balta1701-A

In all honesty though...how many guys out there are there that the Bears would feel "Comfortable" with? An average performing safety gives you no where near the performance of a Mike Brown.

It's also certainly worth noting that the Bears' offense as a whole stank last year. When your O line isn't performing well at all, your RB can't find holes and the linebackers and safeties can spend a lot more effort on covering the TE. When your QB is throwing off of his back half the time, even a great TE can't make something happen. When your WR's aren't getting open, then they don't move defenders out of position and create matchups that favor the TE.

Strahan and Samuel sat out most of regular training camp last year and were still fine.

One down from this season's list.

Brown and Urlacher.

So, here's my proposal. We turn on a swear filter for the f-bomb. It's easy enough to do that, and I think that's the one word most people would care the most about their 8 year old reading over their shoulder. Beyond that, self-police, but watch the personal attacks, because post after post of people insulting each other tends to really ruin a site and either keep people from posting opinions or simply drive people away from the site because they feel they're attacked constantly. Thought?

Over at Soxtalk, we have some fairly rigorous policing policies, including a lot of words on the swear filter and a very strong personal attack policy. I've tried to get some discussion going at times on at least getting a generous personal attack policy put in place, especially after in one thread recently someone put up a post that basically was nothing but a "You're a tool" post or something along those lines. But honestly, I've been a little hesitant, and I'll tell you why. I tried a couple months back to enforce a normal procedure from Soxtalk, which is moving threads in to whichever forum they belonged in (i.e. having a separate NFL forum for NFL news) and that blew up quite rapidly and pissed off a fair number of people from the old site who weren't used to the multi-forum style. After that incident, I've been a little hesitant to do anything strong in terms of policing either language or attacks, because honestly, I don't know what the policies were like @ your guys' old board, and I don't want to drive solid posters away from the site for no reason.

If they didn't want that, they wouldn't have destroyed the original tapes. Of course, destroying the original tapes was what got everyone's attention in the first place, because that looks like a cover up.

Another little thing with Orton is that he has this odd habit of having the team win when he's in there. Bears were 2-1 with him last year, and were 11-5 with him at the helm in most of 05 with him as a rookie. Yes a lot of damage is done by the defense, but there is something to be said about a guy who's team wins when he's in at QB.

This should be fun. (Side note...I'm putting this thread here based on the discussion we had earlier, where people wanted NFL news all to be put in one thread and wanted non-NFL stuff consigned to another thread).

Sweet. Open up a roster spot.

Just out of curiosity, why hasn't any of these reports given the results of a breathalyser?

Yes and Yes. Wasn't trying to disagree, just clarify. He also seems to have a domestic violence issue in his past according to the linked piece.

I believe it was the Substance abuse policy, not specifically PED's.

And, in 2007...Rex got exactly what he deserved. After 06, his first full season as a starter, he was given a couple games to show he'd grown, and when he failed to do so and started out poorly, he was benched and put as 2nd string. If the team had performed under Griese and he'd stayed healthy, there was no reason to play him again. Fortunately for him, Griese got hurt, so he got a second chance just based on luck...and when he got that chance, he wasn't Peyton Manning, but he wasn't Rex Grossman bad. First 3 games, 1 TD, 6 INT's. Second 4 games pre injury, 3 TD, 1 INT (playing with a disastrous O-line BTW). Those last few games are good enough given the circumstances that he at least deserves an open competition for the spot, I'd say. On that you can disagree if you feel, but I think it's worth it.

Ok, exactly what point in the 2006 season should they have benched him? Other than that year, he's basically been an injury casualty. Here's his 2006 game log. Just looking at the QB ratings for each game, they go like this: WEEK OPP RESULT RAT Week 1 @GNB W 26-0 98.6 Week 2 DET W 34-7 148 Week 3 @MIN W19-16 64.9 Week 4 SEA W 37-6 100.5 Week 5 BUF W 40-7 101.2 Week 6 @ARI W24-23 10.2 Week 7 Bye Week 8 SF W41-10 137.4 Week 9 MIA L 31-13 36.8 Week 10 @NYG W38-20 105.7 Week 11 @NYJ W 10-0 81.4 Week 12 @NE L 17-13 23.6 Week 13 MIN W23-13 1.3 Week 14 @STL W42-27 114.4 Week 15 TB W34-31(OT) 104.3 Week 16 @DET W26-21 80.4 Week 17 GNB L 26-7 0 2006 Postseason Game Log DIVISIONAL SEA W27-24(OT) 76.9 CONFERENCE NO W 39-14 73.2 SUBERBOWL IND L 29-17 68.3

Ok, here's my question. Say the 2 of them perform roughly equal in training camp. Each throws a pick or two and a touchdown or two, their QB ratings are close, there's really no obvious advantage in the numbers or in the way they look to picking either of them. Which do you go with?

Before he got hurt, I thought Rex at least had a good game or two as well. Was I imagining that? Either way, as long as whoever starts has to earn the spot, I'm game for it.

How many chances has Grossman had where he actually was put on the line and failed? As far as I can tell, most of his problems have been injury related. Thats why he was out in 04, 05, etc. Last year was the first time he was really told that he had to show significant improvement rapidly or he'd lose his job. He lost his job after a couple games, came back in after Griese got hurt, performed fairly well IIRC, and then got hurt again. His 06 campaign he performed very well for the first half of the season and was at least decent in a couple playoff games, I think it's hard to say that he lost a chance that season. I count exactly 1 chance he was given where he failed and the team deservedly benched him.

Over @ ESPN they have a piece up looking at the status of Anderson and Quinn which takes a look at the contract status of Quinn. The interesting thing is...it doesn't cost the Browns much in terms of salary to keep him sitting on the bench because most of his money was performance bonuses which he won't reach on the bench. In other words...the Browns don't need to move him to avoid cap hits if he isn't playing and if Anderson is playing well. Therefore, they can wait until they get the right package offered up for either of them or until one or the other blows up or gets hurt.

With the sheer number of draft picks the Bears had this year, along with the sheer number of RB's and WR's currently on their roster...at some point we're going to start running out of roster spots for the season. Either we're going to be cutting someone we don't want to cut or we're going to be unable to bring these guys in to start because they know the team won't have room for them. The classic redshirt IR trick will help with a couple guys I'm sure, but the Bears are already throwing a lot of roster spots at a handful of key O positions to try to solve problems with depth.

Here's a version from the SI universe.

At which point...we swap Vasher or Tillman to some team with an extra QB and bam, all the Bears problems are solved!

Urlacher for Brady/P. Manning. Get it done JA!