balta1701-A

If there's going to be a "who are you" thread for the people from BearsTalk to ID themselves, then as one of the mods here, I'd like to add this thread as a place for everyone to say hello. Welcome to this way of organizing the words "Bears" and "Talk"! I'm one of the guys who came over from Soxtalk when this board was created, and it'll certainly be nice to have some new minds around here to pick!

I think that after the last game, one thing the Bears really need to do is to get this Devin Hester guy as much playing time at WR during games as humanly possible. He seems pretty good. He caught a few passes last week, and for some reason people seem really intimidated by him. The work might be useful for him, even if it's only Orton throwing to him. Perhaps they could get into one of those rhythms together. Seriously, if Hester is going to play WR for this team next year, and if he's as big of a threat as they think he can be, go crazy with him the last 4 weeks for playing time. Stick him in as many sets as he can, and if nothing else let him practice.

I'm going to join in the group of people saying that the Bears have no need to spend a draft pick on a RB this offseason. If nothing else, I think almost everyone here can say that the play of the Bears O-Line was uniformly bad this year, and I've seen enough poor running backs look good behind a good O-Line to say that there's no reason to blow more cap space on another RB. On top of that, over and over again we see teams finding a RB off the scrap heap, undrafted, or late rounder guys, and when you stick them behind a solid O-Line and give them a decent passing attack they go crazy. IMO, if the Bears see a QB they really like in round 1, I'd be willing to accept that. But this is supposed to be a deep year for O-Linemen. Keep Tait as your core, take whichever LT remaining when you draft sits at the top of your board unless somehow all the potential first round guys vanish befor ethe Bears pick, and give some strong consideration to spending the cap room on a guy like Faneca, to give you some veteran peaking muscle on that same side at the guard position. Give both the QB and the RB a solid O-Line and see what happens.

Rex has continued the 08 season talk now surrounding the Bears with this statement. Well, he'd certainly have the chance to compete for a starting job in Chicago. The question is, would he be happy to do so on a 1 or 2 year deal?

Well, if the old threads are gone, figure I might as well revive one or two of them on various subjects. Tribune.

NFL.com: Brown is done for the season.

Jones was the 7th overall pick by the Cards back in 00. 2 picks after him...some team picked up this Urlacher dude.

To some lesser extent I'm willing to tolerate things like that...i mean, even LT had one I remember bouncing off his hands thinking "Yeah he should have had that". On the other hand, you had Benson saving Grossman from a fumble on that ill-advised backwards pass that Benson brought in one handed. A running back can not fumble the ball. That is the issue. You can put up with a couple per season, but that's all. The Bears had 2 in a game. Thomas Jones was never considered a good back before he got to the Bears in part because he kept fumbling the ball; it wasn't until he got to the Bears that he started holding onto the ball for a full season except for 1 or 2.

Honestly, just from watching the game yesterday, I wasn't too unhappy with Benson's performance, except for, you know, 1 play. Yes, his YPC wasn't thrilling, but on the other hand, it's not like the defense he was going against was a bunch of scrubs either. He banged in there, worked hard, and very rarely got stopped for a loss. Usually you'd give him the ball and wind up with a minimum of 2-3 yards it seemed to me. The issue of course...is the fumble.

Well, the key for me is that there are different levels of "Those games". Rex's biggest problem last year was that when he had one of "Those games", he'd guarantee a loss. Like 4 TO's or something ridiculous like that. YOu simply can't win games when your QB does that unless you're playing the Cardinals. If Rex can slightly better some of "those games", where if he comes out and has a bad game he throws 2 INT's and has a lot of INC's but doesn't give the game away, then he'll wind up a pro bowl QB.

In the games I did see, I wasn't a huge fan of Davis last year, but as a end-of-the line option we could probalby do wors.e I can't really speak about Haas yet...since I really havent' seen him yet. But if he winds up being a quality receiving option during the regular season, there's no reason not to use him.

I really wonder how much of this is the Bears simply being too loaded on young, quality draft picks when looking at the 53 man roster. I bet that neither of those guys would have been put on IR had there been 60 man rosters; the Bears probably just figured they'd miss a couple games for some reason, and decided the team would be better off basically red shirting them.

Tribune

The AP gives a good rundown of all the subplots between the Bears and Chargers this week. LT's commercial, the 2 Turners, the return of the ex D-Coordinator, etc.

There usually seem to be enough people @ pages that care about these things, so here come the preseason rankings. Peter King, SI: Bears #5 Yahoo Sports:Bears #5 Curt Menefee, FoxSports: Bears #3 Peter Schrager, Fox Sports: Bears #6 MSNBC.com: Bears #4 Pete Prisco, CBSSportsline: Bears #10 ESPN.com: Bears #4

Former Bears' QB Coach Wade Wilson is going to be serving a 5 game suspension for having purchased and used human growth hormone last fall. The NFL says he only purchased it for personal use and not to distribute. This is the same investigation which left Rodney Harrison of the Patriots suspended for 4 games.

20 year old Aurora Man arrested for stalking the playmate currently dating Archuleta. Welcome to Chicago Adam!

Leon Joe snapped up by Tampa

Ok, how about this time...Rex holds onto the ball, nobody gets hurt, and nobody gets arrested?

If Tommie is going to play vs. S.D., it certainly wouldn't be a bad thing for that to not be his first in-game action, just so that he has a little bit more confidence in that leg.

In other words...they should stop doing stupid things, but until they do something really stupid, there's nothing we can do to make them stop doing stupid things...so they might as well enjoy them. I understand what you're saying here, just trying to play Devil's advocate. If the team really wants their guys to stop doing stupid things, then they have to make a big deal when players do even small stupid things.

So...the question is...other than saying "you ought to stop doing stupid things"...should anything be done to encourage these guys to not do stupid things? (and hence, back to the poll question )

So the whole "Leaving the scene of an accident" charge doesn't do anything for you?

I think the most noteworthy part of this first round of cuts is that it seems Mike Hass has won the 6th receiver derby.

So...what does this site think?