Lucky Luciano

you mean like suggesting with no basis in fact that owners could make as little profit as $1M?... "If $21m is aroung top 10, what does the bottom 10 look like? $1m? $5M?" or... "What I do find funny is, I think few fans realize how many players actually make more than the owners." you are correct in one aspect, it IS funny to suggest that individual players actually make more money over their careers as owners do over theirs. so instead of giving this portion of the fair share of the purse (that the owners signed and agreed to be fair in their eyes) to veterans instead of mega rookie salaries and bonuses you want to give it to the owners? i have some 10 year old '98 information on personel (yes i know things have changed but just as an example): chairman of the board - ed mccaskey; president CEO - mike mccaskey; director of community involvement - pat mccaskey; ticket manager - george mccaskey; office staff administration - tim mccaskey; director of player personel - brian mccaskey. any bet that there may be some spouces, sisters, sisters children, uncles or cousins employed? and you just think that when "bonus money" is paid out they just call virginia to cut them a check out of her christmas account? in fact maybe she does. that way she could get a better interest rate on her money when she loans it to her own corporation instead of borrowing it from a bank!! logical or reasonable in what aspect? you have ONE instance of reported profit in the entire nfl and you "logically" deduct from that profit margins? just to open up another can of worms... if the bears had a stadium that held 500,000 they don't get exclusive ticket sale receipts anyway. this is one of the items that goes into a pool to be shared among the league. what they do/or did get was sky box cash if i am not mistaken (and well could be without rereading the old CBA again or reading the new one) and probably a few other perks. again and again i have to keep telling you that it's paid for from the allottment from the collective nfl to pay player salaries!! when that rises so do the salaries for players AND the owners!!!! the only way it is not is if you believe taking money out of player salary allottments is just part of the owners profit plan they are entitled to. so if the players are not entitled to the percentages written in the contract WHY did the owners sign such an agreement????????

metcalf should have been shown the door over 3 years ago. he was a waste of roster space and salary cap. if he initiated the release he also must suffer from brain damage.

so what are you suggesting? that we wipe the board clean and go back to the system of the 20's-80's? players can work for minimum wage with no benefits including medical or retirement? no rights of free agency? robber baron owners? i'm sure trickle down economics will work terrific in the nfl again. after paying all expenses including top CEO salaries!! how many mccaskey’s are on the payroll that comes out of these franchise expenses before net profits are calculated and for how much? stop it... you’re breaking my heart. uhhh, you mean after the salary cap and owners share goes up? isn’t that what is generating the rise in contract sizes? compare the cap today to 10 years ago. this is pretty comical. YOU pull a lowball figure out of your arse and then argue points in reference like it was a fact! in reality, these are sport franchises that operate 4 ½ months a freakin year to generate income. the absolute maximum number of games they can possibly play per year is 20 and ½ of those are on the road! how much more profit do you think they ‘should’ generate and where do you think this added income should come from? and finally........ this is a day to remember when i am arguing with a person that thinks the bidwell and mccaskey type of owners are being mistreated and deserve, not only sympathy, but more money from the players and fans. it's simply mindboggling (but it does put a smile on my face i give you that). here’s an idea, start a charity fund and organize a food drive for the bidwell and mccaskey families to help them through these hard times. individuals in their respective communities can just drop off donations at the servants entrance.

for X's sake what do you consider getting massive revenues? a billion + a quarter? these are sporting franchises not oil cartels. that's >>$21 million dollars

well i'm certainly not a wall street analyst so i can't give you comparisons to other type corporations but didn't they state that the packers were just outside of the top ten teams in NFL profits? don't sound like dog food to me. just for curiosities sake how do these franchises break up their seasons for tax purposes? hmmmmm also the comparisons between 2006-07 player salaries is pretty laughable. they act like they haven't had an increase in the amount of money they were paid or the increases to the salary cap over that period. in my opinion that is a pretty slanted article in favor of management.

wow, we must really be getting jaded hearing about oil company profit figures. only a $21 M profit sounds pretty good to me especially when i could put it into my 127 million dollar bank account LOL!!

actually i am not wrong in regards to the intent of my argument. this entire portion of the thread with nfo was that he stated that by paying large bonus money to resign players proves that the bear franchise is not cheap. for the record, do you believe this is the case? if you do you are wrong. i have NOT stated that it makes them cheap or not or that the bear organization is or is not cheap. just that this is a 'useless' marker to determine the validity of that statement because every penny paid out in these bonuses can be accounted for with money the team receives from the nfl to pay player salaries. the salary cap! i know this and i completely understand the how and why of it. in the real world one reason the players signed this agreement is because they are guaranteed a fair percent of the money each year from the league/franchise to be paid as salary to them, the minimum. the owners signed this agreement because it limits the amount one franchise can pay out in player salary each year limiting their expenses, the maximum. it also keeps one rich owner from spending a lot more than another poorer franchise gaining an advantage and keeping league parity. both sides get something. i also know that amortizing bonus money is getting around the intent of the cap and i know that you can roll money over in bogus incentive expectations to the following year to hide cap money because we DID it last season for $10 M (although in my opinion this is not always acting in good faith according to the CBA). but... this 'rollover' money from the previous year has raised the 'minimum' the following year by the same amount so the team actually has to pay it out one way or another whether they then roll more over in another contract or not. just to note... this is exactly one of the points i am arguing, which is one reason how you can pay large bonus money and completely pay for it out of what is given to the franchises to pay player salaries. 1. to borrow against a near billion dollar corporation with guaranteed income from a multi billion dollar corporation to get a fixed 6 year maximum loan to pay player bonus money should be easy even in these times. 2. where have you gotten this information that the chicago bear franchise was not very profitable in the near past? i guess i would have to ask, not very profitable compared to what? multi million dollar profits from other owners? what are the shareholders bottom line at the end of a year? i'd like to see the figures for comparison. 3. you mean the exclusive lake forest area, where they pay a tax deductable property tax for multi million dollars worth of commercial property they have owned for years? whew, at least they don't pay any taxes on the lake front property. have you really seen or read that teams in the nfl can't make their payrolls because of the lack of revenues paid out by the nfl to the owners? are you suggesting the only way these teams can stay in business is to take money out of the players allotted salary or go broke?? which owners have sold their teams or moved to another city with a better stadium because they were financially strapped with a bankrupt system in which they didn’t generate enough revenue from the NFL under the CBA? the reality of it is in my opinion that these franchises can pad their profit margins at the expense of the players each and every year. that is why they manipulate some of these loopholes, because it’s free money. oh i get it all right. for whatever reason you want to have a micro discussion for each individual nuance of the CBA line by line while i only need a general point of reference for a discussion with another poster in regards to X amount of money allotted by the nfl to pay player salary. so REGARDLESS of the loopholes (which i fully understand how they work), regardless if it comes in the form of one check or a thousand, regardless of where each individual instance of the money to be divided up comes in from, and regardless if the poor millionaire owners need to drain money out of player salary to fend off the wolves, there is X amount of money allotted and given by the nfl to each franchise to pay player salaries per written contract. that is not ‘postulation’, that is FACT.

why not? the only thing that matters is that there is X amount of money that the teams have to use to pay player salaries and that is given/doled out to them BY the nfl which is how the salary cap is determined. it doesn't mean jack for the purposes of my original point where ANY of the money comes from that the nfl uses to pay out the cash. why would it? misrepresenting how the system works? all i was doing was simplifying the split between owner revenue and player salary revenue so it would be easy to distinguish the difference. is it that big of a deal? sorry but there is no exception to the rule. the bills pay at the very least the minimum amount of dollars the nfl has allotted to player salary (salary cap), period. if they are running in the red with franchise expenses they can't meet with what their share of the owners revenue it's too bad for them. which incidently i find it nearly impossible to believe that any franchise pays more out to expenses per year than what their revenue share income is. yes it probably would, as highly unlikely as that is. but when did i ever say teams wouldn't have to or couldn't borrow money for signing bonuses? it's my contention that they could pay off these loans strictly using the salary cap income and none out of their own pockets. this is the whole POINT of my posts in this thread. this discussion is like some kind of shell game. you keep moving the whole point of this discussion off of the original intent. the truth is i don't care at all what expenses a team has. it's meaningless to this discussion. it also doesn't matter one iota 'where' the money comes from. ALL that matters in this instance is that the league gives each nfl franchise X amount of money to pay for player salaries and i can show how using that X amount of salary cap money they can pay for large signing bonuses. as far as using the last CBA? didn't i qualify that to you at the very start by saying that the discussion between myself and nfo WAS over the period that the old CBA was in effect? not that it would make any difference if you used the new CBA that i know of anyway. all i wanted you to confirm was that my understanding of the separate monies involved was correct and you did. in other words there was X dollars assigned to pay player salaries with restrictions and X dollars paid to the franchise to do whatever they wanted. that they were not interchangeable. this makes absolutely no sense in regards to this entire discussion. let me ask you.... 1. isn't the CBA in effect to see that all parties get paid the correct percentage of the total money allotted to them that both parties agreed upon? 2. do you believe any CBA the owners would sign would pay them less money than it costs to operate? 3. do you think that the nfl expects the teams to pay it's players salaries with the money that comes from them (allotted salary cap) for this purpose? 4. do you think that portions of the players salaries should be used for franchise expenses and owner profit or paid to the players as it is intended to be? you know, i have been civil with you trying to have a civil discussion and then you write crap like this. so thanks for nothing. if i need some arrogant prick to talk down to me i'll put an ad in the paper and take applications.

thank you for your input. i understand this that there are items that each team does or does not share revenue in but this is not important in my discussion. i also realized that the NFL probably did not cut 2 checks, one for the player salary and one for the owners. i just used that to simplify how the money is split up between player salary and owner income which i also know they spend on non player items like coaching salary and any expenses needed to run the franchise. that also is unimportant to my discussion. the amount of percentages is also not important, only that there is X amount of dollars allotted to each team by the NFL for player salaries which in itself determines how much the salary cap is and it's limitations. it is then accurate in my model on how an owner can pay large signing bonus money with no or very, very little cash out of their own pockets. it all is paid by the money delegated by the salary cap. this then has no determination on whether an owner is cheap or not by how much money he spends in player signing bonuses.

LT2_3 first: before i go into any details (right or wrong) lets discuss this 'example' using the previous nfl contract agreement as it pertains to nfo's and my discussion more-so than the one signed last year, at least at this point. second: i am going to simplify the examples as much as i can. that will include probably changing percentages of money paid to the parties involved and where it came from etc. the reason to do this is to create a knowledge base of fact built upon HOW it works and not actual factual data examples. for these discussions i am also going to leave out any monies the actual NFL might take out of the revenue for any reason other than to distribute it to the franchises. ok here it goes as i understand it.... the NFL corp. is, in a sense, a holding company where monies come in from various sources to be distributed. this includes TV money and whatever money is made by each individual franchise that get's shared among the (simplified) franchise collective. each year the NFL adds up how much money is paid in and divides it into two types of revenue (very simplified). 1. the amount of money paid to each franchise owner/corporation as their share of the amount of money earned that was subject to sharing including TV money etc. the NFL cuts a check to each of the 32 franchises each year for this amount. for our example we are going to take this cash and simply put it in the owners pockets and it will NOT become a discussion point any further. 2. the amount of money to be paid in salary to players with a minimum and maximum amount specified. the NFL cuts a check to each of the 32 franchises for this maximum determined amount every year. this equals the salary cap. the owners now have X amount of salary money to pay the players in any way they see fit as long as it does not exceed the maximum or go below the minimum percentage of that particular year's cap. the NFL agreement also let's the owners sign players with guaranteed bonus money that they can amortize over the length of the players contract (six years). this CAN exceed the maximum amount they have to spend in an individual year but is counted against the following year's cap expenses for player salaries until the full amount is amortized over the length of the contract. EXAMPLE 1: player 1 signs a contract with a $12 M signing bonus and he is paid this amount in cash immediately (simplified) out of the owners own pockets. next year a $2 M amount (amortized bonus money paid in advance) counts against the salary cap the team is allowed to spend. if the team received $100 M the following year in salary cap allowance from the NFL they can only spend $98 M in paid salaries. they HAVE to put the remaining $2 M in their own account as a payback of the amortized amount they paid in advance out of their own pockets. EXAMPLE 2: if say the cap money allotted by the NFL for one seasons salary cap was $100 M and an individual team only paid out $90 M in salaries to it's players that season, the remaining $10 M can be kept by the owners to buy an island or whatever. it can't be used in any consecutive years as added cap money. is this not how it all basically works? if so i will continue with another more detailed post.

this makes no sense. in another post you stated that angelo doesn't consider drafting offensive linemen as a way to build your offensive line because it takes to long for players to develop but would rather get them in free agency. so in reality, isn't he "building" our offensive line through free agency?

hmmmm... which FA big ticket players specifically are you talking about over the last 10 years compared to the past? which specific FA big ticket players since the new stadium opened compared to the past? where have you read the steelers ownership have always been considered cheap? i don't believe i ever heard that before. please post the facts/links to substanciate your claim. John Clayton - ESPN News "Dan Rooney and his son, Art, run what is considered the most stable and one of the most well-operated franchises in the NFL." http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/stor...&id=3478129 again i want to qualify the following information by saying it is very easily >>>possible you keep bringing this up and i keep giving you information over and over that questions it, in the least, and in my opinion can and does dispute it. FACT: 1. when our head coaches are hired (with the exception of wanny) they are near, if not AT the bottom, in pay compared to other nfl *head coaches. 2. when we hired angelo he was near the bottom of pay scales for GM's in the nfl. same with hately no matter what his title was called. 3. until you can prove they have a large well paid scouting staff i will still hold the argument that the information i gathered disproved that. 4. you can't pay more money to any players than the salary cap dictates per year. this includes salary or **bonus's. 5. the chicago bear franchise has virtually no heavy expenses for new facilities. so where does the money go? *it seems highly unlikely that we would pay our assistant coaches more money than our head coaches. that means they ALSO are likely near the bottom of the pay scale compared to the rest of the nfl. **finally, i will REPOST old information i posted to you and LT2_3 in regards to how easily the large money for bonus's could be paid for with virtually nothing out of pocket per year (or the owners share of the profits from the NFL) whether the owner were rich or otherwise. you also need to take into account that there is a 6 year contract limit on amortizing player bonus money (unless it has changed). i also think that the $10+ mil 2008 rollover money is a perfect example of how you could use the interest on this money to pay out these bonus's. so here goes yet again.................. 07-07-2008 yea, i guess i am going into that “rubbish” once more for your sake. again, i also GET IT, there are times that a team actually pays out, >>TEMPORARILY it is also true that every year previous amounts of this front “bonus” money are paid back and put into the pocket of the owners or used to pay off the loans they took to get it. so what that means is that at the very MOST you, as a franchise, are paying interest ONLY on the money if you had to borrow it. below is a model of how this could possibly work for the owners... first and foremost i am not a statistician, a CPA, or even a math wiz for that matter, and you can take the following “useless info” and put it into perspective if you find it incorrect: most banks in the world would loan you money with a secured loan and usually, if i’m not mistaken, at around a 1% return. as an example i used $10 mil as an easy figure to regulate at the 1% over prime for a pro rated signing bonus over a 5 year period. at 1% loan interest the costs would be: 1st year interest $100,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 2nd year interest $80,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 3rd year interest $60,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 4th year interest $40,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 5th year interest $20,000 with final 20% payback of borrowed money total actual cost of borrowing the $10 mil bonus money over this five year period - $280,000 with interest at 1% let’s say the previous example is crap (which it well may be) and go with a straight loan of $10 mil at 4% interest as an example:. 1st year interest $400,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 2nd year interest $320,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 3rd year interest $240,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 4th year interest $160,000 with 20% payback of borrowed money 5th year interest $80,000 with final payback of borrowed money total actual cost of borrowing $10 mil bonus money over a five year period - $1,200,000 at straight 4% you can look at these yearly amounts of interest money as being paid back from the slop that is left over YEARLY from that same years cap allowances doled out by the league that aren’t spent and used as a reserve for emergencies in case of injury etc.. usually between $.5 to $3+ million dollars, depending upon the franchise, at the end of a season and still show a profit from this. so the theory it takes a well healed generous owner to pay these bonus’s out of his own pocket is nonsense. the nfl pays for 99.9+% of all player salaries at the start and nobody spends more than the cap allowed in the long run.

as stated by me numerous times in the past... spending the money allotted by the nfl's salary cap to teams to pay player salary is not an indication that a team is or isn't cheap. the nfl pays for every penny of every salary and even puts a limit on how little they can spend.

this is one of the big problems with angie. his drafts are anemic and he fills the holes he created himself with 2nd and 3rd tier FA's that are bargain basement cheap, temporary, stop gap players. this relates to an unstable average offensive line at best that needs young top tier talent infused to bring any semblance of long term stability. the crux is he never drafts these replacements to groom into starting jobs. for any GM, whether he is more defense oriented or not, to not understand this concept is inexcusable. even when angie made a big FA splash, to get even with the chiefs franchise, he still screwed it up. when tait was brought in for a huge contract and was forced into playing on the left side out of position, a red flag should have been raised to draft with a first day priority a LOT as the future starter and move tait back into his all-pro position. as it turns out we highly overpaid tait to play out his career in chicago on the wrong side at a mediocre level! the same can be said of his qb merry-go-round. forget the poor drafting, he even had the chance to bring in 2 pro-bowl quality qb's, still in their prime, at minimal cost to the franchise and failed to do so. instead he goes the cheap FA backup for players such as the griese, stewart, and hutchinson type players. it's mind boggling. 1. drafting as many safeties as he has, we still don't have a single sure thing starter even AT strong safety (let alone FS). it has been complete failure on his part for 7 years. the only quality safeties in chicago during his tenure he never even drafted, m. brown and t. parrish, and in fact let one go in free agency his first year. 2. if what you say is even remotely true then he ranks as one of the worst gm's in the entire nfl and should still be employed as a scout. not as a GM in control of our franchise.

someone considered an idiot can talk about a lot of things and most of them are logically stupid or just plain bull @#$%. our idiot gm is letting "another team develop a player for him"? like who angelo? which up-and-coming offensive lineman have you picked up in your entire career as a gm? was it dogins, the temporary backup for tucker, whose glorious career in chicago started at age 29 and ended at 30? great future move there. or was it steve edwards, the non-drafted practice squad player you picked up who had 2, average or less, seasons as our starting LG/RG between 2002 and 2006 to move on and play as a backup for another before he was out of the league? or a one legged, average at best, r. garza whom even you dismissed this offseason? the great 2 and gone aaron gibson? r. brown the 32 year old guard on the last leg of his career? the 32 year old f. miller on the last leg of his career? or was it john tait the 29 year old all-pro quality right tackle you brought in, after paying him the most money a right tackle had ever gotten, and had him play average on the left side the remainder of his career in chicago? all of these genius free agent moves puts a smile on your face?? you can get by drafting 2nd day talent rather than 1st day prospects for long term development because the OL takes too long to develop? where are all of these developed 2nd day picks now angelo? anyone want to guess how many pro-bowl offensive linemen (besides kreutz who he had nothing to do with) we have had in chicago during angelo's time here? ONE, a 34 year old guard in 2006 - r. brown. just maybe you should have bitten the bullet and drafted some FIRST day talent with REAL potential, like other teams with good offensive lines do, and plan that time lag into your general strategy you freakin cretin!!!!!!!!! i have to disagree that this was ever a good philosophy. you build a good offensive line through the draft and not the other way around. if you draft them, you will have players that have the potential to play together for 8-10 years which does bring the ALL IMPORTANT continuity to your linemen who, more than any other position, need to play together as a unit to achieve this type of success. look at the good lines throughout history and see how many were drafted by the specific team. you also get a bargain price on the good players when their contracts come due by averaging their cost over their years prior to free agency. if anyone should know this cost effectiveness it's a good gm. bringing in guys every other year and plugging them in does not create a solid unit for any length of time and costs more money in the long run. you use free agency when your drafted players either are injured, you can't afford one because you have more than one excellent player coming into free agency, they don't turn out to be the player you hoped when drafted and the guy developing behind him isn't ready to start, or you find that ONE specific impact player that will put you over the top. you don't keep filling the bulk of your line with tweeners who you hope are even average and aging vets from another team. finally... guard and safety are the easiest positions (right tackle is a close third) in the draft to fill yet angelo has failed miserably at all.

i know this could be angelo posturing before free agency and the draft but if this diatribe rings true or means anything at all i find it very disturbing. where were attitude and coaching last season? or the season before? are the designated positions (defense, offense, special teams) on this team so compartmentalized that there is no input from the head coach in any aspect at all? did the head coach even realize the team needed some serious hands on input or just didn't want to interfere with his staff? in other words if lovie could have made it better over the last TWO + years why didn't he? "attitude"? what attitude is this clown talking about? do you mean to tell me that unless lovie is holding the specific reins in his hand on the defense that they have attitude or motivational problems??? is lovie an inanimate object during practice or in the film room that he couldn't inject this as a head coach? or that until this so called defensive line savior's arrival we would flounder as a defense because lovie doesn't have a clue? a "pretty good nucleus"? with the money this guy has spent and draft picks he has wasted we certainly should have more than "pretty" good players. no reason we can't play good defense "this year"? why couldn't we play good defense LAST year angie? it's the same core. or does a freakin defensive line coach make more of a difference than than your bloody head coach? and just what in the HELL makes him think this years defense will be more "opportunistic" than last?? if we "have enough talent upfront" then what is the reason we failed so miserably over the last 2+ years? and for god's sake angie at least get your metaphors correct. you don't "drive the train". explain why the past coaching staff didn't "get the most" out of their players angie. or is it the players fault as you infer? just who is going to run this circus? in fact explain why marinelli shouldn't BE the head coach if he does all you say and is the reason this team will be "better" because he showed up.

perfect examples? donnie abraham – 6 years with bucs. a 2002 cap casualty when bucs resigned kelly; a free agent who signed with jets herm edwards a cover 2 coach at the age of 29. broken shoulder beginning of season in 2003 at age >>30 brian kelly – savior in detroit? first of all, he wasn’t even the bucs #1 corner. second, he went to the lions after 10 years in tampa at the age of >>32 *YOU asked me to show you any corners that were top tier corners because you couldn’t think of any and i show you FIVE pro-bowl corners that played in the cover 2 system. now you change it to “shut down” corners? where do you keep coming up with this stuff? did i ever say they were? *“Look around the league at other teams who run the cover two. How many of them have top tier CBs? Personally, I can not think of any.” this isn’t even comparing apples to oranges anymore it’s comparing apples to yaks. you don’t find any of these pro-bowl corners on analysts list for shut-down-corners? who besides YOU ever said any of these corners should BE on a “shut down” corners list? do you only consider “shut down corners” top tier cornerbacks? the fact is that all of these corners could play very well in the normal definition of the cover 2. they could play press coverage and most could cover man-on-man in specific situations when the need to do so was there. you have wanted to fire him for how many years? yikes, even i was willing to give him 2-3 years to put in a system. so you go off of what lovie talks about to the press? the guy that bends the truth like a pretzel or doesn’t say anything worth writing about at all? whose statements i believe even you have commented on in the past as being evasive or misleading to say the least? coaching/lovie 2 aside this is how a top flight #1 corner helps this team... 1. in the cover 2 he can play bump and run on the LOS. this means any receiver is taken out of these quick uncontested passes and is covered throughout his zone. 2. in the cover 2 this gives our #2 corner the ability to play tight on the LOS because even if he gets beat he has free safety help nearly on every play. in essence we can double cover receivers on this side of the field again shutting down uncontested passes in his zone. 3. our strong safety can effectively support the zones in the cover 2 where the TE’s, RB’s and WR’s are coming over the middle in the short slants and crossing patterns. he can also give run support. 4. our linebackers are now free to move around in their cover 2 passing zones against the TE’s and RB’s closing up the middle. this also helps our linebackers in run support. 5. this gives our defensive line, at the least, a second more to get to the qb. we are not forced into blitzing nearly as often. 6. we can mix up our coverages to confuse offenses. we now have the ability to change our defense as onfield situations dictate and if we need to go into man coverage with our #1 corner we can do it shutting down the deep threat or the elite receivers/qb’s in the league. 7. we have just made our blitz packages, when we do need them or just want to mix it up, light years better because we have a cover corner who can play man if/when needed. 8. as stated many times before, we get a good+ FS by moving one of our #2 corners into that position. we have made our #2 corner a much better player. we have drastically improved 3 positions with one player not to mention the great depth in nickel or dime packages. 9. finally... if lovie really is as bad a coach as you imply, he won’t be here much longer and that’s a fact. that means whoever comes in as our head coach has a top flight core of players against the pass no matter what type of scheme he implements (i find it highly unlikely we would end up with yet another cover 2 coach). April 10, 2002 “VIKINGS PICK UP BATES: The Minnesota Vikings claimed wide receiver D'Wayne Bates off waivers from the Chicago Bears yesterday. Bates, who has a three-year, $2.85 million contract, was signed as the No. 3 wide receiver” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...757C0A9649C8B63 warrick holdman: Byline: John Mullin Chicago Tribune April 16, 2002 Bears linebacker Warrick Holdman, the team's second-leading tackler and one of the top young linebackers in the NFL, signed an offer sheet late Monday with the Kansas City Chiefs for $12 million over four years, including a $2 million signing bonus. The offer sheet was signed only hours before the midnight deadline for restricted free agents to receive offers and after the two teams unsuccessfully discussed a trade for Holdman in which the Bears sought a third-round draft choice, a Bears source said. ...the offer may force the Bears to choose between keeping Holdman or Rosevelt Colvin Chicago Sun-Times – Brad Biggs April 20, 2002 In a move that may have tipped the Bears' strategy for today's draft and personnel decisions that lie ahead, general manager Jerry Angelo matched a $12 million, four-year offer sheet for Warrick Holdman. The weak-side linebacker was hours away from going to the Kansas City Chiefs when the Bears finalized their plan Friday afternoon, one that could seal the fate for strong-side linebacker Rosevelt Colvin, who signed a one-year tender offer for $1.227 million and will be an unrestricted free agent after 2002. Up-front Holdman not down on Bears From: Chicago Sun-Times | Date: February 27, 2004| Author: Brad Biggs | Copyright information The checked-box fiasco of 2002 will be behind the Bears for good in a matter of days when linebacker Warrick Holdman is released. The paperwork errors -- which forced the Bears to swallow a contract designed by the Kansas City Chiefs to retain Holdman and lose wide receiver D'Wayne Bates to the Minnesota Vikings before they were ready to cut ties -- taught both players a lot about the game. By Jeff Reynolds and Nolan Nawrocki, Associate editors With the possibility of losing LB Warrick Holdman still hovering, the Bears signed former Eagles LB Mike Caldwell to a four-year, $4.7 million contract that includes a $750,000 signing bonus. Caldwell will also receive a $250,000 workout bonus that he will be paid before training camp begins. http://archive.profootballweekly.com/conte...news_031702.asp Friday July 27, 2001 CNN Sports Illustrated A knee injury to Holdman in Week 12 last season forced Harris back to the weak side, and he led the team in tackles three of the final six games. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/...day_roundup_ap/ Aug. 12, 2002 At the time, all the Bears were concerned about was keeping WLB Warrick Holdman from signing with the Chiefs when they matched the qualifying offer from Kansas City to keep the restricted free agent. Now, it looks like keeping Holdman could cost the Bears SLB Rosevelt Colvin in 2003. The Chiefs’ offer to Holdman was modest for ’02 (a $950,000 salary-cap hit), but it balloons to a $4 million cap charge in ’03. With MLB Brian Urlacher’s current contract set to expire after the ’04 season, general manager Jerry Angelo may decide to conserve cap room, allowing Colvin to walk in order to keep his Pro Bowl middle man. Given the recent seven-year, $50-million deal Ravens MLB Ray Lewis signed, keeping some cap space available would be wise. But the Bears will first attempt to restructure Holdman’s deal, and Holdman has said he will listen. If no agreement is reached, the team will not have room for Colvin, who led the team with 10½ sacks last season and is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next spring. Dec. 30, 2002 Bears LB Rosevelt Colvin, the team sack leader each of the last two seasons, will test the free-agent market. Colvin knew prior to the 2002 season that financial commitments to LBs Warrick Holdman and Brian Urlacher could squeeze him out of Chicago. Desiring a contract that would pay him $4 million per season, and total $23 to $26 million over five seasons, sources close to the team initially believed Colvin’s return was possible for the Bears, because general manager Jerry Angelo has plans to restructure the contracts of several high-dollar defensive players, including Holdman. Now, Colvin calls his chances for a return "50-50" at best. Because of his ability to get to the quarterback, Colvin (21 sacks in his last two seasons) will be a valued commodity in free agency, likely pricing himself out of the Bears’ range in the long run. "He’s right there, if not on the top of our list," one general manager told PFW. "This is a good free-agent linebacker group, and (Colvin) is one of the best (in the class)." http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/NFL/N...tm?channel=2002 nuts? i know holdman was from A&M but come on. he basically had one good season in his career. was poor in pass coverage and an average tackler. look, holdman had speed and had ‘potential’ to be a good player but it never panned out. of all the linebackers since url’s arrival holdman benefited the most from urlacher (which you can’t say about briggs anymore) plus he was injury prone (wrists, ankle, knees) losing considerable time. after his final knee injury in chicago it was plain that his skills were not good enough to compensate and he was finally let go. sacks... now are you going to say lovie blitzes his WLB’s? i truely don’t even remember the last time briggs came in on a blitz off the edge and yet he put up 6 over lovies tenure here. you might also want to look at INT numbers and compare them. for anyone to say that they would have taken the ‘potential’ of holdman against the proven sack capabilities and improving linebacking skills of colvin is simply amazing. next... holdman was never a pro-bowl player or an alternate to my knowledge and i couldn’t find any information to support your claim. if you have this information.... post it. while we are comparing briggs vs holdman’s third seasons, briggs in his third year (2005) was nominated ALL-PRO and went to the PRO-BOWL!! he then proceeded to go to a pro-bowl every year since then. what about holdman? oh that’s right, he never went to a single one. so much for that comparison. i answer the question and you come up with some other added stipulation. you said about lovie defenses... “rarely rank high in terms of passing yards”. i refuted that. now it doesn’t count because the rams had a great offense? in all fairness, lovie had no good #1 corners here when he showed up. vasher was a rookie and tillman was, well tillman. zoom, our LCB was injured the year lovie came here and only started half the games and retired after the following year because of injury. dub was gone after the first season with lovie. he also was switched to the left side in 2002 and when he was injured continued to play there until he was moved to RCB because of injury to peanut, if i remember right, in ‘04. he himself had only one good year in chicago and that wasn’t the year before lovie came here. just so i got this straight, you think lovie is fine with 3-5 yard passes every down? in my book that averages to a first down every 3 plays. plus you don’t think lovie notices these slants etc. are consistently 5-10 yards? you believe he doesn’t notice our corners backpeddling 5 yards at the snap? or he doesn’t like it and it’s just that he is too nice a guy to mention it to them? in 2008 the #1 defense in the entire nfl had 8 games where they scored 21 or less points and they lost half of those games. it also took 27 points to win the superbowl with the #1 defense. Okay, wait a minute. How about not over-simplifying this too much. Are all these teams you list what most would consider offensive powerhouses? I don't think so. Some may have scored 30 or more better than a 1/3 of the time, but (a) how many of those points were defensive or special teams and (cool.gif how many of those teams have defenses that led to great field position, and thus more points. In 2006 (SB year) would you say we had a great offense? Well, that year we scored 30 or more points in 7 of our games (not counting playoffs). I just do not think many would consider us an offensive power house, yet by your reasoning, we were a 30+ scoring machine at 43.75%. Now, look at your teams above. Cards, Colts, Giants (w/ Burress) and Eagles are teams I think most would consider big time offenses. Atlanta, Minny and Tenn are teams would great ground games, but not exactly electric offenses expected to drop 30. Ravens (rookie QB), Phins and Bolts are hardly considered electric either. I look at the above group, and more than electric offenses, what I see are some damn good defenses. It isn't one or the other. I agree you have to score points. But I think we can have a defense that can hold opponents, while offensive upgrades would allow us to score. i’m sorry but 21 points as your offensive target in today’s nfl is just not enough. if your offensive target is 21 are you going to build a team that the defense has to score points to achieve 30? or have one that hester is expected to score special team TD’s every game to reach that goal? look, 30 points isn’t some magic unnatainable number for offenses to score in today’s nfl. the rules have changed to make it so. our superbowl season is a perfect example of what i am talking about. hester scored 5 TD’s that season on special teams. our defense scored 3 TD’s and had numerous turnovers. the problem is you can’t ‘expect’ to get these playing championship caliber teams in the playoffs or the superbowl if you want to win it. you need an offense that is a threat and can score points on its own. you also need a defense to slow down the high scoring teams, especially against the pass, to allow your offense to keep up with them. One. No, I think pass rush far and away is our biggest issue on defense. Now, I would point out I think/hope coaching alone provides a partial answer, but I think the coverage is dependant on the pass rush far more than the other way around. I think elite pass rush can make average coverage look great. On the other hand, I do not believe elite coverage can make average pass rush look good. Here's why. If you have an elite pass rush, the QB will only have 3 seconds before he is pressured. Even an average CB can hold that long. However, if you have an elite CB duo, they still can only hold their man for so long before the WR finds an opening. Just because your DL has time, that does not mean they can get it done if they are only average. An OL can hold a DL indefinitely, but a CB can not hold a WR thus. In our SB year, we were concerned about Manning because he was one of the greatest QBs of all time. No matter who was playing Indy, Manning would have been the concern. Not sure of your point there. Yes, our is a weakness, but I would argue (a) the lack of a pass rush has made that group look worse than it is and (cool.gif FS more than CB is the weakness in the secondary. That and coaching. huh? it’s not the biggest issue yet you think our biggest problem is a pass rush? isn’t that part of your pass defense? who is talking about an average defensive line? is that what you consider us having? are you then suggesting we need to blow up our d-line and start over because it’s not “elite” quality good without 4 all-pro quality players on it? seriously, i want to ask you how quick do you think defensive linemen can get to the qb? even in 85 with the best pass rush maybe ever, we couldn’t get to marino. why do you think that was? what did he do to beat us? what was the way to counter that? your solution is to just rush the passer and HOPE they can beat a 2-3 step drop and fire. mine is to rush the passer AND have good enough coverage (which we DON’T have) to give your good+ linemen enough time to GET to the qb by disrupting his timing and having to check down his receivers instead of having untouched receivers 5-10 yards downfield every play. Of coarse not? What is your point. That is why they were a SB team and we were not even a playoff team. I think a better point, for argument sake, would have been if you pitted our SB losing team against their SB losing team. Even then, I would say they win, but despite what you think, not just due to our CBs. They were just a better team. well what then? in what way did they have “just a better team”? because they could have beaten us to a bloody stump passing to fitz, boldin, and breaston all day long? offensively? ok lets put orton as he was in the first half of this years season along with our ’06 D. do we realistically win scoring your 21 points is all we need scenario? First, when you say we have the money, you are talking about cap space, not reality. Asante Samuel and Nate Clements I think have set the bar, and Osa will likely be looking for a deal that provides around $20m+ in upfront bonus, and an average salary of around $10m. That is a ton of coin. Regardless of our cap space, I can not see us spending that sort of money on one player, while also adding another top FA at OT or WR. what the hell does “talking about cap space, not reality” mean? $20m? so what? this amount is becoming the norm. we could pay him half that upfront with what we rolled over last season. don’t you think our genius gm could structure some of that money creatively? that leaves us with whatever we normally would have in a season to sign one or two free agents like any other team normally does and get a very good offensive player. My point is, while experiments are not unusual, when you constantly use experiments at a position, and it fails, at some point you need to consider getting a legit position player. You don't think trying a CB or SS at FS is an experiment. I disagree. I do agree is often happens, but my point is, if you have tried that over and over again, w/ nothing but failures, at some point you need to instead simply look at getting a player w/ experience at the position, rather than hoping a player w/o the experience can make the transition. Back to my original point, I simply believe adding a legit FS like the one from Stl, would have a greater impact on our secondary than adding Osa. More than talent at CB, I think our secondary has been hurt by (a) coaching (cool.gif pass rush and © lack of a legit FS. As pointed out, both Tillman and Vasher were effective a few years ago when (a) we had different coaching in Rivera (cool.gif we had a strong pass rush and © we had a better FS in Brown. I believe we will see an improvement in coaching (addition by subtraction w/o Babich). I believe we will see a boost in our pass rush due to Marinelli and again, taking Babich out of the playcalling. The one area I do not see improvement is at FS, where I simply feel we lack talent. 1. what experiments are you talking about? which players have we done this with over and over with nothing but failure? you mean like urlacher? even peanut and vasher played safety in college. 2. i believe moving one of our corners who have experience as a safety in college would give us a legit high quality FS. i think this whole discussion boils down, as you say, to whether you believe lovie and angelo are complete idiots. their idea of defense is to play a soft corner coverage, no matter what the talent we have at that position, that has no chance to succeed. i believe angelo is not a good gm. although i believe lovie is not a very good coach i don’t think he so bad that he would run something like this with good personnel. this leaves the quality of players being at least part of the problem. could you be right and our corners are much better than they have shown due to scheme and lack of practice? yes it’s possible. could it be so that nothing would change if we got a quality player like aso? yes. but IF so then this franchise needs to be ripped apart from the president to the waterboy. adios bean counter phillips, adios gm angelo, adios lovie and staff and we stand on a bare field again because nobody with any authority in this franchise knows $#!& about football.

double post.

1. in a previous post i listed FIVE good pro-bowl corners that play in the cover 2. you don’t consider r. barber, d. abraham, a. williams or ty law good corners? does that answer your question? incidentally, the bucs brian kelly was considered a good cover corner playing opposite barber. you then state that other corners playing the cover 2 are better playing bump and run than ours. isn’t this the point of our entire discussion? that our #2 quality corners are poor at it and CAN’T with any consistency?? sure these corners are/were great playing in zone, cover 2, type defenses but they were more than just that. each of these players ‘could’ play up tight to get their hands on receivers and cover them to the point where they left their zones. most also could play man coverage when asked to at a high level. 2. our argument has revolved around the importance of having a corner, even in lovies system, that can play bump and run up on the LOS and cover receivers. not only when asked to play man coverage at times but even playing within the definition of the cover 2 type of defense. you argue that in lovies system he would never play corners up even if he had a pro-bowl quality cover corner on the roster and that by design he would play this type of player 5-10 yards deep anyway. my contention has been that although we have decent/good #2 corners they can’t play up tight because they would get beaten playing that type of defense on an island and this is a reason lovie does not put these players in that position even when the situation dictates he do so. again, i will state: if lovie has 2 corners who have the ability to play bump and run and he chooses not to when we are giving up this much yardage in slants etc. in critical game situations then he needs to be fired. this is not only bad coaching but even below amateur football intelligence. i did answer this question for you in a previous post but i will elaborate if you like... because angelo is a *poor general manager. i want to ask YOU a question now. if you had corners that could play up tight on the LOS and play bump and run would you play them 5+ off the LOS (negating any chance to put your hands on a receiver without getting a penalty) and have them backpeddle another 5 to keep the receivers in front of them EVEN when the other teams in the league consistently gain 5-10 yards every play? would you?? would any member on this board do this (feel free to jump right in)? would any member on this boards children, that are old enough to string a sentence together, do this? it is a fact that the cover 2 defense requires bump and run corners, or “press” if you like, in it’s description. what you are saying is lovie has abandoned this aspect of the cover 2 and just purposely plays all of our corners 5-10 yards off the LOS in a continual soft, soft, cover scheme. if jerry angelo agrees that this is a viable type of defense and supports lovie in this type of a system then he is not only a bad gm but he is a fool. *both vasher and tillman are/were good/decent #2 corners that could become much better players with someone who could take up the #1 position at cb and give them safety help at the very least. i also project one of them could play at a high quality in another position if anyone had the brains to try and position them there. 1. when do you sign players a year before they are free agents? if they are franchise quality players and are in good health. if they are very good players that have a body of work to refer to in past years and in good health (NOT one year wonders). if they are good players that have only had a single good year and/or with possible injuries that will effect play and you can do so cheaply. 2. angie tried to sign colvin? of course colvin wanted good money. he was one of the top sack leaders in the nfl. why didn’t we have the money to sign him? hmmmmm.... maybe because angie forgot to check freakin restricted free agent boxes on w. holdman and dwayne bates and had to sign BOTH for a good chunk of change (and later released bates anyway the SAME season) letting our only player with double digit sacks leave in free agency because he didn’t have the money? that angelo? yup he sure was ahead of his time. and holdman looked good to you? the guy who couldn’t cover his own ass with both hands and put up the amazing sack total of FIVE over his illustrious 8 year career? the guy we CUT the following season? THAT warrick holdman?? rarely ranked high in passing yards? in st. louis his passing yard rankings were 11th, 12th and 12th. in chicago his team ranked 15th, 5th, 11th, 27th and 30th. isn’t this his ‘system’ as you say no matter who runs it? i have to ask, in chicago wasn’t our pass rush from the d-line superb the first 3 years? when that fell off what were the results in total passing yards? our corners were exposed as being unable to cover receivers longer, or even at all, to make up the time needed to get to the qb thus giving up more yardage. is this due to lovie’s scheme as you believe and completely our pass rushers fault or is it because both of our corners are no better than average #2’s (which you admit they are)? yes!! i understand the cover 2 system (although if you are right i don’t understand this lovie 2 system). example: i said this before, look at jauron’s defense. that too was a bend don’t break defense. the difference was our corners, zoom (pre-injury) and mcquarters (pre-sucking) being our #1’s and peanut our #2, could actually cover receivers (along with 2 very good safeties) without a best in the league pass rush. the problem was that there was no relief from our d-line leaving them on an island forever. now we have just the opposite. 1. if the gm and lovie are on the same page in this insane type of defensive scheme you describe then anything that they do or don’t do surprises me not at all. also please explain why angelo drafts players rounds ahead of where they would normally go? or wears 2 left shoes? or parts his hair on the back of his head? or rolls ball-bearings around in his hand when they aren’t rolling around in his head? 2. and you don’t think our d-line pressure on the qb was better in 2004-06?? or we had a pro-bowl quality safety on the field??? i know they probably have NOTHING to do with it but it might be something to think about. did i ever say that? or did i say “force the receiver inside with position”? lovie is fine with short, quick, uncontested 5-10 yard passes every down? if so he is nuts. what are you talking about? being in what area? you mean an area 5 yards ahead of him before he makes his break for an 8-10 yard reception? that area? run into coverage? dude, all he has to do is run right at any cornerback on this team at the snap. he automatically has a 5+ yard cushion and AT the snap our corner continues to backpeddle even MORE!!! that’s not a “hole” it’s a freakin galaxy. he has done absolutely NOTHING to impede any route any receiver makes and by the time he engages it is not legal to touch him. this is like practice for any qb. their timing has been already nearly perfected without a pass rush. what i am saying is we scored over 30 points in two games this season and won both. if you want to compete today you need to put up points just to make it to the playoffs. look below at the top competition. these teams averaged 36%, MORE than 1/3, of their games scoring over 30 points. cards – 10 games over 30 points – won 9 falcons – 5 for 5 panthers – 7 for 7 ravens – 5 for 5 colts – 6 for 6 phins – 2 for 2 vikes – 4 for 5 giants – 7 for 7 eagles – 5 for 7 bolts – 5 for 7 titans – 6 for 6 don’t you agree that pass defense is our weakest link on defense? even with improvement from our d-line can we outscore these types of teams? even when we were hitting on all cylinders going into the superbowl, what was the main concern? can we stop manning. if we had made it to a superbowl this last year and say against the cards, i know it’s impossible, but say we did. how many points would warner and boldin/fitz have put up on us? how much of that do you believe would have been with their running game? even with orton playing as good as he did in the first half of the season, could we have stayed up with them in a scoring fest? yet with one player like the kid from oakland we could compete with anyone defensively. we have the money to get 2 big players this offseason. one the cb and the other an offensive player of our choice. Sorry, but I am well on record w/ this one. Sometimes I can deal w/ experiments, but at some point, after enough failed experiments, enough is enough. I am tired of getting strong safeties and trying them out at FS. To me, that is similar to how we tried out RT, RG and/or LG's at LT for years, and finally had to draft a legit LT. It's time to end the experiments and just go out and get a FS. IMHO, the FS out of StL would benefit the team FAR more than adding Osa. what experiment? every single season teams draft tackles from college to play guard. every season teams draft corners to play safety or defensive ends to play linebacker and so on. sure there are exceptions and your left tackle or qb are just some of them. but how could you compare moving a strong safety to free safety? or a corner to safety? it’s been done numerous times in the nfl. if the guy has the wheels and coverage skills what is the big deal? with us we do this with guys that have none of the requirements to play either position.

hmmmm, why would angelo spend money on players that couldn't do the job at the highest level? 1. because he is saving face with players he drafted similar to our great offensive lineman terrence, the roid, metcalf? no, probably not. 2. because he is dumb enough to believe this system you think lovie runs is a great system that can be run with average/below average players? mmmm no, nobody is that stupid. 3. they are cheaper than top notch talent on the market? nawww, we know he will spend any amount of money to aquire top quality FA players. 4. he doesn't have to make more than one first day cb pick in his entire career in chicago? could be. that way he can keep drafting defensive linemen year after year after year. i'd like to add... if lovie is this stupid and incompetent that he devised a scheme/defense this childishly poor and doesn't even notice how bad it is why wouldn't he put his "stamp of approval" on anything at all? i agree if we don't practice it how could we hope to play it reasonably well. also if what you say is really true and lovie has deviated from the general parameters of what makes a cover 2 work and revised it to play corners this soft then the problems we see now aren’t going away. we could mask them if our d-line plays out of their minds good but can never recover just how really good we could be playing in a sane system. see my other post. as far as preventing big plays? show me that stat. takeaways? yes when our defensive line was playing superb and when we had a pro-bowl quality safety AND offenses hadn't figured out the complete weakness of this system yet. bend don’t break defenses will not work consistently unless you have at LEAST an average offense to keep your defense off the field and give them rest. otherwise the TOP will kill them as we have seen in chicago over these years. i guess i don’t understand your meaning of high value players? you mean like tampa’s 5 time pro-bowl cornerback ronde barber and pro-bowler donny abraham? or the lovies own rams 8 time pro-bowl and 3 time all-pro cb aeneas williams? or KC’s 5 time pro-bowler 2 time all-pro ty law and 3 time pro-bowler and 1 time all-pro patrick surtain? hmmmm... 1. see above 2. maybe you are right. but if you are and lovie put this stamp on his version of the cover 2 then we are in serious trouble until he either drastically changes the “Lovie Two” or leaves town. 1. i do remember the game when manning missed his assignment and agree it was more than likely zone coverage on that play. 2. it is my contention that if the corners are playing this soft that they are literally backpeddling into coverage 8-10 yards before they can engage and that this is beyond where the linebackers zone would end. this is especially true along the sidelines before the wr makes his break which is the case in most instances. just for curiosities sake where is the corner going to go when he is playing this supposed soft zone even if he moves the receiver over 8-10+ yards downfield for the safety to pick up? they have already gone beyond the point of no return for our corners to do anything but cover a deep route. again, if you are correct and this is truly a devised scheme then we are in trouble. because unless you can counter that slant or curl by playing ‘reasonably’ tight coverage off of the snap for that first 5-10 yards they will continue to beat your brains out all day long. if the corners we now have are good enough to play bump and run or even play up NEAR the line of scrimmage and cover these wr’s then the issue wasn’t resigning them but one of firing lovie smith. well that sure didn’t explain anything specific about comparing the new orleans game where you said we played man coverage to this lovie 2 zone crap. yes i think blache would have wanted a freeney type pass rushing de. the problem was he didn’t have one that was much more than average at best. so what is he supposed to say? is blache a stop the run first type of coach? absolutely. but to say it would be unimportant to have pass rushing de’s is a ridiculous statement. here are some quotes from the redskins site: “Throughout the season, Blache emphasized pressure on the quarterback and his defensive line improved from 13 sacks in 2005 to 25 last year. (Overall, the Redskins' defense improved from 19 sacks in 2006 to 33 last year.)” http://www.redskins.com/gen/coaches/Greg_Blache.jsp huh? when did i act like we would be the only team throwing out an offer? your counter posts keep expanding upon the original intent... “And frankly, I think we would cause problems because I doubt seriously that player would be happy w/ his role. Hell, along those lines, I am not sure he would ever sign w/ us.” of course a player receiving similar offers takes MANY things into consideration. i don’t think i ever stated anything to the contrary. would angelo be dumb enough to draft a cover 2 type of corner in round 1? i certainly hope not. any corner i drafted on the first day would be one i projected to be a cover/lockdown corner. Is this not further evidence? Since Agnelo came to the bears, how many CBs have we drafted in the first? Heck, how many CBs were even rumored to be our pick? Angelo has never seemed to consider the top tier, shut down corners. Does that not speak to how we view the position as it relates to our system? how about linebacker in the cover 2? how many of those in the first round? forget for a moment about corners. if you play the cover 2, even if you consider it the “Lovie 2”, you need good safeties and especially free safeties. could angelo or even lovie really not consider defensive backs a concern at all using your standard of 1st round picks?? if so we continually try to field a defense that has absolutely no semblance to the norm of what has worked in the past and doesn’t stand a chance to succeed by design.

1. so what? compare the number of times you remember seeing our corners play up on the LOS vs. the number of plays they were beaten for big/critical yardage or TD’s. don’t ask for specific games as i don’t have them, only a recollection of peanut getting eaten up by fast receivers and vasher getting beaten/out juked and trailing a receiver for large yardage or TD’s. my opinion of what we currently have: vasher - although not a speedster, does he have the speed to play corner in the nfl with the right technique? possibly. does he also lack nfl quality burst speed? i don’t know but if he does he is in the wrong position. watching him play may seem to indicate that. i do know what he doesn’t have is the speed to recover if he makes a mistake like missing the jam and/or getting blown-bye off the LOS by fast receivers. am i for cutting him loose at this point like some suggest? no. with better talent opposite him he could make a suitable #2 especially with good safety play. here is another scenario... vasher played not only CB at texas but *safety as well. this would be a serious option for us moving him to the FS position if we picked up a cover corner to utilize his ball-hawk capabilities (which he does have). he certainly has enough speed to play that position and his size is adequate. *you being a texas fan i’m sure could give some real input into this. tillman – has good size and average speed. plus pretty much the same description of him as vasher with the exception that peanut is a ‘very’ good tackler in open space where vasher seems to struggle some (at least recently). the same could be said for tillman’s ability to play the #2 role with a better #1 corner and even switch roles if larger receivers if a gameplan dictated. he also needs good safety help. the same could be said for moving peanut to FS. he played safety in college so it’s not like this is some drastic change from linebacker to tight end as we have done in the past. he has the perfect capabilities to play this position. so basically we have two good/decent #2 corners. with the addition of a #1 cover corner either player could project to be a very good + FS with a MINIMUM learning curve increasing our quality at three starting DB positions. 2. this, to me, may be one of the most damning things since smith came to chicago. forget good coach bad coach scenarios. we are talking about football rudimentary basics that transcend down to pop warner. to think that any coach, let alone an nfl coach, would devise a defense (or scheme if you like) that purposely leaves a zone open for a 5-10 yard gain continually without adjustments is beyond belief. ok. we paid robinson good+ money for 5 years as a DE in 2002 then move him to tackle the same year and then cut him in 2003. mcquarters has one above average season in 3 of his career with another year left on his contract. angelo signs him to a big 6 year contract extension in 2002 when he didn’t need to and then cuts him after the 2004 season when his production has fallen over the previous 2. i don’t think even you would disagree that resigning metcalf for ANY price isn’t ridiculous. we actually let a producing linebacker go in colvin to pay w. holdmans lucrative contract extension. does anyone on earth think he was worth much more than base salary from his body of work? this kind of GMing is what angelo is known for. he admits he wants to reward players who have good seasons. that’s all fine and good but give them a freakin bonus that year instead of multi year high impact contracts prior to their original contracts expiring. you could ask if he really is rewarding them for having a good season or just being cheap trying to beat other teams bidding on them when their final year comes up. it’s a risky business to try this and it seems angelo has lost more often than not playing this game. rivera WAS better than this idiot babich but you need to look up some stats of your own. only ONE season out of five did we have a top 10 defense in regards to passing yards against us. here are the stats: 2004 - 6 gms over 200 yards per game; 3 gms over 300 yds with a game high of 350 against the vikings; ranked 15th for total yards passing with lovie; 3 games where opponents combined for over 400 yards of offense 2005 - 5 gms over 200 yards per game; 1 gm 300 yds ranked 5th total yards passing (here is your only top 10 season); 0 games where opponents combined for over 400 yards of offense 2006 - 4 gms over 200 yards per game; 2 gms 300 +; ranked 11th total yards passing; 1 game where opponents combined for over 400 yards of offense 2007 - 5 gms over 200 yards per game; 5 gms over 300; ranked 27th total yards passing; 6 games where opponents combined for over 400 yards of offense 2008 - 9 gmes over 200 yards per game; 2 gms over 300 yds; 1 game 407 yards; ranked 30th total yards passing; 4 games where opponents combined for over 400 yards of offense if you notice the trend, it peaks the second year of smith and continues downward to date. why? i say one reason is because the nfl has figured out exactly what we were doing and countered. i would also like to add that in my opinion any time your defense gives up 3-4 hundred yards total offense to opponents that is NOT to solid or good. i couldn’t and won’t deny babs is “partially” to blame. believe me i am not giving any coaches on this staff, besides our special teams coach, much credit for anything. i too understand how injuries effect these results. i too blame our coaches for playing our corners so far off even on wr’s they SHOULD be able to cover. but again... if we run anything like the definition of the cover 2 that has been implemented in the nfl for years and NOT that this is some screwball scheme by lovie, i question the statements he made or you inferred that he made. yes in this type of defense he is supposed to move the receiver inside but how in the hell can he do that from 5-10 yards downfield? no matter what you or anyone else tells me, to make this work (unless they are playing a deep prevent) a corner has to be able to lay hands on or force the receiver inside with position and move him into these zones to be covered by safeties or linebackers and if nothing else disrupt the qb’s timing. when playing so soft or moving backwards like all our corners do it is illegal for them to do so after 5 yards giving every receiver an untouched route!! that means there will ALWAYS be an open zone to make these slant/curls 5-10 yards downfield. our backers are completely out the picture when the receiver makes his break and unless the safeties are playing it tighter than this type of defense calls for they are too far back to disrupt the play all the while our corners are leading the receiver and out of position. i do not totally disagree that an offensive FA player may be more important to the overall improvement on our team. but unless we completely blow up our offense i just don’t see us being able to compete with high octane offenses putting up 30 and more points. i don’t see us being able, even with a top FA wr or offensive lineman, putting up that many points against high scoring playoff quality teams that have good defenses. i truly believe we can afford BOTH with our salary cap position this season. if we got our high priced cover corner our defense again turns into a top ten contender. with then picking up a good/very good FA lineman or receiver we improve our offense to the point we can complete with the high scoring teams by limiting them to less than the norm amount of points that we can score. the money is there and it’s time angelo used it. as far as the corner vs FS? i say we GET a quality FS just using the personnel we currently have on this roster. try both of our present corners out at FS to determine which is better. whoever that is still improves our #2 corner position by not only giving great safety support but he already is familiar with this system AND is signed long term with major portions of the contract bonus money already paid out.

i just find it mindboggling that people would believe that any nfl head coach with a defensive background would purposely play his corners 5-10 yards off the line of scrimmage every game and give up 5-10 yards to a receiver untouched continually and call it his "scheme". honestly, do you really believe that?

the mega gozilla post was from a period in 2004 prior to the draft when talk on the board was to trade down or out of the first round. i completely realize that moving up doesn't give you a lock on a superstar, but.... what those facts showed at that time was the difference in the number of very good to excellent players was greater than even moving down 10 spots in the first round. can you imagine the difference from that top 10 compared to later round picks? so for me, i would look at moving UP in the draft, not every year certainly because the talent is not always there, to get these higher quality players rather than sitting tight or moving down like we always do and have a half dozen picks in the 6th and 7th round who we ultimately cut anyway. the fact is angelo has done extremely poor drafting anywhere on the first day of the draft. so maybe his M.O. needs a change?

1. vasher, tillman, mcbride have all three been beaten badly multiple times at the LOS. whether graham is ideal or not and has or has not i can't say for positive but unless he is playing "Lovie's Cover 2" that requires him to always play a deep cushion every play i certainly don't remember seeing him play bump and run on the LOS. 2. huh? you mean like bryan robinson? or r.w. mcquarters? or p. daniels? or r.manning jr.? or d. wesley? or t. metcalf? or w. holdman? or hester? or your very own vasher? or urlacher? or moose? or h. burris? or k. stewart? or c. hutchinson? or j. quinn? or b. johnson? or k. jones? or b. lloyd? or dick jauron? or john shoop? peanut is a top corner? then you believe we could get a first or second round pick for peanut this offseason? vasher? the guy we have been discussing may get cut if not for the overpayment cap hit by angelo? are you saying then it's babich's fault our corners got eaten alive last season? or for that matter over the last 5 years? you also mention, after commenting on how good our corners are, that our secondary "sucked"? look, your entitled to your opinion on what will fix this mess we call our DB's. you think we are fine with what we have on our roster and i say a top cover corner FA makes not only our secondary better by light years, but our entire defense.

if what you say is really true and it's "Lovie's Cover 2" that requires our corners to play that soft and our corners are good enough to play tight on the LOS then get ready for the same ole, same ole until lovie smith is fired.