Some thoughts on this weekends game while wondering if Shannahan is having second thoughts about kicking to Hester…

• Honestly, it’s probably best for the Bears - long term - to lose out.  But if you’re going to go through the effort of going to the game, they might as well win it.
• Bears offense just couldn’t get going until late.  Fortunately, it wasn’t quite too late.
• I don’t blame Grossman for his one interception.  Those happen on long balls on occasion, and either Berrian slipped or he was pushed out by the defender (we thought it was blatent PI in the stadium).  Either way, at least it stretches the field.
• Olsen - I love ya, man, but you gotta hang on to those balls.
• Including Olsen, seven drops by receivers, if memory serves.  Grossman may or may not be the guy for the future here (it looks more like he won’t, but you can never tell), but he has certainly had help along the way.
• Cedric Benson is out for the season.  Apparantly, got so excited about his big run, he hurt himself.
• Seriously, although I am not a fan at Benson, this may actually cause the Bears to keep him around another year.  I’d rather cut the cords now, but depending on if they resign Briggs, Grossman, and a few others, they may not be able to afford the cap hit by cutting him this off-season.  But I think he’ll be gone as soon as practicality allows.
• Grossman had a beautiful pass to Olsen for a nice touchdown.  Too bad Fred ‘the Human Turnstyle’ Miller brought it back.  Honestly, Miller was the worst player on the field - by far - on Sunday.
• I never thought I’d say this, but St. Clair may be a better option than Miller.
• Defense - eh.  Still not good.  Decent job against the run, but it looks more and more like letting Rivera go was a huge mistake.  Still, I’m willing to give the new guy a second season, as sometimes it just takes awhile for the players to adjust.  Still, if the defense doesn’t improve dramatically next season, he needs to be shown the door.
• Tillman has had another good season overall.  Losing Vasher and Brown has definintely hurt the secondary.  And then, of course, there’s Archuletta.
• Honestly, I could take my father-in-law, put a ball in his hand, and I doubt AA would be able to tackle him.  And no, my father-in-law isn’t dead.  He is, however, 90 (although he moves quite well for a 90-year old).
• Also saw Harris headed for the tunnel at one point late in the game.  Hope it’s nothing serious or, if it is, sit him now for the season.  The Bears aren’t going to do anything this season, so get healthy for next year.  Same goes for Vasher.
• I will say this for the defense this week - two times, they had the ball inside the five, and only got six points out of it.  That’s not bad at all, and certainly made the difference in the game.
• Special teams - this Hester kid is pretty good, right?
• 10 kick returns for TD in about 1 1/2 seasons.  The career records is 13 by Brian Mitchell.  It took him 14 seasons to accumulate those 13 returns.
• Of course, Hester may only end up seeing about 3 more kicks to him the rest of his career.
• And finally, I’d say his 2 TD more than made up for trying to knock down the bouncing ball early on leading to a turnover.
• And his two returns also indirectly led to Tillmans punt block, since Saurbraun (sp?) was trying to kick it out of bounds.  Of course, he ends up angling the punt right at the onrushing Tillman, but Todd wasn’t exactly known for his smart
• Also on special teams - I thought the kick coverage was about as good as it’s been all season.  This looked more like last years special teams - which were special in a good way.
• As for coaching, the one comment I have is this - you have a QB that, for whatever reason, is prone to fumbling, and you call a QB draw for him that isn’t a foot or so away from the goal line?  Seriously, how stupid is that?
• Ron Turner can’t leave fast enough.  Granted, he’s been an improvement over Shoop, but I still want a GOOD OC.
• Finally, again, the Bears are not going anywhere this year, so they might as well lose out, and try and get as good a draft pick as they can.  This team needs a lot of help to get back to being the team they were last year - offensive line, running back, defensive line and secondary, and possibly a QB.  However, this ‘losing out’ I’m OK with does NOT apply to the Green Bay game (although, truthfully, I expect a slaughter that game).

Go Bears!

Some thoughts on yesterdays game, while trying to figure out how high the Bears could pick in next years draft…

• Say what you will about Grossmans fumble yesterday, but he (Rex) was probably the second best player on the field (even if Hester didn’t have an awesome day, he’s probably still the best player).
• Over 200 yards, no interceptions, and no forced throws into coverage.  I’m not sure what happend on the fumble (ie, if he was trying to run or still looking to throw), but if it had been, say, Ogunleye that tracked the other QB down and forced a fumble, noone would be all over that QB for the fumble, but going on about the good play by our guy.  Rarely do I see a double standard applied to a Bears player where our guy is always on the ‘bad’ side of things.
• So, Cedric Benson gets over 60 yards on his first two carries, finally seems to be having a good game (although, given how the offensive line played the rest of the game, who knows if he could have kept it up), and he gets the ball a whopping 3 times the rest of the half, and 7 overall.  For a team that ‘gets off the bus running’, the only thing the Bears coaching staff seems to be running is their collective mouths.
• Also, this ‘need’ to make sure the other Adrian Peterson gets his carries - just stop it.  We know what we have in Peterson - decent backup/change of pace/pass blocking guy.  We’re not real sure what we have with Benson yet.  Yes, I think he’s a bust - but he shows just enough every now and then to show he may not be worthless.  Granted, very few runningbacks are going to do well with this offensive line, but still, we need to find out if Benson is worth keeping around, or if it’s best to trade him/buy him out and start again.
• Receivers did OK yesterday.  Nothing there to really get on them for.
• Offensive play calling was horrible.  For instance, even the pair of interns they had calling the game yesterday knew that, if Hester is not being used in the offense (and he hadn’t had a play go his way the entire game to this point), then using him in a reverse is just dumb, dumb, dumb.  The fact Hester was stopped for a big loss was about the least suprising thing of the day.
• The offensive line - which was pretty darn good last year - is just awful.  Actually, Fred Miller is just awful.  Turnstyle.  The rest of the line might be OK (they’re not, but for arguments sake), but you have a guard that bad, it makes the whole line look bad, because his defensive responsibility is constantly getting past him into the backfield.
• Defense - below average at best.  Injuries have hurt, trading away some experience because this was going to be the year Mike Brown finally stayed healthy was a mistake, but they’re just not good.  I don’t know if Rivera made that much difference, or the team isn’t playing well, but this isn’t anywhere near the same defense we had last year, even with mostly the same guys.
• Special teams - returns, place kicks - all fine.  But last year, coverage on kickoffs and punts was outstanding.  We were constantly pinning guys deep in their own end of the field.  Now, we’re constantly giving up big return yards, or kicking balls out of bounds on kickoffs, etc.  Don’t know what happened there, but return coverage had also been below-average at best this year.
• Not much else to say.  Going to be four ‘who cares’ home games for me the rest of the season.  Bears have no shot this year, and they should quit pretending they do.  Play the  younger players, see what they can give you, and start planning for next year.
• Next week - Denver comes calling after a short week (they play tonight).  I still think Denver will win big.  There’s no reason for the crowd to be all that into the game (other than when Hester is on the field), and the Bears are better off losing out and getting better draft picks than working their way back to something near .500.

Go Bea……ah, screw it.  It’s not worth it.

No, I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth.  I missed the previous two games due to being out of town, and have just now had time to talk about the ‘game’ on Sunday.  I didn’t get to see anything of the previous two games except the last drive against the Eagles, so didn’t have a whole lot to add other than the Bears are a below-average team - nothing that’s news to anyone watching them play.  However, I did sit through that seemingly long game on Sunday, so without further delay, a few thoughts on the last four weekends whle wondering what the Bears will do to adress the RB position in the off-season…

• The Bears really are thisclose to being tied with Miami at 0-9.  And they’d probably be better off in the long term by potentially being historically bad rather than just bad.

• At some point, the Bears have to see what Orton can do with this team.  It’s pretty clear that Griese will never be anything better than a decent backup.

• I’m even OK with going back to Grossman.  Given his up and downs, I don’t think he’ll be expensive for anyone to sign, and given that he’s still a relatively young QB having only played in one full season, I’d like to see if he can develop further before throwing in the towel.

• My nightmare scenario is Grossman going to Green Bay - where they actually can develop a QB - and seeing him flat-out own the Bears for the next decade the way Farve owned the Bears for the 1990s and early part of this decade.

• Still, regardless of the interceptions, in my mind, QB is not the problem on this team in terms of offense - it’s Cedric Benson.  He was supposed to be ‘the guy’, and right now, he’s not even playing well enough to be ‘a guy.’  He couldn’t even get it done against a team that had given up a 100-yard rusher for something like five straight games.

• Hester needs to be involved more as a reciever, especially on crossing routes.  Skip the end-arounds - they aren’t fooling anyone.

• Speaking of Hester, he seemed to be trying to do too much for a lot of the game on returns.  Once he stopped that, and just started taking what was there instead of going backwards trying to create something that wasn’t there, he had a big return that was, unfortunately, wiped out due to an uneccessary block in the back.

• Hopefully, however, his not-so-great day will lead to more teams kicking to him on kickoffs and punts.

• We now know that Goulds range is about 50 yards.  I thought for the life of me that 53 yarder was good - just came up a bit short.

• Defense didn’t play badly at all, although against Oakland, that’s not high praise.  Urlacher still doesn’t seem all there.  I do wonder if he’ll ever be able to get back to 100% for a full year if he has an arthritic back.  It’s a shame too - he’s as good an MLB as we may see in Chicago for awhile.

• Griese had a great drive against the Eagles to win the game.   It’s too bad the momentum from that didn’t carry over into the following week.

• And I don’t care how much the Lions have improved this year - there’s no reason they should have lost to them this year.  Twice.

• Finally - and the reason I don’t have much to say about this game - that was about as bad a football game as I’ve seen.  Sloppy.  Ugly.  No flow at all.  Very little excitement.  The best thing about that game was the Grossman to Berrian touchdown - not because it put the Bears in the lead, but because with a four point lead, the chances of overtime were very slim.

I don’t care much about how the Bears do from here on out - I’m torn between always wanting to see them win, and getting a better draft pick this off-season, but for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE play at least an exciting to watch football game.  I’d have rather seen the Cowboys/Giants game than those three-hours masquerading as a football game on Sunday.