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.