AZ54

It's total BS to allude to that fact that this cheapshot block was the tacklers fault for moving too slowly.

Total bullshit and I'd be fining him big time. For a veteran player to do a cheapshot like this during a preseason game is really messed up. If I were on that D I'd have been taking a penalty for a late hit on Favre to makeup for it. A message needs to be sent around the league on this because a lot of teams are going to line up in wildcat formations. Not to mention all the Crowton WR screens we see.

Pass

It's PRESEASON! Why worry about a halfback passing play in a practice game? We ran it in a highly charged atmosphere where the players can get a feel for what it will be like when it really counts. At least now they have it on tape and can coach it up further. It's the same for our opponents too. Perhaps that means one less safety crashing down on a run play.

His premise about the owner is wrong. There's no way McDaniels was hired without Bowlen knowing in advance he wanted to go after Cassel. So in Bowlen's mind Cutler was getting traded. When the Cassel deal fell through they wanted to fall back to Cutler at least for this season. McDaniels admitted as much when he said publicly that he told Cutler he couldn't assure him he would not get traded in the future, although he phrased that into a generic statement as if that applies to everyone. So to Cutler it was clear he wasn't his QB. Cutler read between the lines and he knew the owner had to approve of the trade in advance and he knew he'd been lied to. Since it was clear neither owner nor head coach were committed to him he called their back-tracking bluff and basically said don't wait to trade me, get it done now. The owner approved going out and getting a serviceable QB to hold over the offense and as many draft picks as they could garner. Point is he approved of McDaniels searching for his own QB from the beginning. McDaniels gets all the heat for this fiasco but reality is that Bowlen was in on it from the beginning and IMO it was the lack of commitment from the ownership that bothered Cutler moreso than the rookie head coach. Why Bowlen gets to sit on the sidelines in all this as people spread the blame among Culter and McDaniels is beyond me but IMO he's equally culpable, if not moreso because he made the decision to hire McDaniels knowing he'd be trading Cutler. It was his setup from the beginning.

Got a Broncos fan in my morning meeting at work, he didn't want to talk to me today. I understood.

Amazing, we've had about 5 quarters of play with this new QB, new WR, rebuilt Oline, and already the panic is setting in. If anything, given the circumstances I'm amazed at how productive this group has been. There's only one reason for that and it's Cutler.

I can live with a cushion of a few yards, even as many as 5yds, but you have to be lined up on the inside of the WR to take away the quick slant. That's a gap that can be closed quickly but the 10 yard drops just kill me. There's no logic in that at all.

Tommie Harris limps when he runs, not a good sign. Harris rarely puts up much effort in preseason so hopefully he can still get upfield when it counts. Seemed like the Dline was able to get some pressure but it's tough with Orton throwing so many dink and dunk passes. I could have sworn Alex Brown was being held by Clady on several plays but no whistle. Nonetheless for Brown to get around the edge on Clady is a very good sign. Harrison is a beast if somebody can get inside this guys head and turn him into a true professional we've got a key component of this D for a long time to come. Still not sure why Adams gets so little respect but I like the guy. LBs, some good, and some average play. I like the range Pisa has, he closes quickly and he's going to be a nice compliment to this group. Malast stays with this team, if not on the active roster he's on the practice squad. DBs, McBride is at best a 5th CB on this team. Among the corners I don't think anyone stood out, at least not for playing well. The safeties were quiet tonight but several times Payne did what a safety should do...he stopped a big play by making a sure open field tackle. Afalava didn't get his name mentioned all night. Cutler threaded a lot of passes into tight coverage and players caught them! I'm still not used to seeing that in a Bears uniform. The Oline, in particular Pace and Williams didn't play well. Pace changed his tactic from dropping back to trying to get out after Dumervil right off the snap and this seemed to at least give him another second to get his feet set on the outside. This is our first look at a 3-4 D and that's all we'll play from here on out until game 5. They settled down after a couple series but even then Cutler had to help with his mobility but that's part of the package. WR...anyone surprised it's receiver by committee? Cutler did a great job spreading the ball around. I was pleasantly surprised to see Bennett run through a DB and then turn around and make a tough over-the-head catch on a key third down. I can't guess how the WR corps is going to shake out. Clearly we have Hester/Bennett and I think Iglesias and Knox both stick around. Among the final spot or two we have Rashied Davis who made some good plays on special teams but nada as a WR. Meanwhile Aromashodu and Rideau made some small plays at WR but didn't do much on special teams. This battle goes into game 4 Thursday night.

Yes, I remember that against Atlanta and Minn last year.

Got some free tickets for the Cards game so I decided to take in a game. Realizing it's only preseason but this is typically the best preseason effort of the first string here's some of my thoughts on the first half of the game and what it might mean for us in game 1. The final score of the game doesn't indicate all that happened. Green Bay defense vs. Cards offense Packers liked bringing pressure especially up the middle. Sometimes they were very effective but often this was due to the Cards WR running some deep routes and Warner had nowhere to throw. That and/or Warner held the ball too long on some plays instead of hitting the quick dump off. Overall Warner was pretty bad, seemed out of sync. I think our Oline is better than the Cards Oline but given pressure up the middle Cutler is much better at rolling out of the pocket than Warner. In fact, if they show these looks I expect Turner will call plenty of rollouts to counter it. Forte is also better at picking up pressure than Hightower. Cards WRs were able to get open. Now they have a better receiving corps than we do and clearly they were respecting Fitzgerald. I think the Packers have a decent secondary but they consistently found openings in the coverage underneath among the LBs. In fact the Cards TE was open all night. They had several huge gains with the TE running up the middle. Their TEs are nothing like Greg Olsen so I think Olsen will have a good game against GB. Cards were able to consistently run the ball. Packers had some stops for no-gain but for everyone of those it seemed the RB got two gains of 7-10 yards. Most of that was Tim Hightower and he isn't fast or quick. Forte would fare even better if given the same holes. While the first half score doesn't incidate it, if the Cards didn't make some stupid mistakes (Warner fumble on a scramble) they likely would have matched GB on the score board. Green Bay offense vs. Cards defense. Cards D is pretty bad and Green Bay offense is pretty good. Jennings went down on his first catch with a head injury but walked off the field. The Cards D got dealt some bad hands with turnovers from the offense but they never once stopped the Packers. This game was decided before halftime with the Packers up 31-10 or something like that and put up about 350 yards in the half, 100 of that on the ground. There was little pass rush putting pressure on Rodgers. Cards secondary bit on some plays fakes and gave up long TD passes which is what they did all last season. Given the issues in our secondary I'd expect similar problems so we better have a good pass rush when we play them. We'll need to score quite a few points to beat Green Bay but from what I saw we'll be able to mount some long drives. We just need to avoid the turnovers.

I wouldn't say we fell apart last year, we were still ranked 8th overall. If only we could say that about either our offense or defense. Hester called out his teammates last year for poor blocking. I'm sure to some extent it was not as good as the prior year but if he's just going to run out of bounds like he was doing instead of heading upfield the blocking doesn't really matter. Danieal Manning proved just how bad the blocking was when he came in on KR midway through the season and immediately led the entire league in return yards and held that over the last 7 games. They should have put him in there a couple games sooner so everyone could be talking about how great it is to have two guys on the Bears who went to the Pro Bowl as KR. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...de.38f0fd2.html

I'm not seeing a problem here. When was the last time we had a leader on offense that would tell others to shut up and do their job right? We had Kruetz who punched Fred Miller and broke his jaw and that wasn't even related to football and he's still considered a team leader. Why? Recall the story about Kreutz staying after a training camp practice to help an undrafted rookie with his technique. You can be a demanding prick on the football field if your work ethic and performance warrant it. When Peyton Manning does the same thing nobody questions him, and I've seen him criticize players on the sideline. Of course I don't know what's said or how it's said but I don't think Manning to his high level of play without hurting some feelings. Cutler is far from Manning's resume but it's a fact he put in a lot of extra work this offseason with the WRs and coaches. This isn't selfishness, it isn't moodiness, it isn't arrogance, it's creating a high expectation for how things get done. He has to hold himself to the same high standard too. It's how you succeed.

No way would I trade for him. He is likely better than Basinez but at this point he doesn't know anything of our offense and he won't be better than Hanie. He might be as good as Hanie but then why make a trade? No need to make a move here.

He's supposed to be our PR.

I agree with that assessment.

Again, we know what Davis is on the field, there's no reason to think differently. I think the coaches this year are doing the right things by giving young players who have shown ability in practice to get some first team reps to see if they have what it takes. We can't get a better roster if we keep deferring to veterans just because they're veterans, like we did last year. If at the end of the preseason the vet hasn't really stood out above the younger guy I think we have to start going in a new direction.

I look at Knox the same way I looked at Hanie last year. I see potential on KR/PR and on the few receptions he's had I see some very nice quick moves to get some YAC. Would I like to see more, absolutely but it's only been two preseason games. As far as Davis he hasn't done much more than Knox and given all his experience and what should be a better rapport with Hanie you'd think he'd really standout. The point here isn't that Knox has looked better than Davis at WR, rather that Knox hasn't looked that much worse. I know he bobbled that first pass from Basinez but Davis has had his share of those in games all last year. Davis is a known commodity and at 30 years old the 5' 9" WR is not going to dramatically get better. Knox at 6' has the arrow pointing up. I know special teams play is valued with the Bears but the reality is that we have a lot of good special teams players. We also have one of the best specials teams coaches in the NFL. Players like Garrett Wolfe, Kevin Jones, and even Rashied Davis have gone from minimal contribution on special teams to standing out on coverage. I don't know his work ethic but I haven't heard of any problems with him so I don't see why Knox wouldn't end up like that. What I've seen of Knox on kick and punt returns looks better than Davis just because he has more shiftiness in his moves while Davis is just a straight ahead speed guy. This battle gets decided in game 4 but I'm clearly in favor of Knox.

I'm not worried about Denver's D versus our O. I'm not really worried about our D against their O either but what I really want to see is our Dline get after Orton. Not because its Orton just because we really need to see this pass rush light up.

What was one of the biggest problems for Bears WR last year? They couldn't get off the LOS under press coverage. Davis was a big part of that problem. What was the other big issue for our WR....drops. Rashied Davis was big part of that too. At some point you have to come to the conclusion he's a guy who could contribute but just is never going to be more than what you have already seen. He also seems to be a better practice player than game player. I can't believe Iglesias, Knox, or Aromashodu can't replace this: 2008 SEASON: Started a career-high 12 games and appeared in all 16 games for the third straight season... Posted career highs in receiving yards (455) and receptions (35), while matching a career high with 2 TD catches... If the Bears keep 6 WR then Davis can stick around, if they keep 5 then let him go.

It's too many injuries in too few seasons. No matter how you feel about him as a player or as a person it's impossible to look at him and feel like you can count on him. For whatever reason injuries are like that for some guys. I think it's best for the team and him to part company. At best he was going to be #2 and more likely #3 NT so give another young guy a shot. Toeina has done some good things for us in the past so I say it's time to open the door for him.

I wasn't counting on him but it's still tough to see him get injured like this again. I hope it's just a sprain but that alone might be enough to keep him off the final roster.

At a minimum Knox has already shown the league he can be a good KR/PR, and while he hasn't made a big splash at the WR position just yet he hasn't been non-existent either. Give him a couple more games and I think you'll see what he's about and I think it will be clearer that he makes the final roster.

I still feel that Orton is a good QB. I just don't see him as a great QB. He is still going to move their offense and put up some points but he's not Jay Cutler. I watched some of the Denver game and much of the big gains came on short pass plays (WR screen for 50 yds). Kyle can and will do those things well but so can a lot of QBs. However, I much prefer our situation where the opposing defense has to cover another 20 yards on the field.

In either case I like the idea of having a backup OG who we know can play. This is a nice change after years of hoping we'd never have to see Metcalf on the field.