apete6

Agree on all counts (sub Bears for Packers). I still try and pay attention to the big college games and follow on my phone, but Saturdays/Sundays in the fall have turned into Apple Picking, Zoo, Pumpkin Patch, family party type things due to having kids. I'm sure that stuff will be replaced by kids sports/music stuff as my kids get older. I can justify 3 hours of a Bears game and watching the Saturday night football games (at least the full 2nd half and most of the late games) while catching the end of SNF/MNF/TNF. Watching all day both days is a thing of the past. Unfortunately.

Would also be nice if Rivers tried to pass to Oliver beyond the LOS. he's positive now with a 22 yard completion but before that he has 5 receptions for -4 yards and 6 yards on 9 carries. Ugh He came through with 13 points in a PPR league...despite having 40 total yards and no TDs. Hahahaha. Thank god for PPR!

http://usatthebiglead.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/tom-thibodeau-laughing.png?w=1000

i'm not mad at him for it. i just think he did a [expletive] job at making up an excuse. Okay then, in response to your idiotic stance. A) The radio show is a pointless waste of time and skipping it should not require an explanation. B) Not all doctors visits for young children are scheduled far in advance. C) Not all doctors visits for young children are scheduled around dad's pointless side gig. D) Not all fathers are heartless robots and some actually want to participate and will attend such an appointment. E) Jay's wife has a career as well. F) The radio show is a pointless waste of time and skipping it should not require an explanation and people who get at all worked up about him missing this pointless exercise are completely psychotic. The arguments against Jay are pretty dumb. We find it nearly impossible to get a good time for a trip to the pediatric. Jay is probably no different It's either legitimate or made up by him & the team. Figured as much, though I'm sure you and I can have a hard time getting dinner reservations as well. Cutler, not so much. Pretty sure famous people get into the doctor pretty much whenever they want and/or just have a concierge doctor come to their house. Story is over, though, as there's no way you can know he's lying or telling the truth. Let's hope he continues being on ESPN1000 because it's a pretty enjoyable segment whenever he's on. Also, let's hope for another @San Francisco type performance from him this week.

Could move some of their office space into the lower floors, but I like the "using it as pre-game area for suites" area the best.

Jordan Cameron vs. Oakland or Delanie Walker vs. Houston Not sure if I am ready to trust the Zach Mettenberger era just yet.

I don't know how these keep getting better each week. It really is unbelievable "Just when you think they've run out of new sex positions, you see Minnesota's on top of the Big Ten." Those guys have been on fire this year.

The Bears have given up 16 scoring (FG or TD) drives of under 50 yards this season. 6 of those have been because of special teams (field position, long return, short punt, blocked punt, etc..)--ironically all in the wins. That means that the Bears have given up 10 scoring drives because of INTs/Fumbles--there have been 2 more that would have been but the opponent missed a FG. That's an average of ~1.5/game. None of these have come in games they have won. Football is an easy sport to analyze. Turning the ball over will kill you. That's obviously not all on Cutler, but the majority of it is. There's also an element of luck involved (he's lost a higher % of fumbles than usual), not to mention the fact that the defense isn't good enough to stop the opponent on a short field. Edit: 50 yards. Also, by comparison, the Bears only have 6 such drives total all year (1 via ST, the other 5 off turnovers).

Fair. For this year, though, he is taking up a TON of their cap room--by design. His original number was a bit lower, but got bumped up when they signed other free agents to longer term deals.

Rumor has it Crow is just sick, so not anything to worry about long term unless he has Ebola or something.

All absolutely fair. But when you are now the highest paid player on the team (and, in a technicality, the league this year), you still have to be better than that. He's 13th in the league in QBR and 11th in rating. When the overwhelming majority of your talent/payroll are on offense, you have to be better than that. Obviously he's far from the biggest problem, but the defense is middle of the pack, and if everyone would have known that going into the season, you'd think the Bears would be 5-2 (which you could argue they would be if not for terrible Cutler turnovers in the Bills and Panthers games).

Ola 2 Mills 2.5 http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/playerstats.asp?id=26786&team=3 For reference: Bushrod 1, DeLa Puente 2, Garza 0, Long 0, Slauson 0.5 That only adds up to 8. I guess the rest are from backs/TE? Not sure how the stats work. If so, that's a concern. I don't know how the stats work either, but I guess potentially there are coverage sacks that don't get pinned on one OL guy getting "beaten"? Probably. This directionally points toward Ola and Mills being the worst of the linemen, at least in pass protection.

yeah, i checked the schedule saturday thinking that game one would probably be that night. can't believe it's still a day away. For ratings, wouldn't playing on Tues/Wed/Fri be great as they won't be going against the NFL or major college football games on any of those days?

It sucks to be locked in to Cutler for another 2 seasons. I think this team is teetering on the brink of 'full rebuild' mode. Just too many holes and too many 30+ year olds. Going to be odd coming from me who just bashed Cutler and am crestfallen over not loving him anymore, but couldn't they trade him if they really wanted to? Even if they got nothing back, they could theoretically get out of the contract, couldn't they? Wouldn't the Rams take him instead of drafting someone in the first round next year?

Ola 2 Mills 2.5 http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/playerstats.asp?id=26786&team=3 For reference: Bushrod 1, DeLa Puente 2, Garza 0, Long 0, Slauson 0.5 That only adds up to 8. I guess the rest are from backs/TE? Not sure how the stats work. If so, that's a concern.

If you think this isn't bitching out, I don't know what to tell you. There's a reason why this guy hasn't been more successful and this is part of it. I tried to look past it and have been a Cutler fanboy for years blaming the offensive line, poor receivers, incompetent offensive coaching, but when stuff starts to go bad, you finally start to see stuff that others (national media, former teammates, anonymous sources) have seen before. It really stinks seeing one of your favorite Bears of all time become "who they thought he was". I really hope there's a good reason for him not to show up, and even if there's not, I'm sure the Bears spin control will come up with something (fake injury treatment or something) to make him look good. And, this year's performance doesn't mean the guy can't turn it around and he still has the talent to be a top 10 or Super Bowl winning QB, but he's in his 10th year and it's hard to see that happening, which sucks. Not a fan of the underlying misogyny of the phrase "bitching out". But I will just say it's a fairly common occurrence for guys with these local media relationships to cancel them for reasons other than a dying child and I am pretty sure the only people who care about that are the hosts themselves and psychopaths. If by psychopaths, you mean front office executives, that's fine. This [expletive] matters, if only a little bit and to pretend it doesn't is wrong. On it's own, this is pretty damn insignificant, but there's a history of people that bring up behind the scenes stuff just like this (not being prepared enough, fighting with teammates, etc...). The "don't caaaaaaare" stuff is funny when it's about Cutler blowing off a fan at a bar, it's a bit more serious when it's a contractual commitment and/or behind the scenes locker room stuff with teammates. Cutler getting hammered by the media for sitting out the 2nd half of the NFC Title Game was plain wrong, dumb, and, quite frankly mean spirited by everyone (media, players on other teams, etc...). But you see [expletive] like this and this is why he never got the benefit of the doubt from anyone on that situation, despite Cutler clearly being injured and right not to play. It all matters. You can't just pick the good or bad things about someone and make a judgement, you have to look at the whole picture and right now, with the play on the field, the contract he has, and the locker room/off the field stuff, it's easy to see why people outside of Chicago don't like this guy and why he hasn't lived up to his potential (despite having an above average career).

If you think this isn't bitching out, I don't know what to tell you. There's a reason why this guy hasn't been more successful and this is part of it. I tried to look past it and have been a Cutler fanboy for years blaming the offensive line, poor receivers, incompetent offensive coaching, but when stuff starts to go bad, you finally start to see stuff that others (national media, former teammates, anonymous sources) have seen before. It really stinks seeing one of your favorite Bears of all time become "who they thought he was". I really hope there's a good reason for him not to show up, and even if there's not, I'm sure the Bears spin control will come up with something (fake injury treatment or something) to make him look good. And, this year's performance doesn't mean the guy can't turn it around and he still has the talent to be a top 10 or Super Bowl winning QB, but he's in his 10th year and it's hard to see that happening, which sucks.

Unless he or his family is hospitalized, he is being a complete bitch about this. [expletive] him. It's great to go on the radio and slap ass with Tom Waddle when you win, but you lose in horrifying fashion and can't man up to be on the show? [expletive] him. This tells me a lot of what I need to know about his character and leadership. He's laughing all the way to the bank. Good thing we didn't have the option to franchise him with nearly no downside. Oh wait...

Pats by 14+. I know the Bears have won games they weren't supposed to after being left for dead. None of those were against the greatest Coach/QB combo in league history. This will be the penultimate blow to the 2014 season with the Packers finishing the job after the bye. What a disaster.

yup. So you're OK with him being a cancer in the clubhouse and personifying the diva receiver? That [expletive] is fine when you're dominating and going 6/150/2TD every week. When you're on pace for 800 yards receiving, you're the last person that should be stirring the pot. Also, the last offensive play of the game was a catchable ball that bounced off his hands. That being said, I like Marshall and a lot of it is on Cutler, but any sign of anything going wrong and he starts to revert back to his old self. Maybe doing that show in New York isn't a big deal, but if you miss 1 route, it's always going to be "maybe he doesn't have his focus" fairly or unfairly.

He's not blameless either. This team sucks.

But more athletic. An unbelievable specimen.

lol. sports fans are the worst. Yeah, that's dumb. On the other side, didn't someone say he was the best coach in the country pre season? How's that working out for ya?

A star "talent" branching out on his own with the risk of less income over the near-term, but for greater opportunity in the long-term (financial and freedom from the bosses above) is a pretty common occurrence. Not sure what would be crazy about it. Grantland was supposed to be his "branching out." They basically said "Hey Bill, Page 2's traffic is literally all being driven in by you how about we fund and let you run an entire site based on the premise." He seems to have been given quite a bit of freedom on Grantland, whether he will admit it or not. He's not getting into a situation where he's making more money by leaving ESPN/Grantland when his contract is up, the only thing he will get is a little more freedom. Which I understand valuing that but he seems to have plenty other than being able to swear on his podcasts and threaten ESPN. It was a theoretical branching out that is really just him running a small department under the ESPN/Disney umbrella. Which he's getting paid more to do than he would be making if he started his own site without ESPN/Disney's funding and ability to drive in traffic. That's my point, he's not going to be able to make as much money by starting billsimmons.com. Unless FOX or one of the other networks trying to compete with ESPN wants to pony up to bring him on-board. I don't see him having a whole hell of a lot more freedom on most of those places, though. Maybe FOX, maybe.

Nothing besides those from him, though. I'm assuming there will be a column this afternoon? Wonder if he apologizes and goes about his business normally or just doesn't say anything and mails it in until his contract is up next year? I'm guessing the latter. I think he will end his twitter silence after his first column goes up, but will only post links to his columns, podcasts, other grantland articles with no commentary. He will scale back heavily on columns and podcasts with his Grantland Basketball Show being the excuse and then leave when his contract is up. He will never address the suspension publicly. When he's been suspended from twitter on the past, I believe he's come back heavily sterilized (just posting links to his content) for a period of time before slowly regaining a twitter personality. Ugh. Unfortunately you're probably right. Booooorrrrring.