selection7

I feel bad for him. I think he's a good guy. And he's smart enough to know that the Bears win that game if he could've eliminated even one of those fumbles, so he probably feels pretty bad about it.

It was a decision I didn't understand at the time. Turns out it was a bad one. Nevertheless, JA makes good decisions that I didn't undertand at the time too. Oh well.

Orton was a bright spot, actually, considering what I wanted from him. I have a feeling this topic is dominated by a small handful of people who have hated Orton since before the season and they've suckered some others over to their cause. No picks, no fumbles or dropped center-QB exchanges, only got sacked once, stayed poised the whole time, surprisingly decisive, directed an offense that could mount honest-to-goodness drives, etc. I'm so happy watching Orton at QB so far because it's just night and day from what I'm used to seeing. Not exactly incredible, but it almost feels that way, nevertheless. Throw in that this is just his 5th start in recent history and second this season and he's definitely looking better than I figured he would this early. As big as the no turnovers/sacks/busted plays stuff is, I think what really makes me so happy is the poise. If you go back a month or two you can find me posting on how Orton is a young QB on an NFL team with quite a history of flakiness at the position and that I'm not accepting him until he proves he can show self-control and poise through at least a few games. I've said the same thing about Rex during his 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. chances at being starting QB and he always let me down. I still like Rex...maybe he's been psychologically ruined, I don't know, but for now Orton is showing he gets it, and I'm not looking back. If I was Lovie, I would have said to Orton before the season "Do what I ask of you. Respect your teamates enough to let them do their jobs. You don't have to do it for them. If you can't manage to do even that without flaking out, why should I trust you to do anything? I will quickly kick you off the team, and you will know exactly why." Some other thoughts: --Orton's pass to Booker was actually a decent pass. It didn't miss by much. It's called a low % pass for a reason, and I could tell Booker never reached a true sprint either. --Orton had *technically* 4 drives all day long that didn't have 10+ penalty yards or a fumble drivekiller (*though a 5th was the intentional grounding to avoid a sack drive). To be more fair, you might take out 3 of those 4 drives due to 1) one drive was the Booker deep pass drive...and that was the only pass Orton threw on that set of downs 2) one drive was the final drive, hurryup and bad playcalling and all 3) Rashied dropped a 3rd down pass that hit him right in the hands. ...which confirms what I thought I saw when I watched the game. It means that with those exceptions, Orton had only ONE* drive opportunitiy all day long that wasn't marred by his teamates 11 penalties or Olson's fumbles. Look it up at NFL.com if you don't believe me. --Orton's last drive audible was bad --every QB has "almost" INT's every game. orton had maybe one more of those than I'm comfortable with. --Orton does not need to improve quickly, as another post put it. He needs to do what I said above, or he's "off the team", hehe. --I think it may be true that Orton's "almost" TD was in fact an outright TD not called by the refs, which would have given him a QB rating in the 90's I bet. --Anyone who actually watched the game (I'll give you a pass if you just looked at post-game stats) and is still calling for Orton's head after 2 games, one of which was a huge win over Indy, and the other was one where we led almost the whole game, then you deserve to be sucked into an alternate reality dimension where the Bears go 60 more years without a good QB.

No one is saying Turner called a great game overall. But he made some really good calls too, don't forget. The reason the Bears' O didn't get more offensive production is because Olson fumbled twice and the Bears had 12 (TWELVE!) penalties for closing in on 100 yards. But again, Turner can't change that for them. You won't get any arguments from me on that last drive. It was rotten Turner playcalling. But that was really only to tie the game anyway. The Bears should have never put themselves in that position in the first place. If I was Turner I would be pretty aggravated.

Turner doesn't get any game balls for sure, but this is a classic example of the "he can't go out there and execute for his players" line. Let's not kid ourselves, Olson lost this game for us. He'll learn...and Chris Harris has a special talent for strips.

Actually, most people still think the Bears are a playoff team. We were almost a playoff team last year, and things look far better for us this year.

It's Sept. 11 today, to be specific, whether the news is slow or not isn't really the point.

Miller may be better healed after the extended offseason at least, and he won't be starting anytime soon unless there's injury so that's even more time. That's bound to help out an older guy, providing he can get into football shape.

I don't follow this guy, nevertheless... Seems that aside from the current weird psychological condition, he's only got 2 bad games in a row...one this season, and last year's playoff loss (I didn't even look up the playoff game, but I assume he played bad). It's perplexing that he got booed in game 1. But more perplexing is how somone can get that down on himself after 2 bad games. Am I missing something? Either way, we can take solace in knowing that some fans have made it known they will not accept failure, regardless of whether the effort is there, and what a vital service that is! I can't imagine how the Titans organization would manage to stay competitive without the hometown booing.

I don't know if Butkus saw that Urlacher interview. The "face" was a very subtle and quick natural reaction. It actually showed maturity IMO because you saw that he is his own man, has high expectations, and doesnt' let the fickle media shape his team's self-value. Nevertheless, the spread was like 9.5 or something. From an outsiders perspective, that should sound like an upset if you ask me. So I also think some Bears fans are being dramatic with their insults at Andrea Kramer.

But it's not really the question. I think though that Carol's angle was that we shouldn't let our expectations get so high, which was an odd angle since our expectations aren't so high. Because of the nature of preseason, there was no good reason for some people's hopes to be so low as Carol's in the first place...to think it'd be a fluke that the Bears could even play the Colts competitively. That's why her recent article was unnecessary. She's still trying to justify her old M.O. without acknowldedging that she (and others) were just being silly before, which is the real story. Alternatively, you could ask the more extreme question "are the Bears for real or are they a fluke" with respect to beating the tar out of the NFL's elite teams, but that would be equally silly. As an aside, it's funny to me how much the media comments about Peyton being off his game, but he still looked better than what we're used to seeing at our QB position. I honestly thought he did fine, but I guess expectations for him are quite high.

Hanie's strategy worked. Why were some people suggesting Hanie would be cut and placed on the practice squad? The 3rd QB doesn't even count on the roster limit...unless you want him to (which would remove the limitation of only being able to play him if you were willing to not allow QB's #1 & #2 back into the game). Because of this, and as the 3rd QB, there was never any chance he'd be cut, correct?

Keeping in mind we've already notched one of those wins, it's certainly not outrageous to predict us winning 2 or 3 more games than last year's 7-9. My one plea is that we get at least 4 games with no one (important starters) going down with season ending injuries. The thing that's killed me so much in the past, just as much as what the IR injuries meant for SB chances, is that we never got to see what our original team was made of before the lineup was changed forever. It still hurts that we don't know if last year's defensive domination at San Diego was a fluke or not. After that game, it wasn't the same team...literally.

"Since the Super Bowl" is only one year. Maybe that year was the "fluke". Nevertheless, our offense has had a lot of turnover. It's not suprising that things are different. Seems like Sleakak is getting ahead of herself. Minus the post-game lockerroom outbursts, has anyone out there been suggesting the Bears problems are behind them...only blue skies ahead? Just last week I was having to endure "hypothetical" forum posts about who would replace our coaching staff and GM at the end of the season. Only someone who's uncomfortable with how wrong she was to think the Bears had no shot at Indy would need to write an article saying "but come one, what does one ass-kicking win prove?". It's just not an article that needed to be written is my point. The main issue that Sleazak doesnt' get is that preseason is jus that. Tackling is worse, reads are worse, etc. because players still need practice to get back into the swing of things. It's not a confusing concept. Actually, she probably knows this but couldn't come up with a better story idea, which is ok I guess since the story is far from being vitriol.

IMO, Orton needs to show self-control, ball protection, and sound decision making for a number of games before Turner opens things up on him. After the five year Rexperiment (where overcoming just those three issues would have made him a QB most teams would love to have), let's not overlook the big picture here and or get impatient...let's develop Orton right.

I also noticed the two costly missed tackles by Vasher. In additon to the 1-on-1 missed tackle by Payne, Payne was the guy on the Colts reciver when their receiver caught that TD; I'm not sure if Payne was the primary guy responsible for him though. Also, didn't the NFL create a rule that some called "the Brian Urlacher rule" that expressly made it clear that flexing your arms into a QB does not warrant a roughing the QB penalty??? What more does the NFL have to do to get it through these ref's thick heads? I think last night's call was even more outrageous than the first time it happened. The announcer was kind to Forte when they showed him miserably failing to help out St. Clair on that one blitz where Orton was nearly sacked. But I think someone on these forums suggested in past weeks Forte was occassionaly getting in the way of the OL trying to do their job, so maybe he just needs to find that middle ground. Orton overthrew his receiver on what should have been a pick for the Colts. Was that just purely a case of inaccuracy or was there another factor? How about Forte pulling away from that Colts defender down the stretch on the 50yd TD? Nice to see he's got the speed to break the long ones.

Deon Sanders made that play famous. Hester was trying to emulate him (though Hester has already done something somewhat similar on a FG return).

One guy earlier in this thread predicted Bears win 31-14. I hope he put his money where his mouth was.

It takes some conceit to look at these preseason games and think you know the Bears season is a bust. Every position on the team had at least one good game this preseason. That was enough for me to know it was possible the Bears could pull it together. At one point I even claimed that I wouldn't be surprised if the Bears make it back to the Super Bowl (before clarifying that certainly didn't mean I thought it was probable). Granted, even now it won't surprise me if the Bears finish 7-9, but unlike last year, Mike Brown made it through the whole game and we clearly have at least a competitive team. I think the best argument the naysayers had was that our coordinators haven't proven they're not weak links...and if fact I'm still worried about them.

You beat me to it. Drafting is such a crapshoot. As the above suggests, it's possibly better to have twice as many guys all drafted a round and a half lower, for example. Then you can cut the worst guys rather than being forced to hang on to them because you just drafted them (in other words, cutting a bunch of guys is part of the plan, not a sign of failure). It's kind of similar to strategies emplyed in some board games or betting games. A 25% success rate on 14 guys is better than a 45% success rate on 7 guys. Of course there's no way to prove which strategy works better with the NFL draft. I also understand there are other factors such as the hypothetical possibility that you won't evaluate any of your camp players correctly anyway, in which case it would be better to just go with only 7 guys drafted higher...but you get my point.

What position did Rashied Davis play at through most of the preseason? What about Hester? This is all speculation on my part since I'm not sure what specific positions our WR's have been playing this preseason but I agree with the last post that the Bears lack of evaluation of Booker must mean he's a starter. On the other side, maybe Lloyd backs up Davis since Lloyd is still new to the offense (assuming Davis has been permanently moved out of slot). I think Ron Turner indicated he wanted to double the number of snaps Hester was involved with up to something like 25 snaps/game, but even that is not quite up to the level of starter. Maybe Hester'll continue to get slot work or replace Booker when Lloyd is also in there to give us two fast guys on the field at once.

Have we ever had a practice squad player end up a starter? What about 2nd string? What about a player who was a practice squad player for some other team before he came to us? There's one guy I'm trying to remember that it seems we cut and recut at least 3 times before finally putting him on the team and he ended up playing significantly, if not a starter, but I can't recall. EDIT: Rashied Davis was a practice squad player...for his arena football team!, though that's not who I was trying to remember.

So even if Bazuin had turned out well, you have a problem with his draft pick as a matter of principle because it nevertheless had a low percentage of success (due to us being stacked at DE). OK. I can somewhat accept that. I think need and best player available is a balancing act. Just remember that even if A.Brown had been sure to stick around, at this time last year he was coming off a poor season.

Some of you already knew this but there's a suntimes article pointing out that Bazuin was hurt during rookie camp last year and has had injury issues ever since, according to Bazuin himself. JA can't be held responsible for that stuff, which happens to every GM's draft picks once in a while...Chris Williams is of course possible another thing all together. http://www.suntimes.com/sports/football/be...-bear30.article

Yes coach!