AZ54

Lost in all the Webb "demotion" chatter was the fact that Kyle Long is also now playing with the 1st team. Trestman stuck to the company line about how this was all part of the plan. I wasn't impressed with Brown in the first game as he seemed to get pushed backward too easily. In fact the sack on Cutler that is blamed on Webb missing his block also happened because Brown missed his block and that didn't allow Cutler to step up into the middle of the pocket and forced him wide to where he got sacked. On the plays I was able to focus on Kyle Long he did ok and most times he held his ground better than Brown. Not sure on the run blocking other than a couple plays where he pulled and opened some decent lanes. Given all the practices he's missed I think Long will quickly pass Brown in overall performance as he gets comfortable with the blocking calls. That doesn't mean he'll be great just that the bar set by Brown isn't that high IMO.

At least with Mills the arrow is still pointing up. I don't think he did that poorly in the first game, at least on the plays I keyed in on him in pass protection. He was up against 2nd string players and that's a big difference from starters. OTOH it was his first experience in an NFL game and overall he looked like he belonged on the field. Trestman was pleased with the work Mills and Long did today in practice. Still had some mistakes but good effort overall. Only one more day of training camp and this competition continues at Halas Hall. http://www.chicagobears.com/multimedia/vid...53-2499a799ed87

Bennett is still sitting out practice with concussion symptoms. This is not a good sign at all.

I think this happened almost every year at the beginning of our season. Plus Lovie's D could never tackle early in the season. Probably not going to change much in that aspect either because Trestman doesn't have them practice tackling to the ground.

Now it's officially a competition: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/football/be...st-team-rt.html I don't know if Mills is the answer but at least he's young and so far seems to be improving. We'll see how he handles the week of practice and game reps. At least for Mills he'll not be moved around for the first time at practice so perhaps that will help him. For the moment it appears Britton is only in the competition to be our backup OT. I'm not surprised at Webb's reaction as this is typical from him: "Webb only played 10 snaps against the Panthers, but he said that was more than enough to show what he can do. He said the coaches didn’t express any disappointment and that he wasn’t disappointed about working with the second team." Mills has a lot of learning to do and the coaches put the defensive stud DE opposite him to test him early: “First time going against [defensive end Julius] Peppers — he’s great,” Mills said. “You line up against somebody who’s the same height as me but way faster and way stronger and just go at it with him. It was great.”

Might be why we're hearing that Mills could be getting some looks at RT. One thing is clear: This is now a competition.

Great photos, thanks for posting them. You can see who gets off the line first at the snap on quite a few of them.

I haven't seen the game yet but I definitely wanted to see something more consistent in moving the ball. Disappointed yet, panicked no. It's far to early. The flip side of this would be to anoint the AZ Cardinals a playoff team based on how they played against the Packers. Ain't nobody doing that. Regarding the INT: I expect to see some mistakes in these preseason games with the timing. I personally think the Alshon route was a sight adjustment based on the defense's alignment when the player jumped into the slant route. That's pure speculation on my part. We'll see how they run these routes in the future. I view this as something that is very likely to get corrected as everyone gets more experience in the new offense. More worrisome to me was the lack of production on 3rd downs, and our still unresolved problem at RT. Don't know how the rest of the Oline played either but I'll key in on them when the NFL Network shows the replay Sun morning. As of now it appears J'Marcus and Martellus are going to be best friends as they may line up next to each other for the rest of the season.

I haven't seen the game yet but reports about Webb's performance aren't encouraging. Neither is the report on Britton. As someone said, maybe we don't have a good option. I imagine the competition for the starting role will heat up over the next two games. We'll see what the coaches do at the next practice.

He is getting back to something similar to a zone scheme in terms of the pass protection. At least that is what I hear in Bushrod's comments. I don't think the technique is the same as ZBS and I don't believe that is how we will run block (i.e the short drop step at the snap). I'll leave it up to the Oline experts here to decipher that stuff. Consider that New Orleans had Bushrod, Nicks, and others who I don't think were considered the lighter quicker ZBS types and they did just fine.

No sign of Jason and if anyone was to comment about Webb being the same old Webb he'd have been first in line. He needs to get back here for the post game commentary.

Way back in minicamp time Kromer said (paraphrasing) he didn't care who the players were, how much money they made, or where they came from the best 5 would be starting. It was a reporter who said there was nobody on the roster that would challenge Webb for the starting role. Maybe there were no obvious candidates but that didnt' mean Kromer wasn't working on developing one (or two). Regarding Oline we have much to look for in tonight's game: I haven't heard anything from or about Mills all camp. He was all cocky after the draft but at the time I felt he wasn't ready for the NFL given 90% of his plays had him in pass protection during his entire college career. Aside from run blocking issues, he probably needs to hit the weight room for a year. Anyway, I'm curious to see how he performs and at what position he lines up (OG or OT).

Or blockers not doing there job and forcing the QB to adjust and move around or out of the pocket and look for other options. Or bad play calling/scheming that defenses can easily read and defend. Part of that "we have an entire package of plays for Hester" deal that rarely worked. I have always wondered just how easily opposing defenses could diagnose our plays based on down/distance/formation/personnel. Of course part of being a great offense is having them know what's coming and being effective at it anyway. That is what our defense has done for many years with a rather basic scheme overall.

It is not finalized but one piece of the puzzle seems to be finding a place on the final roster. http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/bears/post...aps-vs-carolina Don't rule out the possibility of the former Jacksonville Jaguars second-round draft choice Eben Britton eventually unseating J'Marcus Webb for the starting right tackle job. Britton, who started 30 games (23 at right tackle, seven at left guard) for the Jaguars from 2009-12, has come on strong after signing a one-year deal with the Bears on April 16. While everything in the NFL is subject to change, Trestman said he envisions Britton as one of the active offensive linemen on game days in the regular season. "I think Eben is in the mix of finding where our offensive line will be," Trestman said. "He's in the mix. He's had a very productive camp. He's versatile; he can play just about anywhere we put him, both on the left and right side. And at this point I can say he's definitely involved in being part of this roster -- on a week-to-week basis. The 46-(man active game day roster)."

I'm not worried at all considering it's an entirely new offense and we're only two weeks into a 6 week preseason. In fact I'm very optimistic considering all the TDs the offense is scoring in red zone situations against our D. That is where the precision and timing are most needed to be effective and Cutler's been doing it well the past week. The coaches continue to introduce new plays and sometimes there are mistakes made. Just make them now and learn that's what camp is for.

At this point Earl hasn't returned to practice so this is getting serious and he won't play Fri night.

I agree, this really hurts our depth where we were thin anyway. I believe Zach Bowman was listed as our top backup prior to Frey's ascent during camp. We know how Bowman watches plays. Is McManis ready to contribute as a CB? Haven't heard anything at all about him in camp. It's hard to know how significant this injury is but this could well be the end of Hayden's career. He found little interest in FA this past year and now having to recover from a significant hamstring injury at his age isn't going to make him better.

Garza is the starting OC and I can't imagine they'd practice him somewhere else if he remains the starter. If he starts taking some practice snaps at OG then there might be something to this. I certainly wouldn't mind see that lineup if it works out they are the best 3 inside OL. For now it's a good indication Slausson is going to be one of the top 7 active on game day and is as expected our backup OC. EWilliams needs to get his resume updated.

https://twitter.com/jmarcuswebb?original_re...906229414600705 J'Marcus Webb @jmarcuswebb I'm going dark. I won't be on for awhile. I need to prioritize, change up some things and make better choices. Peace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seems like the same thing he said at the beginning of his recovery summer. It's not what we want to hear from any player in the middle of training camp when he came in knowing he was fighting for a job. I realize I have no idea of the context for this but nonetheless it's his statement that he has been making bad choices. For the record (again) I want Webb and every player in our training camp to do well.

No need to take my word for it, coach says Webb is struggling at times (albeit in a very polite way): http://www.suntimes.com/sports/football/be...e-to-right.html

Newsflash....wouldn't that be a 4th or 5th option? I get the whole height thing but Pope is not a quick twitch athlete and that is needed to either adjust to the ball away from the defender or have good hands on a short pass that's a bullet. If you can lay the ball out there he'll catch it. http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-fantasy/0ap2...pe-1-yd-pass-TD That's what you get with Pope. He doesn't have great hands and usually bodies up against the ball to catch it. That won't work over his head. There's a reason he hasn't been used this way in seven years in the league (almost the end of his career) across 3 teams. I'll be happy to be wrong on this.

If true, wouldn't that mean half the teams in the NFL would want him on their roster? Or let's pare it down and say there should have been at least 8 teams that wanted him on their roster. Where was the bidding war or even the team visits? Four teams? Perhaps he was only better than the bottom 1/4 of MLB; at that point teams prefer to draft a younger player who is faster and more durable, which is exactly what we did. Urlacher is not a vet-minimum-salary depth guy, he's a Hall of Fame player who wanted to be a starter. He wasn't going somewhere just to be on a roster and act as a cheerleader. I respect and understand that sentiment and so did the NFL teams by not asking him to play for less. Bostic can't lead the defense like Urlacher could have, but when we see him run down one of these QB option plays everyone will notice the difference. It's already obvious in some of the training camp highlight films although they keep such tight angles on the video that it's hard to pick up. ..and I'm keeping my screen name AZ54 out of respect for the Hall of Fame player and what he did for our team. I'm not happy his run has ended, not even with the way it ended, but in the end it was clear his time was done and I'm happy he retired having only played for the Bears.

In his years here in AZ I never that 4.6 forty speed in a game. When he was younger he was tall and stiff when he ran routes and wasn't a threat to turn upfield with the ball and run away. I don't think that's any better these days. As a blocker he was again too tall and stiff. Let's cut to the chase....is he better than Fendi? I haven't seen Fendi play but most likely Pope is equal or somewhat better in all phases except running routes. We have some games to assess this competition but word I've seen is that Fendi's hands are very inconsistent. Not sure Pope is dramatically better in the hands department. All else being equal Pope's game experience puts him ahead of Fendi on final cuts. For all the chatter about Pope's height helping in the red zone he only has a total of 11 TDs in his seven year career and he's never had more than 250 yds receiving in a single season. I like the signing in light of our lack of depth at this position. If he can get the offense down he can certainly be a good 4th or 5th option on plays but I don't expect a lot from him.

3 WR, 1 TE (Bennett), and 1 RB Forte....... there are your 5 receivers. We will see that often.

At this point we've lost our starting LT and replaced him with Jonathan Scott. Fair enough we keep Webb on the right side where we want him to play this season. Then we lose Jonathan Scott and we replace him with...Eben Britton at LT? At this point I see that Webb is fading from our top 3 OTs. Not saying he's lost his job yet but if versatility is what Kromer wants among his top 7 Olinemen (he said so yesterday) then at some point among these injuries if Webb was one of our top 3 OTs he'd have been slid over to LT for a day or two while Britton, or Scott, took snaps at RT. That didn't happen and Kromer and Co. decided they preferred to see what Britton could do against Peppers. I'm not assigning roster spots to either Scott, Britton, or Webb at this point but the competition is starting to open up IMO. I look forward to more clues as the next week unfolds.