BearFan2000

What a welcomed change it would be if Jeffery turns out to be a real beast. How many WR's have we picked that have busted, or failed to pan out here, how many have actually become impact payers. Bennet is a dependable receiver but he is more of a possession receiver, Knox was a decent pic for a 5th rounder. Not bringing Hester into this as he wasn't drafted as a WR. We have drafted a lot of duds especially high up in the early rounds. Wouldn't it be a nice change if Jeffery gives us an impact presence opposite Marshall, allowing Bennet and Hester to round out the group. When was the last time we had a serious dual threat at WR along with a Franchise QB. If Jeffery pans out It will be nice to see a Bears team with a great tandem of Cutler, Marshall, Jeffery, Bennet, and Hester through the air, and oh by the way you still need to be concerned about a Forte & Bush backfield. I"m not going to assume anything about Jeffery till he proves it when the games count, but just thinking how nice that would be, after all these years of having a joke of a WR corp to boasting one that has two big threats.

I also don't see Forte having a breakout type of year either. One of the things in the past that fueled the "pay the man" battle cry was the large percentage of our overall offense that Forte represented. In a lot of ways he was our best offensive weapon. While that speaks well of Forte it also speaks poorly of our other offensive weapons or lack of. WR was a weakness, when your RB is one of your best pass catchers, that says more about your WR than your RB. To his credit Forte is as dangerous, if not more dangerous through the air as he is on the ground. He was a high percentage of the offense because he was possibly our best weapon. I had Forte on my fantasy team last year along with Ray Rice as my starting backfield and they were gold for me most weeks. Although with Forte, there was Barber to vulture TD's which became annoying but, that is one of Forte's weaknesses short yardage, and goal line. Matt's a finesse runner who does better when he can use space, and set up blocks, but bulldozing is not one of his strengths. I think Forte will have a good season, but I don't foresee him being as high a percentage of the offense. We added more weapons both through the air and on the ground. Marshall I think will be Marshall, I think Jeffery will be ok, he has a good situation being opposite Marshall. As the other WR's will benefit from the attention defenses have to pay to Marshall. And Bush I see getting more work than Barber did. I love the combination you have two backs who can break the long one one that is dangerous in the run game and pass game, one who is a bruiser that compliments Forte. I think we'll have enough firepower on offense outside of Forte that he won't have to carry the large percentage of the offense like he has in past seasons. I do think he's a good fantasy back to have especially in a PPR league. I think the Bears will have more of the RB by committee than they have in the past too. That has movement in the league has made it tougher in fantasy at the RB position seems to be less and less feature backs or one back systems. More and more teams may have a primary back but a TD vulture on the roster who takes TD's away from the other guy.

.... next week on reinventing the wheel we take a closer look at the definition of insanity. In other new water is wet

So what I gleen from that article is nothing new is being tried therefore, the beat goes on and we'll continue to do what we've always done. And when you do what you've always done you generally will get what you always get. Worst turf in the NFL Sod But True

Nicely done Emery, we can go into training camp without that drama hanging over the team. So far pretty pleased with Emery's first off-season. Now we just need to see what happens with the O-Line and whether this group can step up and keep Jay upright. Accomplish that and our offense will be explosive. Forte/Bush/Bell backfield Marshall, upgraded WR corp, and a solid backup QB so should Jay go down for a game or two it's not an oh crap situation. A vastly upgraded offense I think goes a long way to helping out an aging D and puts less pressure on them to keep us in games. Could be a fun season gents.

That sounds crazy enough that it just might work!

another thing to consider is if the offense is scoring points, the D won't have the added burden of keeping the team in games till the offense comes around. If the offense is putting up points regularly, then the D can afford a bad defensive possession here and there . The pressure will not be as great. We've had to play almost perfect football on D in the past.

Good to hear things like this and that Hester's being a positive influence in Johnny's life, I can only imagine what he's going through day to day. I've never had to rehab anything let lone an injury like that. I too hope they get to play together again someday, but mainly that Knox gets back to a normal life, if he never plays again but will be able to walk and run again and fully enjoy life, that in it's self is a miracle. That injury was beyond gruesome. Get well Knox!!!

NFL.com article According to this article police haven't found evidence of wrong doing and likely no charges against Marshall and goes on to say that a one game suspension is highly unlikely but a fine of some kind is likely. Which IMO that too is crap, if he did nothing wrong, the league should not punish Marshall at all. Beyond that all the media and people declaring him guilty simply because of his past which has been clean of incident for the last few years. That said given his past and how the media and many people are just ready to jump all over him at the first hint of anything bad, It's not the best judgement in his case to be at a night club in the early hours of the morning. I should use better situational awareness. Bad things can happen in a place like that at those hours. But if he didn't do anything wrong, there should be no punishment.

why waste the money, time, effort into bringing him to camp when he's not motivated or interested in playing football??? What gain is there in this move? if he's not motivated to play he's not likely going to take it seriously or put in the effort to even try and will be among the first wave of cuts. I would bet half or more than half the fan base would be more motivated to try out for the team if given the chance. I'd rather sign a guy who would bust his but trying to make the team even if he only had an outside chance of accomplishing it. But this guy will get chance and he likely couldn't give a crap if he makes it or not. Not the type of player I'd invite to camp.

Waited all day to find out who we would get..... Guys I liked still on the board. Excited and then deflated with an Angelo quality pick...... what a total waste!!! I am not impressed at all we just pissed away our pick with a reach of a pick....

Denver where QB's go to die lol. The young ones they ship out of town

I hadn't yet seen the twitter comments made by Matt, and that one about nice guys finishing last did rub me as a fan the wrong way. I knew he'd been offered contracts and that he'd turned them down. If the numbers I see here are accurate I'm starting to lose respect for Matt here. It seems he wants it both ways he wants big time money and has been offered fair contracts that would give him the security he claims to want and would pay him well. But he want's to act like the Bears are disrespecting him as if they aren't trying. I would love to see both Forte and Bush in the backfield. In this league you need two good backs you need depth at key positions. The Bush signing was a great move. Reality is the Bears haven't just low balled and left Forte out to dry. And the franchise tag is something that was bargained for in the CBA these players that are whining about being tagged, you signed that CBA including the current iteration of the tag. The Bears are using what is available to them to try and put the best team on the field they can to win. If he want's a contract in the Foster range or a CJ2k, etch then go ahead and walk. Play for Clevelend and enjoy spending your money while playing for a team that has no shot at winning. He is a good back but he is not in the top tier group. Signing bush is not a shot at him, or an attempt to replace him it makes the team better, and it helps extend his career. The Bears are working to put together a team that can push for a super bowl. I hope he realizes that signing here is a good situation for him and that winning is more important than a few more mil on the contract. If he's going to keep whining and force his way out then in a way it'd serve him right to leave the Bears only to see them win a SB. But I'd like to see him shut up, sign a fair deal, play football and help this team win a championship. If history says anything about Bears fans it's that if you win a championship you will be immortalized here. Bears fans are starving for a winner and if you help that happen you will be a hero.

Has there been any movement on a long term deal with Forte? I'm listening to the conference call and they mentioned that Forte and his agent indicated they felt disrespected by the signing of Michael Bush. Are the Bears and Forte that far apart that we haven't seen a deal yet. Was the Bush signing to give the bears a good 1-2 punch or is it insurance should Forte's deal not get done and he holds out. Also in that conf call they said he is going to hold out. At this point I'm siding with Forte, the man has played his butt off for the Bears from day one, has been the focal point of the offense. To me he's earned his pay day... I've watched and I'm sure he has too, watched other bears get extensions and new players signed and here he sits with a franchise tag keeping him in Chicago. I would like to see the Bears work out a deal for Forte and have him in camp and on the field this season. Give him a 4-5 year deal and have a solid 1-2 backfield with a solid back up in Bell. That's just my opinion though...

I would agree that Denver has some good WR's and provided Manning's able to play up to any level near pre-injury, I think people might be surprised at the difference in the passing game. Tebow is a horrible passer Manning is a very accurate passer. Think about guys who managed to do ok with Tebow, will have a better chance to shine with a good passer like Manning. It's hard to know what hey have at WR when the QB rarely gets the ball to the receiver without them making big adjustments on the ball to make the catch. Tebow is a great athlete, he's a poor passer. I think Denver is a good fit for Manning, he is the type of QB that Elway and Fox would prefer as more of a pocket passer with some elusiveness. And I don't doubt that They (Elway and Fox) want to be rid of Tebow.

Thats' what I'd heard too and when it was clear we'd played ourselves out of the playoffs there was no reason to bring either Cutler or Forte back out onto the field. That was the prognosis on Cutler at the time as well that he would possibly be able to play either at the end of the season but definitely would be available for the playoffs. I have no worries that he'll be ready to go come time for min-camps, training camp, etc.

Exactly my thoughts. I didn't watch the seattle game and only heard about the injury and finally saw the clip and it made me cringe just seeing that. Knox is fortunate to not be paralyzed that wasn't a dirty hit but just being in in a bad spot at the wrong time. Whether he comes back to football or not is the minor thing compared to quality of life, first and foremost my thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family and that he gets well and and is able walk, run, and enjoy life like the rest of us. Football is just a game, his health is more important. But on the football side of it even if he's able to get back to where he can run and participate in non contact drills or conditioning or any of that. I would think it would be wise to not play in the 2012 season to let the body heal fully and properly and not to rush back to the football field. From his twitter it's clear he wants to return to football. My hope is that he doesn't try to come back too quickly. It takes a lot of time to fully recover from something like this and even then to expect to be the same as you were before is not likely. He should think of his health and his family first and then think about playing again.

his name isn't Ruskell which is +1, he's been involved in drafts before, and has been involved in drafting some pretty good talent. I would have rather seen Ross but I kinda had a feeling it would end up being Emery. What I don't care for as much is that he happens to have connections here. The Bears seem to prefer hiring someone who is or was connected to someone who's in the organization now. Whether it's a friend, former colleague, friend of a friend, drinking buddy, or whatever. That said Emery might be a good fit at GM he has experience with the draft which was one of the main areas that got Angelo fired. He has some good names associated with him as far as drafting goes. So I will give him a chance it will probably take a couple years or so to really see if he's a good fit or not. What we shouldn't do is say if he doesn't have an outstanding first year and we don't win a SB that he sucks and needs to go. A new GM rarely turns the team around in a year. We gave Angelo 11 years. Let's just hope that if it's 5-6 years down the road and there is little to no improvement in the GM area and he's still here then I'd start raising cane.

As an Irish fan I would absolutely love to have this guy in a Bears uni. I don't see any character issues with him. Yes he had an issue that caused him to miss time with the team but he has learned from that and has been an upstanding guy since. Watching him become the focal point of the Irish passing game when defenses know he's going to get the ball thrown his way a lot and still makes the catches. The guy is a beast and will fight for the ball. Has great body control, good hands, etc. I would be thrilled if the Bears got him. We need more big receivers who know how to fight for the ball and will make plays for us.

something to think about is that these candidates are not exactly going to be completely ignorant of our roster, the situation, etc. When you are going out on interviews for a job do you not research the companies you are considering working for? I would say most people don't just blindly interview for a job. I would bet they have all done homework on the Bears and researched things as well as come up with some ideas/plans to improve the team they are interviewing for. As an employer looking to hire a GM you need to know if 1. they have a plan to improve the team, what that plan might look like, etc. As an interviewee you would want to have something you could present to your prospective employer as your vision for the the team going forward. I wouldn't be so quick to say these guys know nothing about the Bears till they get here for the interview.

I look at it this way as others have pointed out Martz doesn't see the TE as a real part of the offense other than a blocker and occasionally a receiver. With Tice in as OC and lets say for the sake of argument that Davis turns out to develop into a weapon in the passing game especially in the Red Zone that is just further indictment of why Martz system is obsolete in todays NFL. Look at the teams in the NFL that are successful... how many of them utilize one or more Pass catching TE's or better yet do any of them not use the TE as a receiver. If Tice will look to utilize the TE as a passing option I'd like to see what we really do have in Davis and if we can bring in Finley without making too big of a dent, then do it. When you can add more talent to your team you should do it. I for one am tired of the "we're good enough at this spot" thinking. Good enough only gets you so far. The teams that constantly look at upgrading or adding talent too every position are the ones regularly pushing for a strong post season bid. If we can develop Davis and pair him with Finley who is established. It gives Cutler more weapons to throw to and may take some of the pressure off the WR's who definitely need upgrading. The flip side of this is that part of the reason we didn't use the TE as a receiver as much is because we kept them in to help bolster a weak OL. We sacrificed targets in order to max protect. So while it's tempting to turn our TE's loose on routes to give cutler more targets. A weak OL makes it tough for Jay to have time to find those targets and stay upright while running for his life. That said, Tice from what I've heard, will make protecting Jay a priority and looking to put him in a position to excel. That means not dropping back 5-7 steps and turning your franchise QB that you paid dearly for into a pinata where defenses could just tee off on him. Giving him multiple launch points, using his running ability to boot, and roll out, and PA. Jay is a heck of an athlete and his ability to make plays on the run salvaged more plays than we probably realize. The ability to Audible will also help by allowing Jay to use his knowlege of defenses, his experience, give him the power to check out of a bad play rather than run it knowing it's going to get blown up. I remember when I first heard that Martz didn't allow audibles by the QB, and thinking that is asinine! Is this the kiddie table? Is Jay not a grown man who has played QB long enough that he is capable of recognizing "this play is a bad idea." Martz system worked best when he had prow bowl talent at the OL along with PB QB, and WR. With Martz here we were our own worst enemy, and an offensive scheme that by and large highlighted the weakness of our OL. I believe that when you have a weak to average at best Line your offensive scheme itself can make that worse by stubbornly trying to do things you simply don't have the talent to do... But with the right schemes you can at least help minimize the issues. Even when we kept TE's in to block most of the pressure that got to Jay was up front the interior of our line was bad. But rather than use rollouts, boots, PA, etc to give Jay different launch points Martz used Jay as a drop back passer which just set us up for failure. I may be sipping some kool-aid but who's to say Tice can't develop a system that better tailors itself to what we have to work with. And we see a Bears offense that gets more out of what talent it does have at OL, WR, and TE.

I think the majority of Bears nation celebrated that loss. There were points where I was worried that the help the refs were giving GB would put them over the edge when it was all said and done. Interesting that those blown callse happened at key points. The first fumble that was initially called correctly was switched to down by contact by the ref that remembered they were on the GB payroll. Then when the Giants challenged they weren't going to over turn it. That extended a drive that lead to a TD. THen the bogus roughing that extended yet another key drive that resulted in a TD. 14 of their points were basically given to them. Reguardless, I was thrilled to see that cocky, overrated pice of trash team eliminiated from the playoffs.

Make that a perfect storm system.... you want to see how to groom QB's in the NFL... as much as I hate to say it... look at GB. Farve was there forever look at the guys they had under him who went on to be starters elsewhere. Favre was their guy but they continued to draft and develop the next guy. When Favre was gone Rodgers was there to step in having sat behind Brett for a few years. Right now that guy being developed is Flyn They will probably continue to draft a QB every few years. This is how teams who are well managed rotate talent and seem to always have talent at various positions. My guess is Flynn will be traded somewhere else and become that teams starter for a while and the Packers will have the next guy to develop. The Bears on the other hand are clueless on the art of drafting and developing talent. We didn't draft Cutler, we gave up a crap load of picks in a trade to get him. Who do we have under him to develop? Haine who's regressed since he's gotten here to the point where a guy who's not started an NFL game in 4 years and was recently coaching kids came in and looked far better than Caleb who'd been in the system for a few years. McCown looked decent, enderlee who the heck knows what we have in him. This staff seems to know nothing about developing talent. The bears are a franchise that doesn't plan for the future but rather plans for the present, if nothing else to keep the team just competitive enough to keep people in the stands. The Packers on the other hand are an example of a team that plans for the present but not at the expense of the future as well. You build todays team with tomorrows team in mind.

The D held most of the game but the way we closed the game out on both sides of the ball was atrocious. UP 10 in the 4th on offense we just go completely conservative and just run up the middle 3 times and punt on multiple possessions, no real attempt to pick up first downs. Then on Defense we go into complete prevent where we basically gave them a wide open receiver for 10-20 yard chunks. at a time. I am soooo beyond sick of watching the Bears go into this prevent gimmie defense and let a team who needs to score march effortlessly down the field. They can praise Tebow all they want but we made it super easy on them in the last 5-7 min and let them tie the game up that is inexcusable!!! Yes we should have still won this in overtime Barber's fumble was unforced and was a total killer. We were well in FG range. But it should have never come to overtime. We gave this game away at the end. Just once I'd like to see the Bears put the clamps down, and play the kind of defense that had kept Denver off the score board all game long. Make them fight, scratch, and claw for every friggin inch don't just give them easy pitch and catch. The Bears beat themselves today. Three straight weeks of playing not to lose and we are sitting on an 0-3 stretch where we have played ourselves out of the playoff picture. No need for Cutler and Forte to hurry back there won't be anything to play for.

That was huge when Cutler and Forte combined to get him out of bounds. Up 11 points with around 8 min to play and I think they still had all their time outs. A TD on that is huge. And as it turned out was even bigger when Rivers characteristically forced a ball into the end zone where best case scenario would be an incompletion (I know all to well, I drafted this guy on my fantasy team). But what follow was just as impressive. We converted 7 straight 3rd downs to chew up around 7 min of clock. I didn't agree with the fake punt call, I would have rather tried to pin them deep, with just under 2 min to go and no time outs. Then Rivers does what he's done best this year and threw the ball to Graham sealing the game. I guess given the situation the fake punt wasn't a bad risk, given it was a two score game and they were out of timeouts and the clock inside 2 min. if we make it game over. If we fail they are still behind the eight ball. Would have worked if Podleash wouldn't have over threw Steltz. On the post game show they were talking about that play by cutler and compared it to the Super Bowl when Rex basically does nothing to stop the guy from returning that interception for a TD. What Cutler and Forte did was prove that you fight for every inch in this game you never know what will happen if you knock them out of bounds and they have to try to score conventionally.