defiantgiant

Yeah, my worry with Iglesias is that, like Engram, he seems like he's tailor-made for a West Coast offense. From what I saw of Iglesias in college, he made up for less-than-great speed with nice routes and cuts, pretty reliable hands, and good running after the catch; a guy like that can be a featured receiver in a WCO, but I don't know if he can in Martz's system. I think there's a reason that Martz has been gushing about Hester/Knox/Aromashodu and hasn't said much about Bennett or Iglesias: he's traditionally had the most success with deep-threat receivers like Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt. The kinds of plays that Iglesias can make in the passing game, I think Martz might ask Forte and Taylor to handle those for the most part. I'll be interested to see how this whole thing plays out for Bennett and Iglesias compared to Hester, Knox, and DA.

All right, I think there's one thing we can all agree on here.

I think Aromashodu's a huge question mark. He had a great game against Minnesota (going against a significantly injured Antoine Winfield) and a solid game against Green Bay, but he wasn't very effective against the Lions or the Ravens, two teams with VERY beatable secondaries. He's clearly got a lot of ability, but he needs to demonstrate way more consistency before he can be counted on as a starter. I think Darryl Drake nailed it: he basically said that talent-wise, there's no limit to how good Aromashodu can be, but he still needs to work on consistently playing up to his talent. If he can do that, the Bears could have a poor man's Miles Austin on their hands, but whether he can do it is anybody's guess at this point. I could actually see Knox rotating with Bennett at split end like he did last season. Since they bring such different skills to the table, it makes a lot of sense to have situational packages that swap one out for the other. It could be a matchup-based rotation, too - if a team's playing a slower corner on Bennett, you rotate Knox in and force them to adjust. As for the slot, Martz's offense goes 4-wide a lot, and I could see a lot of interesting roles for Knox in those situations. You could line Knox up at SE for those sets, then move Bennett into the slot with Hester, since Bennett is pretty well suited to work those short and intermediate routes over the middle. On the other hand, you could leave Bennett alone and have Knox and Hester be your slot receivers, hoping to get one of them matched up on a safety on a deep route.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was worried about. If we hadn't signed Taylor, I'd be expecting Forte to break a thousand yards, even in Martz's offense. Taylor's the wild card. It's not just that he's getting paid a lot, you can look at what Martz has done in the past. If you look at Martz's whole history as a playcaller, in an average season he'll call 372 running plays. He varies in either direction based on the talent he has at running back: at the extremes, he ran it 431 times when he had Faulk in his prime, versus 304 when he had a banged-up Kevin Jones. Before he got canned in San Francisco, he was on pace to call 370 runs - just about average for him. I'd expect Martz to call a career-average number of runs this season, everything else being equal. In his history calling plays, Martz has given 23% of the carries to players other than the top 2 running backs (mostly QB and FB, but with some WR/TE rushes in there too.) In an average Martz season, that would leave 286 carries for the running backs to split. Frank Gore was on pace for 270 carries in what would have been a 370-carry season, but his backup was DeShaun Foster, who only got 6% of the workload. On the other hand, look at St. Louis in 2004: 381 rushing plays in total, but Steven Jackson got 35% of the rushes, and Faulk only toted the ball 195 times. Chester Taylor's not Steven Jackson, but he's not DeShaun Foster, either. And if he gets even a quarter of the total carries, that's only going to leave about 200 rushes for Forte.

Yeah, when I was against the idea of moving Hester to the slot full-time, it was mainly because he's our best receiver and I thought it'd take snaps away from him. The slot receiver certainly played a smaller role in Turner's offense than the flanker, and it doesn't make sense to take the ball away from our best wideout. In Martz's offense, though, it looks like Hester could get a lot MORE opportunities in the slot. Shaun McDonald got 127 passes thrown his way as the slot receiver in 2007. Mike Furrey got 146 thrown his way in 2006 in basically the same role. Hester did good things on only 91 passes this season; he could break out in a big way if he gets the kind of workload Martz has given to his slot guys in the past. Yeah, you might be right about that. I also just think he's been an open-field guy for his whole career, and he's used to having more room to work. When you look at him on returns back in the day, he was setting defenders up to miss from fifteen, sometimes twenty yards away. It seems like he's struggled learning to do the same thing in close quarters. I mean, it couldn't possibly be less effective, right? I blame Ron Turner for that one. Everybody in the world knew that screen was coming every time he dialed it up. I have nothing against screens per se, and a quick shifty guy like Hester is exactly who you want to run them, unless he's getting mugged the instant he makes the catch. Hopefully Martz actually knows how to disguise a play (or even just run it out of more than one formation) so we can start getting some mileage out of the screens to Hester.

I wonder if that has to do with their defensive system. They were probably looking at Wootton as a 3-4 DE if could bulk up some. No clue why they were so down on Wright - maybe he can't horsecollar a guy to save his life?

It's definitely a hopeful estimate, I know. But Forte's a good player. He's not Marshall Faulk or Frank Gore, but I'm still hopeful that he can break a thousand yards rushing in Martz's offense. If he gets about the same number of carries Faulk and Gore got, I think he's at least got a shot at it.

Hester could be a dangerous slot receiver if he can clean up his route running over the middle. He's certainly got the suddenness and agility that you like to see in a slot guy, but last season he was WAY better running outside-the-numbers stuff than he was going over the middle. When I watched Hester, I saw him run really nice deep outs, skinny posts, flag routes, hitch-and-gos...really all the down-the-sideline routes. He could usually separate on shorter outside routes (like hitches and curls) too, but that could be more due to his speed (I saw more than one corner playing off of him and bailing early) than to really precise route-running. When I saw Hester struggling, though, he was usually running a cross or a slant - routes that slot receivers have to be great at. I don't know what it was, but he couldn't seem to run those routes cleanly in traffic: he'd be at the wrong depth, in the wrong spot, he'd get tangled up with the defenders or the ref...whenever I saw him go over the middle, even if he made the play, his route wasn't pretty. If Martz can get Hester to run slants and drags as well as he ran his deep routes in 2009, he could be an exceptional slot guy and create some real mismatches for defenses.

Hey, congratulations! That's great news!

It was predictable then. If you watch the games in 2008, it's obvious that like two-thirds of the plays were going to Forte, and you can see that defenses were keying in on him all over the place. He still got it done for the most part, but I don't think him being a candidate for OROY means that the playcalling wasn't predictable, or even that Forte was terribly effective. He had really pedestrian numbers on a per-play basis; the big total yardage numbers were more due to his massive workload. Between the run and the pass game, Forte got the ball 379 times - only Michael Turner and Adrian Peterson carried the load more than he did. The way I see it, it's like this: 2008: Predictable playcalling + adequate run blocking=passable YPC. Passable YPC x giant workload=big season for Forte 2009: Predictable playcalling + horrible run blocking=bad YPC. Bad YPC x ordinary workload=disappointing season for Forte I think Martz's playcalling and better play from the o-line (with Kreutz healthy, Pace gone, and Omiyale at his natural position) can help put Forte in many more favorable situations than he saw in 2008-2009. If that happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see him top 4.0 yards a tote in 2010. Even with the reduced carries due to Chester Taylor and Martz's offense in general, I could see Forte putting up 1000-1100 yards rushing. And given how much Martz likes to throw to the halfback, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Forte added another 500-600 yards in the receiving game. If all goes well in Martz's system, I think Forte should have no problem approaching his rookie year production without the back-breaking workload.

So here's an interesting article breaking down Martz's tendencies as a playcaller in every season he's coached. It breaks down everything from the big issues (how many receptions went to each receiver, the carry split between the #1 and #2 RBs, what percentage of pass attempts ended in sacks or interceptions, etc.) to the really minute ones (like percentage of QB runs and TE end-arounds, stuff like that.) Then the writer makes a couple of predictions about the Bears, although he's careful to point out that we won't know much until after training camp/OTAs. It's kind of interesting. The one thing that jumped out at me is this: I was very against moving Hester to the slot like Martz talked about, since I think he's our best receiver right now. What I didn't know was just how much Martz tends to feed the ball to his slot receivers, especially when he doesn't have a dominant #1 wideout to work with. In 2007, for example, Shaun McDonald and Mike Furrey were his slot guys - they racked up 140 catches between them. Hester moving to the slot could be great news for him...judging from Martz's history, he could potentially get more attention in the passing game than the guys lined up on the outside. If Hester stays on the outside (like Lovie has said he will,) then Earl Bennett or Juaquin Iglesias or whoever could be looking at a lot of targets lining up in the slot.

OK, this is the last thing I'll say on the subject. I'm not "pissed that we didn't have a 2nd rounder." The team not having a draft pick seems pretty unimportant when we're talking about a young man who died and another one who could have if the Colts' doctors hadn't caught his condition. The reason that I made the thread is that I'm kind of alarmed that the Bears' doctors, whoever they are, seem to have a pattern of either missing or ignoring serious medical conditions. That worries me.

Yeah - I kind of wonder if you could make a case for carrying a third kicker/punter on the roster. The Cowboys carried a third guy as a kickoff specialist (David Buehler out of USC) last season, but he was sort of a special case. He's got a huge leg for kickoffs but wasn't accurate enough to kick FGs, which ordinarily would mean he'd be out of a job. But he happens to be a 6'2" 227 former linebacker/safety, and he was fast enough to catch up with the rest of the coverage team after booting the kickoff. It seems like having a big kicker who can run and tackle would be a major advantage on kick coverage - you'd have 11 guys on the coverage team instead of 10. Given the number of Aussie rules players trying out as punters, I wonder if we'll start seeing more teams using a roster spot on a hybrid kickoff/coverage player.

Yeah, I did, actually. I mean, I'm not a doctor or anything. Are you? If so, what's the difference between an enlarged left ventricle and an enlarged valve in the left ventricle? Are they really distinct conditions? That definitely changes things if they're different. I mean, I haven't run across any information that talks about having an enlarged mitral valve or anything separate from just having an enlarged left ventricle, and I know that a lot of laymen (myself included) tend to use "valve" kind of interchangeably with "chamber" when talking about the heart, so it wouldn't surprise me if the sportswriter whose article I linked to wasn't using exact medical terminology. If that's the case, then from what I've read, enlargement/thickening of the left ventricle is exactly the kind of cardiomegaly that's likely to lead to cardiac arrest. Did YOU read the article? The article doesn't "clearly state" that it may be recent. There's no evidence given that it may be recent. Freeman himself SPECULATES that the condition may be recent, but the only thing he says he knows for sure is that his first EKG was abnormal and that he never heard anything one way or another about his second one. Here's the exact quote from Freeman, just so we're on the same page: "They had found my heart had come back abnormal at the combine and they redid (the EKG)," Freeman said. "After I took it again, nothing was said about it and we moved on. I don't know if it was (enlarged) then or if it happened in the recent year or what." And, in fact, if we're talking about what Freeman said, his next quote is a little more damning: "The Bears never mentioned it. They were more concerned about my knee and trying to make sure that was healthy. That's the biggest thing, I think, why I was shocked in Indianapolis." I couldn't disagree with you more. These doctors were being asked to review Freeman's medical history, which (at that point) included at least one abnormal EKG. Even if you think they were only responsible to the team (which I don't - they have a responsibility to their patients regardless) they were being asked by the team to look for medical problems that might keep him from playing. An abnormal EKG suggests that there might be such a problem and, in fact, there was one. Given how severe the consequences can be for letting something like that go undiagnosed, they had every responsibility to find it and to let both the player and the team know.

Yeah, a lot of teams seem to turn a blind eye to veteran players' medical problems if they think they can rehab. I mean, the Dolphins sent a 2nd-rounder for Daunte Culpepper, knowing that his knee was totally demolished. Sometimes it works out, though. I don't think anybody would have predicted that Marc Colombo could come back from his knee injury, but the Cowboys gambled on it and they got a good starting RT for nothing.

Exactly. There are plenty of cover corners in the league who can't catch a cold (like Carlos Rogers or Ike Taylor) and they still help their teams' pass defense more than a guy like DeAngelo Hall, who always tries to play the ball and gets burned constantly. Hell, Nnamdi Asomugha has only had 1 interception a season the last three years running, and I think we can all agree that he's an elite corner. There's some site (maybe it's PFF?) that tracks receptions allowed and what opposing QBs' rating was when throwing into a corner's coverage. That might be a better indicator of how well a CB is playing each game than a stat that, like you said, only shows up a few times a season. I'm a little more on board with Wright learning free and strong than with Manning getting pushed all around the secondary or with Bennett learning all the receiver positions instead of getting locked in at one. Even in a non-Tampa-2 defense, when you blitz you often need to disguise which safety is going to be doing what. If we can ask the OLBs to play the Mike in some blitzes, I don't see why we can't ask the safeties to learn each other's roles, too. If they're just teaching him SS to the extent that any FS has to know it, I'm OK with that. That said, if Hoke honestly hasn't made his mind up where Wright is going to play, that's a problem. There's one need spot in the secondary, we don't have anybody adequate to fill it, just get the new guy locked in there.

Yeah, I think you're totally right. That defense did well at stopping big plays (they had the third-fewest 20+ yard passes allowed, for example) and racked up enough picks/forced fumbles that they still had a positive turnover differential despite Grossman's 20 picks and 5 fumbles. The offense might not have put up many big plays, but Hester took care of a lot of that. The good news is that, if you believe Fox-Tox, the Bears' defense doesn't need to go back to 2006 form for the team to do well. They were carrying the offense on their backs in 2006...now they just need an offense that doesn't turn the ball over and can break off big gains from time to time.

Freeman was drafted prior to Adams' death and had two EKGs at his Combine before the draft - not only are EKGs and MRIs commonplace tests for players, but Freeman's first one actually came back abnormal, which should have put every team on notice. I'm sure that teams are being more careful about heart conditions after Adams' death, the same way that teams have started being more assiduous about post-concussion symptoms in players. But I'm talking about the doctors' obligation to the players, not the teams. Regardless of whether other teams missed the condition, if you're a doctor checking players for heart problems and you miss life-threatening heart conditions in not one but two patients, something needs to change.

I know how the running game helps the passing game generally, but remember that we're just talking about big-play offense here. I don't know exactly what the relationship is, but it certainly doesn't look like you have to have a good ground attack to make a lot of big plays through the air. The Colts' run game, for example, wasn't scaring anybody last season (Addai and Brown barely topped 1100 yards between them.) Same goes for the Eagles, the Texans and the Chargers. And as much as Reggie Bush showed up on the highlight reels, he wasn't even New Orleans' #1 running back, and he didn't break 100 yards a single time this season. In the entire regular season, he only ran 70 times for 390 yards. Even when you put that together with Pierre Thomas' 793 yards, you don't get a particularly big-time running attack. I doubt any defenses were stacking the box to stop the Saints from running, so I don't think Bush opened up the field for the passing game in the traditional way that you're describing. I do really like your comparison of Bush to Peterson and the Cowboys' RBs (especially Felix Jones) though. Reggie won't make anybody stack the box, but he is like Peterson and Jones in that he can create big plays on his own. He broke at least one 12+ yard rush in 8 regular-season games and added a 20+ yard pass play in 3 games. So while he may not have drawn 8-man boxes, he moved the chains in big chunks when he got the ball. Same thing goes for Felix Jones: he reliably produced 12+ yard rushes and 20+ yard receptions in almost all of the games where he wasn't hurt. Peterson is an even better example...he created at least one explosive play in 15 out of 16 regular-season games, and a lot of the time he'd break long runs and big receptions in the same game. There was only ONE team this entire season to hold him without an explosive play: the Bears in Week 16. Keeping Peterson from getting those big chunks of yardage may have had something to do with the win that night. So that's another thing the Bears need to find a way to do - get some big plays out of the running backs. We don't necessarily need to have two 1000-yard rushers or anything (as much as I'd like to) but we do need Forte and Taylor to break off some long gains. Given how much Mike Martz likes to throw to his running backs, I think that could happen this season.

I don't know about that. The Saints don't really have any major receiving threats after Colston, the Vikings have Sidney Rice and then a bunch of guys who are average to good, and the Texans have Andre Johnson and then a couple of decent guys in Daniels and Walter. Before Celek's ridiculous season this year, the Eagles basically just had DeSean Jackson and a bunch of #3s, but they still made a lot of big plays. I think there are really a lot of ways to skin a cat here. You can have (as you pointed out) a QB who's among the best in the league at spreading the ball around, like Manning or Brees or McNabb. You can have a 1000-yard receiving TE, like the Chargers, Cowboys, Colts, and Eagles do. Or you can have a big-play wideout like Rice or Andre Johnson, who can break big gains even when he's drawing all the coverage. Clearly you can have more than one of these things: the Cowboys and Chargers have a big-play WR and a great receiving TE, the Saints have a spread-the-wealth QB and a big-play WR, and the Colts and Eagles arguably have all three. On the other hand, the Vikings and Texans are getting good results from just the big wideout and nothing else, really. Favre and Schaub are very good QBs, but they're not the kinds of guys like Brees or McNabb who can work magic with a crew of subpar receivers. Shiancoe and Daniels are good TEs, but not elite. Interestingly, none of these teams have just the elite second receiver/TE and nothing else...seems like you need either a genuine #1 or one of those rare QBs who can make something out of nothing. I think the takeaway is that as long as you have either the elite QB or the elite WR, then you can make a lot of big plays. It'll be interesting to see which of these teams (if any) the Bears' passing game can mimic. Cutler's certainly not bad at spreading the ball around, but Drew Brees he ain't. He was at his best when he had a situation like Favre's in Minnesota: one great jump-ball receiver who he can force some throws to, and a decent surrounding cast around that guy. And I don't know if Aromashodu can turn into that Brandon Marshall type of receiver. If he can, great, problem solved, but there's no telling right now. If the Bears' passing game sputters again in 2010, I could see us drafting a genuine big-play receiver in the next draft. Maybe AJ Green, maybe Julio Jones, but a guy who can help our passing game pick up yards in chunks.

Yeah, I just saw that. I guess we can cross him off the list.

I don't think it's as dire as you make it out to be. Wright had 3 picks last season and 4 picks in 2008 - Mike Brown got more than 3 picks just once in his whole career. It's not like you have to be Ed Reed or else you're just a strong safety. I agree that Wright's ball skills could stand to improve, but not all free safeties are ballhawks and not all ballhawks are free safeties. Look at the Steelers - Polamalu's the ballhawk, and he's the SS. Ryan Clark's job is basically to play single-high a lot, hit people really hard, and generally clean up on the back end. But since he has the range to play center field and is sound in coverage, he's a good FS for them. The thing that limits guys to strong safety isn't lack of ball skills, it's lack of range. That's what's been killing the Bears the last couple of seasons - forget ball skills, we didn't have any safeties who could get to the ball in the first place. Steltz, Payne, and Afalava were all a step (or three) too slow in coverage. Daniel Manning had the range, but all the speed in the world won't help if you can't figure out where you're supposed to go. Wright's got both the range and the instincts in coverage to play FS. He can work to improve his ball skills, but he's not a SS. EDIT: Here's Jon Hoke on Wright - "We're going to play him at free to begin with. In this system they have to be able to do both jobs, so he'll learn both, but he has characteristics (for both). He's a ball guy, he's obviously got excellent speed from the times he ran, and he plays fast, but he is a physical guy also."

Actually, the last time he worked with Martz was in 2007 - Furrey caught 61 passes for 664 yards and 1 TD. He really only had the one good year, but I think you're right that he could be good in Rashied Davis' role.

Major Wright is a free safety. That's where he played at Florida and that's where he projects in the pros. He's almost as fast as Danieal Manning and Florida played him in the deep middle constantly. He's not a strong safety.

Apparently Marcus Freeman has an enlarged heart, just like Gaines Adams did. His EKG at the Combine was abnormal, so he got a second one. The Bears' doctors either didn't catch his heart condition or didn't think it was a problem (the article doesn't specify,) but when Freeman went to the Colts for a tryout, their doctors said he couldn't safely continue playing. Seriously, I know that awareness of cardiomyopathy among NFL players is just starting to increase, and that these kinds of conditions can be hard to catch in athletes, but it's pretty inexcusable for the Bears' doctors to have missed the diagnosis on both Adams and Freeman. Both these guys passed their physicals with the Bears, both were told that they were fine, and then both turned out to have life-threatening heart conditions. I'm glad the Colts' doctors diagnosed Freeman correctly, so that he didn't risk his life trying to continue playing.