DABEARSDABOMB

Aside from last week the defense has played good enough for the Bears to win so I think Millen has a point over the whole season. Our offensive line has been abysmal and the team has been a one man show (Cutler and the WR's). We've had zero blocking, zero rushing, etc.

I think it shows you much more about Cutlers ability to get rid of the football and avoid pressure. He has been stellar at that, the problem is, there have been a good number of plays where he's hit as he throws the ball and while those don't show up in the stat sheet they lead you to throw inaccurate balls and picks, on top of it, they also force you to potentially rush future passes out of fear of the pressure.

Really a great piece by Mulligan.

It sounds like he's pissed off and IIRC a bunch of people were complaining as if Lovie doesn't get fired off. He's ticked that his team played like shit but doesn't want to publicly throw anyone under the bus but himself (which he's done in the past). Look, I've bitched and moaned about Lovie too, but some of you guys (not you Nfo), get on him for every little thing and its completely ridiculous.

It is a huge difference. The Browns didn't even tell the QB's who the starter was and who wasn't. Lovie has told the team whats going on, he's just not reporting it to the press and I don't have a problem with that. I'm very curious to see how Lovie responds to this adversity.

I realize Turner wants to get his guys back, but don't tell us they are playing well. Thats a bunch of horse-shit. By the way, I commend the Bears for going to Beekman, hopefully it helps.

Well Anderson has the worse QB rating in the NFL, so I'd have to think they'd bench him. All I can say is that if Anderson puts up good numbers, Lovie better hide, cause the city and the airwaves will be 100% after him (to get fired).

Browns announced Anderson will remain the starter for this weeks game versus the Bears.

Agreed NFO. I'm on board for all of those things.

I did mention that we needed new coaching too. I'm 100% on board the Lovie needs to go camp. And I'm not saying those moves make our defense a top 10 defense....but right now, we don't even have the talent of a top 20 defense to be honest. But if you can give Cutler a top 20 defense or just a solid one, and get a solid oline together, the Bears can win while they work on developing that defense again (cause right now we got an aging, mediocre defense without the players capable of running this scheme. The Cover 2 doesn't work if you don't have a dominant pass rush. If you have a dominant pass rush, the cover 2 works well, but than again so does pretty much every other scheme.

College is only 26 or so.

List of FA DB's that could interest the Bears if they wanted to go that route: http://www.footballsfuture.com/2010/fa/ol.html Dunta Robinson - Promised that he wouldn't be franchised by the Texans. Entering/In the prime of his football career. Probably commands too much money, although no denying we could use an elite CB. The question is whether he really is an elite CB. Anthony Bethea - Colts good safety Nick Collins - Packers good safety

Having a new coach will help, imo.

List of FA's on the Oline http://www.footballsfuture.com/2010/fa/ol.html Marcus McNeil is one of the most intriguing names - Stud LT whose young. San Diego might have some other pressing needs depending on what they ultimately do. Chad Clifton - Former Packer. Not an elite tackle, but he's 33, would be 34 and still would have a couple years left and be able to buy time until the Bears have a full arsenal of draft picks. Darryn College - Packer; Better than Clifton, but inexperienced on the left side. Packers will probably go all out to sign him. The better question is why with 2 good tackles is the Packers oline so bad, cause maybe that means this guys are over-hyped. Jared Gaither - Restricted FA. young, would be a great pick-up, but given the restricted tag we wouldn't have the ammo to get him.

Someone had a list of all the FA's and there are quite a few solid guys available and a few potential pro-bowlers out there. Again, sign one or two good guys (one being an older vet since the Bears won't be dishing out 100 million in contracts to two guys) and than hope Williams and Beekman improve and your alright. Use 2011's 1st rounder on an olineman and that continues to regrow things and use a couple 2010's on some guards and you might be in business.

I'm not saying next year fixes make us a Super Bowl Champion, but two good olineman would do a whole world of good to the offense. Not to mention a years more experience for Bennet, Hester and Knox is a plus and Forte will be fine when he gets healthy and has an improved line. Defensively the team is a middle of the pack defense and that should be enough with the weapons above playing well to win 9-11 games every year. If the Bears get development out of there younger players, add a safety and put themselves in a position where they could focus on best available on the olines and defensive side of the football in the 2011 draft as well as add another free agent or two, we could be looking at 2010 as a playoff year, 2011 as an above average, potential super bowl year and 2012 and beyond as hopeful superbowl years.

We might be winning, but I wouldn't say we'd be any closer to the superbowl. The reality is, great QB's win super-bowls. Very few average QB's win super-bowls and typically the teams that perennially contend for them have the top QB's in the league. The Bears went out and got that and while they could have maybe won a few more games this year by spending there draft picks on other guys, long-term they'd be worse off cause we'd still have a team built around the aging defense and a solid, but not great or special QB. We'd also still have a horrendous oline.

It says a lot that the Bears sat Harris. On one hand, we saw the performance without him, on the other hand, Lovie has watched him play and the fact that he could have played and didn't must be a testament to the fact that Lovie didn't think they were going to be effected much by his abscence. It didn't sound like his injury was tired and that more or less, this was a DNP due to soreness, which is pretty much nothing.

Moving Harris frees up a lot of money for the Bears to spend on the oline. Harrison was a huge dissapointment this year. He looked good last season came in this year out of shape and it showed. What ultimately happens with Melton will be interesting, but I still believe you see a lot of veteran DT's without a job come cap casualty time and the Bears could always sign a quality stop-gap or two while they wait for others to develop. No need to pay a non-special player 9 mill, when you could use that money towards an olineman or two.

I also think that from an offensive perspective, we are headed in the right direction. I like our 3 WR's, Olsen is young, Forte as well. Basically put on the offensive side of the ball I think we are alright with the exeption of the line. That is a big if, but a couple good free-agent signings along with the development of a Chris Williams and Josh Beekman (maybe at C) could immediately improve this line as soon as next year. We'd still be in need of using some of our 2011 picks on the oline, but the reality is they could target one guy via FA as soon as this off-season and pick him up, if not two guys. The Bears have money, especially when you factor some of the other changes that will come, specifically Vasher/Harris being gone along with Ogunleye and a few others. At that same time, I can't think of anyone that we need to resign or due up for a major extension now that Cutler has signed. On the defensive side there is also much to do, but we've put a lot of recent picks into the line so we can only hope that Marinelli can do what he does and that a rotation of Gilbert/Melton/Gaines Adams/Anthony Adams/Marcus Harrison/Mark Anderson/Alex Brown can do its thing and be a solid dline. If Gaines Adams or one of the pass rushers lives up to there hype we would instantly have an above average dline. Plus, if we need at DT, there are usually quality veteran DT's available who we could pick up to play part of the time. The secondary is a whole nother story, but the Bears have spent draft picks on Moore and they like Bowman. He's still raw but hopefully he can develop into something and than Tillman could potentially move to safety and thus strengthening our position there. Plus look at how a Darren Sharper can move relatively cheaply. There is no reason the Bears couldn't go out and spend some money on a safety. Add a healthy Urlacher (while I am not a fan, right now he's our best option) and go with Roach/Williams on the outside and the LB corps is fine. Basically put, the Bears can fix a lot of holes by spending money on 2 olineman, developing the Dline a bit, finding one more CB, and signing a safety. That wouldn't be out of the question. Than you can use the 3rd round and later picks (maybe get a pick for a Tommie Harris) to hopefully fill some long-term needs (ie, draft some guards, a project tackle, maybe a safety, etc). And next year's team will be better and than we'll have another off-season where we'll have our full round of picks where we can hopefully grab another impact olineman or an impact Dlineman or both (with our 1st two picks) and maybe go after an impact WR if we ultimately determine we need one. Who knows though, we still have Iglesias there. Basically put, FA will be a much more important thing for the Bears this year, but we don't need to sign 10 guys, realistically 2 bigger signings and one solid signing would be enough to fill some major holes so that the team couldn't be exploited and that we could really look to Cutler to maybe make us even better. I basically think Cutler makes our team a couple wins better based purely on his talent. So if we have a 9 win team, we might have an 11 win team with Jay. This team without Jay (and with Kyle) is probably a 6-7 win team. With Jay I still think they have a great shot at 9 wins, maybe 10.

The thing is, I think most Bears fans knew that short-term, Cutler wasn't going to win a superbowl with the team currently constructed. However, Cutler alone should make this team a playoff contender while it rebuilds in a better direction and hopefully 3 years from now we are talking about a super bowl caliber club and we'll have a super bowl caliber QB in his prime.

Pretty dead on. I'd probably just give the whole team F's, but its hard to completely kill the QB/RB given they were in zero position to do anything the whole game (being down as far as they were and with the blocking they had). Hell, I'd give them incompletes cause they had no chance to succeed.

I would not go back and re-do the deal. We would not be a better team with Orton than Cutler. We'd be even worse cause there is really no support system for our QB. Our oline is the worst line in the NFL.

I don't even see how you could evaluate Cutler's performance this week. We were down 5 Td's and we had 2 guys in his face all game.

The D wouldn't have said that last year with Urlacher as the leader, but it probably wouldn't have had to. That said I give them credit for speaking up, but I firmly believe its time for a change (at the end of the season). I hope I'm wrong and its one game, but wow what a bad game.