4 Bears listed, with Forte listed #2 overall behind Adrian Peterson of the Vikes.

 

I believe (or hope) Cutler & Hester wind up higher than they are by season end.

 

Olsen is the 4th player for the Bears to make the top 100.

 

When was the last time we had 4 players in the top 100 of a FF Offensive Ranking?

 

http://www.nfl.com/fantasy/rankings

4 Bears listed, with Forte listed #2 overall behind Adrian Peterson of the Vikes.

 

I believe (or hope) Cutler & Hester wind up higher than they are by season end.

 

Olsen is the 4th player for the Bears to make the top 100.

 

When was the last time we had 4 players in the top 100 of a FF Offensive Ranking?

 

http://www.nfl.com/fantasy/rankings

If healthy, Forte is going to have a monster yr. He will have less touches but will average probably .5 to 1 yd more per carry.

 

Peace

If healthy, Forte is going to have a monster yr. He will have less touches but will average probably .5 to 1 yd more per carry.

 

Peace

 

That's assuming at least one and likely two of our young WR step and play well: Bennett, Iglesias, Knox, Kinder.

If healthy, Forte is going to have a monster yr. He will have less touches but will average probably .5 to 1 yd more per carry.

 

Peace

 

That's assuming at least one and likely two of our young WR step and play well: Bennett, Iglesias, Knox, Kinder.

That's assuming at least one and likely two of our young WR step and play well: Bennett, Iglesias, Knox, Kinder.

 

I'm not sure that's true. Obviously one of our young receivers will need to step up for us to have a balanced passing game, but I think Cutler-to-Hester and Cutler-to-Olsen alone should be enough to stop defenses from stacking the box against Forte to the extent that they did last season.

 

It's pretty common knowledge that Orton doesn't have much accuracy on his deep ball, and Devin was still learning how to adjust to a ball in flight last season. How many times last season did Hester break open down the field, only to have the pass off-target and fail to adjust sufficiently? If Cutler can put those deep passes where Hester can get them, teams will have to play honest coverage. The Cutler-to-Olsen connection should be even more of a threat from a defensive coordinator's standpoint: everybody knows how much Cutler liked to hit Tony Scheffler, and Olsen is a better receiver than Scheffler is.

 

I'm not saying that the passing offense will be productive in 2009 with just Hester and Olsen as receiving targets. But defenses will have to play their linebackers/safeties against the pass, which they really didn't have to do last season. Marty Booker was slow enough that you could put a single guy on him in man coverage, and Orton couldn't reliably get the ball to Hester/Lloyd/Davis unless they were within 10-15 yards.

 

Assume that a defense is player at least Cover-1 (since you don't see much Cover-0 in the NFL.) That gives them 10 players not dropping back into deep coverage. Even if teams in 2009 can single-cover Bennett/Iglesias on one side, they'll still have to account for Hester and Olsen on every play. Double-covering Hester and putting the SS or the Sam linebacker on Olsen leaves you with only 6 guys to stack the box. If you're playing Cover-2, you've only got 5 guys. That's a hell of a lot better than the 7-8 in the box looks that Forte was seeing last season.

 

If we're going to have a legit passing offense, then yeah, at least one of those four WRs is going to have to contribute. But as far as just getting guys out of the box, Cutler, Olsen, and Hester should be able to do that just fine. I posted it somewhere else here, but PFW had an anonymous quote from another team's DC after the end of last season. The guy basically said the ONLY Bears player they game-planned around was Matt Forte. I'd be very surprised if anybody facing the Bears in 2009 thinks they can ignore Jay Cutler.