BearFan2000

The play action thing has been baffling as we have a mobile QB who can throw on the run, and we have had the luxury of a complete every down RB like Forte that we've not taken advantage of those things. Let Jay create mismatches by rolling out, extending plays. Too much trying to make him a pocket passer which has never been his strength.

Saw those articles and I take it with a grain of salt because the Media knows (and in some ways has helped create the persona) that Jay is a very polarizing player. To what degree it's true we as fans may never fully know but. But what the media is usually good at is yelling fire even if there's no smoke and insinuating that there is actual smoke to justify what they write. Whatever each of us personally think or make of Jay, it's abundantly clear the media hates him and sees him as a gold mine for negative articles. It's the easy lazy thing to do to write an article based on assumptions fueled by public opinion merely to stir the pot, and get views, and reads by creating controversy when there may really be none. That said, it is a little odd that AJ is closing to work with Marshall now that Marshall's no longer a Bear. Last offseason it would have made more sense since they were teammates vs working out with Jay and the rest of the WR's who are current teammates. To each his own, he may be working out with Marshall because is used to doing that to prepare himself using the fit speed (or whatever it's called) program that he's used since he came into the league. It's not uncommon for NFL players to go off and do their own offseason workout programs to prepare for camp and the season. What matters is that whatever he does and whatever his teammates do that he's ready to go when the season starts.

Agree, and honestly, I was surprised he signed the one year deal last season to play another year in Chicago. Was fully prepared for the parting to happen last offseason. Can't respect the guy enough really embodied everything you would want in a pro on and off the field. Will always think of him as a Bear and one of my favorite Bears. Class act all the way.

Cause she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, good looks, and has been pampered all her life and bathed in wealth. She has no other redeeming qualities she's one of those idiots who tell everyone they should not vaccinate their kids (which that mentality will only lead to revisiting some the nasty plague type diseases that had been pretty much eradicated). Some people in this world get non stop media attention who the rest of the world could care less about and have no reason to care about. It's hard to know what these people are like when the cameras are off, but pretty sure she's a B in real life. Jay may be cool to family and friends, and a jerk to everyone else, he may just be a total jerk, he may be completely missunderstood. After this season he's likely gone and then my ability to care anything about him will be completely gone. For now he's our QB so that's as far as I care and want to see the Bears do well.

Couldn't agree more. There are many good things Thibs did but also many bad things, burning players out in the regular season, simplistic and predictable offense. Head scratching defensive calls at times, head scratching rotations, and play design. I think it was time for a change early on in his tenure here we saw a lot of good things happening we were a sound defensive team, a hustling team, a never die never quit attitude. Over the past couple seasons and more so this past season that is breaking down. The Bucks series was absolutely painful to watch. If the buck didn't suck so bad we wouldn't have made it out of that series. We looked out of sync more often than than we looked sharp. Turning over the ball like we're gunning for a turnover record. There's has been no consistency or balance or adjustment to our offense. We either take the first shot that presents itself or force one up from distance (when we aren't a great 3 point shooting team), or we pass the ball indefinitely till there's only a few seconds on the shot clock like a game of hot potato and more often than not it ends up in the hands of someone who has no shot or can't create their own shot resulting in either a shot clock violation, or horrible shot. We don't even seem to consistently do the hustle things either, fighting for loose balls, boxing out, etc. We take bad shots with no one near the rim, we don't box out on defense very well either which is compounded when like you said we double'd James out past the 3pt line leaving us vulnerable to easy buckets. The bulls I saw in the playoffs were a bulls team that seem to rarely show hustle and do the little things, a team playing very fundamentally unsound. There is also no adjustment to the game flow. We took game 1 against the cavs because they didn't defend the pick and pop, they adjusted we seemed lost once they took that away. The turnover issue could partly be due to the predictability of the offense teams know how to bait us into bad passes, bad shots, etc. I'm not to big of how the front office of Gar/Pax is doing things too. Keep changing the tires on the car when the engine needs work is dumb. I loved Pax as a player, but they have meddled in things when they should let their coaches coach, the relationship between Thibs and management has been deteriorating for years, especially when they fired one of his assistants without involving him in the decision. The other bad thing is this is not some secret it's well known and been well documented. So that plays into searching for coaches. I hope Hoiberg pans out, but the management needs to let him do his job and manage his staff, not have deal with meddling. Management needs to just focus on managing the roster, draft and FA and get their coach the players he wants/needs to do his job.

The part that I'm happy to see is that the Bears wasted no time releasing him. We speculated what the stipulations of his deal were and how short the leash would be. Very glad to see that the Bears were swift and did the right thing. Even if he is cleared this guy has a pattern of putting himself in bad situations. With the talk about bringing in quality character players I was surprised they even took a chance on him, but clearly the deal was a prove you can keep your nose clean and be a productive member of society and this team. He has the talent to be be a valuable asset. Had it worked out it would have been a good deal for us, but it didn't so he's gone no one's fault but his. But I'm sure glad this incident didn't occur and have to wait as our front office/staff figured out what they were going to do, they had a unified agreement if something like this happened and they acted quickly. That's one thing I have liked since the end of last season. There has been a swiftness and a sense of purpose to the moves we've made from firing Dr. Death and Emery, to hiring Pace and brining in Fox and assembling the staff. We won't all agree on every decision, not every decision will be correct, but, when a mistake is made (in this case signing McDonald) we fix the mistake and move forward.

definitly! I'll take as many of these 12-15 guys as we can get. Time will tell once training camp gets underway, preseason, and then when the games count. I think it's going to take some time to see what kind of identity our defense will have and who will surface as studs and who will be the duds. So many ? at nearly every position. Lots of bodies have been brought in so it's hard to tell but also excited to see what our D will look like with Fangio at the helm. That alone gives me more hope/confidence than I've had in recent years.

especially for the Bears lol How many guys have we had that could give us 12-15 a year with any consistency from year to year. We had guys have breakout years only to disappear the following year after our hopes were up. We've brought in guys who previously were prolific pass rushers who seemed to somehow get neutered wearing the blue and orange.

On the fence about this on one hand I would rather it just stay, it's been that way for a long long time. Are we changing things just to change something? Sure it's a virtually automatic thing but it's just normal tradition. I do like the idea of awarding 7 points for a TD and making it optional to go for 2 to make it an 8 point score with the risk of losing a point by failing the conversion. This to me would add strategy without making a major change TD's now are basically 7 with the gimme extra point and the option to go for 2. It would also make things more interesting as some scores would end with the TD where a team ops not to go for 2. Right now the extra point is basically an extra couple min of break to grab more snacks or beverage, or restroom break. On the other hand your kicker should be able to knock down 33 yard kicks at a fairly high percentage. What this might actually do is reverse the balance of how often teams go for 2 vs 1. Where the 2 point conversion may become more of the norm since you only need 2 yards for 2 vs kicking a 33 yard fg for 1. Either way I guess we'll find out.

Some would probably argue that a 4 game suspension for Cutler might actually help the Bears LOL

The one big difference this year is we actually have proven good coaches to work with our players vs hacks. I trust their evaluation of our roster far better than Tucker, Trestman, and Emery. Vic has a good idea of what he wants in his defensive roster. Clearly didn't see a reason to keep Greene, and while he sees potential with SMC choosing not to pick up the 5h year option shows that they see him as a 1 year prove it player like many of the other signings they made in FA. If SMC somehow does resurrect his career and prove he belongs beyond 2015 he'll be here beyond 2015, otherwise he'll end up in Tampa with Lovie.

Instead of a 1 million dollar fine which is chump change to them, why not something like reducing their salary cap for a season or two, not sure how much but that would be more of a punishment than straight up 1 mil fine. Kraft probably whipes his arse with $100 bills. As stated earlier the 1st rounder will likely be a low first rounder and wouldn't the 4th rounder be a lower round 4th as well? Which makes it more like losing a 2nd rounder and a 5th rounder. People are whining that they came down too hard on them and "it's circumstantial" yada yada, but we're talking about an organization who has a history of circumventing the rules and bending and breaking whatever rules they have to to win at all costs. Not only were they caught, they were arrogant and smug about denying any wrong doing. Bill and Brady brag about how smart they are, but when they are accused of knowingly being involved in rule breaking they suddenly become Sg. Shultz "I know nothing, I see Nooooothing" The act that they got caught in may seem trivial, and in a game that the actual act didn't make a difference in the game (colts blowout). I highly doubt that was the only time they did this, they had some close games before that in the regular season and the previous round of the playoffs vs the Ravens was a far tighter game where something like this would have a much higher potential impact. People need to realize that it's as much about the history of cheating and their attempt to cover up, deny, and not cooperate with the investigation. People with nothing to hide don't withhold or destroy evidence.

Let's not put them in the HOF yet

agree, even if a smart pick is a consensus, logical, even a predictable one. if it's a smart pick it's still a smart pick. Far better than a pick that makes pretty much everyone say Whaaaaa? And the pick requires your GM to have to sell the pick after the fact. I'll take the former every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The point is to add talent to build your team with not just make waves on the clock.

Although a vet skipping offseason stuff on a team he's been a part of is different than a FA Vet doing the same before signing to a new team. For a vet who's been with a team and knows the system the impact of missing is less. Though with us getting a whole new staff those offseason workouts are valuable especially when the staff starts installing concepts for their system.

For a young first time GM I think Pace did very well, his enthusiasm and passion shows in his pressers very refreshing from the old nerd who talked down to people and drafted like he though was the smartest guy in the room. We've come a long way from last years collapse and dumpster fire of a season. We have a new GM who has passion, enthusiasm, well organized, and hard working, a new coaching staff that knows what success looks like and how to coach success. It's almost like the scene at the end of Terminator 2 when Sarah is saying for the first time she looks at the future with hope. For the past several seasons we've expectedly watched in horror as our "braintrust" crapped draft after draft down their legs. And had to be overactive in FA to cover for their drafting ineptitude. This has been such a refreshing offseason, and we as fans approached the the draft with a sense of hope. No draft is perfect, and no draft will suit every fan's expectation on every pick. But I feel like overall I'm pleased with this draft and feel like there is a lot of potential in this group as well as some of the UDFA signings. For once it's nice to walk away from the draft with optimism vs disappointment, confusion, and hope that somehow something good comes out of it. It's too early to tell how this draft will look in the next few years but I for one definitely walked away more hopeful about this years class than I have in many years. Could the tide be finally turning for us long suffering Bears fans. Time will tell.

I agree, yes ideally you want as many of your picks to contribute early, but we don't know what we have this year how good we'll be, or how far we have to go to be a contender. Some positions would be more likely to be expected to start or contribute right away. Others like QB we know will sit behind Jay and battle for backup spot this year and possibly next. I'm on the fence about Mariotta, do not want Winston at all. I'd rather trade down and get more picks but if the Bears go with Mariotta at #7 I can live with it because it is taking a chance on the future. I don't think we should not draft guys just because they don't start this year, if they can be a part of the teams future. We may very well struggle to be a 500 team this coming season. I don't like throwing a season away, but we need to draft with the future in mind as well as trying to find as many guys who can contribute now. There are too many holes to expect them all to be fixed or patched this offseason. It's going to take consecutive good offseason in the draft and FA to right the ship.

A loss of a great guy on and off the field. Win or lose I always looked forward to the Doug & OB post game. His passion as a player and after his career as a commentator was hard to miss and will be greatly missed. An extremely classy guy, who wore his heart on his sleeve and always called it like he saw it. A true representative of the Chicago Bears.

Exactly, especially GB week 1 in our house. There will be no tape on us other than what little would be shown during preseason. So that will give us an advantage in game planning, since we are well aware of what the Packers do on both sides of the ball. Will that tip the balance for an early season battle, who knows. But early division wins will be huge for us. And we have Detroit in week 6 as well. Also only 2 of the first 6 games are against AFC opponents so it's a chance to get some conference wins and some good tests early to see how we stack up.

that would be awesome to have a guy like that fall to us at 7. About time we catch some breaks and get a really good draft this year. We've suffered bad drafts long enough. For once it would be nice to walk away from the draft feeling excited rather than the usual. "Man, I hope this works out" and have to google some of our picks cause no one knows who the hell they are.

Do we ever get to host the third preseason game? Seems like it's away every freakin year.

at 7 we should go best available whoever that is. Your high picks especially a top 10 should be targeting future stars on your team that you can build around. You need anchors and as many as you can get. We've all talked for years about our past drafts and how sad it is that only a few guys over the years can fit that description. The majority of the guys we've signed this offseason are of the "let's see" variety, some may stick I'd guess most don't. But a transition year it's smart to bring in plenty of bodies that could potentially work out. We have a lot of unknowns when it comes to our current guys, so I like that we are bringing in low risk guys that if it doesn't work it doesn't kill us.

Sad that we've become so used to evaluating players from the perspective of knowing they will be coached by idiots. Having real professional coaches changes how we look at potential players. It's a brave new world for us Bears fans.

Exactly and the draft is in someways like a final exam, you don't know what questions may arise but you want to be prepared so you don't get blindsided and have to "guess" or wing it. You run through as many scenarios as you can so when things don't go exactly to plan your not caught with your pants down. You want to play a high stakes poker game and not tip your hand. It does help us that Pace is a first time GM, the team is in a retooling/rebuilding mode and they haven't committed to much so they are playing things close to the vest. May as well use the ambiguity to our benefit.

Wouldn't be surprised if Tillman also winds up there. Maybe he'll take Jay LOL