balta1701-A

How long has he been at UCLA? I always feel nervous about guys who haven't been in a single spot for all that long in college and then leave for another job again.

If Winston is on the board, and hypothetically the Bears are able to move Cutler's contract, do people here go for the QB?

They used to. 5-8 years ago that was a legit complaint against them, but at the same time they were winning while doing it! They went in big in free agency to start filling holes in the early part of this decade (think about the day where they signed Peppers and several other players). I'm not trying to defend the current management, I just want people to indict them for the correct reasons. They're not being cheap. They're putting money on the field and doing so in a totally ineffective way. That's not a complaint about them being cheap any more, the correct complaint is that their targets are failing to produce on the field on a regular basis.

One thing that is no longer true from this article is the claim that the Bears have kept their payroll down. Over the last several years this has been incorrect most years - the Bears have used up almost every scrap of their cap space each of the last few years. In some cases (like this year) that has led to them only being in the middle of the pack on total payroll, but still using up virtually the entire cap because they have so much dead space due to Peppers. Over the last several they have been close to or at the top of the league in payroll. I totally agree with the claims of the Bears being a tremendously undervalued, poorly managed asset, but that is not because of a lack of spending on payroll for the last half decade.

The last time the Bears picked #7 they selected Curtis Conway.

This is usually the kind of move a team makes right before the end of a season in order to use up some fraction of their remaining cap space on that extension. That's my guess about why this deal happened, using up a portion of this year's cap to pay his salary for next year.

Wasn't Allen's contract written that the guarantee was like $3 million this year and $9 million next year? i.e. it's really tough to get rid of him because you have to pay him next year anyway?

Marshall isn't going to be a free agent any time soon, they extended his contract earlier this year.

Game thread.

several studies say the strongest home field advantage in most sports is the way the referees call games.

The Bears simply have to do a better job scoring if they play a team like the Eagles or Broncos. Hell, they'll have to do a better job putting points up next week against the 9ers if they want to hang there too. The Bears were one of the top offenses in the league last year. They're not going to win games if they can't put up more than 20 points.

Brett Favre's best season by far, in Minnesota, was when he finally cut down on some of those tendencies, cut down on the INTs, and showed that control. He then lost his final playoff game when he reverted back.

Overall it was still a better showing than what the Bears D was able to put together last year. The O turned the ball over 3 times, the game went to OT, and the Bears still only gave up 23 points. Even though the Bills aren't the best offense in the league, they didn't torch the team through the air and they were only able to get 15 first downs during the game compared to the Bears 29. The D wasn't spectacular against the run, particularly if you factor in the game killer, but at least so far it wasn't an open gate; until that final run the Bills were at about 4.7 ypc. That's not the best defense in the league, but so far thats a major improvement from last year.