adam

So I went down a rabbit hole tonight. Seeing Briggs on the sideline, I was looking for the Bears active leader in games played (on the field). Not counting Gould, the Bears active games leader was Garza, but after that it dropped off a lot: Briggs - 170 (t/13th w/ Dent) Tillman - 154 Gould - 147 Garza - 145 Forte - 97 Cutler - 73 Jennings - 68 Conte - 51 Paea - 45 Marshall - 38 Jeffery - 32 McClellin - 30 - If Briggs plays all remaining 10 games, he would pass Singletary and move into 9th, 2 games behind Urlacher. What I found remarkable was the gap between Garza and Forte. Almost a 50 game gap is the equivalent to over 3 years in the league. Where did all the players go: Since 2004 draft: 2004 draft - No active players in NFL (Harris/Johnson/Berrian/Vasher) 2005 draft - Orton only player in league left from 2005 draft in NFL (Benson/Bradley) 2006 draft - Manning and Hester only active players in NFL (Dvoracek) 2007 draft - Olsen, Graham, and McBride current active players (Bazuin/Wolfe/Okwo) 2008 draft - Forte only player left on team, Williams, Bowman, and Davis still active (1) 2009 draft - Melton and Louis still active in NFL (Gilbert/Iglesias) 2010 draft - Wright and Wootoon active 2011 draft - Paea and Conte on team, Carimi and Thomas still active (2) 2012 draft - SMC and Jeffery on team (Hardin) (2) 2013 draft - Long, Bostic, Greene, Mills, Washington, and Wilson still on team (6) 2014 draft - Fuller, Ferguson, Sutton, Carey, Vereen, O'Donnell, Leno still on team (7) w/ Fales on PS Forte is the only player drafted from 2004-2010 still on team (7 drafts). That is just crazy. Now I understand we traded some picks for Cutler, but I didn't think it was this bad. Now obviously, the more recent years will have more players left, but you still have to be happy with the amount of impact players out of the last 2 drafts and Jeffery only 3 drafts ago. To me, we are quietly building a strong core of youth. This is also why we got old really fast. To me this really shows how well Emery has done and literally kept this thing afloat with smoke and mirrors over the last few years and retooled on the fly.

Cutler just passed Jeff Garcia for 62nd in Passing yards, and closed the gap between himself and Rodgers to 3 yards. With 12 more completions he will pass Ron Jaworski for 54th in completions. Forte broke 7k Rushing yards for his career and is now only needs 33 to pass Charlier Garner for 57th all-time. With 157 All-purpose yards, Forte passed Earl Campbell and 6 others to move into 124th all-time and only needs 4 more yards to pass Donald Driver for 123rd. With 2 more rushing TD's, Forte will tie Gale Sayers for 4th in team history with 39. With 113 receiving yards, Marshall passed Raymond Berry and is now 50th all-time in receiving yards and needs only 18 more yards to pass Rob Moore for 49th. He also passed Wendell Davis and Jim Keane to move into 13th as a Bear. He now needs 69 more yards to move into 12th (passing Jim Dooley) in team history. With 6 Receptions, Marshall is now 7 away from passing Donald Driver and Andre Rison for 38th all-time. Marshall passed Dick Gordon and Desmond Clark and is now 10th in Bears history for receptions. He will pass Bobby Engram for 9th with 4 more. That was quick, Alshon making quick work of Bears receiving numbers, with 136 receiving yards, he jumped up into 24th all-time receiving yards passing Muhammad, Berrian, Knox, McLean, Graham, and Earl Bennett in one game. With 7 more receptions Jeffery will pass both Berrian and Graham for 35th all-time in receptions as a Bear. With his 1st sack as a Bear, Allen is now 3 from tying LT for 10th all-time. Gould hit 2 FGs and passed Chris Bahr for 40th all-time. With 7 pts, he now needs 4 pts to pass Mike Vanderjagt for 47th all-time. He also needs 11 pts to pass Garo Yepremian for 46th all-time. For team records, Gould now needs 1 FG to tie and 2 to pass Butler for the team career record. This should come in the next week or two. Willie Young now has 7 sacks as a Bear, good for 44th (tied with Hillenmeyer) and with 1.0 more, he will pass Ron Rivera, Clyde Simmons, Carl Simpson, and SMC for 38th all-time tying Bryan and Ron Cox.

Oh yeah, the entire D-Line played great. Our entire starting LB Corps, plus 4th LB was out. We started our 5th, 6th, and 7th. That is crazy. Briggs, Williams, SMC, and Bostic.

Everything fell into place again , we allowed 20 or less, scored 27 or more, won the turnover battle, and had zero INTs. When Cutler throws a pick 0-3, when Cutler doesn't 3-0. Some crazy trends. Cutler's lowest QB Rating this year 82.5, which is not bad. For the season his rating is around 98. His QB Rating, Yards, Comp% and TDs are all top ten. 1pm EST starts 0-3, 4pm or later 3-0.

Leading tacklers: Greene and Sharpton, and Hurst with an INT. Game balls to Cutler (381 yards, 68.4%, 1 TD, 0 INT, and 1 left-handed throw), Young (2 sacks) and the entire D-Line (4 sacks), Marshall, Jeffery, Forte, and the young LBs stepping up. Besides for that long screen to Smith, the defense held this explosive offense in check at home. 42 rushing yards allowed is crazy good.

Yeah those stupid runs at the end kept getting negative yards, why did he keep kneeling like that, lol.

Willie Young an absolute beast, now leads the league in sacks with 7.0.

Kinda funny when an INT is a bad thing, just bat it down and give us 30 yards, lol.

A little too early to go conservative IMO. Then O'Donnell can't coffin corner one, ugh. Net of 20 is not good.

Massive stop for the defense, great to see pressure by the front 4.

Wow Bears fans in Atlanta force a timeout, lol.

Last 2 drives, 80 and 87. Nice to see the offense play up to its potential. Now we need a stop by the defense.

Holy crap, what a drive and 2-pt conversion, wow. Cutler on fire.

Wow, great pass and catch to Bennett there on 3rd and long, we needed that.

I have never seen a Special Teams setup a team with worse field position than this one.

Well now the scoring is offset and we only lead by 6, so a TD and we are down by 1, so yeah, it sucks.

Just when you think the team can't mess something up, we miss an extra point, lol.

There we go! Just use more clock next time!

Holy bomb Batman.

Last thing we needed was a 3 and out...... This offense scares no one. Still don't understand it.

Doesn't seem like a difficult team to defend, double Jones and spy the RB screens.

Great return for Hester, looks like he is on the wrong team.

Bostic, Greene, and Jones would be one of the fastest and hard hitting groups in the league, especially on turf.

I saw some interesting stats on Football Outsiders in regards to our rushing defense. We are currently middle of the road for run defense, but have a few areas that really need some work. We are 25th in Run Stuffs, 25th off the Left Tackle (RDE), and 30th off the Right Tackle (LDE). I was really surprised to see how bad we have been off the Left DE as Houston and Young have been lining up there. That really needs to change, we are basically being gashed for over 5 1/2 yards on runs over the Right Tackle. The lack of stuffs makes sense due to the struggling LB's.

Briggs not on the field might actually help, to me he looks old and slow on almost every play. He has even missed a bunch of tackles.