AZ54

Glad to see the resident Oline expert's approval. I'm being serious on that because it means we have made real progress.

On Sunday I watched the Cards game....QB throws 20 yd pass to Fitzgerald a little behind him and defender is in perfect underneath coverage. Fitz goes up, reaches back over the defenders head and scores a TD. Monday night our 6'3" Roy Williams doesn't even adjust his speed to shield the defender and keeps his arms at waist level on that deep pass instead of using his height advantage. We don't need an All-Pro Fitzgerald (it would be nice though) but do need a bigger WR who can go up and catch a deep ball over a defender, or get a quick release on inside slants. Hester and Knox cannot fill that role they need time to run into space to be effective and any contact as the ball arrives means a dropped pass.

Garza gets his guaranteed money early and in exchange the Bears get a little discount on market value. Fair for both sides.

Bears are still looking to add depth long term to the Oline. No problem with them kicking the tires of the occasional practice squad Oline now and then. I also think this indicates more confidence in our safety tandem of Wright and Conte, leaving Steltz and Meriweather as backups along with the other kid they just picked up: Anthony Walters.

Toe's knee had healed and Adams hasn't done anything, at least nothing that I know of. Plus there's a rookie named Paea that is starting to make plays. Do you go with old guy on the downside of his career or get your rookie on the upside of his career going? I'm glad Paea was out there and I liked his diving attempt to get Vick, forced a bad pass. Melton is playing well at times but it will take him another offseason to get fully adjusted to playing at this weight, as well as learning how to play DT. Still, I like the upside with him. This game it was clear the Dline has strict orders to keep Vick in the pocket. I constantly saw our guys the edge on a blocker but then pull back and keep pushing the pocket. Next week Stafford won't get the same treatment.

I thought Forte had bobbled the ball as he was turning and hadn't yet made a football while in full possession. Did he have full possession right before it was stripped, yes, but not without making a football move IMO. In my rule book it's a fumble, in the NFLs I'm not so sure.

Good write-up but you are way to easy on Forte. You give him and Cutler the same grade but if Cutler had thrown 2 INTs and the offense still put up 30pts and won there's no way you'd give Cutler a B. Forte's first fumble as he was tucking the ball away, ok it happens. His second fumble there was no excuse for as he knew he was in traffic and should have had two hands on the ball. Kudos to the coaches for giving Forte a little extra time on the sidelines to think about his ball security while Barber got some carries. Jason will be mad at you for giving the Oline an A+ but for once these guys deserve some real kudos from fans. They forced the Eagles to bring extra guys on pass rushes, relying on their CBs to cover mano a mano. Prior to this game all the know-it-alls had the Eagles D playing great and going on the road and man-handling them as we did was great to watch. My play of the game was watching Lance Louis toss a pass rusher (not sure who) to the ground with one arm. He is no longer intimidated by the game and getting more and more comfortable and more than willing to his man on the ground and keep him there, and he did so several times. He's still learning but he is playing well now and he has a very bright future ahead of him.

Add one big WR who can go up and get the deep ball and this offense becomes very dangerous.

We've given up 3 sacks in the last 3 games, that is awful? I'm not saying we have a great Oline but this "worst in the NFL" tag that keeps being tossed around here does not match up with the data. I'll say it right now too, Detroit is in for a different game when we meet next week. They took advantage of Omiyale who was just horrible but late in that game, when Louis was kicked outside to RT things immediately got better. Tonight Louis at times was pancaking his man on pass protection. He and the rest of the Oline will be ready for Detroit at home and we'll have Earl Bennett on the field.

Sorry but Matt Forte is not having a career year behind the worst Oline in the NFL.

LOL... this really falls into the fantasy football category. Do you think AZ is going to give up the main player putting fans in the seats? The Cards are more than one player away but despite their record they aren't totally bereft of talent. They may be in need of some new coaching along with some new players, Kolb being one of them to go. That old adage about the gap between the top and bottom in the NFL isn't as much as you might think is true here. Ask Indianapolis fans. Ask New Orleans fans how they feel about St Louis or how Baltimore feels about Jacksonville. Or even how Baltimore felt having to come from behind against these same Cardinals?

Bears have clearly made it known they'll go the franchise tag route next year. Seems to me this is part of the negotiating process on this one and there's a reason all this chatter is showing up now....the Bears would like to get a deal done and take the big cap hit this year. Leaves them a known budget to re-sign the other FA they'll have.

Agreed. I'll add that Conte has also been a pleasant surprise his first couple games. Big test coming up for him with the Eagles. I just hope the Bears get after Vick again like last year.

When Conte played special teams there wasn't much of a problem but with him as our starting FS, and it appears he'll stay that way long term, we don't want him burning up energy on special teams. Harris played poorly at S and couldn't or wouldn't play special teams (Meriweather will by the way so he keeps earning $3 mil) plus we needed more depth at LB. I had thought Harris was going to fix our issues at S when he returned from his injury but after watching the guys on NFL Playbook single out with the clicker how poorly our safeties were playing it became obvious to me we needed someone else to save the day. While Harris was well liked among his teammates from the comments I've seen it doesn't appear there is a lot of shock in the locker room. Or perhaps at least nobody is saying that he was critical to our success and how many big plays he made.

Talking to a coworker last night who happens to be a Lions fan I asked him: Do you remember that long TD catch Calvin Johnson had where the safety bit on the route? Yes. Do you remember that long TD run Best had where the safety dove into the wrong hole at the LOS leaving an open canyon down the middle of the field? Yes. Well now that safety is on your team.

Webb threw a key block on Forte's TD run by chasing down the weakside LB and taking him out of the play. He didn't look to slow there. http://www.chicagobears.com/multimedia/mul...lip=Y&rn=12

You might be right. My concern is tinkering right now that we're starting to get some stability and keeping Cutler upright for the most part.

For our friends on the other side of the pond: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/footb...55.story?page=3 8. Big props to the U.K. Bears fan club, as passionate a group of football fans as you’ll discover in any Chicago neighborhood. I met up with them Saturday night to watch some college football. Only a few bars in London show college football, and we were at one not too far from the Chelsea soccer stadium. There were a few in the group from London, but the vast majority had traveled long distances to be in town for the game. One fellow came from Sweden and another was from Spain. Another guy made his way about 100 miles from Bournemouth after his wife delivered the couple’s first child the night before. He explained how he designed a vacation in the U.S. in 2006 to travel Route 66. The couple started in Chicago after seeing the Bears rough up the Bills 40-7 on Oct. 8, 2006. They completed their journey after watching the Monday night game the following week in Arizona, a game that’s well known in Bears’ lore. The fans talked about the history of the Bears, referencing George “Mugs” Halas at one point, and were delightful to spend time with. A lot of these folks spend more than 20 pounds a week to watch the games on the Internet, making the Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV look like a bargain. So, a tip of the cap to a fine group and a thank you for a memorable evening.

Having traveled over to Europe several times I don't think this was a big deal at all because the game was at the same time as the Bears are used to playing. Yes they had a long flight but with two days to get over it that's not an issue. their body clocks are used to playing at 12am Chicago time and that's when they played.

He's in. Nobody has ever done what he's done in the way he's done it. TD returns is one thing but how many other huge returns does he have? I can't see how receiving hurts him at all. He's proven he's not just a one-trick returner. It's an additional skill and he's good at, not great but good. Lovie did him more damage by talking so much about him being a #1 WR. If he'd set expectations for him to be a KR/PR/#3WR this would never have been an issue. Flip it around and ask the question: How many teams would want Hester as their #3 WR right now?

I'd take him back as the backup C on our roster. Cut Omiyale. Spencer is playing fine at OG, keep him as the third OG. Louis has already proven he's solid as a backup OT. Edwin Williams rounds out the group as emergency body. Would Kreutz accept this role, I doubt it but maybe. He'd be back on his team in his town where he is still highly respected. I wouldn't mind having his voice in the locker room again. Kreutz has enough class and respect for his old friend to defer to Garza leading the line but would still speak up to provide some guidance and leadership.

What a bunch of crap this whole non-story is. Once again I'll put myself into the non-politically correct camp and state that I'm happy about this. What I see is an offense where the leader wants to drop back and pass the ball to score points even when he's been the most sacked QB in the league. If that isn't showing your Oline and the rest of the offense that you have confidence in them and you want to win then I don't know what is. All of the comments I've seen from Cutler's teammates indicate no discord over this issue whatsoever. I'm also amazed how everyone is talking about Martz making the conservative play call. Yeah right, Martz suddenly turned into Marty Shottenheimer. We all know it was Lovie who told Martz make sure we get a FG out of this once they got within striking distance.

A lot is being made of the "new" max-protect scheme but Martz has used it before and the blockers still failed. We even used it some in last years debacle against the Giants. We've used it at times earlier this season too and had some success with it. The problem in the past has been that players didn't know who to block, or in the case of Omiyale, weren't capable of blocking. I think most people haven't realized Spaeth had a calf injury and I'm not sure when if it happened during the Packers game but he was inactive for game 4 against Carolina. He was back for Detroit but still on the injury report and I'm not sure he was fully healed. Judging by how well he man-handled Jared Allen on Hester's TD pass I'd say he's back to full strength. My point is that losing him, along with Louis, Carimi, had a cumulative effect. Now we see one game with two of the three back and there's improvement. I'm not discounting the fact the changes in play calling helped, they did. But improved run blocking and pass protection is also due to Louis and Spaeth returning from injury and keeping OmidoIhavetoblockhim off the field. Had we not gone up against Suh in Week 5 I suspect we'd have gone with Spencer and his broken hand at RG with Louis at RT. In hindsight after seeing the improvement once Omiyale went to the bench that's what we should have done for the entire Detroit game.

Unfortunately for Harris it seems the entire league watched his MNF performance. He remains a Bear.

Back in the day an NFL player would have finished this on his own and nobody would have thought twice about it. Of course there are still some of those guys in the league. Can you imagine someone doing this to Kreutz?