What to do with the Bears?

Looming questions:

1) Is it time to fire Lovie?

This is a tough one... I'd argue that up until this season, the Bears have gotten better every single year he's been the coach including a Super Bowl run. He's been good at finding talent and has led an aggressive defense despite consistently lost talent (Mike Brown, Urlacher, Vasher) and pathetic offensive weapons (Orton, Grossman, no WR's etc). This season is a HUGE step backwards for the organization... I think we own Lovie one more year (more than we can say about Ron Turner).

2) How will we address needs this offseason?

With no high draft picks and key holes in our lineup at LB, DB, WR and OL, I'm not sure how this is going to work out. Perhaps we can swap a guy like Briggs for multiple picks and some depth but I'm not sure that's a good move. Hey, maybe we can send Cutler to the Skins for Campbell and 45 top draft picks...

3) Why do we suck so much?

3 reasons:

1) Our offensive line is built for bruising and rushing. It takes a lot more energy to pass protect then to run block and out line is old/bad. We changed our profile overnight with the Cutler deal and it's going to take some time to build around him. In the meantime, we cant pass protect and our running game is non-existent.

2) Cutler is essentially a rookie again and playing like it. With far weaker weapons than he had in Denver (and a worse O-coordinator), it will take time to fix. This wont be an ongoing issue, just this season (hopefully).

3) Our pass defense is bad. We need Gaines Adams to start to play a bigger role. We need Tommie Harris to play like the monster we drafted and we need another DB that can create plays (Afalava has been playing well and Jamar Williams played well subbing for Briggs yesterday but we're still short on talent).

We've got 1-2 more seasons to make a run with the current roster talent. Let's hope we can finish the season strong (no reason to tank without picks) and build for next season. 9-7 isn't out of the question...

Bears...win?

Speaking of things that make no sense...

Someone Check His Wrists

FLYING THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!

After another Sunday loss, the Bears are now at a less than luxurious 4-7. We're obviously not going to the playoffs, but at least we can treat this as past seasons and root for the Bears to lose because we want a higher draft pick, right?

Wrong.

That pick belongs to the Broncos.

There's only one thing worse than a losing season, and that's a losing season where you don't even get the benefit of the higher draft pick from sucking because you traded it to the Broncos. This means that the entire rest of the season is like watching the Bears in limbo/purgatory. There is NOTHING for us to gain at this point.

All we can do is hope to make the Broncos' 1st round pick worse by stringing together a couple of wins, and we can't even do that either. I mean, the Bears have won one of their last seven games - Cutler was supposed to be the guy that takes us to the playoffs, gives us that extra boost, and then we can say "who gives a shit about that 1st round pick?" Instead, we can watch the Broncos draft the next Cade Enis, except when it ISN'T the Bears that draft someone, 1st rounders are sometimes successful.

THINGS TO DO THIS OFFSEASON:

1. Fire Ron Turner
2. Trade Hester
3. Spend all remaining draft picks on offensive line or defense
4. Kill self

Sigh

"Shhhh...just ignore them, Jay. No one can deny our love..."

Side Note: I actually wanted to find a screenshot of the end of the game where Hester missed the last pass of the game and his pants got pulled down. Searching for "Devin Hester, Ass" produced nothing out of the ordinary. I tried "Devin Hester, buttcheeks" at which point Google noticed my searching trends and suggested "Devin Hester, Keggers, Anal Sex." After that, it's just not worth it to search.

What to do, what to do?

In a game that started out with the usual "Oh yeah, I forgot we were terrible" vibe, the Bears actually came back to make it pseudo-interesting...briefly. After Cutler's touchdown pass to Davis, the universe seemed to say "Whoa whoa whoa - wait a minute. This is the Bears!" and then the rest of it went to shit. Couldn't stop the Eagles on the most important drive of the game, and couldn't get the ball downfield to come back from it either. I'm sure the Broncos will be loving their high 1st round pick next year. Fuckers.

As much as it feels so natural to try and blame this game on Jay Cutler (which I'm sure 90% of the Chicago media will do ANYWAYS), it's really not his fault. He was pedestrian, sure, but it's not like he cost us the game. There were some passes I would like to see a little closer to OUR players, but nothing horrible.

The real story that keeps getting lost this season is Matt Forte. Surely someone you know has been lamenting over Matt Forte. Running the ball is hard when your offensive line represents a bunch of Weeble-Wobbles, but you've gotta get something going. Hell, even past-his-prime Edgerrin James managed 60+ with the pre-good Cardinals' O-Line. There's something to be said here about a lack of execution.

Um...

Yes Jay, that's where your brain supposedly resides.

I was all set to completely exonerate Jay Cutler in my post today.

Somewhere in the third quarter, I thought: "shit, he's not getting any help and some fluky plays are making his stats looks a lot worse than they are." Hester fell down on a deep route that got picked off, Desmond Clark clearly got bumped on what should have been a PI penalty for another INT and Hester ran into the ref on an underneath crossing route that got picked off... That makes 3 fluky INT's, not really Cutler's fault and totally drive-killing.

So in the 4th quarter, I was pretty sure redemption would be spelled J-A-Y, driving quickly and efficiently downfield and in scoring position with enough time for 3-4 throws to the end zone.

Then...

BAM!

I don't give a shit how many good excuses there were for throwing 5 INT's. Most people will forgive one bad red zone INT (like his first one early in the game) but a GAME ENDING LAST MINUTE PICK, DOWN BY 4 TO END THE GAME AND CAP OFF A 5 INT DAY? Winners don't do that. That shit isn't supposed to happen to franchise QB's. This is very troublesome.

Hence, I will not exonerate Jay Cutler. I am legitimately concerned about his ability to lead our team and win football games. No doubt he has the talent to be a top QB but the intangibles are missing. His constant sulking and general lack of emotion (or any sense of gravitas) make me want to punch him in the fucking face.

Get pissed once in a while. Show some fire. Get pumped up. Even Peyton gets amped up once in a while. We should all pray that he doesn't end up like Jeff George, the most talented shitty QB of all time... just writing that sentence makes me want to kill myself.

Go Bears?

-KEG

Mark Teabag

Sigh...Kenny, what are you doing?

Our two biggest liabilities for this upcoming season are our infield and our lack of real presence. Trading Getz and Fields dumps all of our infield depth (meaning Nix starts at second base, and...um...we have no other players) and gets us Mark Teahen.

No knock against Teahen, but he's Rob Mackowiak part deux. Kenny loves these all-purpose utility guys, but when you need to fill a RF spot and a 1B/DH spot, you might want to get someone that actually excells at his position.

All the papers seem to believe that he is our RF of the future, and I REALLY hope they're wrong. Getting Teahen to play 3B or 2B would be much more valuable as we could then pick up a powerhouse in RF (/wishes Abreu hadn't just resigned) or a disgruntled psychopathic switch hitter to play DH (yes, I want Bradley. Sue me).

Worst case scenario, we start Teahen in RF, Flowers at DH (not bad), and Nix at 2B (bad). We need another acquisition or some rookie depth. Or maybe Kenny thinks Viciedo will make the squad this year. Who knows.

Win

Just Fucking Kill Me

Strong-armed mopey bitch

Revenge, served cold by CedB

Well, shit.

It turns out our offensive line can't pass block. This wasn't obvious in the past few seasons when we ran the ball 30x/game and threw nothing but short passes and screens. In trying to protect Cutler for more than 2-3 seconds this season, it's become painfully obvious.

Hence, we need to establish the run early. Even at less than 4 yards/carry, it's important to get Forte warmed up and keep the line fresh. It takes a lot more energy to pass protect than to run block and our line is old as shit (and mostly crippled). This also sets up a plausible play-action pass (which thus far, has been as unrealistic as TPC lasting more than than 2 pumps).

I hate pointing fingers as football is really a team game and everyone is responsible but a lot of shit stems from our bad O-line. Forte looks like crap and isn't getting opportunities, Cutler is getting beat up and facing lots of double coverage and our defense spends a lot of time on the field. And without Urlacher/Harris, that's not a good situation.

Some quick notes:

1) Hester will make a great second WR for the Bears once we get a big physical target for Cutler.

2) What happened to Nathan Vasher? Remember when he was good?

3) Carson Palmer is a really good QB when healthy.

4) Cedric Benson looks like the real deal. I want to be happy for the guy, but when you try to rub it in going for 200 yards in the 4th quarter, you're dead to me.

5) I'm happy we have Gaines Adams but we have no high picks next year in a REALLY deep draft.

A question: Are we rooting for Favre in GB next weekend? I think my head is going to explode.

-KEG

Well That Was Depressing

YOUR MAGIC INSULIN - YOU MUST GIVE IT TO ME. THE FATE OF THE WORLD DEPENDS ON IT!

I don't think that Cutler is really to blame for last night's shitshow, but he's certainly the "face of the franchise" enough where we can (try to) blame it on him. Let's see where the blame really falls, shall we?

Bears Defense:
(2/5 retards)
While they didn't look particularly punishing, and they didn't really manage to put any sort of pressure on Matt Ryan, it wasn't a terrible effort. Sure, there were a bunch of blown plays where the defense seemed to be confused about what position they play (hint: it's defense) before the snap, and there were definitely some blown coverages. That said, they still managed a slightly-better-than-terrible game with their third reserve linebacker in the fray - they managed to break Norwood before he broke them, and Michael Turner was limited for the most part.

Bears Offense:
(3/5 retards)

Now we're getting somewhere. Cutler made a few retarded throws (my personal favorite being the rifle shot 10 yards downfield of Greg Olsen...right into a Falcon), and Matt Forte is becoming my least favorite player on the squad. You can't fumble EVERY SINGLE DOWN and expect to win the game. That said, even though the ground game was shit, Cutler had a sick run in the 4th to set up an Olsen TD, and receivers sacrificed themselves (see: Earl Bennett's catch that set the Bears up for 4th and 1) in order to keep the game close. Even with their fuckups, we still scored twice.

Special Teams:
(4/5 retards)

That "too many men on the field" penalty is worth two retard points all by itself. When you've just stopped their offense, the last thing you want to do is say "Hey! How about you guys give it another go?" Throw in some lax return defense (I don't even want to think about the returns in the 4th quarter from the past two years), and you've got yourself a scapegoat in the making.


Offensive Line:
(5/5 retards or 1 Ron Turner)

And THERE's your cause of failure. When the Falcons can bring a three man rush against FIVE of our fatasses and STILL put Cutler on his ass, you have a problem. When the Offensive Line commits penalty after penalty to push you out of the red zone, that is a problem. When Orlando Pace draws a brutal penalty on a must-get 4th and 1, you've got yourself a full retard. You never go full retard.

Best Post Of All Time

This was posted in my fantasy league this morning (from the guy I'm beating this week):

well as you may have noticed, my team is in a todd heap of trouble. early in the season i dealt with some hakeem nicks and bruises, and definitely made a bunch of bad tashard choices. without a doubt, my team was jason snelling up the joint. i mean, sometimes its tough to justine gage the wax and reggie wayne of the league, who will be good and who will get injured. it takes a lot of justin forsett to know in advance which players are gonna take a dennis northcutt and who will fall into the beanie wells. but after this weeks loss, im just jeremy shockey-ed and mike furey-ious. im liable to marshawn lynch all the non-lyndale and roddie whites out on this lonely heyward bey ive brought myself to.

i cant help but think about the better fantasy times, when i was sitting in the tim hightower of my matt cassell. i was eddie and robert royal-ty! anquan em-boldin-ed by my success, id go to bars where id jeremy macklin on chicks with huuuuge stevie breastons, and if they were lucky, take them delhomme. i had the world in the carson palmer of my hand.

so here i am samkon gado, beseaching, nay, stephen-howlings, to you from this lonely heyward bay (or is it a brian westbrook? i never remember). samkon gado, clear my steve slaton. cut me some joe flacco. champ bailey me out of this. i know i dont have the greatest team ever, but im chansi stuckey with them and just have to make do. look, i know you dont necessarily terrell owens it to me - heck, every since ive been a vince young lad in my josh cribbs ive practically worshipped the leonard pope.

all i know though is if my team doesnt wake up and smell the glen coffee soon, i may joseph addai a very slow, painful fantasy addeath.

ps. please kill braylon edwards and jets D tonight