Pixote

Back in 1970 when the Miami Dolphins hired don Shula away from the Baltimore Colts, the Colts accussed the Dolphins of tampering to lure Shula away and the NFL agreed and forced the Dolphins to give the Colts their 1st round draft selection. I am sure there must be some other examples out there but that is the only one that comes to my mind as I lived just a little under a 100 miles from Baltimore back then.

Thanks Mad Man, this Old Man appreciates your kind words.

Great to see you back LT By the way, I usually do check my email on a daily basis. It is just that I have been having some health problems coupled with a heavy work schedule which in turn is complicated because I was promoted at work and am busting my ass to make sure I impress the hell out of those who made the decision to give me chance to step up. At the time you were having the problems which led to the misunderstandings I seldom even turned on the computer. Things are getting a bit easier at work, feeling a bit more secure in the new position, so that has taken a load off my mind. I assure you I will be more attentive in the future. You are certainly a valued member of the forum! I would not want you or any other member of this forum for 1 minute to think I do not value everyones participation at TalkBears.

He also felt the Admins and Mods for the forums did not show proper respect for the opinions & input of the posters. I would hope he is the only one who feels this way. I assure you all the Admins and Mods have nothing but the utmost respect for the posters and their input into the operation of the forum. A forum is only as good as its posters. We have the best group of fans posting at this site to be found on the entire Internet. I am totally convinced of this. We value each and every posters opinion and input. We (as posters) may disagree with your opinions about the Bears as you may disagree with ours, however, we (as Admins & Mods) take all suggestions (input) about the operation of the forum very very seriously. We may move slow at times because many of us have hectic schedules. However, I assure you we do listen and we will try and make sure the majority is served. Obviously, there is no way in some instances everyone will be satisfied because of the diversity of our community.

Because of a disagreement he had with some of the policies of the forum (ie moving threads) he requested his salary cap analysis be deleted. I honored his request.

You may be right. We picked up Booker and LLoyd, have Bradley & Hester who the Bears Brass are high in, and Haas who I would love to see get more reps. If we add a WR near the top of the draft and maybe another near the end of the draft I think we will be fine. Especially with us wanting Olsen to get more looks and Clark having such a good year in 2007. Also, I am sure JA is expecting more WRs will be cut from teams between now and season startup. These WRs will come cheap as they will have little time to negotiate. Could be some good bargains there that are better than the ones we are looking at now. I was high on picking up Hackett but he has had a lot of injury problems, we already are concerned about Bradley, who has great potential, but has had injury problems. I guess it makes sense not to pick up another WR with the same problems.

It seems this collapsed thread (outline) display on the Talkbears forum is the one issue that has cost us the most as far as posters from the old Bearstalk migrating over to this forum. I know I miss it very much myself. I have gone back a few times and viewed the old site and the site that the owners of the old site are transferring posters to. You will see a few posters saying this site sucks and is not for them. When I email them they almost always mention they do not like the collapsed thread mode. Even some of the posters who did come over to TalkBears from BearsTalk (in addition to TD) have said they do not post as much because they do not like the outline mode. We have to remember that hundreds of posters who went to the old site went there for many reasons. Most because of the great group of fans we had there. However some joined because they liked the linear threads.

Lloyd, I have deleted your salary cap post as you requested. I showed you no disrespect. I received your email Monday. I worked M-S of this week, this is my first day off since getting your email. I do not check my email daily, but I see it was dated the 12th. Every day this week I got up at 4:30 AM and left the house for work by 5:30 AM. Every day I returned to my home between 6:45 & 7:15 PM. Back to bed between 8 & 8:30 PM. I took awhile trying to figure out today just how to delete a post, finally found all the Admin options and deleted your post. First time I had to use these controls. I truly do not understand why you are upset. You explained it to me in the email & you have posted your opinions on the forum. Still does not make sense to me. There is a poll up to get feedback from the users of the site as to how they would like the forums to be structured. I am sure when the results are in there will be some changes made. It appears that many (16 out of 20) want just about everything NFL related left in the Bearstalk forum 8 wanting the NFL forum closed entirely. So if you feel disrespected because I did not take time to interrupt my hectic schedule to delete your article, I do not apologize. I did the best I could for you. If you feel slighted because an admin promised you a poll in 2 hrs and it took 12, well, maybe that admin had good reason. The main thing is he did what he said, he posted a poll. It wasn't until recent that anyone really raised much objection. It was clearly time to get feedback. We are getting it. Adjustments will be made if warranted. ALL admins do care about what our posters opinions. You want respect. Well so do I. Everyone here does. Most everyone here shows respect for each other. We are a community as nfo said, or a family as I have always referred to the forum. If you do not feel that way then you are missing out on something special. I feel sorry for you. I will not get into the reasons for the move or the details involved. I have gone into that before. I will say that no one was lied to. No one was misled. If there was any misrepresentation I assure you it was unintentional. The move was absolutely necessary. Many made it over. Most decided they liked it enough to stay and give it a try. Some did not like it and left. I hope you stay. It's your choice.

You can not trade a compensatory pick.

I understand your point and agree to an extent, but do you want Bradley and Hester to be handed the starting positions or have to compete for them with the best WR winning the starting job? If Bradley and Hester are ready to be productive WRs in the NFL, let them prove it on the field. It is not like we are bringing in Randy Moss and Terrell Owens for them to compete with.

On the website FootballsFuture.com there is an interesting article/post from a guy who likes to make this prediction every year entitled Projecting the 2008 Compensatory Picks. He is saying he projects the Bears will get 3 7th round picks. Interesting information on how the picks are awarded. 3 7th rounders would be nice. Every year there are players every team are rushing to sign because they feel they could be worth a tryout but were not drafted. This would give the Bears a chance on taking a flyer on 3 of those players without having to compete for them after the draft is over. Never know what you may find.

I would go for Darrell Jackson as well. Not sure if he would be an upgrade, but certainly would be a good option for our O. Others I would not mind seeing (assuming they were cheap cheap) are DJ Hackett, Eric Moulds, & Peerless Price. Still need to draft a WR to develop, the key word is develop. How many rookie WRs actually contribute much year one.

My understanding is if the case goes to the NFL they may lose a draft pick &/or be fined but the Bears would get nothing. However, I also understand that the 49ers could settle with the Bears before it is heard by the NFL. Exactly what the 49ers would give us to avoid it going to the NFL? Guess it depends if they feel they would lose the case and what they feel the NFL would do if they found on the side of the Bears.

Article from Chicago Sun-Times by Brad Biggs:

When I read: It sounds to me Fitz is wanting the new deal, it says the Cards would be willing to have him play out his contract, that does not sound to me that it was the Cards asking for a redo of the contract.

My Lord, you mean this guys is due to make 32 million dollars over the next 2 years and he is wanting to redo his contract? I am sorry, but this is getting totally insane!

Good point, 4 Great Moves, then add 8 more: Extension of Rex Grossman at a very reasonable contract Extension of Kyle Orton cheap Extension of D Clark Extension of A Brown Cut B Griese Cut F Miller Cut Moose Cut D Walker For those wanting to kick Angelo's ass, I personally think he is doing a good job and I am sure he is far from finished!

From Fantasy Insider Online:

Yep, I agree, he has had far greater success on defense than offense. I think every GM has their strenghts and weaknesses. JA has done an excellent job picking up defensive players, resigning our better players to extensions, managing the cap, day two draft picks, ..... He has done pretty bad drafting first round and developing offense. He did however take a team that really really sucked and got us to the Super Bowl. We lost, but we got there and I have no doubt we will return. I feel last year was more of an abberation than reality. I do not think I have ever seen the Bears suffer so many injuries to starters on defense as we did last year. Our offensive line all of a sudden went from being a very strong unit in 2006 to crap in 2007, something I do not think any of us expected and I am sure Angelo & Smith did not either. With the OL playing as bad as it did there was no way we were going to have a successful running game. We could also not expect our QBs to play very good while getting killed by pass rushers coming through in many cases untouched. If a QB has no protection, guess you can not expect WRs to look great as far as numbers go either. I think if we can stay reasonably healthy and fix our OL, we are in a lot better shape than many believe. We are no where near as bad as we looked in 2007.

It would appear we have some posters here that should change their username to "Chicken Little". Man, we have so much time before the Draft, FA has just started, teams will be making trades and cutting players, we have what, 6 - 7 months left before the season starts? Bears fans, rest assured, the sky is not falling, Jerry Angelo & Lovie Smith are well aware we need to pick up some WRs, and know all the weaknesses of the Bears that need filling, they know which players they need to keep on the team through extensions, they know what our salary cap is and I am sure are going to do everything they can to get us ready for the 2008 season. Maybe we should give them a chance to do their job. We will have plenty of time to judge their success later.

I am amazed we got a trade done, period. It was obvious to everyone in the league we were going to cut him before the 300K bonus came into effect soon. We need to open up a spot for a QB in the draft to develop behind Rex & Kyle. Hopefully it turns out to be higher than a 6th or 7th but if not, well, something is definitely better than nothing.

I agree about St Clair. As a tackle he sucked IMO. However, it seemed that when he played at OG he found his calling. He was actually very impressive in that role and if given the reps at OG in preparation for 2008 he could be an excellent player for us in that position. I am not sure on Starks. If he is only an option at ROT then I question the move because even though Tait is "ok" at LOT, his age is catching up to him and it might benefit him to move back to his natural position at ROT. The draft has some outstanding LOT prospects. I would hate to see the Bears pass up on one of these hard to find Gems. I think to get Starks we would have to give him "starter" money, and if he started at ROT we would have Tait at LOT and if we drafted a stud LOT he would be on the bench for awhile, something you would not normally do with a top draft selection. I know it would give him time to develop. The other option would be, I guess, to trade Tait. He should fetch a decent return and good OLT/ORT veterans even at his age are valued by teams looking for solution to OL problems. Is there a team in need of a player like Tait who is looking to trade a WR or RB that would be of interest to us?

Not really knowing the guy I went to FootballsFuture.com and clicked on Combine Results, then on the link for Defensive Backs and found that Zbikowski was timed, on a fast track and ideal conditions, 4.52 for the 40. I know nothing about the guy. Maybe he just had a bad day. If this is his typical speed, sounds like more of a strong safety for a traditional 4-3 defense. However, Mike Brown when healthy is a kick ass safety and he was never accused of being a speed merchant! (4.52 is not really that bad when you look at the times of all the other safety prospects. He also had 24 reps, again, impressive for a safety.)

In the Chicago Suntimes Article about the Briggs deal it gave a lot of interesting information. First, Briggs accepted very close to what we originally offered him: The Chicago Tribune Article gave a different number on the contract: It also appears according to the SunTimes we will also see some more contract extensions for the Bears in addition to working out a possible deal for Urlacher: WR, yep we are still interested: Bottom line, now that the wait to see what JA can do to keep Briggs/Berrian is over, I think JA will now be able to move forward.

During the 2007 season every time he dropped a pass, and he dropped as many passes as his "wow" catches, everyone was screaming how we should get rid of the bum. When he missed blocking assignments there were posters wanting us to cut him. Now that the season is over the same posters want to give him #1 WR money or franchise him and make him a king. The stupid thing would have been to overpay the guy. To be honest, I thought the Bears offered him too much as it was. When we traded Booker many were pissed. What did he do in Miami? When we lost Marcus Robinson to the Vikings many thought this was the end of the world, what did he do for Minny? Both Booker and MRob were damn better WRs than Berrian. If JA was, as you say, freakin stupid, for not franchising Berrian, thank God for stupidity, for I agree with JA all the way on this one, he was not worth a franchise tag and certainly not worth any where near what he signed for in Minny.