AZ54

I'd love to see Mike Brown back but not as a starter. He'd be excellent depth for us at Safety and his knowledge of the game and leadership can still be utilized on the sidelines and in practice. If he has to fill in for a few games he should be able to handle that.

Sign TJ in FA. Resign Mike Brown, given all the other needs he's our best option for now. I will add that Steltz pissed me off one his first play in the game when he got run over and gave up a TD. However, later in the game he took on an OG block and stood the guy up and then went on to make the tackle Resign Kevin Jones at RB. A year removed from his surgery and dropping his playing weight will get him back to the explosive runner we knew, and need. His willingness to play special teams late in the year proves he can be the backup RB we need. All the chatter about how trading Thomas Jones and watching him head to the Pro Bowl neglects one aspect; the Jets spent a ton of money fixing their Oline. Jones is the beneficiary of that effort. With our QB situation in doubt once again we must pursue this path and build one of the best running games in the league with Forte. Resign St. Clair and tell him he's the starter at RG. Let Garza be our backup or Beuning whoever wins the spot. Please please cut Metcalf! Keep Beekman at LG for now, he will be our C in the future. Rd 1 draft ROT of the future. Let him compete with Tait for starting job. If Tait loses he's our backup OT. Rd 2 best available between WR/DE. Rd 3 draft WR/DE. Rd 3a (Berrian comp?) draft a QB. At a minimum we need a 2nd QB but more importantly we need some competition for Orton who may at best be a stopgap. Rd 4 lots of different directions here but I think it's got to be a FS, OG is a possibility too. Rd 5-7 best available.

Losing Gage doesn't really bother me since he hasn't done much since he left. What bothers me is that we let an average receiver leave and only replaced him with average receivers, if that.

This season our offense is based on one guy...Matt Forte. We need another guy to take some of that focus away from him. We have good TEs who help a lot in the passing game but no WR that anyone has to worry about, including Hester. I'm in favor of pursuing Chad Johnson if the deal is right. We have nowhere else to turn and hoping the draft will provide a solution is nothing but hope.

I suspect there was some effort to reduce Forte's carries due his injury. At least I'm telling myself that to keep from pulling my hair out.

The improvement in Hester's performance at WR this year versus last year is huge. He's still not where he needs to be but he can run routes this year. Last year he was flat out clueless what to do on offense. If we can get the same step up next year he'll be a good #2 WR for us. I said good not great but right now IMO he's more a #3 WR for us.

I still don't see a consistent pass rush up the middle. I see our DEs coming around off the edge fairly often only to watch the QB step up in the pocket. There's a reason Tommie sat out practice lately (again). I was very happy to see the energy and passion the D played with. We can all see gaps in performance (see above) but still as a unit they have been playing hard the last few games. I know we give up big plays here and there but overall this is much more fun to watch that when we sat back and kept everything in front of us. We give up a 15 yard gain but then Alex Brown stuffs a RB for a 4 yard loss. I see stunts! Dusty played well at the beginning of the year but he wore down. We forget he just came back from having his knee repaired and I don't think he was up for a full season. The coaches should have recognized this sooner and made him inactive weeks ago and started Adams. It's not like Adams is an unknown quantity, he played well for us last year. Another one of those coaching decisions that make me wonder why I can't earn $4.5 million/yr. I absolutely agree on the need for a FS. This type of defense needs a great safety at one of the positions. Take Polamolu out of Pitts D and it's not the same. Take Bob Sanders out of Indy's D and it's dramatically different. Ed Reed in Baltimore? Mike Brown out of Chicago's D years ago? How bad do Lloyd, Davis, and Booker have to be for Bennett to get on the field? I can't imagine that Bennett is worse than what we've seen lately. Even if he is, at least he's should have an arrow that is pointing up and I'd rather see what he can do.

We desperately need WR help. None of these guys is getting it done. However, I still say we focus on Oline first in the draft. Chances are a rookie WR won't make that big of a difference anyway. Fix the Oline and let Forte carry the team as he's been doing all year for us. Get Bennett on the field now. I find it impossible to believe he's worse than Rashied Davis.

Yes, it's true CBs get better when there is more pressure on the QB because they can stick closer to the shorter routes without worrying about double moves and deep routes. We DO NOT have that luxury. At times in the game last night Frerotte had zero pressure on him even though we blitzed.

How many times must we see this team fail at 3rd and short or 4th and short because we cannot run when we must run? This has been a constant problem for the offense all season long. I know we need WRs but bite the bullet and draft the Oline talent we need. Then everyone else will appear to be a better player, including Matt Forte who already looks pretty good.

You mean that wasn't Rex who threw 3 INT tonight?

I agree with moving St Clair inside. We are no longer in first place and more importantly we are not playing well up front. It's time to see if Williams can play, if for no other reason than getting him ready for the first game next year. Lovie will never make this call though.

i agree we don't deserve to be in the playoffs, just take the higher draft position and spare NFL fans the pain of having to watch this miserable defense and offense.

Bradley is already hurt in KC. Gage, he's doing ok in Tenn but without that running game I don't think he'd be seeing as much success. He's in a good situation for him and is making the most of it. Wade had more fumbles than any other player I can recall except Hester. He bounced around a bit before signing with the Vikings who, since they signed him, have complained they need better WRs. So they went out and got Berrian for $8mil/yr. Of the three, Berrian is the only guy I miss but wouldn't have kept him around at the salary he's getting.

We resigned this guy after losing him to the Raiders so they must have seen something in him they like. It seems we're going to find out what he brings to the table tomorrow night. http://www.chicagobears.com/news/NewsStory.asp?story_id=5404

Time to go with a lot of empty backfield sets and put Forte out wide.

It seems the Williams brothers will be playing against us and I think our best way to defeat them is to wear them down by using the no-huddle offense quite a bit during the game.

I'll respectfully disagree. Gap control is needed against guys like AP but if we were playing Brandon Jacobs I wouldn't worry about it that much, rather I prefer to just get him moving sideways even if that means bringing a guy down the line from the backside of a play thus opening up a backside cutback. There are other backs who have great speed but not the vision to work the backside of a play and just always put their head down and plow ahead. In those cases you can focus on the point of attack a bit more, just watch out for a reverse handoff to a WR. Peterson works the entire field at all times and discipline is key to stopping him from getting big gains. That might mean we won't see as many big plays behind the LOS but I'll take that if he's only averaging 3 ypc.

Kevin Jone's 3.2 ypc is pretty impressive. I honestly don't understand all the complaining about Jones because he has looked slow and is not very nimble at the LOS. Everyone seems to forget he had a major knee surgery just last December. The fact he was even taking carries for us back in Sep/Oct was pretty impressive IMO but I also don't think he's back to where he will be. Contrary to others I actually think we'll make an attempt to resign him. Whether he takes that deal or looks to be a starter somewhere is anyone's guess. I agree with the special teams arguments for keeping AP and Wolfe active. I agree even more with keeping Williams and Beuning active because we need Oline help, if not now definitely down the road. I do not view Terrance Metcalf as Oline help. Sometimes you have to look at the sum of the parts but you also have to keep an eye on developing some players for the future. If Beuning and Williams can get their feet wet on some special teams play it's ok by me.

There was one play Harris made today that caught my eye, and it wasn't either of his two sacks. It was the tackle he made on the RB about 12 yards downfield. In the past we've seen him hustle to make plays after the RB got behind the Dline but he hasn't done that much this year, at least not running that far downfield IIRC. Tommie has been practicing during the last few weeks and seeing him run like that, along with a couple sacks is making think that perhaps he is getting back to 100%. We'll find out next week.

Sorry but I'm not buying this argument that Anderson is the victim of bad coaching. I've seen Anderson out there on plenty of "passing downs". More to the point, how many posts have we gone through, Nfol included, where we gripe about the fact all our DE's ever do is rush wide outside? So if we blame coaches for this problem, and if that's the only thing Anderson has to do when he's on the field regardless of run or pass what is the problem? To quote the article: "Anderson hasn't made a sack this season, and it has been 22 games since he has had a full one." That isn't coaching that's a player not getting his job done. The same as we've been saying about Ogunleye and Brown.

In summary, I was right, you were wrong. Time to accept it. The evidence is mounting. Evidence is mounting? As in no returns for TDs? Or as in Devin crying about his blocking and Deion Sanders backing him up? Or as in Devin gets benched so we can watch Danieal Manning return a kickoff further upfield than any Devin had done in the same game with the same blockers?

Of course it's not all Hester but I have seen holes Hester has missed. There have been opportunities for cutbacks to the weakside of the play like he was doing last year. He has also misread lots of blocks and often runs right into a defender. The last two years Hester's trademark was moving laterally to open seams between defenders and then making a lightning quick cut upfield between them. He's running laterally sometimes but the quick cut upfield is no longer there. More typically he keeps running laterally until he goes out of bounds.

I'll be part of the minority but I'd actually like to see Wolfe get some carries during a game. I don't mind Jones getting a few carries as well but he is similar to Forte in that he's a big back and has less shiftiness than Forte. Wolfe on the other hand is something completely different with his quickness. Forte gets a lot of touches between runs and passes and we could sneak Wolfe in for 5-7 plays a game.

At this point I'm just hoping we can beat the Rams.