusiasm beyond this week.... I dunno... but for now, there's actually a reason for me to watch non-NFC North football, the one time in my whole life that there's not an NFC North game going on. Go Mike Singletary! You (or at least Tecmo you) were my hero for some very important formative years! I'm glad you ate Mike Nolan and took his job! 'Bout time! Go 49ers!

Squib is a Four-letter word.

2008-10-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

It seems I just can't shut about yesterday's game... There's lots of talk out there about how stupid it was for the Bears to squib at the end of the game, therefore, the argument goes, Lovie Smith is a terrible coach and should be fired. Then there's defenders of the decision, a defense most articulately described in Rahula Strohl's thing today. I think both sides are wrong.

King Kaufman's little ditty about the squib kick being a horrible decision comes closest to being right, I think, although he still comes to the conclusion that Lovie Smith is an idiot. What I think is right about Kaufman's article is that a lot of it is an argument about how stupid squib kicks are in general. That, I think, is the crux of the thing. I honestly cannot think of a time a squib kick makes sense. I just don't understand what is supposed to be gained by squibbing the thing. Usually teams to it do prevent a big return, but (I don't have stats here or anything, so I don't know for sure) it seems like more squib kicks end up with the other team taking over somewhere around the thirty-five or so than traditional kicks do. The squib is just one of those things that for some reason is a given in the basic coaching handbook. If you are trying to prevent a big return: squib it. And it just seems completely wrong to me. And dumb. It's not Lovie Smith himself who's extremely dumb for making the decistion. It's a decision most coaches would have made in that situation. It's just a stupid thing to do in general. It's a general stupidity that Lovie Smith was only symptomatic of yesterday. That's what I think.

The only case I can think of where squibbing it marginally makes any kind of sense is when people squib to avoid Devin Hester, but that's because (at least until this year) by squibbing to the Bears, you were just basically calculating that giving up field position was better than the (likely) possibility of Hester burning you for six. I don't think any returner aside from Hester (and I'd even be willing to entertain arguments there) has ever been so dangerous that the squib is strategically better. (Or tactically better? I can't remember the difference between tactics and strategy right now... sad...)

It wasn't that the squib didn't work or that it was a bad decision in that specific case. Squibs are always a bad decision. I hope the Bears never do it again.

Why me? What now?

2008-10-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's loss is the type that leads me to all kinds of useless soul-searching. Especially useless because by soul I mean "the Chicago Bears," and I'm not even on the fricking team or in any way capable of effecting them at all. I can only imagine what it might be to be like on the team. (Actually, I can't... I'm not really sure how professional football players think about being on teams... for one thing, I think they just don't or rarely ever do love their teams the way fans do. Part of maturing as a football player seems to be coming to the realization that it's just a job... which is, like, so completely different from being a fan... anyway...)

Of course, everyone is calling for Lovie Smith's head, because that's what Chicago fans do any time the team loses. Thing is: we're very much still in control of our chances to make the playoffs. All we have to do is win more games than Minnesota or Green Bay, and I think that seems way more likely than the opposite happening in either case. Minnesota is pretty much disintegrating. Their offense is horrible. Against a Detroit Lions team that made Kyle Orton look all-world, they only managed to win because of a really questionable pass-interference penalty on the Lions. And that was even with the Lions spotting them two points when Dan Orlovsky forgot where he was and wandered out of the back of the end zone (quoth Orlovsky, "You're an idiot.") The Vikings are 3-3 but two of their wins were more the result of the other team sucking than their own goodness. Meanwhile, the Bears are 3-3, and all three of their losses involve bizarre fourth quarter collapses that are very much out of character. It seems unlikely they will continue to be in character for the whole season.

Meanwhile, Green Bay is basically using a pre-season lineup on defense. They'll probably stick with us longer than Minnesota just because of Aaron Rodgers being pretty legit, but they ain't gonna win more games than us.

That said, we do need to make some basic strategic changes, and here's what I think they are:

-Attack with the offense! Attack with the mid-range passing game, right out of the gate. That's the part of the offense that has been most consistently successful over the past several games, and it's becoming more obvious that the offense works best when it's put in the hands of Kyle Orton. Matt Forte is a really good running back, and it's not that he couldn't handle the load--it's just that the offense works better when it's going through Orton. Wait until we're up by two scores to start eating up the clock. And attacking works: every game we've started out by attacking on offense, (see especially the Philly game, the Detroit game) we've been in control of the game. Then we went out against Atlanta yesterday and just kind of hoped they'd make a few mistakes or something. We didn't really attack on offense until some time midway through the third quarter. The receivers are starting to run routes well and Orton is really starting to click, and the offense is capable of so much more, right now, than just being the side of the ball that tries not to lose. I have to admit, I do like the general trend toward attacking that the offense has taken, but so far it's seemed to be limited to aspects of the game plan against certain teams. Like, we'll attack, but then we get back to our base offense. We need to change what our base offense is.

-On defense? Jeez, I dunno, actually... it's hard to tell what's going on with the defense. It seems like the main problem is that they only play well when they're completely jazzed out of their minds. When they just sit back, like yesterday, letting the offense come to them, it just keeps coming. We need to switch to the always high-risk/high-reward defense of 2006 and (especially) early 2007. Whenever we lay back in a "safe" defense, we get destroyed. It has not worked, ever. Not once. So, Babich, Lovie, whoever it is that needs to be getting this done: get the defense angry before games. And set them loose. There is so much talent pretty much everywhere on this defense, but that doesn't mean that they're good enough to beat teams without trying, which is what seems to be the thinking.

So, I guess, basically that's the theme. When this team goes out clearly on a mission to take the game from the other team, it wins. When it goes out figuring it's just going to win and waits for it to happen, it loses.

Now I feel a little better. And we're going to beat the Vikings this weekend. I have no doubt.

Orton is good.

2008-10-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

Okay, so lots of that game sucked--mainly the defense. Obviously the defensive game plan was to stop the running game and then sit back and wait for Matt Ryan to make some rookie mistakes. That never happened, but the Bears didn't adjust their game plan accordingly. And we got burned for it, culminating in probably the stupidest collapse I've seen since the Vikings gave up two touchdowns in thirty seconds to the Arizona Cardinals to miss the playoffs, way back when... Jeez, I remember watching that at mom's house in Aberdeen. Like five years ago? That was Jauron's last year... Anyway, apparently, that's sort of like what our defense is this year.

But, there's room for optimism:

Orton is good. He's showed that the more you lean on him, the better he plays. There's not going to be some carpet getting pulled out revealing him as a bad QB, like happened with Grossman. He's good. He's solid. He's really smart and knows how to run the offense. The Bears have not had something like that going for them in a really long time.

So what's up with the defense? It sucks right now, but there's time to turn it around. If they can even regain some of their intensity and form, by the end of the season we're going to be a really good team. I mean, we've never had an offense waiting for a defense to catch up. Ultimately, I think that bodes well. This is a defense with a ton of guys who are capable of playing better, and have shown in the past that they can play significantly better. So, likely, they will.

But they need to start working on it right quick here.

Nor rhetorical.

2008-10-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

From our favorite whipping boy, David Haugh:

2. I know Tommie Harris opened himself up to criticism by injecting God into his explanation for why he was suspended and hasn't played well this season. It risked making spirituality sound like a trait necessary for all good defensive linemen, like a quick burst and low center of gravity.

But it would reek of insincerity only if this were the first time he had talked openly about Christianity. It wasn't. The guy known to wear Psalm 91 on headgear and bandages has referred to the role God plays in his life since the day he was drafted in 2004.

If fans or media members weren't mocking Harris when he proselytized all those times he commanded a platform for playing well, why now when his play has changed but the tone of his rhetoric really hasn't? As much as Harris shared, more revealing was the reaction to what he said.

What exactly is he talking about? Did I miss all the mockery the Chicago media was spitting out? Not that I suspect the Chicago media of being in any way noble, but I just didn't notice any making fun of Tommie Harris for his talk of his faith, either in the traditional media or in any of the too-many blogs I read... So, wtf is Haugh on about here? Did he just make up this idea just so he could disagree with it and seem extra noble? Or is he talking about some behind-the-scenes snickering that didn't actually make it into print, but he didn't realize it? Is this something that all those yelling-guys shows on ESPN picked up on and mocked (I don't watch them so I wouldn't know)? Or did he just assume that all this stuff was going on and decided to come out against it so he would have a full ten things to say he thought about?

Oh Tommie Harris we love you get up!

2008-10-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

Harris apologized to teammates and asked fans to forgive him for bringing negative attention to himself.

As a person, Tommie, sure, I forgive you. Done. As a Bears fan, tho... For the first time in two weeks I'm going to wear my Tommie Harris jersey to watch the game. Give me a reason to be proud to wear it. Be the Tommie that was so good you made Arizona forget to block Brian Urlacher because they couldn't figure out how to deal with you both. Be the Tommie Harris that beat the snap to Philip Rivers on the goal line in San Diego last year. Be the Tommie Harris that made me decide I had to make yours my first Bears jersey. Seriously, I'm nuts about you. But I feel like you've been gone for a long time... Be the man I know you are, Tommie. It's as easy as that. You won't even need to be forgiven.

A few roster notes on the first post from my room!

2008-10-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Id first like to say, Welcome back Hass! Though I've never seen him play a minute of meaningful football I like Mike Hass and I'm glad he's in Chicago but sadly I can't really cheer for him to take any roster spots because I like all of the Bears receivers this year.
The other recent addition Marcus Hamilton is, I believe, a good signing for this defense. It allows for more safety flexibility and he proved that he's good enough to step in if the Bears reach that point.
The most interesting note of the week though is that Nick Roach is good enough to challenge Hunter Hillenmeyer and Jamar Williams for playing time. When the hell did this happen? It's great that another player is doing well enough to ask the question, and Hillenmeyer responded with a great game against Philly, but I'm annoyed that as an avid fan and roster junky things like this consistently happen and I'm sprung for a loop. I wish that the Chicago media was more consistent in relating this information or that the Bears coaches were less finicky in their player dealings. I get annoyed watching it so I bet it sucks for the players.

One of Chicago's finest

2008-09-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

I bet the first people to read Haugh's article today were members of the Chicago Bears. Obviously they would look to the press to get their coaches' thoughts to them because they don't work with them. That's right, D-bag actually believes that the key to the Cubs and White Sox seasons so far is that their managers called the players out in the press. And since we know Lovie doesn't blast his players through the tribune we can pretty much assume that none of them know they fucked up on Sunday.
I really don't know if Haugh has ever played a sport, I assume he has, but from my experience players tend to have a lot of respect for a coach who led them to a title game. And I'm sure Peanut feels worse than any of us about the play because he let his teammates and coaches down. Players play for their team and since they see them everyday I doubt they rely on the media to get them inside information.
Also Haugh notes that Daniel Manning caught like 12 passes in college and maybe the Bears should turn to him at wide receiver, because thats what an innovative coach who actually cared would do.

Screw you, Panthers.

2008-09-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

I seriously hate the Panthers. No single team has caused me more grief as a Bears fan over the past few years than the Carolina Panthers. I just never want to admit that they're any good... but then they keep beating my team!

Our offense needs to be better. There were a number of breaks that went the other way in the second half, and some of those holding calls were absolute bullshit, but our offense can't stall that many times with the game on the line. I think it can get there, but we can't afford for it not to.

And now, an attempt at optimism: We've played four halves of football so far this year against two very good teams. Of those four, we've completely dominated three, and got whooped in one. Overall, I'd say that bodes pretty well for the rest of the season. We're going to be better than 8-8.

A few Sunday morning predictions

2008-09-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just cuz I'm in this kind of a mood:

-Either the Vikings or the Colts are going to be 0-2 in about four or five hours. It's not going to be the Colts.

-The Bears are going to have an easier time rushing than everyone expects. The word around the league has been that Carolina "stopped" LT2 in San Diego last week. They didn't, really. They played well, but San Diego's offense only stumbled when they went to the pass, and they pretty much stopped running in the second half. Which isn't to say that Carolina completely stopped SD's passing game either: just that they never actually had to stop LT2 because SD didn't rely on him. The Bears would do well to try to rush to the outside more against Carolina than they did against Indy, because Carolina looks like it has a slower defense, but the Bears will have some success running wherever they do if they're rushing offense last week was any indication.

-There will be some interceptions in this game. Carolina's CB's are always looking to intercept first, and it's likely that they'll get one off of Orton. Meanwhile, Delhomme, the offensive spark that he is, was wildly off target fairly often against San Diego last week, and likely that'll happen a few times today, and the Bears' opportunistic defense has the speed to take advantage of mistakes like that. I expect the Bears to have the lead in this category, but I'll be really impressed if Orton manages yet another game without an INT.

-I expect this game to be closer than last week's. I'd be surprised--although totally impressed and excited--if the Bears' coaching staff came up with a game plan as effective as the one they had last week against the Colts. They'd been preparing that game plan for months--possibly even as long as since their Super Bowl. So here's hopin'! But I expect Carolina to get a few things across.

Whatever I don't care whatever

2008-09-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Wow. This is quite possibly the most unintentionally hilarious column I've read coming out of the vaunted Chicago sports press. Rick Morrissey defends his dismissal of the Bears by admitting that he doesn't put a whole lot of thought into his columns. What a colossal douche bag. "I just get paid a whole lot of money to write columns about these teams. Why would I actually try to pay attention to what's going on with them and figure out whether they'll be good or not? That would be so stupid! I can just look at what all the other writers at ESPN and stuff are saying!" Seriously, only as a member of the Chicago sports media can you not only admit that you just spout negativity unthinkingly, but you can actually use it as a defense when you're wrong. What a great job!

Is it a QB? Is it wearing a Bears Jersey? Then it's worse than it's performance!

2008-09-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a quotation from today's Every Play Counts over at ESPN (from the FO guys):

The dominant defensive performance allowed the Bears' offense to play conservatively. The Bears' struggles last season were largely due to the revolving door of mediocre quarterbacks. Kyle Orton played adequately Sunday, but the key was he was never forced to make plays outside his comfort zone.

Forte's big 50-yard touchdown gave the Bears an early lead, and from that point, Orton took very few chances. He worked on underneath throws and completed two big passes to his tight end, providing enough offense to let the Bears coast home with a victory.

It's funny, because there's nothing actually bad about a QB taking very few chances when his team has the lead for basically an entire game. However, when writing this about Orton, it is somehow still a criticism. "The key," dude writes, "was he was never forced to make plays outside his comfort zone." Subtext: Kyle Orton is terrible and if he would have had to actually throw any passes the Bears would've lost by a hundred points. And check out the pointless shot the FO guys take at Orton over in their Quick Reads article, "The next time you hear the words "Kyle Orton" and "game manager" in the same sentence, ask that person how Orton conjured up nine defensive points and a fourth-and-1 stop." That's right, Kyle Orton is not even worthy of the most back-handed compliment you can give a QB. Seriously, the Bears can't even look like one of the best teams in the league on opening day, playing a nearly perfect game, without still being criticized.

I mostly just think it's funny. I fully expect that Orton is going to have a solid season. But he's probably not going to be spectacular, and being spectacular is the only way he's going to escape being considered the default worst QB in the league.

Meanwhile, quoth Ron Jaworski at the beginning of last night's Monday Night Football game between the Vikings and the Packers w/r/t Tarvaris Jackson (paraphrased),

You know the only number that matters with this guy? 8-4: his record as a starter last season.

Tarvaris Jackson should thank his lucky stars that he doesn't take the field every week wearing the Bears' navy blue. (Kyle Orton's current overall record as a starter: 13-6).

DH recognizes his present mistake, but still can't help but feel that his past self was totally on

2008-09-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

First, I totally echo your point about a good football day not felt for a really long time. The last time I remember feeling like this was the play before Mike Brown broke his knee while being illegally held on a touchdown. The Bears domination died that play last year and they never looked like a playoff team after that week performance.

This year they do look like a playoff team. The defence is back though I still don't totally trust the safties other than Mike Brown. And Kyle Orton is the kind of QB that this team has been looking for. He's smart and accurate and has a sweet neckbeard. Also, the importance of Matt Forte and Kevin Smith cannot be understated. But, obviously no one could have possibly seen this coming, "To predict anything but a struggling season based on what the Bears showed in August would have been like a doctor looking at an X-ray of a broken bone and telling the patient not to expect pain." But I'll give Haugh credit "The beauty of the NFL is that nights like Sunday happen."

Wait, actually anyone who knows football and put more than an ounce of thought into the Bears shouldn't be too surprised. Peyton and Dungy recognized it. The Bears have moved all the way up to 15 in ESPN's power rankings after dominating what's probably the best team in football. This is why the BCS doesn't work, you can't have a bunch of idiots ranking things and then expect a fair result. The Vikings by the way, have dropped from superbowl contenders to 16 based largely on performing exactly as they could have been expected to.

[Ululating]!

2008-09-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

Not much important to say, but that was a good team we played tonight, and we didn't just steal a win that we need to hurry up and get out of town with; we completely dominated the Colts for basically the entire game. Even when the Colts were up 3-0 it felt to me like we were winning.

Everyone's going to be talking about how surprising it was, but I honestly don't understand how people who were really paying attention to the Bears could be surprised to see them coming out and looking like a very solid team. Not like a Bears victory should've been assured by any means, because that was a very good team out there we were playing against, but we had a defense coming out on the field complete and healthy for the first time since mid-2006, so what reason was there to think they weren't likely to be very good? I didn't expect the offense to really control the game like that. That's about the only real "surprise" that I can see--though even that shouldn't be as surprising as everyone's going to act like it was.

But, whatever. I cannot wait until next week already. Seriously, the Panthers? Without Steve Smith? My only worry is that there could be a bit of a letdown coming off of this huge week when everyone was picking against them, but then again, the defense will be playing against Moose, who apparently built up a certain amount of bad blood against these guys. That may have been a mistake on his part.

For now, I just feel so good. I feel like making exaggeratedly masculine noises at everything in sight. This was a wonderful, wonderful football day. I haven't had one of them in what feels like a really long time.

Grossness

2008-09-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

Football doesn't actually start tonight. I don't care that the Giants and Washington are actually playing the first meaningful game of the season--it's not really the start of football. Football doesn't start until Sunday. I might watch some of the game tonight, or I might not... It is seriously difficult for me to stomach East division games (in either conference) because of the exaggerated importance these teams take on in the (mostly East-coast, natch) press. Washington is one of the most boring teams in the league, who've been consistently mediocre since the early nineties. Also their team name is unforgivably racist. Fuck them.

Also, just because I have to complain about this, DH's new Trib article is probably the grossest column written by someone not named Mariotti in Chicago that I can remember. It literally uses the fact that the Colts said nice things about the Bears to both call the Colts either liars or idiots and then to reiterate his tired thing about how the Bears are actually one of the worst teams in the league, full of overpaid stars who can't play anymore. What the shit is wrong with the Chicago sports press? Seriously, the 49ers have been one of the worst teams in the league for long enough now that you could reasonably call it recent memory, but the sports press in this city, while certainly not ignoring that fact, also doesn't go out of its way to crucify the team or the management or the players. Same for the atrocious Giants. Meanwhile, unless the Bears have the best record in the league, ESPN and other parts of the national sports media either ignores them or uses them as a punch line--deserved or (mostly) not--and the Chicago media itself seems to feel like it has to one-up everybody in pointless negativity and grousing. The Bears are one of the most popular teams in the league. Their games consistently sell out in minutes. Why the hell is it so hard to find decent coverage of them?

But, whatever. Three more days until the first game! I'm consistently slipping off into daydreams about that game... I might just decide to go to sleep until Sunday evening...

We Suck!

2008-08-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

After reading the Bears' analysis of their defensive performance last night, I'm excited that their 'we suck' moment came in the pre-season this year and not in Week 3. The defense is going to be good, they have to be. And now I think more than ever they've finally forgotten about '06 and realize that they have to earn all the respect they will get starting in Week 1 '08. These players don't want to be good, they want to dominate and run the table as the top ranked defense through the entire season. Anything less will feel like a failure to this group, and these players just do not fail.

Cure for the (orange and) blues.

2008-08-20T14:00:00.001-07:00

G-ddamn it is depressing reading the coverage about my team this year. All of the coverage focuses on the offense and how it looks like it won't be very good this year. The thing is, I don't remember a time when the Bears offense was any good, and I still managed to be excited about the team before. And I'm pretty sure I remember lead-ups to seasons that weren't as insanely pessimistic as this year. But, ask anyone, the Bears have the worst quarterbacks in the league, the worst offensive line ever, and they'll be lucky to win a single game this season. Well, fuck that...

Here's how you get excited about the Bears this year. Yesterday, while I was floating around in a Dramamine haze somewhere above Utah I began to wonder how good the defense can be this year. Ever since Lovie took over the team, with the exception of the first half of last season when most of our defensive starters were injured, the defense and special teams have been the reason to watch the Bears. Even during Smith's first season as coach, with Terry Shea setting the all-time low for offensive ineptitude (and how could anyone even think that this year's offense could approach that year's... Shea didn't even know what players he had out on the field half the time!) the defense was pretty special. It was even better three years ago, and when combined with the explosion of Devin Hester onto the special teams scene, we made it to the Super Bowl. Sure, during the Super Bowl run the offense came up big a few times, but that offense wasn't going to take any other team even into the playoffs. The defense and special teams were so good at times that it almost seemed like a mistake for the other team to even try to run an offense...

Which gets me to this year. I think there's a great chance the defensive and special teams units will be even better this year than they were in '06. Hester is now a special teams veteran who's been in the system for two full years already, and teams are even more afraid of him than they were in '06. On top of that, it appears that we're going to have the healthiest defense going into the beginning of the season that I remember us ever having, and our defensive line is likely to be significantly deeper and stronger than the '06 version. Add Dvoracek, Anthony Adams, Marcus Harrison and Israel Idonije to the four freaks from that year (Ogunleye, Harris, Brown, Anderson) and we've got a potentially terrifying d-line rotation. Add a healthy Mike Brown to that mix and... well, I started thinking: Is it possible for a defense and special teams combo to be so good that opposing teams actually decrease their chances of winning a game the more times they touch the ball? And how would that register, statswise? If a team plays against us this year and goes three-and-out more often than not, and then if it has to deal with trying to punt to our special teams unit, the offense won't even have to move the ball forward before they eventually start out in field goal range. And if you add to that the possibility of touchdowns on punt returns and touchdowns on interception runbacks, well, there could conceivably be stretches of games where the other team would've been better off actually allowing our offense to hold onto the ball by giving up a few first downs now and then and hoping for their own defensive break...

Okay, yeah, that's maybe stretching it, but that's what I'm hoping for this season: more than one game where our opponents actually find themselves lowering their chances of winning the game by trying to run their offense, to the point that they're chances of winning actually decrease the more touches their offense gets. If the Bears can pull that off, I think I'd be even more excited about it than making the playoffs. And I think this is the year we can do it!

Hooray!

2008-08-18T15:40:00.001-07:00

I'm not gonna lie: I frickin' love beards.

And now we got one running our team!

Never mind that the Bears are not going to win a single game this season (in spite of a defense and a special teams unit that will both be significantly better than those fielded by the team in '05, when a significantly worse Orton managed to win ten of fifteen) these Bears are going to please me in a different but nearly as satisfying way: aesthetically. In fact, with Grossman riding the bench, I can't think of a single starting member of the Bears whose appearance doesn't please me. But none so much as Captain Neckbeard.

Dripping Sarcasm

2008-08-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's not even the third week of the preseason yet, and I already know the season is over. We are going to be absolutely awful this year. We will probably lose every game. Lovie Smith obviously has no idea how to coach a professional football team. He took over four years ago spouting all this optimistic stuff about beating Green Bay, winning the division, and making it to the Super Bowl, but all he's done since taking over a team with a 76-102 record over the previous eleven years is compile a 38-30 record. The dummie's only one the division twice, and he only went to the Super Bowl once. Nice try. Go play tennis or something, where it actually matters if you win more games than you lose. Obviously, the Bears are not going to be a good team until they get a new head coach.

But first things first: the Bears are going to be awful this year because their starting quarterback is either going to be Grossman or Orton. It doesn't matter how good you make the rest of your team: history has proven that it's just impossible to win games with these guys leading your offense. The team is a rather dishearting 12-6 in games that Orton has started, and an even scarier 19-11 with Grossman starting at QB. And they didn't even win the only Super Bowl game they got to play in after letting him fuck everything up for them for a whole season. This whole quarterback thing is extra frustrating, too, because there are all these great QBs sitting around not playing for anybody. Like... um... Daunte Culpepper, and... just tons of guys. It just sucks. There is no way the Bears even stand a chance of winning a game as long as they have Kyle Orton or Rex Grossman starting for them at quarterback, and as long as Lovie Smith is staring calmly at the field from the sidelines, "coaching".

Now.

2008-08-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

For once, I totally agree with David Haugh. The only thing that's been proved up to this point in the preseason is that Grossman isn't going to win the starting QB spot. The offense needs to come together and start really getting ready for the regular season, and they can't do it while waiting for Grossman to finally figure out how to bring his game every time he's out on the field. The decision needs to be made. There's really no point in delaying it.

Oh, and, if anyone needs a reminder of how meaningful pre-season is: right now, as I'm typing this, New England's getting blown out by Tampa Bay, like 27-3 or some shit.

I have seen the future, and it is LOUD!

2008-08-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

So now that training camp is officially over, Grossman and Orton have officially used up all of the practice time they get to show why either is better than the other. The verdict? Maybe Ron Turner has an clue?

'I really don't,'' offensive coordinator Ron Turner said when asked if he has a sense of who's ahead.

This isn't Turner being his typical clueless self, either, I don't think. All reports out of training camp have been that neither QB has really pulled himself ahead of the other, and based on all I've seen, which is just the Kansas City game, there's not really a whole lot, at least from a pure performance perspective, to base the decision on. Reports from camp have fluctuated between both QBs looking extremely sharp and both QBs looking equally sloppy. In the KC game, they veered a little bit toward the sloppy side of the spectrum, but neither looked as bad as they've looked at various times in the past, which is to say they looked good enough to run a game-winning offense with the special teams and defense the Bears have on the field the rest of the game.

So, obviously, the decision of whom to choose as QB is weighing heavily on my mind. There's a chance that the decision could become obvious in the Seattle game. Orton could come out looking crisp and efficient while Grossman bumbles, turning the ball over in several of the many ways he knows how. Or Grossman could come out bombing like the early 2006 Grossman did, while Orton treats us to a series of two-yard passes and bombs to the out-of-bounds. If either of those things happen, though, it likely won't mean much more about each QBs overall abilities. We know the downsides of both QBs, and even though we don't have as clear a picture of Orton's upside, we do know it's nowhere close to Grossman's.

All of which is why I think we have to go with Orton. The thing is, Grossman should have won this competition. He has tools Orton simply doesn't have, and if he was ready to make full use of them and become the big-time NFL starter he looks like he's got buried deep in him somewhere, he would've pulled way ahead of Orton a while ago. But he hasn't. He hasn't shown he knows how to bring his whole game whenever he wants to, and he hasn't yet shown he knows how to leave what we once lovingly called "Bad Rex" behind. Meanwhile, Orton has left his rookie season back in 2005. He's solid. He's not great. It may even be stretching it at this point to call him "good," although he could probably develop into that over the course of a full season as a starter. But he's solid. Give him a decent running game, a powerful defense, and consistently great starting field position, and he'll make enough plays to win games, and he'll limit game-killing mistakes.

So there it is, that's my pitch for Orton, although I'm not convinced that's why he's going to be our starter. He's going to be our starter because of that weird groupthink phenomena out there that has convinced everyone Grossman is the worst QB who has ever played football. What Grossman needed to show this preseason is that he's finally learned how to not fail. If the coaches decide to go with, and if he then fails, they are going to look to the common thought of football followers like they are unconscionably stupid. They will lose their jobs. If they choose Orton and things don't quite work out, they'll look like they just weren't given enough options. I'd think that was a truly cynical set of steps to a decision if it weren't for the fact that I think Orton makes more sense anyway. But you can't discount the effect of the rabid booing of Bears fans in the decision.

And, ultimately, I'm not sure it really will matter all that much. Ron Turner's offense needs a good running game. In 2006 we had that, and even with Grossman going through some of his pants-shitter games we made it to the Super Bowl. And the big offensive story of this preseason should be our running game. Matt Forte looks like a better version of what we lost when Thomas Jones went to the Jets. And behind him we've got Kevin Jones, who, if Forte didn't look so good already, I'd say has a chance to challenge for the starting job. And he still might anyway. And to top it all off, we've got a bit of a wild-card in Wolfe, who looks like he's figured out how to be something kind of special in the league. Look for the Bears running game, led by Matt Forte, to be the best it's been in a long time. And because of that, frankly, regardless of the whole confusing situation at QB and receiver, I'm not even worried about our offense. It's going to work this year.

I just threw up a little in my mouth.

2008-08-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

I honestly didn't think it'd be possible for me to hate the Vikings and the Packers even more than I did, but.... Well, I was wrong.

The latest reports (and this could change by the time I'm done typing this) are that the Packers called the Vikings on Friday to let them know that Favre will be available for a trade. If that ends up happening, current Packers management have no reason to expect they should be able to keep their jobs. This whole stand-off has been stupid from the beginning. Brett Favre, despite being probably the most over-rated QB ever, is still pretty good, and he had one of his best seasons in years last year. Yes, Favre has acted like a petulant solipsistic flip-flopper and pretty much dominated the entire off-season attention of the team for going on like five years now, but that doesn't matter. I know, if you're Ted Thompson, you think it's your job to be, y'know, building a team and working out trades and developing draft picks and all that nice stuff. And, yeah, it is your job. Except that your real job is just making your team as good as it can be, and all of that stuff just represents the tools you have available to do that. So I know Brett Favre has kept you from really exercising your GM muscles--but that just means you don't have to! No matter what Brett Favre said, it simply makes no sense for the Packers not to do whatever they need to do (which, really, is not much) to let him lead their team for another year. Instead, they've done everything in their power to keep him away from the team. It is just, plain, stupid. And I'm going to relish the two Chicago Bears victories that come this when we pound the Packers even more! Punish that stupidity!

Meanwhile, I never really could get myself to actually like Favre, but I did have a kind of begrudging liking for him. But he's apparently just clueless about the existence of other people and the rights of anyone except him to want anything. Frankly, on a personal level, no wonder the Packers organization wants him gone. Reading the transcript of the interview with that Fox News lady made me really happy about the obvious pain the Bears defense has inflicted upon the man for the past few years. Whether he goes to the Vikings or to the Packers this year, I seriously want to see that mofo on his back with Urlacher & Harris & Mike Brown (& Alex Brown & Mark Anderson & Ogunleye) letting him know that's where he belongs.

Also, and this is a bit of a non-sequitor but it just occurred to me and I'm blogging in real-time here: Brett Favre holds two (at least) major records right now. One of them for all-time touchdown passes, the other for all-time interceptions. By playing another year or two, all he's going to do is make it one more or possibly two more years longer for Peyton Manning to break his TD-pass record. Meanwhile, is INT record is going to become untouchable. Nobody's ever going to break that record, especially if he inflates it with more games. So, yeah, that's a bit of a comfort, that in several years, Brett Favre's most untouchable record will be the one everyone acts like he doesn't have.

Oh, and the Vikings are pure evil. I've always known that. But now there's even more evidence. Seriously, the image in my head when I think if the Vikings is of a glossy purple serpent, like the kind that talked Eve into eating the fruit. That's what the Vikings represent in my mind. I hope they all lose their teeth. And I cannot friggin' wait for the Bears to mash them into their astro-turf, with or without Favre.

Unbridled Optimism

2008-07-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

Today, the day before training camp officially begins, is the last day I can be sure of the possibility for unbridled optimism for the upcoming season. Starting tomorrow, people can start going down, and then there's no going back. Also, people can start failing to live up to expectations, or even just succumb to the mundane realities of not being as great as they might be now. So I'm going to take this moment to list off a few things that have me feeling really optimistic about this upcoming season.

1. Devin Hester. Duh. The man is great, and this season it sounds like he'll have even more of an opportunity to wreak some of his special brand of greatness on more than just special teams. But even if that weren't the case, even if all (all?) we had to look forward to was another season of Devin Hester returning kicks (or totally fucking with the psyches of opposing teams' special teams units), what's got me feeling especially upbeat about the whole thing is that there's even a lot of room for the guy to improve. He's got such an amazing amount of pure talent that it's easy to forget how often he screwed up last season, too. There were loads of times he missed punt catches and a few times he let those squib kicks kickers have taken to serving him roll right through his legs. He had obviously cut down on these mistakes last season compared to his rookie season, so he knows how to get better at that part of his game. It's crazy to think of him actually getting better at returning kicks, but if he manages to cut down on the amount of his talent that he has to waste making up for mental errors, that's all the more effort he can put toward making coverage units look silly. And he will. And it will be awesome. Plus, like I said, he's going to be more than just a gimmick at receiver this season. He won't be the leading receiver for the team, but I guarantee he'll have impact on the offensive side of the ball this season.

2. Mike Brown is due for a break some time. Seriously. Unless he was a child molester in a previous life or something, there is no way anyone deserves the amount of bad luck he's had in his career. He's missed shitloads of games in the past few seasons to freak injuries, but none of them have been repeats of previous injuries, and none of them are the types of injuries you expect to end someone's career. It's just that he's had three or four of them. Even typing this I feel a little bit skeptical, but now is not the time for skepticism. There is a God, and Mike Brown is going to play every single defensive snap for the Chicago Bears this season. That means that what was a weakness on the defense last season, the safety position (I'd feel a little sorry for Adam Archuleta if he didn't suck so much, but he was absolutely terrible), is now going to be a huge strength. If Brown makes it through the whole season, the Bears defense will be ridiculously dominant, and Brown will be a leading candidate for Defensive player of the year. And it will be good.

3. Tommie Harris played the whole season last year, and he pretty much always dominated the line of scrimmage. So he was a strength last year. But he was also hurt the whole year, playing with a bad knee and some kind of ligament in his leg being sore for most of the season as well. Before his injuries, Harris was making plays the likes of which I've never seen. Against the Chargers, he literally beat the snap to Philip Rivers, who was under center. He might have been offsides, but he wasn't blatantly so. He's just that fast. Incredible. Since he hardly missed any time last season, he never got a chance to get back to one-hundred percent. But now with a whole season of rest, and a brand new shiny contract behind him, and tons of people declaring him the new face of the franchise, he's going to be ready to do some proving. He's the best defensive lineman in the league, and by the end of the season, everyone who watches football is going to know it.

4. Speaking of Tommie Harris, I'm just feeling really good about the entire Bears defensive line. Like the Safety position, the whole line wasn't really itself last season. Tommie Harris was sore, Dvoracek went down during the preseason, Bazuin went down, Mark Anderson was suffering through a sophomore slump and wasn't up for the increased playing time, Darwin Walker turned out not to be worth anything near what the Bears paid him for, etc. This year, the line is going to destroy. With Tommie Harris at full strength, opposing teams are going to have to invest a lot of attention his way, so whoever lines up next to him is going to be having a field day out there. If it's Dvoracek, who looked really good before injury sidelined him for a second season, teams are really gonna have a tough time protecting the middle. On the outsides, Alex Brown'll be back to starting which will be good both because he's a really great outside defender, and because it'll give Mark Anderson the opportunity to come in and totally mess with the opposing teams' blockers the way he did during his rookie season--only he'll be better at it, it being now his third season. On the other end, Ogunleye finally looked like the guy the Bears traded Marty Booker to Miami for, and I think he's going to bring that improvement into this season. Basically, the Bears D-line is going to be scary.

5. Not to mention we'll have Vasher back completing the Bears CB tandem, with possibly Danieal Manning taking over for Ricky Manning Jr. at the nickel spot. Without injury, there just isn't a weakness in the Bears defense, and there are outstanding players at every level (Harris, Urlacher, Brown, Vasher&Tillman).

6. And did I mention Lance Briggs? He was angry about his contract last season, and while the rest of the Bears defense was falling apart during the first part of the season, Briggs was showing the Bears and the league that he deserved to be one of the highest paid players in the league. But then no one bit during the offseason, apparently because they're all stupid, and the Bears are so lucky to have him back. I mean, really, I feel bad for him because he deserves to be getting so much more recognition, but the reason for that lack of recognition is because of the big names and outstanding players around him, guys who make it so teams can't really focus on Briggs. Hopefully he'll stop being mad at the Bears this year and use this season to send up a big proud finger at all the other teams who were bashful about shelling out the cash for him. If you play against this defense as perfectly as possible, Lance Briggs is still going to destroy you.

7. The offense. It is going to be better this season. Remember I said I was being optimistic? Here we go: Check out Matt Forte's highlight reel on Youtube. Kevin Jones should not have fallen to the Bears, but he's really good and we won't even need to rely on him. Marty Booker equals a younger, faster, less petulant Muhsin Muhammad. Greg Olsen has a full season under his belt and won't have to sit out the first few games of the season. Devin Hester. Rashied Davis will have a more sure role, which will only benefit both the Bears and him. And somebody, either a finally injury-free Mark Bradley, or Earl Bennett, or Brandan Lloyd, one of those guys is going to emerge as the 2006 Bernard Berrian of this season. But the main reason to be optimistic about the Bears offense this year is their offensive line. They're not going to be great, but they're going to be solid, and that'll be enough. Grossman is capable of being a much better QB when he has time behind a solid line, although I'd actually be happier of Orton won the job. I have to admit, even during this session of unbridled optimism, there aren't a lot of really sure things about this offense, except for that it will be better than it was last season. It might even be better than it was in 2006.

8. I'm getting hungry, so that'll be it for now. But before I go I have to mention the Bears special teams, which is going to be amazing yet again, under the brilliant coaching of Dave Toub. They're always fun to watch, and if nothing else, I'm looking forward to yet another season of watching other teams' special teams units flail around trying to figure out what to do about Hester, and watching the Bears solid special teams unit take full advantage. It will be exciting.

A Moment to Gaze

2008-07-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Only five more days until training camp! But until then, all we have is anticipation and memories. So here's something to get you through the day. I just saw this picture posted over at ESPN's HashMarks blog.

Pretty much any picture of Devin Hester brings joy to my heart, but this one is especially great for containing the blurry Viking in the background, hands held out palms up in the universal expression of helplessness. The pure joy of Hester coupled with the schadenfreude of witnessing Viking ineptitude equals a perfect football moment.

My first Bears dream

2008-06-25T06:41:00.001-07:00

Every summer I start having Bears dreams. Just the other day, sparked by the signing of Tommie Harris, I started talking to my fiancee about what the Bears have done during the offseason, which conversation got my blood going about the football season for the first time in a while, and then I realized there's less than three months until the first regular season game! Ah!

So then that night I had my dream. This dream was about a preseason game, which I think is the first time I've ever dreamt preseason, and it centered on the quarterback position. Grossman started out in the shotgun, and as soon as the ball was hiked to him, a defensive lineman shot right through and he barely launched the ball before getting absolutely drilled; the ball sailed well short of the receiver and into the patiently waiting hands of the DB covering him. I was calling R to explain to her what happened, saying something along the lines of "picking up right where he left off," when I noticed Grossman getting up and rubbing his shoulder kind of gingerly. "Yes!" I thought, "He's hurt! Now they'll have to put Orton in!" On the next play, of course, Urlacher intercepted and ran back for a touchdown, although Urlacher was pixellated and looked kind of like generic white guy from Tecmo Bowl, with super exaggerated muscles and pink skin, and he was short like the dwarf from the Golden Axe. The next thing I saw on TV was a close up of the Bears QB under center, a chubby guy with baby cheeks, and it took me a second to realize that it was Orton--but without his neckbeard! I was horrified! I think the prospect of Orton playing without his beard qualifies this dream as a nightmare...

blogging Bears post-draft

2008-04-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

How great is Lovie!? He hates talking to the media plain and simple. He showed up in a striped polo raving about Williams and Forte but it took every fiber in his personality to say anything about the Bears situation. Williams is absolutely who they were after, no doubt. Forte is Benson in '08. The Bears were after a starter and Forte is a starter on their board. They could've looked at a speed back, but they don't trust Benson and Wolfe and Hester are on the roster. Forte is a character back and he is a power, three-down back and Benson will get a chance to earn a spot but this pick is a replacement, absolutely.
I love that the Bears were after intelligence no. 1 in this draft. After last year I felt that intelligence wasn't really a premium on the roster and now it's firmly in the mix. Also, I love that the Bears got who they targeted top three. Bennett is Booker as a rookie, great routes, great hands, smart and productive.
Greg Gabriel is a stud! Why have I never seen this guy before, Lovie should just give him notes and turn him loose every week. Awesome press conference, awesome!
Harrison is a great 3b. He slides right into the Bears rotation if anything goes wrong with 91 or DD and if not he's not gonna tie the Bears down. If he's healthy he's a steal, prolly better than Tank if not he's a prime IR or cut candidate, no loss a lot of cieling!
Steltz is a Bear. He's not gonna start but he can learn the spot, he has ball skills and he's gonna be a special teams stud! Toube has to love this pick and it absolutely displaces AA. Perfect choice for round 4.
Bowman is a very worthy risk. The Bears love to IR rookies so injury history isn't really a big deal. Bowman makes RMJr. expendable if he's healthy and he gives great depth as a four or five corner not to mention blazing return ability on both sides. Again Toube has to be McLovin(sorry) day 2!
Davis is a specimen. 6'7" and he can block. Gilmore is gone and certainly forgotten. Daivs is our new three and great value at bottom 5!
Baldwin has numbers. I still don't know much about Bazuin but he's feeling the pressure with this pick. I have no idea if the Bears will consider carrying a fourth DE but this guy has the ability to push anyone below Wale and Brown and is a solid 7th.
It's straight numbers at this point. Adams, LaRoque, and Barton are special teams flyers and camp bodies. Look for IR or chip-on-the-shoulder production for these guys to make it past week 4 of the pre-season.
Finally, Monk is a freak. I know he's the last pick but I'm seriously fuckin pumped about this pick. Over 6'4" 4.45 forty and good hands. He may not turn out obviously but this is my darkhorse for Bears 2/3WR(I still think Devin's most effective in a versatile Reggie Bush type role) this year. With him in camp it's gonna be easy to forget 80!

Shit.

2008-04-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

Shit.

Yeah, the Vikings have had an a pretty good defense for the past two seasons, but it was entirely a one-dimensional defense. I know for whatever reason the Bears always have trouble with the Vikes, but the team has never actually scared me as much as they would if they acquired Jared Allen. They've still got crap secondary, but adding Allen to their extant defensive line would go a long way toward making their secondary seem a lot better... I seriously hope this does not end up happening.

Forgetting BB

2008-04-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

I believe it was the Chicago media who did the most squawking when BB bolted to Minny for a substantially overinflated contract. DH said it was the biggest gaffe of the off-season. Let Briggs go but don't let an unproven deep threat earn more than you can afford to pay him. Ruin your pay structure and break up the best LB tandem in Chicago's history but don't let BB catch 900 yards of deep-balls in Minnesota next season!
And now Chad Johnson is the worst idea ever. How is not over-paying for 80 a crime and not looking into a hall of famer a stroke of genius? Johnson would immediately improve an offense that everyone says is going to keep the Bears in the cellar. Sure he could talk a lot but even TO, who is obviously unstable, was fine for one year and he's been fine in Dallas. 85 will be happy if he's winning, no one has ever questioned that.
The Bears shouldn't give up anything essential, but they have a lot of tradeable value on D and any draft pick below 1 available to send to Cinci if they're listening. It's not a done deal but Angelo is I hope looking into it.
I'm convinced that Haugh doesn't want the Bears to be good, which just makes it even more infuriating that he's in Chicago. Mariotti and Rosenbloom already have the pessimism market cornered; isn't there anyone outside Halas Hall who likes winning?

in response to DH

2008-04-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Mostly because I'm bored I figured I'll follow up my question of why the Bears will be better this year and won't do worse than 9-7.

I guess I should start where everybody starts at the QB position. Last year the Bears entered the season with one year starter Rex Grossman aged interception machine Brian Griese and third string Kyle Orton. This year Rex is a year older and is coming off his most consistent three game stretch since September 2006. He's also coming off an injury and is fighting for his spot. Griese and his 2 Ints. a game are gone. And Kyle Orton is actually being allowed to compete for the job after proving he is miles ahead of Rex and Griese in the turnover department.
Advantage 2008. If Rex doesn't shine in the preseason Kyle Orton will be the starter and will keep turnovers to a minimum while gaining confidence and experience. Either way its better than last year and anyone will be as good or better than Griese in the three spot.

At RB the Bears entered last year with an unproven and unchallenged Cedric Benson followed my utility man AP and rookie Garrett Wolfe. If you don't think the Bears will have someone on their roster whose better than that you're probably working for a Chicago paper.
Advantage 2008. The starter will likely be a rookie but that hasn't been a problem for the Colts, Patriots, Bills, Vikings etc. Also Benson has shown that he at least doesn't totally suck usually as a motivated backup. Also Wolfe is a year older and stronger.

The Bears had the oldest OL in the league last year and they played like it. Did Kruetz even make the Pro-Bowl? There are at least two new starters on the line for this season. One of the Tackles will be a first round rookie with a high grade coming in. The Guard spots are totally open.
Advantage 2008. Miller was the worst Tackle in the league last year so decline is impossible in that spot. At the least the Bears will have a strong rookie in that spot. It's also very possible that Tait will switch back to his All-Pro side and a Rookie who has proven himself in camp will be the new LT. The Guards could be anyone but they would have trouble being worse than one-armed Ruben Brown and Garza could very easily remain an average starter. It's also hard to believe Kruetz won't enter the season determined to do everything he can to erase the memory of last year.

The Bears have the same TE's as last year and Olsen looks like a stud.
Advantage 2008. A one year older and stronger Olsen pairs an effective Desmond Clark in an area of real strength.

The WR position was in shambles last year. The Bears kicked Moose out but they also lost their over-hyped number 2 in Berrian.
Advantage wash. Booker is at least a dependable veteran which is better than anything last year. But it's a stretch to expect Hester or Bradley to be at Berrian's level. However Hester should be better than last year, he showed promise at the end of the season, and Berrian had too many drops to be missed as much as the media is writing about him.

The DL looked strong going into the season last year, but things quickly began to deteriorate. DD was lost for the season, Harris was obviously not 100 percent, Walker was a walking injury niggle and 97 clearly wasn't the starter 96 had been.
Advantage 2008. Izzy gained some valuable experience Toeaina was a nice find late in the season and Harris and DD get another shot at staying healthy. Anthony Adams fills out the DT's and with 96 back in the starters role and 97 functioning as a rush specialist the future again looks rosy.

At LB Briggs came in looking to not get hurt. Hillenmeyer really stepped up last year and 54 spent the year hiding a back injury and learning how to play with it. The last 5 weeks 54 was back to his old self and that can't be a bad sign.
Advantage 2008. 54 is motivated to prove everyone wrong, that can only be good. Briggs is around for the long haul and is ready to take his prominent role right next to Superman not behind him. Williams looked great and could challenge an improved Hillenmeyer for playing time. This is the heart of the team and it's the Bears biggest strength.

The secondary looked good early last year as well, but again injuries exposed a lack of depth. Two starters were lost for the season in week 1 and week 3 saw four different starters than week 1. Again there's nowhere to go but up.
Advantage 2008. Mike Brown is back in the lineup! We don't know how long he'll last but anytime he's playing the D looks amazing. Peanut and Vash are back on the corners with an experienced and promising McBride looking for playing time. D Manning looked great for the second half and Kevin Payne is back to ensure AA won't see the field on defense.

Finally the Bears had the best Special Teams in the league for the third year in a row last year. Surely no team could do that four years in a row!
Advantage wash. Devin Hester is just getting better. Robbie Gould is steady. The Bears are the only team that uses important players on Special Teams so I don't suspect much if any decline. The Ravens have a ST coach as a head coach now so they could make a run at the Special Teams title, but Hester is just too good.

more great stuff from DH

2008-04-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

First David Haugh points out that the home media over-emphasizes any negativity coming out of the Chicago crowd, then he points out that this is largely the same old 7-9 team from last year. Coincidentally it's also pretty much the same team that went to the Super Bowl the year before they lost 7 defensive starters in the first 6 weeks. Asking how this team is better than last year's team is pointless. There are too many right answers. Instead the question is why won't this team be better than last year's? I don't have an answer, I don't think Haugh does either but he thinks his job is to heap negativity on the city so he doesn't have to try.
Also he inexplicably picks the Bears to start 0-3 and then beat Philly? Then he picks a Vikings sweep and home losses to the Jags and Saints before losing at Houston! WTF!!? Even the most pessimistic analyst wouldn't pick a 4-4 home record and another Vikings sweep. I'm not sure what his job is supposed to be, but if it's anything other than unreasonable pessimism he's surely not doing it. What reason possibly exists for him to have a job in Chicago?

An Open Note to David Haugh

2008-04-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

From today's column: "Fans want to love Lovie, but it would help if they knew more about him."

Please stop speaking for me, Mr. Haugh. You're always doing this, where you try to bolster your own opinion by attributing it to fans. It's cheap.

And anyway, what is it with you and your bizarre belief that media relations should be anywhere on the list of priorities of the Bears coaching staff. Sure, they're bad at it, but not a single game was lost or won this season because of how well or poorly the coaches spoke to the media. Not even a single fucking yard was gained or lost because of it. I understand it probably doesn't make your job any easier, but please stop analyzing it like it actually matters.

Thanks,

Bears Geek

Shit.

2008-03-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know that Bears fans everywhere (along with Vikes & Lions fans, I suppose) are supposed to be thrilled that Favre's retiring, and the consensus is that this suddenly makes the team far worse than they were. I honestly don't feel that way. Don't get me wrong: emotionally, I'm thrilled to think that the amount of Favre love/talk that goes on during the football season will necessarily have to go down. I frankly would be happy to never hear his name spoken or see it in print ever gain (ha!), but I don't actually believe that his departure spells doom for the Packers, and actually I'm pretty sure (I admit I have no proof for this) that it makes their offense better. I've seen Rodgers play a few times, and he's looked really good to me. I could be wrong, and I hope I am. But I'm sure number 4 didn't have any more years in him like the fluke he put together last season, and even still he was the reason they lost their playoff game. Even when he was playing his best, lately, he was still also kind of the team's biggest liability. I fully expect Rodgers to blow everyone away this year. I hope I'm crazy.

This Crazy Mixed Up World

2008-03-03T00:38:00.000-08:00

Um, so... wtf? Since when do we have to turn to the Sun-Times for a reasonable defense of the Bears' free agency so far? I pretty much agree with everything Mulligan says in this article, which is weird.

The only thing I'm really upset about how Angelo's handled free agency so far is that he wasn't aggressive enough in pursuing Michael Turner. Who knows why. But losing Berrian's not a bad thing, and it'll be kinda funny watching him become the most hated player on the Vikings over the next few years. Finally, Vikings fans will have a receiver worthy of their constant complaining!

I really do wonder, though, if the Bears are actually as committed as they seem to be trying to indicate to the idea of Hester becoming a number 1 receiver. Although he was totally underutilized last year, I didn't really see anything about his receiver play that made me think he was on the verge of becoming a legit number 1. I'm sure the Bears'll end up signing a few more receivers before its time for camp, but none of them will be in a better situation to become the top receiver on the team than Hester and Bradly will be. Actually, that should be wide receiver, since the top receiver will most likely be Greg Olsen, I bet. And I'm fine with that.

Now when are we gonna get an offensive line?!

no rings

2008-03-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

Now that the big names are all off the board, save Randy Moss, the marketplace should be 'sobering-up' a bit and the Bears will begin to be more active. I just noticed that the Bears organization doesn't have a single person whose won a Super Bowl. It seems like it wouldn't be the worst idea to target a few players who have that experience. Eugene Wilson (S) and Jake Scott (G) would be excellent options and I would consider Booger McFarland (DT) and Rosevelt Colvin for cheap veteran depth if they were interested.

Moss and Culpepper together?

2008-03-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

John Clayton writes a very interesting piece today. Though it's never going to happen it's fun to imagine that Angelo read it and was also interested by it. Clayton says that Moss and Culpepper would like to get together again so a team looking for a WR and a QB could be in an advantageous position. Kinda sounds like Chicago doesn't it?
The day after Chicago's 'best' receiver left for Minnesota the Bears could get Minnesota's most successful QB-WR combo ever. That'd be a true coup.

BB recap

2008-03-02T11:18:00.001-08:00

The big news of the day is that Lance Briggs will be a Chicago Bear for the rest of his prime. The Monsters of the Midway will have the two best linebackers in football for at least four more seasons. When you throw in Tommie Harris, Peanut and Vash, Alex Brown and possibly Mike Brown it's a pretty fierce core. I'll go out on a limb and guess that if two or less of this core are injured each game the Bears will be the best defense in football, so good in fact that they could carry a mediocre offense to the Super Bowl.
The Bears still have some work to do to become a mediocre offense but starting with Devin Hester can't hurt. Even if he doesn't touch the ball the Bears are likely to start on at least the 40 most of the time. Again call me crazy but I believe that between Orton and Grossman someone in Chicago will figure out how to move the ball 30 yards enough times for Bears to win a lot of games.
It's true that this task became more difficult when Berrian signed with Minnesota, but Berrian leaving is a truly minor issue. He caught the most passes last season but he still didn't have one thousand yards, nor did he score the most TD's or have anything like a good attitude. For once I think Jay Mariotti made some very good points today, and I'm inclined to believe that some of what he says about Angelo is true, though pessimism seems to be a job requirement in the Chicago media. But the inaccuracy of this argument cannot be understated, "[The Bears] lost the one proven speed threat who stretches a defense, and the fact Berrian was allowed to sign with a superior divisional rival is all you need to know about the conservative rockheads in Lake Forest."
Devin Hester is if nothing else a proven speed threat. He is not a 'proven' wide receiver but it's a stretch to call Berrian that so I assume he's just referring to defense-stretching ability. Hester doesn't need to catch a lot of balls to stretch a defense, he probably doesn't need to catch any. The Bears do need to sign a proven wide receiver to put opposite Hester but 23 is stretching defenses as I write this. Plus Greg Olsen was clearly the Bears #1 receiver last year and he's still on the team and still nothing but upside.
The other overlooked aspect of the Berrian deal is that Minnesota totally overpaid and Chicago simply couldn't afford to match. Briggs is the more important player but Angelo had to hedge knowing that one would go and it wasn't until Berrian signed that they could sufficiently up their offer. Tommie Harris and Devin Hester are going to get big contracts, Urlacher will probably get more money, and hopefully one QB will next year as well. They need to sign a Guard and a Safety and it'd be nice to see a RB brought in instead of another draft gamble. With 24m left and the best defense in the league they look like they're in descent shape.
David Haugh doesn't agree but his argument ignores the fact that Chicago was never going to keep both and figures that a disgruntled Berrian is a good option. Berrian isn't going to do better than he did this year, a lot of receivers can help this team for less than 8m a year. Also, what's with Haugh's weird need to make Briggs out as a jerk and an idiot. Contrary to Haugh's math a 7 year deal for 43m looks a lot different than one for 33m. I feel like Brigg's quote is a much more accurate assessment of the situation than Haugh's, "I'm not greedy. I'm not trying to knock something out of the park. All I wanted was what's fair. If it's fair, I'm happy."

fire the media!

2008-03-02T01:56:00.000-08:00

I can't really go on saying this anymore without being overly redundant can I? David Haugh, the whole fucking Chicago media are such douche bags.
Without getting more into this than I mean to right now the Bears have signed two major free-agents this year. They were both listed as the top available at their position and they were both previously Bears. This should be celebrated as nothing short of excellent. Instead Haugh thinks the Bears should have paid Berrian too much money which definitely would have meant that Briggs wouldn't have signed. Losing Berrian is not a big deal, keeping Briggs is. Sure the contract stuff could have been neater, but the business worked out this way and I'm fine with it. The defense is intact and the offense is without over-hyped egos. The Bears will be better next year and that at least is very comforting.

Act now or you will forever be held responsible

2008-03-01T01:56:00.000-08:00

I know this is too many posts for one day or one section of unimportant season, but the Bears off-season needs are so apparent and their supposed addressing of them is so incompetent that I cannot keep quiet. Michael Turner is the best available and easily signable for the Bears. It may be a deep draft class, but Benson was the best in his and he is an absolute bust. Turner is simply the best option hands down! Moss is beyond that. In simple terms he would make every team better. There is absolutely no excuse beyond stubborn laziness and stupidity for the 30 million the Bears have not to quickly turn into 10 million and Moss and Turner on the roster. Angelo has outlasted my patience.

Save us Rex!

2008-02-29T16:51:00.000-08:00

Angelo is supposed to love Rex right? He's basically so motivated to be proven right about Rex that the rest of the organization comes second to his narcissistic desire to have built the franchise around his self-picked golden child? For once I want all the jerks and whiners in the Chicago media to be right, I want Angelo to be so obsessed with getting that right that like a rich dad on his daughter's 16th birthday he throws his sobriety out the window and asks Rex what he wants, anything, he can have anything. In this one moment Angelo will make up for all the games he missed, all the other birthdays he had to work late, all the getaways he took with his mistress while his daughter stayed home. And Rex will tell him that he needs Randy Moss and Michael Turner more than anyone else, that only they can make him love again. Then they'll cry and embrace and Angelo will make the calls and get it done, and they'll live on just like before but with silent acceptance that their love is conditional.

Final FA primer

2008-02-28T20:49:00.001-08:00

After Randy Moss the free agent class drops off quite a bit but these are the best players for the Bears to go after.
1. Michael Turner RB - essential for '09 Super Bowl run
2. Guards - essential with or without Moss and Turner
Jacob Bell - appears to be the best available
Jake Scott - years with the Colts can't hurt anyone
Maurice Williams - a little older but he can definitely run-block
3. Safety - a weak draft class makes a veteran signing a priority
Eugene Wilson - best available and another steal from NE
Mike Doss - won the Super Bowl with Indy but couldn't break Minnesota's lineup
Will Demps - made an impact for Houston but thats not saying much
Tank Williams - similar to Doss and Demps but probably not as good
4. Wide Receiver - with or without Moss the Bears need a veteran wideout
Marty Booker - fan favorite with motivation after winning once last year
Issac Bruce - not who he used to be but still a very good receiver
Donte' Stallworth - great player but potential to be a bigger headache than he's worth
5. Rosevelt Colvin LB - with Briggs gone Colvin could provide needed depth and another outside rush specialist
6. Julius Jones RB - I hope the Bears aren't stupid enough to need this option after Turner signs elsewhere

Randy Moss

2008-02-28T02:10:00.001-08:00

Tonight feels just like the night before the first regular season game. I'm tired but I can't stop thinking about tomorrow so I can't fall asleep. Nothing can be won tomorrow, it's the first step on the incredibly arduous road to Super Bowl victory and yet it impedes my sleep. Injuries can always ruin a season, even during the actual game a single injury could ruin the entire season, but still Randy Moss becomes a free agent tomorrow. The Bears have a myriad of needs and there's probably no chance Moss will sign in Chicago, yet Randy Moss is all Chicago needs. With him they are instantly in the running for best team since the '85 Bears and possibly best team ever. Even Ron Turner makes sense with Moss. He loves the vertical passing game, so do Rex and Orton, and everyone wants to play for Lovie. How could any defense line up against Moss, Hester, Olsen, Turner and either Clark or Booker? It'd be impossible. Plus the Bears defense can be easily upgraded with Eugene Wilson or Mike Doss and Rosevelt Colvin.
I don't know where they are right now, but I hope Angelo and Moss are both awake thinking about how perfectly Moss and the Bears fit together.

Pity Poor Rick Morrissey

2008-02-25T16:23:00.001-08:00

I just thought I'd pop in to note that Rick Morrissey seems to have lost all hope about the Bears. I feel bad for him. I really do. In fact, I wonder if he might just be depressed. After all, "lack of hope" is one of the warning signs of depression, and "lack of hope" has been a theme of Morrissey's for a while now. I sure hope he finds a friend good enough to tell him to seek real therapy instead of using his column as a personal record of his depression. I hope he does that before he kills himself. Really, I do.

At least Haugh isn't the Bears GM

2008-02-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

If I recall correctly, David Haugh was firmly in the Griese corner last year or at least he was never in the Rex corner. Plus he's had a lot of anti-Briggs sentiment despite him being a solid performer. Now in this off-season he thinks the Bears didn't show enough support for Rex and that they absolutely should have franchised Berrian. One of his major points is that keeping Berrian would mean Rex would stay, like they're two children who will only play if they get to be on the same team, and the Bears now need Rex badly because he doesn't like Orton. His other main premise is that Berrian was the best of a poor receiving corps so the Bears just have to overpay for him or risk getting even worse. He's also now hating on Bradly who definitely isn't an NFL one but probably deserves to be on the roster.
So Haugh thinks that Angelo's big mistake this year is failing to overpay for mediocre talent that is already much cheaper on the roster? Angelo's best move is to hold firm with his valuation of Grossman and Berrian as he did with Moose knowing that Orton, Bradley, Booker and others are capable of performing just as well for far less money. Then he can use the money saved to overpay an all-pro like Briggs or Moss.

Still Hatin' on The King

2008-02-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

I just thought this was interesting. It's the NFC North's turn in today's Four Downs at Football Outsiders, and their assessment of the Bears follows the standard line as it's been for the past several years:

"Obviously, finding a quarterback is priority No. 1 this off-season, but 1A is wide receiver, 1B is running back, and 1C is getting younger on the offensive line."

First of all, I think those are kind of in the wrong order, but it also speaks to this weird cognitive error that you see so consistently: this assumption that there is something like an unlimited number of players that are available to be got. Well, not exactly unlimited, but I think it's based on assuming that the talent pool is big enough as to be conceived of as kind of a vague cloud, or something like that. Anyway, the problem with saying that "priority No. 1" is finding a quarterback is that there really aren't any quarterback's out there worth getting this year. Meanwhile, there actually are a few linemen out there worth fighting for, there's Michael Turner who the Bears just have to get, and there's at least the possibility of making some kind of play for Randy Moss, or possibly entertaining ideas of a trade for Johnson from Cincinnati. So, sure, if there were a solid QB out there available for the getting, you could argue that getting him (or her? hehe) would be the number 1 priority, but it's a pretty meaningless proposition in the abstract. Also notice that in the "Whom Should They Sign" section, the only quarterbacks discussed are ones that aren't available.

But here's what I find even more interesting. In the section discussing the Vikings, the QB position is evaluated as pretty much "wait and see."

if Jackson doesn’t show noticeable improvement in 2008, the Vikings will have to consider a change.

In world is Tarvaris Jackson a better quarterback than either Rex Grossman or Kyle Orton? Or even (shudder) Brian Griese?

How the off-season would unfold if Angelo was me

2008-02-13T14:01:00.000-08:00

The first potential 2008 action is reducing Mike Brown's cap number. I hope that both sides have enough sense to see that the Bears need to keep Brown but that they cannot afford to pay him anything more than the veteran minimum this year. The easiest solution is to convert his current deal into a 2 year contract with the 2.4m he's due in salary this year changed into a roster bonus next year. Sadly if this can't be agreed the Bears and Brown will very likely part ways to the detriment of both sides. Until March 1 the only other action is waiting to see if NE franchise's Moss. I assume they will, but it's more fun to believe they wont in which case:
The Bears should be able to absorb a cap hit of up to 13m this season, and they should use every penny it takes up to there to lure Moss. However, it's going to take more than just money to bring Randy to Chicago. The Bears are also going to have to look like winners again, a tough task considering they're going to have to concede Briggs to afford Moss. This means they absolutely have to secure Michael Turner. They will probably also have to have Rex in the mix as well, but if they get Moss, Rex will surely follow.
If NE franchise's Moss the Bears have to turn to Chad Johnson as the best option. The good news is that he'll take less cap-room and the Bears have the players and picks to trade for him, ruling out their first pick of course. This option would also mean that the Bears could still make a run at Briggs. I have no idea if they have a chance to get him, but they couldn't afford not to try. Michael Turner is still essential and again, Grossman would come cheaper if Johnson's in the mix.
The next important move is to sign Marty Booker. He's a perfect replacement for Moose and if the other options don't work out he still has at least one year left of being an NFL 1WR, which would give the Bears flexibility in addressing this situation. Without Moss or Johnson they probably need to keep Moose and draft a WR with their 2nd pick. It's easy to see how important signing Michael Turner is in this situation and Grossman too becomes vital without Moss or Johnson. The Bears cannot afford to lose Briggs without getting Moss or Johnson!
The next logical move is to bring back Ruben Brown to stabilize the OL with a new LT on the way and a fierce RG competition brewing throughout the off-season. It would also make sense to look into bringing Mike Doss in as safety cover. He's probably better than McGowan and it's supposed to be weak safety class this draft.
I'm sure there are a lot of ways to go at LB if the Bears get Johnson or Moss, but it'd be cool to see Warrick Holdman in camp if there's an LB spot open.
Along with these additions the Bears need to cut or trade Archuleta, Bazuin, Griese, Ricky Manning Jr., Fred Miller, Darwin Walker and probably Terrence Metcalf. Also Moose, Maynard, Benson, Beekman, and Garza shouldn't be surprised to find themselves playing for their spots if they're still on the roster in training camp.
But before camp there's the draft. The first pick is easy, LT. The second selection should be a WR without Moss or Johnson. If they get one of them there are a lot of options. Joe Flacco has been getting a lot of press but the Bears could use more competition at G, CB, S, WR, RB, LB, DT as well as QB, which I think puts me out of the forecasting business until training camp.

Booker will return

2008-02-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

I plan a much more thorough examination of the roster and suggested roster moves in the next month as I figure out more about the salary cap and next years numbers. But I have to make mention of the sudden availability of a significant and beautiful new number two/possession receiver. We all know that Moose is beyond his usefulness and seemed to be a bit of a cancer last year. So in his stead for the same money the Bears should make a run at Marty Booker! I never liked that he left and he's three years younger than Moose. He should have a solid 2-3 years left in him, he's always been a great teammate and it'd give the Bears flexibility in rebuilding their offense over the next three years. It's simply too perfect not to happen.

23 is synonomous with god

2008-02-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

I heard Joshua Cribbs's name a few times this season. I think he had like three maybe four touchdown returns. And I know ESPN needs to do something to make the pro-bowl seem interesting in any way, the NFL should have long ago taken care of this by plying it in the bye-week before the Super Bowl and not involving SB participants, but saying anything that even comes close to questioning Devin Hester's status as the all-time greatest return man ever, EVER is just blasphemy and lazy journalism.
*update*
I don't know what made me do it, I knew it was just going to make me angry and sad and sick-to-my stomach. But I clicked on this article and it was amazingly worse than advertised. I know Hester doesn't care because he is god in pads. He is humble and selfless and anything else good it is possible to be. They call AD purple Jesus, but Jesus is already in Chicago.
We who know must stand up to this blasphemy lest any foolish football fans read and actually believe that someone could be compared to 23. The article uses meaningless statistics showing that Cribbs has a better kick return average to claim that he is better at kickreturns and then suggests that Hester might agree. It goes on to call Cribbs more consistent and quotes him as saying something like, "I just want to get to the 40 everytime." It does at least have the decency to mention that Hester rarely sees a good ball while I haven't heard of anyone gameplanning around Cribbs. But the article fails to mention that the 40 is a disappointment for Chicago's special teams. Nor does it point out that Hester's TD/return ratio is nearly three times that of Cribbs or that in one more season and 102 more kickoff returns Cribbs has only equal the TD's of Hester. And if constantly causing the other teams headaches and forcing them to kick it out of bounds or face the lord's wrath isn't enough proof of consistency the Bears had the best avg. starting field position in the league this year.
Dream big Cribbs, dream about hitting the 40 every time you touch the ball, but know that while you're doing that 23's gonna keep scoring TDs whenever he gets his hands on the ball. Holding the Bears to the 40 is the subject of opposing team's dreams.

Brian Urlacher: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2008-02-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

So my boy Brian, that old lacker of Ur, proud papa and formerly dominant linebacker in a proud lineage of formerly dominant middle linebackers in Chicago, you know the guy, and you know that he just had neck surgery. Apparently. Since the Bears are based in Chicago that means its time for rampant pessimism and pointless criticism of the organization, and also it's time to assume that the Bears might now be the worst team in the league for the next 75 years because of it. It's very sad.

However, I've decided that there's another response to be had. In a recent article from the Trib, they interview various doctors about what could possibly be the reason for Urlacher's surgery, and his likely prognosis. One of them came back with this quote:

As one doctor put it, "It's plausible he might come back even stronger."

I'm just going to assume that by "plausible" he actually means "absolutely %100 the case," and start the celebration of Urlacher's resumption of dominance right now. In fact, following Urlacher's neck surgery, I'm a little confused about why they haven't announced the cancellation of the 2008 season and just given the Lombardi trophy to Mr. Urlacher and the Bears. It must be that they're looking forward to Brian having the best season ever by a middle linebacker as much as I am!

Seriously, though. Regardless of Urlacher's prognosis, this latest news would make it even stupider for the Bears to not do everything possible to re-sign Lance Briggs.

Oh, This is a Good One

2008-02-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

David Haugh's post-Super Bowl article is about the possibility that Rex could ever pull something off like Manning did. Most of the article is actually a pretty decent argument that Manning's apparent "ascent into manhood" or whatever supposedly happened is a little exaggerated, since Manning got lucky several of his throws weren't picked off and that 17 points was all he needed to score to win thanks to the ridiculous play of the Giants' defensive line (the fact that Manning was named MVP is stupid; that play to Tyree was amazing, but Manning didn't do a whole lot for most of the game while the Giants' defensive line dominated for pretty much the entire game; Umenyiora and Justin Tuck should've been co-MVPs). But then Haugh comes out with this zinger near the end:

The difference in their respective rosters and the level of commitment their organizations showed in them is real.

Yes, that is an actual member of the Chicago media now criticizing the Bears' organization for not showing a high enough level of commitment to Rex Grossman... Eat shit, douchebag.

post Super Bowl

2008-02-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

I feel like it's necessary for me to record my non-NY/Boston thoughts on the end of the NFL season.
Bill Belichick is a complete ass in every sense of the word. A head coach leaving the field before the end of the most watched game of the season is so disgusting. It's funny how much everyone's trying to avoid this. This game was all about NE, it was their perfect season to win or lose. I can't believe neither Belichick nor Brady were on the sideline when it ended. They've won half of the past six Super Bowls and they still didn't have the class to congratulate their opponent, it's unfathomable to me. Even without Spygate Belichick should be handed a major fine for disrespecting the Super Bowl like that. Say what you want about Lovie and Dungy's total disinterest in the happenings on the field but they're high class. Much was said about their character last year and as much should be said about NE's lack of it this year. I want to know how many Pats were on the field for the last snap and who they were and it should be noted that Randy Moss was there. The best player on the best team who made the play he could to help them win but with the spotty character. How much time and money have gone into praise of Brady and Belichick and in the end Randy Moss would have won the game if he could have gotten the ball and he stuck around to watch the end. I hope it was the last this he does in the NFL that's not in Burnt and Blue!
Speaking of class, I can't stand another Manning year. Peyton's a hilarious actor, but god are the Manning's boring personalities. I'll love Rex through and through if he's our QB next year, but until the competition ends I'm cheering for Orton all the way. We need a neckbeard media storm next season! And after this game I'm certain that Moss can be bought in the off-season. Randy Moss will win the Super Bowl if he's on the Bears next year. He is that important. If it's the only move the Bears make it's the only one that matters.
Another great thing this game did is keep the '85 Bears as the best team ever! And seriously, Fuck the '72 Dolphins I actually think they're bigger dicks than the Pats. They will always be undefeated, it doesn't matter if anyone else is they still will be. But no one will ever think they were the best team ever. The Pats were 18-0 once and the Bears were the best ever. They should just enjoy that they were undefeated once and they should forget about everything else.

It's getting closer and closer to that time

2008-01-15T01:59:00.000-08:00

I still think the Bears need to make some coaching staff changes, especially the AHCO/OC ones. Regarding players it's harder to get better by removing people so the plan is to get as much of this done as possible in order. By doing this the Bears have the best chance to bring in players to compete and improve on '07's underperforming players.
Sign Randy Moss!
Keep Mike Brown
Michael Turner
Rex Grossman
Ruben Brown
Trade for Chad Johnson: Any/All - 2nd Rd. 14 or 3rd Rd. 14or30, Manning Jr., McGowan, Bazuin, Griese, Moose, Adams, Toeina, Williams/Wilson/Okwo-Pending Briggs
Figure out Briggs
Best SS possible
Cut: Archuleta, Griese, other over-expenditures
Draft LT 1st Rd.
Draft G
Draft S
Draft WR
New QB
New WR
New OL
New CB
Gilmore or New TE
One more RB for Benson competition

Is Another Turner on Offense Really What We Need?

2008-01-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Yes. I'm certainly not the only one to notice this, but if yesterday's truly awesome game between Indy and SD proved anything, it's that Michael Turner is really really good. Everyone already expected the Bears to go after Turner, but now they'd be even stupider not to--except, of course, that yesterday probably increased the amount of competition there will be for Turner, and Angelo has always acted allergic to competition for free agents in the past. So I kind of feel like yesterday convinced me that Bears have to go after Turner, but also that they probably won't get him because Angelo won't want to get into a "bidding war." He'll probably end up settling for Julius Jones.

And in non-Bears football thoughts, as really great as yesterday's game was, and as hard as San Diego fought and everything, they wouldn't have won that game if those two balls hadn't bounced off of Manning's receivers--and if they hadn't randomly bounced directly into the waiting arms of Chargers defenders. Fat chance of that happening against New England. San Diego'll give the Pats more of a game than most people are expecting, and certainly than anyone would've thought earlier in the season when it was a given that Norv Turner was the worst football coach in the history of bad football coaches, but if the Patriot's lose it'll be because of the type random bad luck that did in the Colts yesterday. And since Belichick gladly gave up his soul to Satan at the beginning of the season (Belichick: "You really want this thing? It probably tastes like orange peels and cat litter..."), the Patriots aren't going to have a luck problem.

Two things learned today

2007-12-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

Brian Billick has just become the hottest offensive commodity on the market in the NFL. I'm guessing there's a good chance SF will be interested in him, but if they keep Nolan the Bears should be in better position to get him. Billick made a lot of mistakes this year, but he directed the best offense ever pre-2007 the 1998 Vikings so he's at least better than Turner.
Speaking of Turner, he still sucks. This article proves that he's a complete idiot and has no business being anywhere near the dynamic but unorthodox talent of Devin Hester.

Take a good look, because it's the last time you're going to see theese!

2007-12-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

It's sad to think that the Bears won't play a game in 2008 until September. I'm not looking forward to the dead time while other teams are playing and the off-season hasn't begun yet, the three month break before the draft or the six month until training camp. Tomorrow will be fun though!
It's tempting to start displaying my Angelo-predicting prowess right now, but there's no hurry, and if I start now what will I have to do before the off-season begins?
However I am sure that Haugh and much of the Bears media have a lot wrong about this team and this off-season. Turner is going to be fired. He is obviously inept and Lovie and Angelo care a lot more about doing a good job than trying to please the media. Babich will stay because the defensive collapse doesn't seem like his fault and Lovie believes in him. Mike Brown will not be cut, it simply doesn't make any sense to try to improve your team by cutting your best though oft-injured safety. Grossman and Orton will both be in training camp in Bourbanis next year, Griese probably will not.

wishplan 1.5

2007-12-17T23:47:00.000-08:00

The first move is obvious, FIRE Ron Turner!! After that things get a little more complicated. I still think my plan for his replacement is pretty sweet. But until the season is over it's hard to speculate about players. Orton has two more games to try and look more competent than Griese, I'm sticking with Orton on this one. Turner's damage carries into the off-season though. It is truly impossible to evaluate the Bears players on offense with him around. Gage and Wade look much better away from him, how are we to know who else will too? This leaves a very interesting conundrum.
Based on this year, the Bears need two new starters on the O-Line and three new depth players. They need a new number one running back and Benson will not be around after next year so a new two back wouldn't hurt. They need one more quarterback actually capable of being good not just not-terrible plus Rex and Kyle. And they need two new starting wide-outs to go with Hester, Davis and Bradley to ensure good special teams.
Or
They need to keep or improve their top 10 D-linemen, 7 Linebackers and get at least one new corner as good as Vasher and Tillman and one new safety as good as Brown and Manning plus one more secondary contributer, probably a safety on all their levels.
This means in the off-season they have to decide if they want to get 10 new offensive players in order to become competent or 3 new defensive stars in order to eliminate the offense from the team entirely. They could carry 28 defensive players on their roster and be assured that no matter how many injuries they suffer they will not give up more than 13 points. The defense and special teams would literally put them in position that the offense could not fuck up.
The first route is normal, but the second would be a hell of a lot more fun!