jason

You ever notice how the announcers never talk about the great halftime adjustments made by the Bears coaching staff?

Three straight jail-break pass rush situations for the Seahawks. There's the OL I have been talking about! And the announcer is a dumb ass. "Slow developing play"? It was a 3/4 step drop, he patted the ball once, and there was a defender grabbing him. I'm sorry, if the QB doesn't have time to plan a back foot and at least take a peak at the second read, then it's bad OL play.

Awesome Briggs play there...way to get caught inside on what was clearly the LB responsibility. Easy TD for the Seahawks on play-action pass.

Comedy of errors again. Nobody on the OL or TE blocks and there is a defender in the backfield, Hanie turns to see that guy in his face, and Hanie makes the absolute worst possible decision he could have made.

But hasn't that been an issue for this defense for as long as Lovie as been here? Hell, I remember talking about this several years ago.

True. But I've yet to see a consistent improvement from the late-round guys to consider this a viable, equal secondary choice to successfully drafting the guys you need in the positions you need. It doesn't matter where a guy gets drafted if he does well, but there is statistical proof that higher draft picks have a better probability of success in the NFL.

HAHA. I hate JA as well (from a draft perspective anyway), but this can't be on him.

The winner is who screws up the least. It's crazy, but that defensive TD could be the difference.

You've pretty much nailed the difference that we haven't been able to accurately state in all the back-and-forth. Planning versus execution. Some hate one; some hate the other; some hate both. My major contention is that proper planning can negate the poor execution. I once heard a saying in the Army: "Prior planning prevents piss poor performance." That's accurate in this case. Agreed...until the next time it rears its ugly head.

DEFENSE!! DEFENSE!! DEFENSE!!

Love the defensive tenacity. Absolutely stuffed the Seahawks on that short drive.

I'll be the pessimist. The defense can't overcome the offense. Seahawks win by two TDs. BTW, I'm tracking the OL performance, play by play to see what their performance is objectively. Thus far there have been 6 plays, 3 runs & 3 passes, and there has only been one play the OL has played well enough as a unit to grade out well. Naturally, it was the one play Knox fumbled.

I guess this comes down to two things: 1) You think some of the guys have promise where most others don't think those same players show promise, and I certainly don't think they show much promise. And when I say promise, I mean "should start in the NFL." And by that I mean, not just because the team hasn't gotten someone better. I'm not happy with the C- student just because the teacher passed him on to the next grade to get him out of the classroom. 2) What you and I quantify as success, on the Bears OL. Other UDFA players have done well all over the NFL, but I don't see any on the Bears OL. They may be UDFA, but we will just disagree on whether they've done well. I'm still shocked that you're actually saying the Bears have given their QBs enough time to throw. We are clearly not watching the same games. You must consider anything more than 2 seconds a luxury in the pocket and a coverage sack. I'd love to watch a game with you, seriously, and discuss whether player A got beat or not, whether he held his block long enough or not, and whether his performance had a negative impact on the play. I think you, and some others, see the Bears' OL improvements via diminished sack statistics as solely their own. I just don't see it that way. The changes made on offense have been to mask the OL's impotence. That, and a minor improvement, have led to the current status. But they are far from good, and their flaws hamstring the offensive potential because the OC, regardless of who he is, must castrate the playbook in order to overcome the OL's inadequacies. Also, it's intellectually dishonest to pretend a higher draft pick doesn't, in general, have a higher probability of success in the NFL. The UDFAs are usually UD for a reason.

Yes. If that is the major source of our disagreement on this portion of the debate, then I'm fine with it. I think running 9 straight times, particularly when on 3rd and long situations, is stupid. But if you like that strategy because you think it's better than Hanie even taking a chance, then so be it. And, I also agree the Bears have to be run-heavy without the two stars (obvious), but I don't think that means sacrificing the probability of getting first downs. It's interesting, however, that you support such a preventative coaching move as deciding not to throw, thereby reducing/eliminating the possibility of a passing mistake, but you continue to ignore the other preventative measures the coaches should have taken (i.e. not running the prevent defense, and trying to consume more time on offense by realistically going for a first down). I'm not talking strictly about cause and effect, either, because there is clearly a factor of sequence involved. Obviously the coaching and playing is somewhat symbiotic, but there is always something that comes beforehand and something that comes afterwards. For instance, if Hanie were allowed to throw on any of those 3rd and long situations, we could be talking about a myriad of possibilities. Maybe he would have thrown a pick. I admit the possibility. The coaches avoided that, however. But maybe he would have performed like the rest of the game and the Bears would have consumed enough time to make the comeback impossible. That's a very real possibility as well. In fact, I'd say it's more likely than the INT because they would have had him throw safer passes. Certainly it's an unknown either way, but my problem with the coaching is they changed from what was working on defense and they got ultra-conservative on offense. The combination resulted in easier passes for Tebow, and more time to complete those passes. Had the Bears coaches not screwed up either situation, the Barber fumble more than likely wouldn't have mattered because either A] The Bears would have stopped one of the Broncos drives, or B] The Bears would have consumed enough time to make one of the Broncos drives impossible. Either way, A or B, and the Barber fumble doesn't matter...but that's only if they employed the same "preventative coaching" thought process as they used (successfully because no passes were thrown, but ultimately unsuccessfully because the game was lost) with the passing game.

All the back-and-forth for this is valid. I see the point being made, but I also see the flaws in the data. What I wish is there was a website that did this. I wish someone out there compared the GMs, the coaches, the teams, on their draft records. Conclusive, hard, all items included data. That'd be nice.

I hate to see the Bears lose as much as the next guy, but I also had the midlevel record that always gets the Bears a midlevel draft pick. If Cutler doesn't come back this year, and they have a good idea he won't, do you even want the Bears to make the playoffs? I don't. They'll get embarrassed, and likely a worse draft pick.

Agreed. I wouldn't give a shit who they drafted in the 1st if the Bears targeted Nicks and got him.

Virtually everyone, everywhere agrees they played the prevent defense. In my experience the prevent defense doesn't necessarily have a limited scope of alignment. It usually has more DBs, but the philosophy is what we're all getting at. It's semantics to argues X's and O's on the field of what a prevent is, because definitions vary. However, you at least agree they underwent a significant philosophical change on defense. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You're being ridiculous here. At no other time during the game did the Bears run on 1st, 2nd, AND 3rd down, and they only ran 3 consecutive runs a few times during the entire game. Furthermore, you can't argue that what they did wasn't a change, here's why: 2nd to last drive 1/10 - 1 yard run 2/9 - 2 yard run 3/7 - run that didn't get the first down 1st to last drive 1/10 - negative 1 yard run 2/11 - 1 yard run 3/10 - run that didn't get the first down Last drive 1/10 - 0 yard run 2/10 - 5 yard run 3/5 - run that didn't get the first down I'm sorry if you don't want to take your head out of the sand, but 3/7, 3/10, and 3/5 are not normally running downs. 3/5 is the only one that's even remotely up for debate. The Bears absolutely shut down the offense and played not to lose. In a very limited view of football maybe that's what TOP is, but in the real world TOP can signify, among other things, if a team is primarily run-oriented or pass-oriented, if a team scores quickly or drags out drives, and if a team gets a short-field advantage very often. In this case, the TOP clearly signifies what the drive break down above displays: The Bears shut their offense down. The combination of play choice, down and distance, and TOP is irrefutable. That's what they did. In a linear world, where nothing affects anything else, yes, Barber's play cost the Bears the win. But that's not how the real world works, much less football. As I've proven above, the offensive changes at the very least affected the Bears negatively, and those extra 48 seconds per drive (on average) shaved off the game clock would have nullified Barber's actions. A good coach coaches his team in such a way that the negative what-ifs of late game scenarios get eliminated before they become possibilities. The Bears coaches didn't do that, and the result is Barber's mistake. Not the other way around.

I think you completely misunderstood my post. And you certainly failed to comprehend the cause-effect nature of things. The prevent defense came before Barber ran out of bounds. It's not the other way around. If the Bears hadn't played prevent defense, would the fumble by Barber have mattered? The first 56 minutes or so of the game say that the fumble wouldn't have mattered.

I could not agree any more. I think it's crazy that anyone is talking about this OL as being average or good. Talking about the promise of the OL is all well and good, but most people who make it into the NFL have promise. What they do to capitalize on the promise is where things change. Thus far, the promise is all the Bears really have. The bolded part is what I find the most ridiculous.

This story is tragically hliarious.

True. Nobody can explain Barber's mistake. All I've been saying all along is that the coaches should never have put him in that scenario. Good coaches would never have allowed that scenario to be possible. Why even take a chance? For instance, if the Bears are in a similar situation, what are the odds they call Barber's number for anything other than a straight up the middle dive play? I'm guessing about 0%. Hell, they might not even give him the ball. That's how you avoid a mistake. They could have applied this same line of reasoning during the game and we would never have even been talking about the Barber play.

Not a horrible concept. I'd like to see Umenyiora on the opposite side of Peppers, but for some reason I don't see that as necessarily a great thing. Osi is not as good as Peppers, and certainly not the all-around player that Peppers is. That's a problem in a defense that appears to limit the sack potential of DEs. Getting rid of Knox and Williams, and moving Hester primarily to ST (I don't disagree), leaves only Bennett and Sanz at WR. And only Bennett matters in that equation. Meachem would be an intriguing sign, but I think he could have slightly inflated numbers because of Brees and that NO offense. So, you hesitate on the McNutt pick, but I think if everything played out as you mention, that wouldn't be a hard pick for the Bears' staff. That's too much change-over for them not to hedge their bets a little bit. I don't see how they could sign a WR AND draft two though.

But weren't the same things said before this year? And before last year?

Let me ask you this... If the Bears hadn't played prevent defense, was there a strong probability that Barber's boneheaded play wouldn't have mattered?