DABEARSDABOMB

Funny story...it was during the week (and I realized I don't have your number) and the rest of my family (whose from the area) wants to stop at this place called the Lightower...turns out its in Michigan City. So I was in your town for like 45 minutes. I think your property values went up just from having "The Chisoxfn" there The lighthouse had a ton of stuff and the town seemed pretty cool (we took the historic route into town so we were driving near the lake most of the way).

I think the draft was a negative only if you go based on what was expected. We all expected a lot of offense, but Angelo showed faith in our current offense and by not taking a bunch of offense he made a statement that QB was the main problem last season and with Grossman and Griese at the helm it shouldn't be a problem this year.

Heck ya, it should be an awesome year. Welcome aboard

Hey is Grand Haven near South Haven? I ask that because I was in Michigan last week for about 2 days (my aunt has a little house on Lake Michigan; they've had it since the 70's) and it happened to be located in South Haven.

Yes siree...as soon as Heads can get to it, may take a week or so. He's doing the Bulls one and than this one. I'm with ya though, its gonna be hard to beat that last one. It was as Paris Hilton says: HOT

http://www.chicagobears.com/news/newsDetail.jsp?id=16157 Its nice to see that they expect Tank Johnson to come back. Of course they didn't give much of a timetable but Johnson talked as if he would be fine. He also mentioned Ogunleye and Brown tiring a bit last season and put a bit of the blame for that on himself. My guess is we'll see the Bears rotate in some of our depth a bit more often to keep them fresh throughout the season. Talked briefly about Anderson and Dvoracek and mentioned just how quick and athletic they are but also said its hard to tell anything about the guys without pads on.

So the Fox games will be getting a new update guy. That should be interesting. Colinsworth moved too right???

Who did they lose? I forget what happened with all the TV deals. NBC replaces ESPN for Sunday night while ESPN replaces ABC for Monday night???

The Arizona game is a MNF game because the Cards are going to be showcasing there brand new retractable dome (with a sliding grass field; the real grass stays outside and than is carted in on a tray on game-day; its a gigantic tray that electronically carts in so the stadium can be used as a convention center when there isn't football). But you'd think we'd have a home MNF game to go with that, especially when you think of the national draw of the Bears. Oh well, I got my bar on Sundays with NFL Ticket and I won't be missing a game (unless I'm dying or something). Come on...the Rams matter. Its funny how quickly they got good after they left Anaheim. You couldn't pay people to take Rams tickets during there last few years. What an awful franchise they were during the California days. They only did one thing right and that was Jim Everett...solely because he whooped Jim Rome's butt after Rome repeatedly called him Chris Everett.

Ya, I'm sure the rest of the division being down helps, but the Vikes arne't a bad team and they played much better down the stretch. They were by and large a brand new team at the start of the year and it took a while for there defense to gel but considering they lost Daunte (who they don't have anymore) they didn't do all that bad once Johnson came in (in fact he did a much better job than Daunte did). Lions made a boatload of changes and seem to be going in the right direction, but that many changes tends to mean it takes a while to gel and they are probably still a couple years off while the Pack still has a damn good QB (Favre is still pretty good, I don't care how old he is) but the defense is meh and they really had trouble protecting the football.

I tried for the World Series tickets and failed just like everyone else did. I was lucky enough to have season tix for the Angels so I was golden for the ALCS road games. I may end up getting to the Arizona Cardinal monday night game. Only problem is I start my career about a month sooner and I have 3 weeks of training so basically my first or second real week would involve me asking for time off and for some reason I don't think that would be the wisest thing to do. Anyone else planning on attending any games in person this year?

Here's the Bears NFL Network pre-season TV schedule. I have no idea if the Bears will be lucky enough to get a game televised live, but for those of us that live outside of the city of Chicago we always have the option to catch the delayed game via NFL network. Here are the times and dates that the Bears preseason games will be on NFL network. Tuesday August 15 Chicago at San Francisco 3 PM Saturday August 26 Arizona at Chicago 1 PM Saturday September 2 Chicago at Cleveland 10 AM Here's all the preseason games that will be played on NFL network. 52 games in 24 days. http://www.nfl.com/nflnetwork/story/9558446 Apparently our 5th pre-season game which is against the Chargers will be televised nationally on either Fox or CBS.

Don't know if anyone is planning on buying them, but if you are be prepared to get up early on Saturday and get the tickets. I think anyone thats every dealt with ticketbastard realizes that the experience will suck if they are going after tix. But hey, it'll be worth the wait knowing you go to see the 2006 Super Bowl Championship Bears in person

In case anyone is interested, they will be doing some sort of review on the 05 Bears on NFL network on July 20th.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...in.16e2f4b.html This is a pretty good article talking about the Bears off-season. We've made a few moves, but I really do think we've upgraded offensively with one move (Brian Griese). That move stabilizes the key offensive position (along with the oline) and should help give the Bears enough continuity to allow there Wr's to develop and the offense to put some points on the board. I'm real excited to see this team develop. The only real negative I have out of this whole off-season are Ricky Manning being an idiot after signing with us and the whole Briggs/Jones fiasco's (i hate when guys hold out). I do hope we can get Briggs locked up.

This is it for Rex, its time for him to show us whether the injuries were just total flukes or if he just has durability issues in the NFL. The nice thing is we now have a legit backup and really as good of a 3rd string QB as you can have (Orton). At WR I too am excited to see which is better between Berrian and Bradley. Berrian really impressed me down the stretch but he's had injury problems (kind of nagging type injuries) while Bradley has had two major ligament injuries. Both have the talent to emerge as good #2's or 3's this year, however, they could both get hurt and than the team would be hurting for depth.

I'm real curious. The guy was one of the best backs in the past few years in college football and his skills really are a great fit to the offense we run. Ie a ball control version of the west coast offense that likes to run the ball a lot. Benson has been a workhorse type of back his entire life and he usually gets stronger when the game goes on. He is a decent catcher out of the backfield and while he isn't explosive he is able to get the tough yards. At least he was able to do all these things at the collegiate level and he showed flashes of doing some of this in his brief experience at the pro level. He seems to be saying all the right things now that he's a year into the league and will hopefully get a full training camp and exhibition season under his belt so he'll actually be in shape and ready to play (both mentally and physically) at the start of the 06 season.

It was interesting, but I do feel that Clark is a very capable TE. The Bears passing up on all the tight ends in the draft shows us one of a few things (could be all of these following things or just one). 1. That the Bears have a lot of confidence in our guy 2. That they didn't think that highly of the TE's left on the board (at least not compared to other players that were also on the board) 3. That our offense may not really plan on using the TE position all that much. I know Turner has often stated during the off-season that he wants more production at that position, but he also stated numerous times about wanting to do that without losing anything in terms of run blocking. Clark is a pretty darn good blocking TE.

Hopping on right now. All smilies should be back on Smilie table fixed.

Now time for me to fix the graphic.

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He's the type of WR that would make our WR corps much better, allowing us to eventually have 4 very strong WR's (in terms of Mush, Lelie, Bradley and Berrian). I'd definately be a fan of the move.

Easy schedule is hard to look at in the NFL since teams really change so much on a year to year basis (especially as of late).

If our line can block and our backs stay healthy the rushing attack should be above average. Mix that in with some talented (albeit inexperienced) WR's and two solid QBs and the makings of a decent offense are there but a lot of things will have to go right as well. I am glad Benson has done all the right things after his holdout and he is 100% and really starting to understand things. Hopefully he'll be able to make adjustments and improve his blocking cause we don't want Rex or anyone else taking unneeded hits. In terms of Jones it was comforting to see that he was able to come into ATA's and not miss a beat. We will need him to play this year as he is our #1 back, even though Benson could be better, having the vet there makes things a lot nicer.

Briggsy made the team. I'm really hoping we can get him inked long term because he's a big time piece to our defense.