bradjock

3. I have noticed that Williams resembles Calvin Johnson. I am ok with Burress going to NYJ and have a feeling that Roy will have a stellar year. If Martz gives him the time on the field, I'll bet Roy is Cutler's favorite target. In Roy's worst season he put up 500+ yards. He's an NFL WR. 4. Spaeth came by way of Pittsburgh and played against the likes of Ray Lewis, Bart Scott and Ed Reed and practiced against James Harrison, LaMarr Woodley and Larey Foote. We know that Olsen couldn't block, something tells me Spaeth will hold his own. My only thing is, the real good blocking TE's and FB's have REALLY wide hips and stocky legs. This makes sense for blocking purposes. Spaeth looks like a WR. 6. Had just read an article about Cutler looking leaner. Good for him. That will help him overall. I'm worried Cutler spent too much time in holleywood and not enough time in the weight room. That being said, Forte looks great. 7. Who is this second "Bennett" you refer to or did you mean Hester? Hester. I didn't see Hester drop a single ball. That might be the only WR I can say that about. Nice hands and he gives a great effort. 8. Good to hear the Defense is having fun. Perhaps a by product of Marinelli and what we hear about how guys like playing for him? I hope so. More importantly, I hope Marinelli gets better results this year. Adding Okoye & Gholston, and Paea, he has lots of talent to work with. Were none of the other recent FA's there? I know they couldn't practice but figured that Williams being there may have been a few others. Yes there were others. For instance, Caleb Hanie was there but couldn't practice (which is a stupid rule). I didn't see Gholston, Okoye, are Barber, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. The Bears have 30+ guys I've never heard of who won't make the team which made it more difficult then usual.

I should have clarified. The offense spent a great deal of time on running routes and passing without the defense. You have 1 QB and 1 or 2 WR's on the field. That's it. At least half these passes were incomplete. Probably more. This includes all the QB's and all the WR's, but it was all pretty bad. I know it's only the 2nd day of practice and I shouldn't be pessimistic, but it was literally hard to watch. When the defense came on it got worse. Granted there weren't pads, but you'd have thought the only thing blocking Peppers was a giant pillow. Hester, Knox, and Bennett look better then any other WR's on the roster who was practicing. Knox and Hester are both listed as 6-0, when in reality they are closer to 5-7 and 5-9.

Just reading the Trib and they are saying Angelo doesn't act like he'll sign another o-lineman. If he was going to do that, wouldn't he have done it already? The Bears have not shown interest in signing a guard. We made offers to Colon & the LT from NO. No guards. Does this mean we're happy with Chris Williams at Guard? Unless something changes real quick, here's what we'll have: LT: The bad Frank Omiyale or rookie Carimi. Most experts project Carimi better suited to play RT. LG: The bad Chris Williams or the bad Lance Louis. C: Spencer: Most consider him worse then Kreutz. RG: Roberto Garza: I hope his age doesn't start to show RT: J Webb: He's a great story but I have never been impressed. The list of free agents is now very thin and we don't seem interested. Does anyone else feel sick?

This is the 10th year I've been to training camp and I enjoyed it as usual, although it was limited with no pads. 1. D.J. Moore was the first guy out and shook hands with people for 20 minutes. Good guy. 2. When practice was starting, I saw JA & Lovie having a serious discussion between the fields. Lovie then went to Tice. I figured then it was about Kreutz. 3. I saw Roy Williams and said, "holy shit." Damn he looks impressive. He's tall, lean, chiseled. While he didn't practice, he passes "the look" test. 4. Matt Spaeth is built like Greg Olsen. I don't see how he can be a great blocker. Manu was 6-0 300. Spaeth is 6-7 260. 5. There was no pads and the offense sucked. Bad passing, bad route running, lots of drops, bad, bad, bad. 6. Cutler looked better then Enderle who got a lot of work. Cutler looked far from great. It could be my imagination, but he looks leaner. 7. With no hitting, the main thing to watch was WR's. Bennett, Knox, & Bennett all looked pretty good. None of the other guys distinguished themselves. Sanzenbacher looks slow and had a couple drops. Fantuz did not stand out. Kris Adams looked fairly impressive. 8. The defense was so fun to watch and they are very vocal, particularly Briggs & Harris. They looked like they were playing against a JFL team. 9. It was also fun listening to Dave Toub coach up the special teams. They spent a considerable amount of time on these. 10. Got Major Wright's autograph. Sparse crowd today. I'm guessing there were 2500 people, roughly 1/3 of the size the last 2 times I've went.

I agree I get tired of the cheap angle. The Bears have spent. That being said, we've missed the boat on the major free agent signings. Our top free agent expenditure was the punter. While I praise the Bears for spending the last few years, I won't be happy if we go cheap this year.

Strange moves. I'm confused and flabbergasted at the Bear's moves. It's like we want to get as many cheap players as possible and figure out the mess later.

That's awesome! He's one helluva a special teamer and I still think he's good enough to start.

On one hand, that's one helluva a deal for Williams. On the other, the fact we paid so little is telling of how low the league thinks on him.

Getting what's likely to be a high 3rd for Olsen ain't bad. That being said, I'm leaning more and more towards your line of thinking. We've had FA for a week, and we've still got to be at least 30 million under the cap.

As per PFT. That means teams can stay far under the cap. Now I'm starting to get worried, especially when you consider: 1. We appear to be done adding offensive playmakers, essentially swapping Greg Olsen and Rashied Davis for Roy Williams & Sam Hurd. Not an upgrade. 2. Considering our d-line was mediocre, after letting Tommie go, I thought we'd add a quality guy to help Peppers. Instead we get Gholston. I have as many NFL sacks as he does. Seeing how we did nothing to improve Gaines Adams, I have no faith in Marinelli. Maybe Gholston will die and then we'll bring in a pro bowl DE. 3. Secondary--We let D Manning go, and we plan to replace him with Major Wright, who I don't think has finished a game without getting injured. Although we have Chris Conte and Craig Steltz waiting in the wings. 4. O-line--We have no sense of urgency to improve. Adding a good blocking TE will help, but I said the same thing when we added Manumaleuna. I know we can still add guys, but IMO we appear close to being done. While we were big spenders last year, we appear to be going cheap.

I don't know much about him, but why do we need him when we have Lance Louis? (please note intentional sarcasm)

We were likely going to sign one WR. I never had the impression we were impressed with Harvin, and I don't blame us for that. We also didn't think Santonio was worth it. I'd agree with that also. The WR's left were Sims-Walkers, Randy Moss, Malcolm Floyd, Braylon Edward, etc.. Roy Williams ain't much better or worse then any of these guys. Pick your poison. It ain't like Larry Fitzgerald was out there to be had.

What scares me about signing Gholsten is that I feel like we have room for one guy. That's it. Basically, we've dropped Tommie (who wasn't good) and we're replacing him with a 2nd round rookie. To me that ain't nearly enough of an upgrade. If we get Vernon and sign Jenkins, I'd be all for it.

Love you optimism and I agree. Although, I'm starting to get concerned about the o-line. What guy is out there we are looking at?

Some guy on the SCORE actually called in saying the same thing. Last I've heard, Sims-Walker wants the Bears, but the feeling is not mutual.

Marinelli's been with the team for over two seasons now and we repeatedly heard how great he is. Except, what the hell has he done? Linemen he's worked with: Tommie Harris--Did not improve and he was cut Jaron Gilbert--3rd round pick. He was bad and he was cut. Marcus Harrison--he's actually regressed under Marinelli Gaines Adams--he came here bad and didn't get better Julius Peppers looks good, and Idonije is somewhat effective playing opposite of him. Honestly, after 2 years, I have zero reason to believe that Marinelli's worth a damn at developing players.

First and foremost, him being in touch with the Bears doesn't mean a damn thing. However, that's interesting, and more importantly, don't we now have to sign not one but two WR's??? Since last year we lost: Greg Olsen (who played in the slot a bunch) Rashied Davis--nice fill in player Devin Aromoshadu--was bad, but at the start of the year we thought he'd be great. You figure we'll scrap the double TE's and run more 3 WR sets. Right now, we only have 3 NFL WR's on the roster. (Bennett, Hester, Knox). We need to add two. It could be we'll add Williams and Sims-Walker (which seems god awful).

Before the deal was made I was sitting there thinking, "Olsen for Steve Smith . . . " if the players name hasn't been mentioned, he probably ain't good. On one hand I agree, on the other, how much do you trust Martz? Hell, I defended Turner well past the bitter end. I was thrilled with the Martz signing. Having Cutler pass 50+ times the last game of the season against the Packers was unacceptable to the point I fear Martz is incompetent.

I just heard that on the SCORE. What did we get? Steve Smith???

Seeing that San Diego made Eric Weddle one of the highest paid safeties in football reminded me of how the Bears botched a perfect trade. During the 2007 Draft, the Chargers traded the 62nd pick, 93rd pick, a 2008 3rd & 5th rounder to move up to the 37th pick and select Weddle. I praised JA for getting a a 2nd, 2 3rds, and a 5th for a 2nd. Helluva a deal. Unless you use those picks to take Dan Bazuin, Garrett Wolfe, Kevin Payne, and Marcus Harrison. Yikes.

Justin Durant headed to Detroit, as per PFT.

True. I'm wondering what our plan is? We want Bushrod who is young and a very good LT. We seem to love J Webb and Carimi's our number 1 pick. Does this mean we're not sold on J Webb? Do we think Carimi should play guard? Are we convinced Chris Williams can play guard? We have a lot of interesting options at the tackle position, yet we have no interest in upgrading the guard spot. I'd be thrilled with Bushrod, but it seems to conflict with other moves. What is our plan?

Because this is a copy-cat league the fact that teams are putting more passing friendly guys in their Wildcat formations is inevitable. Disagree. This happened immediately, but overall, the wildcat was not very effective last year. Teams use it to hide bad/inexperienced QB's. Cutler can run and throw as well as any QB in the league. Why would we mess with the wildcat? Smith is not the end all be all but he is another asset the Bears can aqcuire that will keep Devin Hester's plate limited to returns and offensive plays. Either way, Hester's role in the wildcat are done IMO. If you have a talented QB, don't spend millions on a guy to take the ball out of his hands once or twice a game. Hopefully, when I attend TC this year I won't see Hester lined up in WC formations. I saw the training camp schedule. I can't wait to go!

Thanks for posting this. Hell yes I have thoughts! Thought #1: What's up with the tackles? Currently we have the following offensive tackles: J Webb--Showed promise, but I'm real skeptical. Chris Williams--Looked ok at LT and was moved to guard due to injuries. Omiyale--I like him as a back-up Carimi--If we add another tackle to play opposite J Webb, will we try him at guard? I don't know what you can expect from Willie Colon. If we got Bushrod, that would help a ton. He won't be cheap. Lets get him.