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In summary, the winners stayed winners and the losers stayed losers...with the exception of 4 teams that got worse and 3 that got better. Interesting stats. Usually there's more losers that get better than we've seen this year. It seems every other year one of those teams makes it to the super bowl.

This seems almost stupid to say...but yet again all the right teams have lost/won at this point in the year to make 9-7 possible for playoffs. Only 3 teams are ahead of us and there are two slots. Us winning out means beating Green Bay, which should mean finishing ahead of them if they lose this on this week's MNF. If Philly can win their division, that leaves only the Giants and Dallas as stumbling blocks. The Giants still have Minny and Philly to play. And 3 out of 4 teams Dallas has left are 8-3, 8-4, & undefeated. Of course our schedule is not cupcake either, but Lovie was talking winning out.

Yeah, your first sentence was the sort of thing I was referring to when I mentioned "caveats", but Chitown didn't go there. BTW nfo, you say you don't know what to call it, but you do, because you nailed it when you said he doesn't like the team's identity changing away from defense. Of course that's exactly what Urlacher said was the reason, so we don't exactly have to assume.

So then by your logic we are looking at a 1st round QB pick in 2011 to replace Cutler? When the guy says that, he means because we'd also get to keep Orton as our starting QB, not only because of the draft picks or in spite of him...so that's at least one guy (you can add to me) that thinks QB wouldn't be a "gaping hole" . Clearly Orton is a starting caliber QB, as he's shown it 2 years now and has improved his QB rating every season he's been in the league. It's quite possible Orton would look better than Cutler here now because he's cool under pressure and hates throwing picks; probably not, but the real question is what would look better, this offense, or an Orton led offense with 3 high round draft pick or their equivalent spent on upgrading the OL? And it's an enormous stretch at this point to say Orton (who's still has upside yet to come since he's young) can't helm a SB team when we went to one with Rex, of all people, and stayed right with Indy until almost the 4th quarter. Conventional wisdom is that there was no point making a decent to modest upgrade at QB when you've got enormous "gaping holes" at OL poisoning the offense. But I guess wisdom isn't for everyone . Having said that, Cutler is fun to watch and if only our OL hadn't turned out to be worse than I had imagined, the Cutler deal could have turned out good for both teams. It's not looking likely these days, but I've not given up hope yet. Nfo, however, should have no excuse since he apparently knew all along how bad our OL was going to be.

Fascinating if true.

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/football/be...otash03.article Some of his points can be argued. I thought the paragraph about the Bears not being able to recognize talent was well written. Benson over TJ, Mark over Alex, go down the list...I thought they were goofy decisions (except Rex in Orton's sophomore since Orton obviously wasn't ready). Nor was I in favor of ANY of those early contract extensions, lol, which says more about my philosophy. As it turns out, I misjudged Lance's talent and yet I was right anyway since playing hardball with Lance worked out for us.

That was my point. From the instant he heard the news he wasn't exactly shouting hallelujah, so that rules out his problem being that he's jealous of the attention the city gave Cutler after Uracher found out. There are some possible caveats to my logic I've thought of that you didn't mention, but just stating what you said in and of itself just proves my point.

I've not seen him play yet. I'm still skeptical because it really is so hard to tell from stats (regardless of looking at the teams played against) what a runningback's talent is. You need to see it on the field on multiple days. But Ced was cut partly because he was still relatively expensive, was poor for team morale, and violated the teams trust with respect to second chances. Purely based on his play, he'd still be on this team. That's life. I think he should be forced to give some of that bonus money back so we can pay for Cowher, lol. His career with the Bears was fraud in a sense if you compare what he gave to the Bears compared to what many are saying they see him capable of now (with respect to results, attitude, and work ethic).

Yes, happy. I said in an earlier thread that the status quo was not good enough. I needed to see evidence that they acknowledge and are tring to figure out what they've done wrong. Even if they take some wrong turns, they need to be moving forward. We may not see returns on this move right away mind you, but how enormous would it be if Chris could eventually stabilize that position, the position that he is apparently better physically suited to play than RT or guard. It would up the timeframe for us having a competitive OL by a season. ...since we just don't have the draft picks to expect more than 2 new, eventual starters from next year's draft (if we're lucky). We have to solve some problems from within, or Cutler will be a free agent before we get a decent line...we could have gone that route without trading for him.

In regards to Urlacher's preseason comments. Cutler certainly doesn't seem soft, so we don't have to worry about that. Maybe Urlacher meant psychologically soft. And so far I think Cutler is psychologically strong and mature, which makes me feel justified for earlier saying people shouldn't read too much into his pouty, mopey on-field demeanor. Looks can be decieving.

Isn't the conventional wisdom that Urlacher doesn't have a needs to be the leader mentality like Ray Lewis and can't be bothred with all the trappings of media fame compared to your average superstar? In other words, anything is possible but Brian is the exact opposite personality type to care about the team's QB being the face of the franchise. Url's vested years have him thinking he gets to say more than he does, that's all...it seems like a stretch to say that he's jealous, especially since he wasn't 100% on the Jay trade from day one, and that was before all the hysteria.

It's not profound to say that without our turnovers in our close games we'd have won them. That's the way the NFL works. Win the turnover battle by 2 or more and you've pretty much got a win...have less serious injuries than 80% of the league and you've pretty much made the playoffs.

This statement was the most compelling: "Mike Shanahan won one playoff game (1-4) after John Elway retired. Jon Gruden went 0-2 in the playoffs in six seasons after winning the Super Bowl; The Colts are 11-0 without Tony Dungy; Mike Holmgren built a winner in Seattle, but didn't win his first playoff game with the Seahawks until his seventh season; and Brian Billick went 1-3 in the playoffs in seven seasons after winning the Super Bowl in 2000." ...along with the fact that no Super Bowl winning coach has ever moved on to another team an won another. Just coincidence? Are we willing to wait 7 seasons for our first playoff win?

I would like to see acknowledgement that status quo isn't working, problems are being addressed, and to see the players execute as a result of good leadership.

I didn't even think about last year actually. Based on our play recently we're not better than last year. I was thinking of those years where a sub-10 point offensive effort was common (but then defensive shutouts were too). Obviously we have different expectations now with what is supposed to be some talent ready to blossom with Hester, Oslon, Cutler, and Forte at each skill position. The shamewas not being able to get a capable offense together before our killer defense faded away.

The Bears had an awful record when Urlacher doesn't play, and after a short time looking otherwise, it looks like it will continue this season. You can certainly argue it's coincidence, but I'd bet comparing our record over the last 5 years with and without Urlacher would be eye opening.

And Bill Cowher used to physically remind me of Wannstedt a little. It's a little depressing to think that losing the rest of our games wouldn't even get us better high round draft picks. Lovie's defense made some solid, firey, plugged up the running lane and gang tackle plays even into the fourth quarter. It seemed like some of the time Lovie had them motivated. The O is more Ron Turner and isn't he a pretty emotional guy? Mistakes, bad execution. For some reason the players just aren't playing up to their potential. Lovie took over a bad team and for a while there all we ever did was win (I remember winning something gaudy like 19 out of 21 games at one point), so I refuse to thoughtlessly throw Lovie to the wolves. But JA needs to have a plan and to evaluate whether Lovie seems to have and idea been done wrong and how to fix it, otherwise he's going to have to assume things won't change. That'll all be moot if JA is gone too. If Lovie goes this will be the second head coach in a row to get Coach of the Year only to end up not being a long term solution.

In retrospect he was right. Our only hope was gift points since we had no chance playing them straight up. I'm just being sarcastic of course...and yet it's true.

And we're still a much better offense than we used to be.

Technically we could trade high picks for more low picks, or just not pick (was it minny that did that once) and let our pick fall until it was where we liked. But you're not supposed to win when you give up that many points, and we had poor running for a large portion of the game and penatlties or important missed calls. My point is that I think Cutler played well enough to win, though not well enough to justify his cost to us. I pointed out in preseason that Cutler's deep pass success was only marginally better than Orton's (and that was when he was on Denver). You shouldn't have expected miracles there. Having said that, Olson was not sprinting on that Cutler deep ball that grazed his finger tips. I'm not even sure he fully extended his arms. He was also the least open of the 3 missed deep passes, justifying Cutler throwing it at a safe distance. That makes that missed TD Olson's fault IMO. He makes that catch and we're not having this discussion because Cutler finishes with 2 TDs and no picks and we win. On a side note, what was the deal with Afalava on that deep pass coming right up on the WR, slowing up and extending his hand out as if he's bracing for a potential jump ball only to have it sail way over his head for a TD? Just a misjudged depth? That was ridiculous. Did some bookie pay him to 'take a dive'?

Does it matter? The Bears don't have an election to win. Very rarely do fans hate their team so much they give up the sport. They'll wallow in misery, but they won't leave. While I think it's within us fans' control to make our players lose their love/will of playing by constant berating and complaining, I don't think we affect major decisions like whether to fire a coach/GM unless they were on the precipice already. So as much as you might think the organization cares about what everyone else thinks, they really don't have a huge reason to.

If he has one, Kyle's actual brother probably doesn't look as much like Kyle as that.

Great point Pixote.

I'm ignorant about setting up a message board website so maybe this idea isn't practical, but I've always thought a messageboard should have a system where you can click a button that simply adds a "thumbs up" tracked stat to the post. Although I've seen a "reputation" system and a "this post was rated helpful" system, that's not quite right because some posts aren't necessarily helpful so to speak and from what I've seen on other boards "reputation" ends up being taken too seriously, yet you'd like to give a quick "liked something about that post", which doesn't necessarily mean you liked all or even most of the post...just that there was something worth recognizing, however minor and for whatever reason. Especially for people with big sigs, a discrete post just to put a smiley face emoticon or something comes across as clutter. Anyway, someone codes these things from scratch, the originator, even if most everyone else just uses it as a template. If I was coding my own, that's the way I'd do it...for any forum, not just Talkbears.com.

One of the weirder stories you could come across. Remember guys, when you get in arguments about football with strangers, psychopaths probably like football too. Hopefully the poisoned guy will not have permanent blindness.