selection7

The Broncos traded their 2nd, 3rd, & 4th round picks to select Tebow, and all they they got was a 4th round pick (and $2.5M) for him two years later. That's very interesting. As big a deal as he is, clearly most teams consider him to be less valuable now than he was back when he was drafted. It's gonna be interesting seeing how he gels with the crass, loudmouth son of Buddy Ryan.

Trends in the NFL come and go. It's hard to not see height as having become overvalued when Wes Welker is outproducing Megatron...not too many years after Steve Smith consistently did the same. But balance is important so the other team can't simply play one defensive strategy on you. If all your receivers lack elusiveness, or if all your receivers lack height, you've probably got a problem. We don't have one WR that will still be on roster next year who's over 6' even.

How does this compare to where they were at before Forte tailed off, then got hurt, then the Bears lost a lot of games and the GM got fired? He's almost surely asking for less now than he was then, but I wonder how much less.

I wondered the same thing, so thinking it out... If one of them is making 10MIL/yr, then that 100 times what someone making $100,000/yr is making, so in a sense, $2000 is like $20 to them, but since football players salaries over only about 12 years has to last them until retirement, we should at least double it, so yeah...about 40 bucks to a guy making 10MIL/yr or $200 to a guy making 2MIL/yr. It's not that much, but it's enough to psychologically motivate I'd imagine. You know I've read about oldtimers like Butkus and that player I once read about who necessitated implementing the "no spearing" rule decades ago, and I'm sure they were as mean of SOBs as people say, but they also weren't 6'4", 255lbs of muscle running a 4.5 40. Can you imagine having someone like Urlacher out to hurt you by any means necessary?

I totally agree there's no place in today's game for it, especially as it amounts to cheating now that it's officially against the rules, but it has has to be mentioned...the first bounties on players I can remember hearing about was Buddy Ryan's Bear defense in the 80's. Though I'm sure it was going on before then too.

Hmm, yeah, I think I remember that talk now. Though I still have no memory of where he went when he left. Obviously his stint in NY has worked out for him so I congratulate him...though he might do well to remember what happened to Ron Rivera after his (far superior) D got us to the Super Bowl. It's good for him they finished on a high note.

Why wasn't the Hester clip the one from the opening play of the Super Bowl...against Indy? ...considering we were watching the Super Bowl and it was being played right there in Indy. That's the change I would've made. I didn't realise our former DB coach, Perry Fewell, was the Giant's DC. Not that we should be excited bout that. Or even the Giants since their defense was fairly bad for most of this year. Also, I was looking at Mark Anderson's stats. He got 10 sacks this year for the Pats but only 29 tackles. That's less than 2 tackles/game. Not that he's known for his run stuffing, but maybe he's also primarily a third down player.

Really though, JA drafted almost excusively from Div I in the first 4 rounds, so probably not as much as you'd remember in retrospect. Just Roosevelt Williams and Danieal Manning, I believe, neither from the last half-decade. JA did draft from smalltime Div I schools a lot though. But Tillman came from LaLafayette, Urlacher from New Mexico (not a JA pick), Forte from Tulane. If you can hit on talent from small time schools too, that should be a sign you're doing a little better than just going with what Street & Smiths football magazine suggests. http://www.databasefootball.com/draft/draf...=chi&lg=nfl

Here's photos of Urlacher with Cutler wearing the GSH and Peppers wearing the GSH on the home jersey. What were you referring to? http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2011/12/27/...77831325009657/ Here's one with the white jersey on Cutler: http://chicagoexpat.blogspot.com/2011/02/f...-whom-bell.html In looking for photos, I did notice that the little GSH on the left sleeve often gets tucked under and hidden.

I too was amused at his evaluation of Jamarcus Webb. "His consistency grade was actually solid." So first, he says whatever Webb did, he did it consistently. Ok, so what did Webb do? "What grade was bad was the critical errors, the sacks, penalties." So then he admits that what Webb did consistently was make critical mistakes. Wow. I remember in that last game watching Webb and he moved like you'd expect some LT on a college club football team to move. It doesn't matter whether you've got Jared Allen or current day Refrigerator Perry coming at you, ambling around slowly is what it is. And it made me wonder...Carimi is less mobile than this guy (according to coaches)? I understand that when being at least 6'3" is a requirement for the position that you're automatically filtering out 97% of the best athletes (that conservatively assumes athleticism is evenly distributed among all heights), but maybe I still give too much credit to the athleticism of an NFL left tackle. The only other thing I can think of is that maybe the plays where the cameras highlighted Webb were plays where he got caught napping (mentally), and those aren't indicitive of his true athleticism.

well said, my friend. well said.

yep, interesting.

I really felt the media was too happy to "crown their ass" with respect to GB. ...like they were the next dynasty. Sure, they very well may get another SB soon, but then it also wouldn't shock me if they didn't ...and Rodger's 1 SB win ends up his only one. How bout we actually make them win first before we put them all in the HoF? I was super happy to know they'll watching from home just like our 8-8 Bears. And to Controlled Chaos, I don't like losing to them 4 times in one year either, but I'm also not going to pretend like we didn't win the division last year. If we're gonna crown their asses, I think we'd expect them to not lose their division, squeak into the playoffs their SB year and get beat one-and-done the next.

I don't necessarily disagree with the OP, but Hester did turn out to be a better WR than I figured. He was pretty inexperienced in college and had played CB only for a year or two here. I was really skeptical. It's also true that most teams devote higher picks to WR than we have (JA was probably scared of another David Terrell).

Coming fairly recently off not having two first round picks two yeas in a row, we'd never pull the trigger on that. Though if it was completely up to me I'd do it since I'm biased (being an OKState fan). My biggest concern would be that here in Chicago we'd never get the most out of him (we have a certain history)...that's glass half-empty thinking I'll admit, but that's actually worth keeping in mind with respect to any receiver we'd be interested in picking up.

And more specifically, not with our division rival Packers. I wonder how not having Al Davis around factored in.

No kidding. I could do this all day, but I don't really need this type of debate practice (only on the point about luck did I have to think for a moment about why you were off the mark). If I was going to ask anything next, it would be what you think the central argument is. You sometimes do a good job of arguing things that prove points other than what we're talking about though. I'll give you that.

I see what you mean. If Lovie is staying, you don't want any element of lame duck. If he's not, there's always "oh well, I changed my mind". Sort of like naming your QB the outright starter before training camp when reality is everything is dependent on how situations can change.

A] All those teams were not god awful. B] I never said anything about "things staying the same". I specifically said "everything else" other than what Cutler can affect. Don't play cute word games with me. These sort of debates go on easily enough without any help. C] your last point is irrelevant to our central argument It is to my point's advantage that it works both ways. Things going a little better than expected in a game won't help us get any more than 1 win out of it. Things going worse could result in a loss, even with Jay. As previously stated, 2 pick sixes does not cause you to lose by 24 points. Whether Cutler has done it twice is irrelavant. That Cutler very well could do it once (or twice, even), however, is relevant, as I previously pointed out. Kyle Orton had been on the Chiefs for 3 weeks and was still healing from a finger injury. The unbeaten Packers chance of winning that game was much more likely than our chances of going 5-1 with Jay. That's what you should take from that. But actually, your statement here, worded the way you did, I might even agree with. Of course, winning most of the games by double digits is not the same as winning all 5 of them easily.

I would have rather heard the Bears will strongly encourage a GM candidate to retain Lovie, but that it won't be a litmus test.

Cutler did say he wanted the Bears to keep Martz. Of course I have heard of a little thing called lying before. I'm just saying... As an aside, I know when a coach gets fired, other teams' forums end up with the obligatory posts about their availability, but I thought it was hilarious reading a Broncos forum fan's posting about "Should we hire Mike Martz?" lol. Fortunately, most Denver fans knew to shoot that one down. One fan, after rattling off a list of requirements in the Mike Martz offense, then asked "what about Tim Tebow makes you think he'd be good at any of that?"

Good read.

OK, I'll be more specific. You're making such a strong assertion about the hypothetical. My point is partly based on the idea that you can't simply add Cutler and everything else is guaranteed to stay the same. As it turned out with Hanie, we were close in 4 of those 6. But we were perhaps lucky to be close in a couple of those and it would take avoiding bad luck to not have a couple of those re-played games end up harder the second time round. If you could rewind time and play those last 6 games with Jay (but not Forte, who you didn't mention) 100 times, how many times would we win 5 out of 6? You'd have to answer we'd do it at least 80-85 times out of 100 for "easily" to be an appropriate description, IMO. You'd make that bet? Knowing in most cases, losing any game but the Packers means failure? Beating all those teams means finishing the season 10-1. Also, the Seahawks scored 24 straight points on us. It wasn't close. Same for the Pack. Yes, Hanie threw 2 pick sixes, but we lost by well more than 14, and do you remember what was happening when Cutler hurt his thumb? Sometimes picks get taken to the house, sometimes they don't...it's chance (I mean that in general. I realize Jay's hustle did save a TD on his play where he got injured). I definitely would have liked our chances against the Seahawks with our starter, but did everyone like the Packers chances against the Chiefs? Yep. But they lost anyway. This is the free-agency era NFL, on any given Sunday you still have to play the games. Plus, yes, Jay had some games at probably the highest level we'd seen from him...but not with consistency. Heck, 2 out of his last 4 games he had a 69 and a 60 QBR. Jay is a lot of great things, but consistent isn't one of things he's shown us (yet). So is that enough rebuttle to support that easily 12-4 is unneeded exaggeration? That is all I said after all.

Devin Hester would not be a happy camper either. Throw some money at him, Angelo