bradjock

IMO you're confusing two different arguments. It doesn't matter whether it was a legal injustice, what matters is: 1. He repeatedly embarrassed the franchise. Maybe this is bad luck on Cedric's part, but he did. 2. Angelo likely told him, "Don't be out late. Don't party in public. If you do bad things will likely happen." He said something similar to this to Tank, and Tank was released. (He also told Tank to be careful who he hangs out with. I'm convinced Benson needs to stay away from his Mom, since she's always in the picture when he gets arrested.) Cedric was told he'd be fired if he put himself in a position where he could be accused of doing something wrong. He did and now he's gone. The end.

I heard on the SCORE today that Jones is supposed to have an open work-out for NFL teams on June 28th or something like that. If he's healthy, I'd love to see us take a chance on him. That being said, it's mind-boggling how many good running-backs are looking for work right now. Jones, Rhodes, Henry, Alexander, Ron Dayne (I could be wrong about that) and now Benson. I can't think of any other position where so much talent is available. Especially when the Giants won the Super Bowl using 4 different running-backs a ton throughout the course of the season. I personally don't see us signing anybody. Forte supposedly looks great. AP is ok, reliable, and consistent. The biggest question mark is Wolfe. If we think Wolfe can contribute, why do we need a 4th back who's a big-name? Angelo stressed TEAM in his press-conference.

It's easy for the lawyer to say that when nobody can see the video. I'm a skeptic. If I hear someone is out at 3:00-4:00 in the morning, if they're not doing something work related or there is an emergency, I think they're probably drunk, stoned, or up to no good. I'd think that if it was Urlacher, Lovie, or JA. That's probably not fair, but that's just how I view things. Either way, I'm sure Angelo told Cedric, if you're going to be out late, you'd better be invisible or we'll dump you.

Yes. I bashed Cedric pretty hard after the boating incident. Since then we heard the stories about how he came into camp much leaner and faster and how he's going to do all the off-season workouts with the team. In other words, maybe Cedric had finally woken up with a changed attitude. Heck, I was starting to get excited about the one-two punch of him and Forte. With two years left on his contract, maybe Cedric figured out that the world doesn't revolve around him. Now this happens, and predictably Cedric brings out the bullshit excuse of "not my fault." Cedric has a history of blaming other people and making excuses. This tells me Cedric's never going to get it.

Huh??? If you're innocent you should refuse it? Either way, Cedric saying this is far from shocking. So far with Cedric we've had: 1. Draft day he cried because he said he was put under unfair scrutiny. 2. He openly complained that his teammates were out to get him and that his offensive line wouldn't block for him (unfair) 3. The was mistreated and pepper-sprayed unfairly when he was sober not doing anything wrong. 4. He aced a field sobriety test but was unfairly asked to give a breathalizer. Cedric has a history of claiming "not my fault!" This just seems like more of his typical BS.

Kevin Payne--I'd heard on the SCORE we want him to replace Brendon Ayenbadejo on special teams. This could be the reason he's not getting much of a chance at SS. Danieal Manning--What happened to him playing nickel-back and replacing RMJ? Steltz--My guess is we're preparing for him to inevitably replace Mike Brown. Rather then start him at SS, then move him to FS in week two, just keep him working on FS for when the inevitable happens. (Mike Brown injury)

They talk about his "technique" . . . at this point isn't that a nice way of saying he's not very good? How many times has he been given the chance to start in previous situations and lost the job? Several. Metcalf's an NFL back-up at best. I don't blame the guy for that. He is what he is. I'm pissed at JA and the coaching staff for trying to say he might be our starting LG next season. That's not fair to Metcalf and it's not fair to the fans.

When we drafted Enis, I remember the Chicago media saying, "There are 5 'can't miss' guys in this draft, and the Bears are going to get one of them!" Those can't miss guys turned out to be: 1. P Manning--Turned out ok 2. Leaf--wow 3. Adre Wadsworth--Almost as bad as leaf 4. Charles Woodsen--Turned out ok 5. Enis--See Wadsworth I got this from the NFL.com site http://www.nfl.com/draft/history/fulldraft...mp;round=round1 I always find it fascinating to look at these things once in a while. Like for instance the Medicine Woman was a 3rd round pick to Jacksonville just ahead of Brian Griese and well ahead of Matt Hasselback, who went in the 6th round. Heck, I'd forgotten R.W. McQuarters was a 1st rounder.

It was reported that Lloyd is running with the first team offense since Mark Bradley got hurt. Now we're rumored to want to cut him??? How do you sign a some-what high profile guy in March and cut him in May without any reason? It's not going to happen. If he sucks, cut him September 1st. There's no point in dumping him now. I'm one of the few guys who are genuinely optimistic about Lloyd. We're hearing how Bennett & Monk are catching everything. Don't we hear that every year from some WR who gets cut? Can they run routes? Can they block? I'm happy as hell to hear good things about them, but I'm not counting on much from them. Is Monk better then Hass who also catches everything?

Agreed. We're paying him under 2 million this year. If he can be productive he's well worth. If he sucks in training camp that's a different story. Although paying him over 4 million next year is ridiculous. But I see know reason to make a move now.

I love stealing. ESPN can talk all they want. Most Bears fans are thrilled with what Olsen's shown. Here it is: Bears' Olsen didn't live up to billing By KC Joyner ESPN Insider (Archive) Updated: May 14, 2008 Comment Email Print Because we have covered every passing position except tight end in the "best of/worst of" 2007 series so far, it seems only right to review that position in this week's segment. The previous installments detailed the vertical impact of various players, but for this article I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how well each tight end performs when he is flexed out as a wide receiver. Glossary of terms There are usually only a few tight ends who have high pass-attempt totals, so the qualifying mark here is 48 total attempts (i.e., an average of three overall attempts per game, regardless of whether the tight end was flexed out). The yardage totals once again include "pass in the air" penalty attempts and yards (i.e., penalty yards from pass interference, defensive holding, illegal contact, etc., have been added to each player's receiving yardage stats). (I did make a qualifying exception for Quinn Sypniewski of the Ravens. Sypniewski had only 47 attempts, so he technically wouldn't have qualified, but I wanted to see the potential impact his loss to a knee injury for the 2008 season could have on Baltimore and thus decided to include him.) Let's start by taking a look at the flex tight end totals from 2007 on a yards-per-attempt basis. Because only 25 tight ends had enough attempts to be considered qualifiers, we'll just list the entire group rather than break it up into top 10/bottom 10. Rank Player 2007 Team WR Att WR Yds WR YPA 1. Heath Miller Pittsburgh 14 189 13.5 2. Vernon Davis San Francisco 11 132 12.0 3. Zach Miller Oakland 12 124 10.3 4. Owen Daniels Houston 18 181 10.1 5. Ben Watson New England 27 263 9.7 6. Jason Witten Dallas 33 308 9.3 7. Tony Scheffler Denver 28 261 9.3 8. Antonio Gates San Diego 68 594 8.7 9. Tony Gonzalez Kansas City 59 482 8.2 10. Kellen Winslow Cleveland 105 849 8.1 11. Chris Cooley Washington 51 400 7.8 12. Desmond Clark Chicago 16 122 7.6 13. Jeremy Shockey N.Y. Giants 35 262 7.5 14. Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 43 321 7.5 15. Dallas Clark Indianapolis 62 447 7.2 16. Eric Johnson New Orleans 29 204 7.0 17. David Martin Miami 15 98 6.5 18. Randy McMichael St. Louis 13 73 5.6 19. Quinn Sypniewski Baltimore 20 112 5.6 20. Alge Crumpler Atlanta 15 83 5.5 21. Jeff King Carolina 44 223 5.1 22. Bo Scaife Tennessee 25 118 4.7 23. Greg Olsen Chicago 30 137 4.6 24. Bubba Franks Green Bay 3 4 1.3 25. Marcedes Lewis Jacksonville 4 0 0.0 The top wide receivers in a season will typically average somewhere around 10 YPA, so the top 10 in this group does a terrific job as faux wideouts. On an individual basis, Benjamin Watson and Heath Miller stand out because of their improvement in this category over their 2006 totals. Miller nearly doubled his 6.8 YPA and Watson added more than 2 yards to his 7.4 total. Two big-name tight ends who underperformed as wide receivers were Randy McMichael and Alge Crumpler, but they have historically performed badly in this area (McMichael had a 4.2 YPA in 2006, Crumpler 6.2). So this showing was not unexpected. Player 2007 Team % of att Kellen Winslow Cleveland 74.5% Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 71.7% Dallas Clark Indianapolis 66.0% Antonio Gates San Diego 62.4% Jeff King Carolina 58.7% Ben Watson New England 55.1% Eric Johnson New Orleans 49.2% Chris Cooley Washington 48.1% Greg Olsen Chicago 46.2% Tony Scheffler Denver 43.1% One player whose poor showing does come as a surprise is Greg Olsen. Olsen had highly touted receiving skills coming out of the University of Miami, and it was thought that he would be able to serve quite effectively as an alternate wide receiver in the Bears' offense. It turns out Olson wasn't even Chicago's best flex tight end; Desmond Clark notched nearly as many yards as Olson (122 to 137) on just more than half as many attempts. The other item of note is how often Kellen Winslow was thrown to from a flexed position. His 105 attempts nearly equaled the flex attempt totals of Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez combined. They were also 74.5 percent of his overall attempts. That seems like a phenomenal total, and it led me to wonder how Winslow compares with other tight ends in this category. The top 10 in that area are above. It turns out that Winslow's number is very impressive, but it doesn't quite put him in a class by himself. Chris Baker's 71.7 percent showing here and his equal showing to Jeremy Shockey in the flex YPA total may be indicators as to why Baker feels his value to the Jets is higher than the team seems to think it is. One other barometer of flex tight end performance is how well these players perform as flex tight ends versus when they're lined up as a standard tight end. I decided to track this on a plus/minus YPA basis, with "plus" meaning that the player did better when flexed out. Here are those totals: Player 2007 Team TE as WR +/- Vernon Davis San Francisco 6.3 Heath Miller Pittsburgh 5.2 Zach Miller Oakland 3.9 Ben Watson New England 3.6 Dallas Clark Indianapolis 1.8 Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 1.6 Jason Witten Dallas 1.5 Owen Daniels Houston 1.3 Eric Johnson New Orleans 1.2 Quinn Sypniewski Baltimore 1.0 Kellen Winslow Cleveland 0.8 Chris Cooley Washington 0.8 Tony Scheffler Denver 0.7 Jeremy Shockey N.Y. Giants 0.5 David Martin Miami 0.3 Tony Gonzalez Kansas City -0.1 Antonio Gates San Diego -0.8 Jeff King Carolina -0.8 Desmond Clark Chicago -1.3 Bo Scaife Tennessee -1.3 Randy McMichael St. Louis -1.6 Alge Crumpler Atlanta -1.8 Greg Olsen Chicago -2.4 Marcedes Lewis Jacksonville -7.8 Bubba Franks Green Bay -8.3 If this chart is any indicator, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Oakland should do all they can to flex their guys out more often. KC Joyner, aka the Football Scientist, is a regular contributor to ESPN Insider. His core coverage metrics for all skill-position players and cornerbacks will be available in the ESPN Fantasy Football Magazine, which will be released this summer. His 2008 releases, "Scientific Football 2008" and "Blindsided: Why The Left Tackle is Overrated and Other Contrarian Football Thoughts," are available for preorder. For more, check out KC's Web site, www.thefootballscientist.com.

Before the 2007 season EVERYONE had us as winning the NFC North and most had us as 1 or 2 in the NFC. We were universally pre-ranked as being a top-10 team. PREDICTION WRONG! Before the 2006 season, who picked the Bears to run away with the NFC? Most considered 2005 a fluke, and we were ranked in the teens. PREDICTION WRONG! Before 2005, Dr. Z picked us to be the worst in the NFL. Most others just ranked us in the 20's. We finish as the #2 team in the NFC. PREDICTION WRONG! Before 2004: Most thought we'd suck, and we REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY SUCKED! Prediction correct. Talk is cheap. Words are plentiful. I love reading the predictions, but I'm not going to get pissed about them since 75% of the time they are wrong.

I heard this on the SCORE, so I don't presume to be original, but I thought this summed it up: The water-cops asked Cedric to step onto their boat. He refused. If he doesn't say no--the situation doesn't escalate. Period. Lets say your driving a car and you get stuck in a "safety check" (which has happened to me on several occassions in IL). Innocent or not, if the cop ever asked me to step out of the car & I refused, they'd immediately call for back-up and I'd probably be dragged out by my neck and make the high-light real on COPS. Tank Johnson threw a fit when they asked him to move his limo & John Gilmore was arrested for pot after he refused to leave a tavern (both a few years ago.) If it's you or me, nobody gives a damn. If it's an NFL player, PFT resets their "days without an arrest meter" What I'm saying is that right or wrong, by Cedric not being complient, he put himself in a bad situation. I don't know how in the hell they could have arrested him for driving the boat drunk, when he wasn't even driving the boat at the time.

Agreed. Not to mention the embarrassment factor. First he had the child custody dispute that made all the papers. Which that's not a big deal either way, just like what Cedric did is not a big deal. This is probably true of most NFL teams, but it sucks when all the news stories about your team is negative in a non-football related way. But getting back to Urlacher, his anger with the local media makes him seem half-nuts. He started a blog a foxsports.com??? I'm guessing chicagobears.com was THRILLED about that. Now he's telling the media he won't report to mini-camp 18 days before it even starts. Why is he even talking to the media??? How important is mini-camp for these veterans anyway? It didn't hurt Lance missing 2 years in a row. If I'm Angelo, I'd tell him to quit making an arse out of himself and then we'll talk.

By well do you mean running straight up the middle into a huge pile and failling backwards? I agree with you on this: the coaching staff greatly misused him last season. I really don't know what to make of him since he didn't play much, and when he did he was ineffective. Of course when your offense is pathetic . . .

Agreed with the Gould deal. Yes we paid a helluva a lot for a kicker, but isn't it worth it??? Seriously. If healthy our defense should be among the best in the league. Our special teams are the best in the league. Yet our offense is still a big question mark. That means we're likely to have a bunch of close games (assume Rex doesn't throw the game away). Having a guy who's been as consistent as Gould is flat out critical. I also have to agree with Harris. Sure I'd be happy as hell if we signed him, but essentially we have him for 2 more years. It'd have to be pretty bad for us not to franchise him. With Rosenass as his agent, I'm assuming this will drag out the way Lance's deal dragged. My guess is that our focus should be on signing Hester. Eugene Parker is a helluva a lot easier to deal with (unless his client is Cedric Benson.) Hester is only making around $700,00??? (don't quote me on that. I pulled it out of my arse) Either way, it's a much less then he could be making. With two more years of making comparitive chump change, I can't imagine he wouldn't be very motivated to get paid now.

Great job Tom! Please keep these up! A few things I'd comment on: 1. I agree with Az that we won't miss Moose, but I'd be disagreeing if we hadn't signed Marty Booker. 2. I hope like hell Cedric truly has had a wake-up call. Yes, I haven't hated a Bear player this much since the Cade McNown days, but if he could not suck this season, that'd be great. 3. I don't know about the Chris Williams & Fred Miller. Sure it's good Williams isn't looking over his shoulder, but how smart is it to throw a rookie into the 2nd most difficult offensive position? 4. Finding a guy to replace Kreutz is like the Packers drafting Aaron Rogers 3 years ago to replace Favre. It won't happen until Kreutz is ready.

It's TERRIFIC to see us rewarding our own guys who've performed. Heck, he's 25 now so he'll be 31 when this contract expires??? Not bad.

I can't argue that the 2nd fullback spot is a waste. But yet we typically keep one on the 53 man roster. I could be wrong, but I just figure we'll continue having that guy. In 3rd and short situations, don't you REALLY need that guy who plows the way for the running-back? Or at least acts like a decoy?

I'll try to explain why I loathe the player right now, and then I'll happily drop it. The difference between Rex & Cedric is that Rex at least gives the impression that he cares. That's the minimum I ask from any Bear: At least PRETEND like you care. Cedric is a "Me-first" guy. From his crying on draft day because he was misunderstood, to "I can't play because I have my future to worry about," to his complaining that his teammates treated him unfairly, to most recently he says he doesn't have anything to prove. I'm sure other players think this way, but know better then to say it to the media. Honestly, this whole police episode seems like just one more episode of "poor me, poor Cedric." (Just for the record, I think both sides are telling the truth. Cedric was drunk/stoned, belligerent & mouthy, and then the police used excessive force . . . IMO both parties screwed up. Good luck to that jury.) Heck, I'd be happy if we didn't hear Cedric's name again until the end of July.

I agree, but I'm still shocked that Jacksonville gave a 4th for Williamson, and even more shocked that Dallas gave a 4th for Pac-Man. That is flat out nuts on both parts.

I have to disagree. Ever since Ron Turner's returned, we've carried 2 FB's on the 53 man roster, always keeping the #2 inactive on game day. Now that John Gilmore is gone, doesn't it make having a full-back who lead blocks even more important? (That's assuming we keep the TE we drafted in the 5th round, who's name escapes me, as our 3rd TE. He seems to be more of a receiver then a blocker.) Of course if Wolfe, Forte, or AP get hurt, it could decide that.

I watched that hoping to see him being beaten. Needless to say, I was dissappointed.

Marty Booker, Mark Bradley, Brandon Lloyd, Devin Hester, Edgar Bennett, Rashied Davis . . . unless there's an injury, those are the six we'll keep on the 53 man roster (I expect Monk to get the IR treatement & Haas to be cut). If Robinson couldn't help the Packers, he's not going to help this team. It seemed like they wanted him more for his return ability then anything else. That's a no.

Why do I get the feeling Cedric was holding hands with the dude next to him right before that picture was taken? Cedric has been a worthless piece of crap on this team for 3 years. It's stupid, but it pisses me off the bastard looks so damn happy in that picture. That piece of shit deserves whatever he got just for sucking.