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I agree in general, as long as the Williams' still get suspended:) Also, keep in mind that just from a logical perspective, bearing full responsibility does not necessarily say anything about what the punishment has to be, unless the rule has a "mandadory" clause. While bearing full responsibility covers a quantitative assessment of how cupability is meted out, it says nothing about a qualitative assessment of what actually happened that deserves punishment (and the result-that the banned substance ended up in their bodies above allowable limits-is only part of what happened).

Previously I had given up hope that Minny would lose 3 of it's next 4. But, now, isn't it true that our previously non-existant playoff hopes would be revived by a four game suspension of the Williams wall? We control our fate w.r.t. Green Bay, and if Minny loses 3 out of the next 4 (now more likely without the Williams') and the Bears win 3 out of 4, then the Bears would have a 9-7 record and Minny would have an 8-8. The tiebreaker would no longer matter. Hard to believe 9-7 could be the best record in the division, but it could. Our D is playing better now. We just need the WR's to be able to get off the bump-and-run and get separation...without ruining the timing of their route...or at least make the opposing D pay with big plays that forces them to cut that crap out. If our guys aren't capable, we need to get Orton a WR who can because it will never stop. That, and Orton's injury are the only things that have changed since back when the O was prolific.

We are loser. Our only chance is to win 4 straight (after just losing 3 out of 4), which is to say IMO we're done. How close were we to going up 14-3? Instead it went straight to 7-10 followed by 14-34. How quickly the tide can turn. We lost the line battle on offense all day so I knew our O wasn't going to put up numbers. No running game combined with fallling behind isn't a recipe for offensive success. Orton was forcing the ball to covered receivers that either couldn't get open or would drop balls placed right in their hands. I'd love to know what was up with Tillman on the play where he released to the non-existant safety. That AP 60yd run came after Corey Graham came barreling in, didn't contain, missed the tackle, and then got in the way of his own guy making the tackle. The trifecta.

Winning this game would make us the huge favorites to win the divison. Green Bay would still have another game against us, which could result in a two game swing for them if they beat us, but Minny would almost be out of it. 2 games down (tie breaker) with only 4 games left would require the Bears to go 1-3 and the Vikes to go 3-1 for them to win the division.

I'd like to see you go into the Redskins and Cowboys locker rooms and repeat that...see how popular you'd be.

I don't care about anyone but the Bears, so if it's not going to be the Bears, then might as well be the Lions and Cowboys. There's something comforting about knowing they'll be there every Thanksgiving.

Atrain got the ROY and it didn't help him out much. It's not like Forte needs to hammer a point home to the coaches that he's good, since Lovie and co. already adore him. So from the selfish perspective of a fan, the ROY will just raise his price in two or three years when we try to re-up him, while in the meanwhile serving as motivation to opposing defenses to pay extra attention to him. In other words, I don't care whether he wins it or not.

To be fair, last week he switched them out for Superman big boy pullups.

How dare you accuse Vasher of drinking soy shakes laced with gensing!! He didn't do it I tell 'ya!

Haven't you gotten the memo? Because Urlacher has become a media (and commercial hawking) star, the media has carte blanche on reporting the kind of gossip that hurts him and makes us worse persons for reading it.

I can understand why some would have thought Kyle would never make it, but to assume he'd make it but suggest his ceiling would be low doestn' make sense to me. He's a smart, 6'4" guy with good pocket presence and a big arm. Why would you have ever thought his ceiling was low? His release not fast enough or his lack of foot speed? Too much of the partying and Jack? My original predictions regarding Hester as a WR were not particularly accurate. I clearly remember thinking it'd take years for him to be more than backup quality because of the learning curve on route running, hands, playbook, defense reads (yeah, even though he played D), etc. and instead he's vastly exceeding my expectations, though he's still got a ways to go. The point is that his ceiling is super high, so don't count him out in only his second season ever at WR. I also think the press has made a soap opera out of Lloyd that the fans shouldn't buy into. He's been nothing but of good character since he got here, so if Lovie and Turner do to him what they did to Mark Bradley, they ought to be ashamed. The coaches owe it to the rest of the team to put talent out there, not to serve their own egos just because some of their players can think for themselves. Which is a perfect segue into Booker, who chose not sit after injuring himself... W.r.t. Booker, I made a post reply a week ago wondering which guys were playing hurt but not talking about it. Turns out Booker was one of them. I guess the cynic would still think it's just an attempt at an excuse. Time will tell. He had one big play a few weeks ago where he even showed his age of 32 hadn't slowed his top speed down.

I think Turner should work the no-play-call offense. You know, sandlot style. QB rollout, bomb to Hester, delayed handoffs, you get the idea. Do you think Orton would still be handing the ball off to McKie up the middle?

So what if it's true? As weird as it is to do that, it's weirder to present that to a court as evidence that the father is psychologically damaging the kid. Is that what all females are, psychologically damaged? Because their diapers were too pink? To truly cause this kid gender confusion, Urlacher would have to be doing about 99 other things of a similar nature (dresses, tea parties with My Little Ponies, calling him Miss Precious Kennedy, etc.). As a comment mentioned on the newspaper's website pointed out, Urlacher also has a little girl, so that's probably why he (allegedly) has pink pullups at the house.

Can't we just put a Captain Hook claw over his well-bound hand and let him loose on Minny? Gurantee you his tackling would improve (well, at least not get worse). In all seriousness, having Corey Graham being able to jump into either Vasher or Tillman's spots this year was a great boon in terms of depth. There goes that depth. The cup half full way to look at it is that at least we have Corey there to jump in. Wasn't Vasher injured last week by some guy on his own team? I forget.

I don't think coming in mid-season off the bench to play bad against an excellent Titans defense is a fair evaluation. Too bad for Rex you're right because Rex has worn out benefit of the doubt. Most Qb's that arent' drafted high don't ever get any to begin with, so that's life in the NFL.

I wonder that too. As an aside, did anyone catch exactly what Orton's streak is on no picks (not rhetorical, I actually don't know)? After years of turnovers at the QB positon (no one would get more aggravated at the "what was he thinking?" picks than me, lol) we've got a guy setting records for controlling the ball! Let's not be those fans who can only see the glass as one-third empty. We should be celebrating every week that after the torture that was the past 10 years we finally have a QB, and barring injury, he's not going anywhere anytime soon. But I think the D's fall from grace (before this week) has tempered our enthusiasm for some of our O improvements, which is understandable. If it keeps media spotlight off Orton, that's at least a positive side effect.

BTW, note that I never took a position on this issue (in preseason) since I really had no idea and I haven't said otherwise in this thread. Tough to be wrong when you don't pick a side, but considering the Oline has played average, not great, not terrible, being on the fence in the preseason seems to have been a reasonable choice.

That just sounds like someone not wanting to admit they were wrong to me. So you never felt like they were playing well? Considering your preseason bias, of course it's gonna take more to convince you than than the average person. To use a goofy cliche like Mike Brown would, the proof is in the pudding. The offense is better than it's been in years and with respect to the Oline's weakness, rush blocking, Forte is even doing well on the ground some weeks. That could not happen if the Oline was playing as bad as you predicted, period. And reality is that the Oline doesn't have to be a top5 unit to prove you wrong. If, now in week12, you wanted to stand on the more reasonable point that the Oline "still needs improvement", then maybe next time you'll think twice about being so dramatic. I believe my exact words were "holding up nicely", not all-pro unit, and management "knows our players better than we gave them credit for", not Lovie and JA make all the right moves. As I sit here and type this, it seems to me that's prety accurate and what fans like you were predicting in preseason was not. Pretty cut and dry, IMO.

Though all that really matters is overall performance, I agree that conistancy is still important, especially after years of seeing up and down QB play, I want don't want to see up and down anymore. However, realize it's a little tough to evaluate stuff like that when the game is a total blowout.

Ummmm, yes, actually. Those are good enough examples of my point, though I would add in about the changed personnel in the blocking this season and the excellent returning before Hester ever got here. But what's with the question mark? It sounds like we agree. The only person on this thread that seems to be in denial is BidDaddy. Though let me add that Manning's returns are way too few to draw any conclusion about what other returners are capable of with the same blockers. Still, what we're seeing every week is the combination of worse blocking and finding out that Devin was never the unstoppable god of kick returns he was hyped to be. That's not exactly an insult to Hester. Now he just needs to at least get back to playing like he is capable of playing. If that means he's no longer shattering season records but is still a great returner, so be it. The moral of the story is that the personnel that were blocking for Hester the last couple of years weren't getting nearly the credit (or pay, probably) they deserved. I've been saying it all along, though I was a little quieter at the height of the madness because I couldn't see the point in pissing on everyone's parade. I was helping to throw parades for Tommie Harris back when he was a monster on the Dline and I admit, it was a lot of fun...while it lasted...so I understand.

Cool. I don't like to see Hester psyching himself out, so I hope he just chills and has fun out there. Returning kicks/open field running is about feel, so if you try/think too hard, you lose the feel. Also, maybe he'd have had 1 TD now if that guy hadn't horse-collared him.

But has this been because the lanes aren't there to make that quick cut into? Hester used to be able to pull that crazy stuff because his blockers would deliver for him when he'd take a risk. What you remember was hype, and now you (should) know differently. As I said at the time, Hester looked great out there, but what he was doing was nothing earth shattering. He rarely used top speed and he rarely showed Barry Sanders like elusiveness. His vision was great and his sudden quick burst was huge, but he also had great lanes on at least half of his TD's. Without lanes, all that it meaningless...you waste your returner's abilities. In summary, I was right, you were wrong. Time to accept it. The evidence is mounting.

As I watched Orton trying to get Hester the ball last Sunday, it became apparent that for all Hester's speed, he wasn't getting separation and executing his routes well in the short, quick passing game, and Orton desperately needed someone (not just a TE/RB) to help move the chains that day. Well, that's exactly what you'd expect from a still relatively green WR with lots of athleticism, but on 3rd and 4 we need someone to run a perfectly executed route to pick up the easy first down, like other teams have. I expected this out of Booker before the season, but oh well. I'm not sure what's up with Lloyd. Rashied was converted to DB too, right? But he's less green than Hester, so Turner should expect him to be able to fill that need. But let's not forget, up until these last two games, our WR's have actually been a pleasant surprise. Rashied and Hester were playing well and Lloyd was playing like a number one. I also noticed it took all of two games for everyone to go from "damn, guess I was wrong about the OL, maybe Lovie/JA/Turner knew their team better than I gave them credit for. They're holding up nicely, just gotta get more run blocking push." to "our OL is a joke. I knew we should've signed a FA in desperation." So it's kind of convenient to be dramatic now isn't it? Wait until after a game where we didn't lose 37-3 to make an evaluation of our players for the season. Before Tennessee, we were 6 seconds away (Atlanta) from having won 5 straight games. All the other losses were by 3 points or less.

I was wondering who on the D is secretly having injury issues (it seems we always find out in the offseason that people on the team had long-term issues during the season that weren't reported), but you may be right as well about not keeping guys fresh. I'm under the impression that DT rotation is part of lovie's philosophy, so I dont' know about that. Forte's not exactly getting 35 carries a game, so it could be worse, but I'm always more in favor of using the backups than most people--especially if starters are injured--so I don't disagree that Forte could stand to be relieved more often so he doesn't hit himself a rookie wall. It also stunts the development of our other runners, who we'll need if Forte goes down. Additionally, we need to evaluate Kevin Jones. He's had so few carries, I dont' care how he's looked, you can't judge potential starting quality runner on that little.

Before the Titans game I said "We need a couple of wins in the next 4 weeks", expecting that 3 out of the 4 games would be very losable. Well, we can still do it, but it nows means going 2-0 in the next two games. As I said in that previous post 7-5 wouldn't be a bad position to be in on paper. Unfortunately, now I worry that we haven't developed enough as a defense for it to really matter in terms of any postseason chances. But unlike some fans (as is their opinion and I'm not saying it's wrong), I see great value in winning your division and being conference champions...that is, it's not all about the Super Bowl. So whether we "develop" enough to have a reasonable chance in postseason or not, I still want us to be NFC North champions.