Splendid_Splinter

Without both Rodgers and Matthews it is easy to say the Bears are the better overall team. Add those two injuries to prior injuries to Brian Bulaga, Randall Cobb, Jermichael Finley, Nick Perry, the Packers are at a point where injuries will, more likely than not, submarine the rest of their season. For me it is a bit of both. I don't mean this as a slight toward Jay Cutler in any way, but the talent divide between Rodgers and Wallace is greater than the divide between Cutler and McCown. As a resident Packers fan good game tonight and good luck with the rest of the season. Given the dim hope I have for the Packers I would rather see the Bears win the division than the Lions.

The play was blown dead with 14 seconds on the clock because Stave did kneel to the ground. So, no, that would not be a fumble.

Although the offense has not scored that many runs during the same period because of a decline in the team's slugging percentage the overall trend of a more patient offense is one I like a lot. With the emphasis that the front office has put on patience I am also hopeful that this trend will become a long term trait of the offense.

Is that a dig at Rose? Thibs? The FO? Fans? I'm taking it as backing up Rose against everyone else, but maybe we're reading into it too much. I thought it was more a shot at Derrick Rose moreso than anyone else. Gibson and others have been battling through injuries all season, and yet they are still trying to play since they want to help the team win. In contrast, Rose still is not playing because he does not feel he is fully recovered.

This seems to be the biggest difference with their offense tonight. I think last year spoiled Rodgers because too often this season he was looking to make deep completions while ignoring open receivers underneath. Tonight he is taking what the defense gives him. Along with a little more focus on their running game, it is helping to open up their deep passing game. There are still a few kinks that need to be worked out, but so far this half has looked closer to the typical Green Bay offense.

LOL GB actually has class. Other than the nasty hit that McCray put on Favre's legs that they are showing ad nauseum on ESPN, I'd like to see a Saints hit from the past few years that had more of a chance of ending someone's livelihood than this hit at 2:30 http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-game-highlights/09000d5d804144c4/Packers-34-Vikings-0 That hit taking place in a game where it has since been established that a bounty existed of some sort on Peterson. It's not some logical leap to imagine that there were bounties in that locker room that weren't so vanilla as the tame ones they admitted to. It is the intent that matters. Given that football is a violent game sometimes players can be seriously injured from similar hits to the one between Al Harris and Adrian Peterson. Two other similar injuries I can think of are Will Allen's hit on Willis McGahee in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl that tore every ligament in his left knee and Lawrence Taylor's sack of Joe Thiesmann. It does not mean that a defensive player intends to injure an offensive player. Sometimes freak injuries happen. According to the article you posted the financial incentive the Packers had was to keep Peterson under 100 yards. Looking back at the box score, up until Peterson's injury the Packers held him to 45 rushing yards with a little more than a quarter to play. My guess is that Al Harris's tackle was less about an intent to injure Peterson to make sure he did not reach 100 yards, but rather hitting Peterson low to bring him down more easily. You do make a good point that the Packers may have had actual bounties, but at this point there is no evidence of that beyond speculation.

The thing I do not get about Suh's behavior is whether it can be said that he is playing the same way he in college or if his time under Jim Schwartz is beginning to rub off on him. After the incident today I looked up a few old scouting reports and every one said how low key, quiet, and mature he was while he was at Nebraska. Another major selling point was that he was considered a leader of the defense and a role model for the younger players on the team. His time in Detroit he has displayed none of that. On the other hand, dirty play has a strange tendency to follow Schwartz wherever he goes. When he was in Tennessee they had developed a reputation as a dirty team, with Albert Haynesworth's stomping on Andre Gurode's head being the most significant example of such play. Now that he is Detroit, players who previously never exhibited signs of dirty play are doing so. This obviously does not excuse what Suh did today, but I do not think it helps when he has a coach that at best condones such play and at worst encourages it. Although there is no way to prove it I think if Suh were to get out of Detroit and work with coaches who demand discipline from their players it would have a dramatic effect on the manner in which he plays. But there is no way to know for sure.

Apparently James Jones has resigned for three years. Details of the contract have yet to be released. I like that the Packers decided to keep him. Add to him the talent the Packers lost due to injuries and the new draft picks, I am excited about what this year's team will be able to do on offense.

I don't know. Leg injury of some sort but it didn't look too bad. Shields went down too. Shoulder injury. It wasn't a knee injury, but he took a knee to the head.

Todd Haley is trying to get Matt Cassel killed.

I'm almost positive that Washington St. had a rose on their helmet in 2002, but I can't find any photo that shows it.

QFT, except get a better NT than Harrison. well, yeah, but i'm just talking about guys on our roster right now. a new NT would be nice if that happened. I've been thinking of ways to make the 3-4 work with this team for a while, but it would never happen. They have depth and quantity at LB, and no great lineman. i think we lack a 3-4 NT and good ones are hard to find. One possibility to play NT that is already on the Bears roster is Anthony Adams. As long as the Bears chose more of a Bum Phillips/Dick LaBeau 3-4 he would be more than suitable until a long term replacement is found. Factor in that this a deep draft at DT it should not be too difficult to find a good NT in the later rounds of the draft.

A la Favre. Works for me. Except much less accurate from what I've seen from Cutler this year. Even when he's going well he's underthrowing and overthrowing people all the time. Actually Cutler's accuracy is pretty close to Brett Favre's at the same point in their careers, if not slightly better. Well that's good to know, because that's one of the things about Cutler that really shocked me. Even the passes he completes receivers are leaping or lunging to catch. No one talks about it outside the INTs but I notice that crap all the time and it mpisses me off. The thing that Cutler needs most is good coaching, more specifically someone who is a strict disciplinarian. In Denver Cutler had Mike Shanahan that served that role for him, but right now I see nobody on Chicago's staff to play a similar role. Unfortunately, that has caused Cutler to regress overall as a quarterback. Favre was similar where he needed Mike Holmgren and later Mike McCarthy to constantly critique how he was playing. Otherwise Favre's play got sloppy and end up costing Green Bay. His play during the Mike Sherman served as a testament to that. Interestingly enough according to Pro-Football-Reference, through 3 seasons, Jay Cutler is one player whose play is similar to Brett Favre.

I'm sure he'll be better but will he still be forcing stupid passes all the time? Probably. A la Favre. Works for me. Except much less accurate from what I've seen from Cutler this year. Even when he's going well he's underthrowing and overthrowing people all the time. Actually Cutler's accuracy is pretty close to Brett Favre's at the same point in their careers, if not slightly better.

Another impressive game for Mark Sanchez.