AZ54

After the Cutler deal the Bears front office is getting more publicity. Cliff has done a great job for the Bears and it's nice to see him get some national publicity recognizing that. When you step back and look around the league we standout for our ability to get draftees signed early and our own players signed to extensions early. As stated in that article the salaries we pays our players stand up over time. So why does the perception that the Bears are cheap continue to persist? Why don't we have the perception that our front office does a good job managing the cap and takes care of players who deserve it?

How many RBs did John Lynch light up in his career? He was a safety but was also famous for his hard hits, and he was considered slow. I know what the ideal measurables are for SLBs but there have been players who were successful in this league that never fit the "numbers". London Fletcher stuck around for a long time as a MLB and he was never that big IIRC. http://deadspin.com/5113135/ I really don't know a thing about Pisa's ability since I can't recall ever watching him but it seems he's played most of his career on the lighter side and been successful. I listened to his interview on the Bears' website and he seems to be comfortable with who and what he is as a player. He knows he doesn't fit the traditional mold but he said he knows how to get his job done despite that and he doesn't try to do the things he can't do. I interpret that to mean if you know you can't take on a pulling guard don't do it, just use your speed to get around him to make the play. While he might not have the ideal weight, keep in mind weight doesn't necessarily translate into strength. When considering tackling force, strength and leverage come into play but so does momentum and momentum is a factor of weight and speed. If Pisa plays faster at 225lbs maybe he can make up for the lack of weight. Maybe he will give up a bit in the running game due to this but maybe he gains that back and more in coverage. For me, it appears Pisa has been successful in the league at this weight. When drafted he was listed at 230 but this is one of the links I found that said he was 10lb lighter than that: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/...yers/16881.html Why does that matter? He had a pretty good year as a rookie in Lovie's scheme. Interestingly, the Bears' website lists him as being 240lbs.

Every reported is dying for the scoop that confirms the Bears were one of those 3 teams. It's kinda comical how often the reporters are throwing the "believed to be" line out there.

The more players in the pool the more likely one steps up....it's true to a point but if there are so many players in that pool sharing the reps then perhaps none get enough reps to really step up. At some point you have to commit to some guys and get them fully engaged to see what they've got. As far as the 4 TEs, I agree somewhat with your assessment however, Greg Olsen can and does fill in as our H-back type TE and thus be the 4th WR on the field. He can also be split out on some plays although the motion from the H-back set makes more sense to me. It seems Gaines also has the ability to play FB on short yardage play if we once again use our 3 OT front like we did with Williams at the end of the season. Point is these two players give us some roster flexibility. I'll agree that Olsen, Clark, Gaines are locks for the final roster. That puts Kellen Davis competing against the 6th WR for a roster spot. You typically make the team based on how well you play your primary position but clearly this battle has a strong element of special teams play. I'm not that enamored with Rideau nor Davis and I've already stated that I can see the team shopping him for a conditional late round pick during training camp. Yet, to compete against Rideau I have to say he has a reasonable shot at making the final roster because of the flexibility Olsen brings to the team. I'll toss in one more item: TE is one of the most injured positions in the league. Add a good vet WR to the mix and you might as well push the eject button on K. Davis.

Cutler has been in the league a mere 3 years and people point out his faults and forget that he's still got the arrow pointing up. They talk about him as if he should compare to Peyton Manning or other QBs with 10 years experience. I don't expect he'll be great for us right away but he will change our offense and open up the entire field immediately. Toward the end of the season we should have a good idea what he can do in this offense.

I just question the wisdom of keeping so many rookies/unproven players at one position. If we add a vet WR then I can clearly see keeping 6 with the 3 top young players on the roster. Before keeping 4 inexperienced WR I'd rather see us keep the 4 TEs and use more heavy sets if need be.

I say someone has to get injured for him to make the team. Not wishing it upon anyone especially as I view other WR as being better players but that's just the way I see it. It might not be a season ending injury but if someone like Knox gets hurt during preseason he'll miss enough practices to put him too far behind to catch up with the playbook. I don't anticipate us keeping 6 WRs.

Nobody has asked Hester if he can out-run Cutler's arm, nobody has asked Cutler if he thinks Hester can out-run his passes. That's really a nonsense statement but I put it down just to make the point that we saw that quite a bit last year from Orton. So far in the OTA's nobody has indicated any issues like that at all. This is going to be a huge boost to our offense and I can't wait to see the first deep pass go for a TD.

That didn't take long at all.

I'm not even worried about stuff like this. I don't live the life of someone who is famous but I can imagine it would be annoying as hell to have people harassing you for autographs whenever you go out in public.

I do consider Harris a young Dline player but I don't consider him as ever getting back to the player we once knew. Like I said, I don't see a guy who can't practice much ever making a huge impact on a season. Doesn't mean he won't have impact plays for us, he will but we need another body to step up and pick the slack when he's off the field.

For us to be a top 5 defense then some young Dline player is going to have to step up in a big way. I don't have much confidence we'll see that and I'm not sure Harris will ever be 100% again since he couldn't even get healthy enough to work out in minicamp. Overall we'll have a strong front seven with the addition of Pisa but I think our D will be top 10 not top 5.

The last time my daughter talked to Deuce Lutui she mentioned Boldin. Deuce said he likes the way he plays on the field but he isn't real thrilled with Boldin's selfish antics. I don't think he's the only one as it was very clear during the Superbowl run that Boldin wasn't getting a really warm reception among teammates in the locker room.

Hester needs to quit listening to Deion Sanders who seems to do nothing more than tell him how great he is and how bad his teammates are at blocking, and how bad the Bears management is. Get rid of Deion and get back to hard work and doing what he instinctively did and Hester will be ok.

I think the Cards are intent on keeping Boldin. They might re-sign him to a new deal if they can reach reasonable terms but if not he'll stay and they'll pay him his $5mil/yr and then renegotiate the new deal next year. Remember Boldin still has at least two years left on his contract so he really has no leverage.

Glad to see Izzy sign on for a couple more years. I agree having him back on special teams is a big boost for us but it also means we're keeping 6 LBs.

Brad Biggs put together some nice stats about the WR last year: http://blogs.suntimes.com/bears/2009/05/ca...ack_at_pla.html In the comments someone posted the number of times the players were thrown to. While that's unofficial it is amazing to see Hester had 92 passes thrown his way but ended up with a mere 51 receptions. There's a variety of reasons for that including his own learning curve but I have to believe if Cutler gives him that many opportunities his receptions will go up dramatically.

I hope Hester always goes deep when a play breaks down and Cutler scrambles around. at least one WR always needs to have that responsibility. I don't know how defenses will play us early in the year but you have to believe Cutler is going to surprise quite a few DBs in the NFC North this year; they just aren't used to covering Bears WR for longer than 3-4 seconds, and they aren't used to worrying about the deep ball. Even with Rex the deep ball success went away once teams realized all they had to do was blitz. I think we'll see some success on deep routes with Hester early in the year but more importantly once DBs see this on film it will force them to always be thinking deep when plays break down. That is something Green Bay always had with Favre because he could throw the ball so far downfield. the net result is that when a play breaks down the QB has a lot more options to throw to because the defense gets spread out. Not only should we see more deep passes but the effectiveness of dump offs to guys like Forte should improve too.

This is where the coaching staff screwed up totally last year. Bennett IMO should have been asked to learn one position, at least to start the year, so he could get on the field. Instead we went with Lloyd and Booker. Lloyd at first seemed like the right choice but Booker never did anything to impress me and in fact I wanted to cut him. Even if we started out with the "learn all positions approach" it should have been quickly pared down to get him on the field once they saw how bad the others were. Now we have a second year WR who didn't catch a single pass last year. Ridiculous consider how bad our WR corps was last year.

IF Pisa signs with us we will finally have a challenge to make the roster at LB on this team, with some guys who've contributed in the past hitting the street. It's been a long time since we've said that. I believe we will only keep 6 LBs. IIRC Freeman fell to us in the draft so even though he's a 5th Rd pick he might get interest if we try to stick him on the practice squad. I think if he shows the ability the team talked about having on draft day then we'll have to keep him on the final roster. Williams has proven to be a good special teams player so he has the nod in the backup role. He has also been used at both MLB and WLB but focused more on WLB. He has better mobility than Hunter and thus I think he'd that gives him one advantage. OTOH Hunter has the game knowledge to be in the right spot. I think Freeman is coached up at WLB to backup Briggs thus freeing up Williams to work mostly at MLB in camp. That should help his play inside improve and might be enough to give him the edge over Hunter for that backup role. Hunter would have to compete with Pisa and Roach for SLB. I think he wins that role, at least as the backup because of his versatility. If Pisa signs our final LB corps: SLB: Pisa/Hunter MLB: Urlacher/Williams WLB: Briggs/Freeman Both Willams and Freeman should be our special teams guys.

Gotta agree with that concept. At this point in his career Hamilton is a known quantity, he is what he is. Bowman on the other hand still has upside and after only one season if the performance including special teams is close (even if Hamilton is slightly ahead) I'd go with Bowman as long as his work ethic shows his desire to keep improving. With young players you can't just evaluate on abliity at the start of the season but you need to project what their ability will be at the end of the season. Since durability is a concern for Bowman you simply give him more snaps in the preseason games and see how he handles it.

I have no clue if Davis is eligible for the practice squad but I really wonder if in fact the coaching staff is so enamored with him. The knock on him coming out of college was a lack of work ethic. If that is the issue for sure I wouldn't mind putting him on the practice squad and seeing if he "gets it" but on the other hand if we got a conditional late round pick for him I'd probably take that too.

I'm going with the left side of our Oline. It might not be fair to take two players but Omiyale and Pace but I think these two guys really anchor our left side. You have a young guy with a reputation for hard work looking to make his mark in the league next to two veteran Pro Bowl players in Pace and Kreutz. I think he picks things up quickly and plays well for us. I also think his mobility (he's a tackle) combined with Pace on the outside allows him to pull and block like Reuben Brown used to do for us. We got a lot of mileage out of that play a couple years ago. Pace I feel is ready to prove he's not done yet and knowing Jay Cutler is behind him helps motivate a veteran who suddenly sees himself with another opportunity to get back to the Superbowl. I expect our pass protection from the left to be dramatically better than last year and equally important I think this will be our strong side in our run game. The play of these two Olineman elevates the rest of the offense. On defense...Kevin Payne. Last year was really his first year on the field. It wasn't all good but it wasn't all bad either. That experience combined with a complete offseason help him take the next step to becoming our SS of the future.

The injury history at these positions likely means we'll keep 10 DBs IMO.

I think the Bears are adamant about getting a solid run-blocking TE on the field and I think Davis is the odd man out. I don't see us keeping 4 TE but it's possible if Davis plays well enough they view him as Clark's replacement in a year or two. There's a big difference between Olsen's athleticism at the FB position and Gaines. So again Olsens versatility to do the H-back role there will also limit the times Gaines plays TE. Does Davis earn a spot? I'd say it's a 25% probability. I say he gets traded to someone for a conditional draft pick if he makes their roster.