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The Bears first TD next season you mean :D? Seriously-I voted for Benson. The Bears will have a good drive running the ball near the end of the 1st quarter, Benson will punch it in, and everyone will be saying about how bad the Indy run defense is again-just like the Patriots game. I just hope it ends the same way :D

Kobe's had 3 or 4 suspensions that were way too light, but after seeing the video, this suspension was absolutely ridiculous.

For Bears fans -on these down and distances, do you run the ball somewhat consistently? Or is it going to require more consistent gains on 1st down? 2nd and 6 2nd and 8 2nd and 10-12 3rd and 4 3rd and 5-7

Is this your first superbowl? Um, no. We showed up 1 day earlier than the Colts. 1 day wasted, IMO. The Colts didn't practice. Dungy gave them the weekend off to spend time with their families. The Bears practiced in Miami on Monday. No time wasted. Yeah, both the Bears and the Colts practiced on Monday-so they are really on the exact same schedule, other than the Bears having had off time in Miami while the Colts did in Indy. Yeah, this whole when they arrived issue is the biggest non-story in a long time. I would definitely agree with that. It's not like the Colts arrived on Thursday or anything-after both teams have had a media day and 3 days of practice, nobody will remember where they were a week before on one specific night.

Is this your first superbowl? Um, no. We showed up 1 day earlier than the Colts. 1 day wasted, IMO. The Colts didn't practice. Dungy gave them the weekend off to spend time with their families. The Bears practiced in Miami on Monday. No time wasted. Yeah, both the Bears and the Colts practiced on Monday-so they are really on the exact same schedule, other than the Bears having had off time in Miami while the Colts did in Indy.

This is always interesting-in honor of media day, the 20 dumbest media day questions of all time: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0701/gallery.nfl.SBfunnyquestions/content.1.html

How does he become available? Cha ching. Money talks and if the Cowboys want him I'm sure they'll "contact" him and let him know that the money is there for him. If the Bears decide to go on the cheap or in their words a "fair" price they may lose out on Lovie. I know he has a year left in his deal but something may be worked out. I like Lovie and I think he is a very good coach but the Boys may make a very good offer that the Bears my accept. This all depends on 3 things: -Do the Bears lowball Lovie -Is Lovie really interested in going to Dallas -Is Jones willing to pay the picks for Lovie While I think Jones is more than willing to pay the $$ for Lovie, I don't think he's willing to pay with picks. It's not his way. Jones has always believed the talent on the field is more important than the coach. My guess is that after interviewing Singletary, Jones will attempt to hire both Turner and Singletary away from the 49ers. I think his true desire is for Turner to come aboard to groom Garrett and have Singletary run the defense. Garrett and Singletary would give the Cowboys two young talents on each side of the ball and the one who shows the most promise would end up becoming the next coach when Turner steps down. I thought I had heard that Singletary could only leave the 49ers to become a head coach somewhere. This is due to his having the title "assistant head coach." I could be wrong on this, though. John Clayton reported earlier that the Cowboys probably only interviewed Singletary to comply with the "Rooney rule". While they already might have been covered due to their interview with one of their assistants, the NFL might have encouraged to interview another candidate, and Singeltary was a logical choice to bring in, as he will likely get a job somewhere in the next couple of years.

Wow-looking at those stats makes me feel a lot better about the rotation this year. I mean-3 people with 9 starts or more that had ERA's over 7. 3 more people with 24, 13, and 10 starts with ERA's in the mid 5's. While the rotation still has question marks, it should at least be a lot better than that.

I'm not terribly tech savvy, and really only know how to play games and spin the weather globe on the Wii. Is the browser up and running now? Do I need to do some sort of config? There's a trial version (more like a beta) of the browser available for download for free in the Wii shop right now. The full version of the browser comes out in March I think, and if you download it before the end of June, it's free.

no. it'd be similar if every online provider had an email program, then aol one day bought exclusive rights to email, and everyone else was shutout. this isn't a difficult concept. but that's NOT what is going on. If EI was the ONLY way to see ANY baseball, then fine, you have a right to gripe. But the truth is, WGN will still show its games, Comcast will still show its games, etc. DirecTV is not shutting everyone out of watching baseball directTV is shutting out cable subscribers who wanted to watch out of market games. they have only one source to watch out of market games on their tv. how can people defend this? It can be defended because people are saying it's illegal to buy exclusive rights to any product, and it's not. It would become illegal if cable companies wanted to buy it and couldn't no matter what-but that's not happening here. Cable companies are simply not willing to pay the money to be able to get it only for themselves, and DirectTV is willing to pay the premium for exlusivity. That's no different then CBS paying the NFL billions of dollars to be able to exclusively show AFC games on Sundary afternoons-another station could have got it, but CBS was willing to pay more.

I think it's a step back, but it's hard to change in our free market economy. Truthfully, we limit access to things every day in all sorts of things in the name of business, and it's just something that has to be lived with unless Americans want government to have a great deal more of regulation into the business world.

no. it'd be similar if every online provider had an email program, then aol one day bought exclusive rights to email, and everyone else was shutout. this isn't a difficult concept. Or like when games were shown on different channels, but then one channel bought the rights to show all the games of a particular sport? If this is a violation, then there are things all over the place that are a violation.

First off, you must have started watching football early if you can still remember the Baltimore Colts. Their last season in Baltimore was when you were 4 or 5 years old at the most. Second, I'm not completely sure how they got fans in strange places. Of course, Indiana has embraced them. A large part of TN and part of Mississippi and Louisiana have embraced the Colts as well because of Manning. Other parts of the nation? I seriously have no idea-but I do know the Colts are the biggest draw in football now, so apparently people like to watch them (the Colts have been involved in something like 4 of the 5 highest rated regular season games over the past 5 years, and the Colts-Patriots game last week was the highest rated non-Super Bowl in 20 years).

They cut from Peyton to Dungy on ESPN news-there wasn't much to report there, as Dungy provided very few quotes. They haven't shown any other people yet.

I'm hoping the Bears consider a similar strategy. I'm sure they will, but like the article says, if the Colts see they are doing that they will start mixing in quick snapping. Since being out of position is worse than not showing Manning the look, the Bears will be forced to back off,

That's going to be an absolutely amazing game.

That's a very interesting analysis. While you're right that the Cubs should have less double plays (due to the high strikeout totals from the pitchers), the striking difference in the numbers does back up the claim that the Cubs could not seem to turn the double play when they needed to last year, and that it hurt them greatly during the season.

The fundamental insight that spurred the development of this metric was the realization that balls in play that turn into outs for every pitcher tend towards the same value. The primary variables are: 1) type of batted ball (gb, fb, ld) and 2) defensive efficiency. #1 varies by pitcher and #2 varies by team. Not every individual ball has the same chance of becoming an out, but over the course of thousands of balls put in play per year, this has been repeatedly shown to average out. What this means is that looking at the efficiency of the defense is a very valid metric. I understand your stance, and your opinion - that's not the problem. I'd like you to answer the question about where overthrowing cutoff men, throwing to the wrong base, Barrett calling 8,000 fastballs (on 0-2 and 1-2 counts) a game, Pierre playing about 10 feet behind second base, etc etc comes into play by numbers? Edit: Meant to type 0-2 and 1-2 :D I replied to your post before you edited it. I game the answer to your question in my response to cubcoltpacer. In short, the defensive efficiency on thousands of balls in play is far, far more impactful than what happens on any 50 plays you care to pick out during the year. And while you watch the Cubs all the time and those 50 plays stick out in your mind and tell you the Cubs have a bad defense, the truth of the matter is that every team has some number of plays just as stupid every year. But however many it is, and however great the difference in those between the Cubs and the team with the smallest number of gaffes, the rate of making outs on thousands of balls is overwhelmingly more important. With the defensive efficiency ratings and the number of at bats total for the season, the difference between 3rd and 22nd defensively is less than 100 plays. The variability of those plays that cannot be measured could swing it that much. From seeing the 2006 Cubs, they had all those things go wrong. Their OF defense gave up base after base. Their infield defense (especially Cedeno) made a larger percentage of their errors than normal during the middle of big innings. Those plays (and others) caused the difference between being a good defense statistically, and a defense that blew several games in the 2nd half (and I could go provide the examples if needed) and was overall a below average defense.

Ask Jason Marquis what he thinks about our outfielders when the seasons over. If our outfielders do a very above average job of converting fly balls into outs, I don't think he'll have room to complain. However, he may do so if the OF doesn't accrue "style points". But isn't the fundamental idea of defense creating outs when the ball is put in play? I'm not trying to be smart here, but you do know that's what defensive efficiency measures, right? I would agree that the defense's fundamental job is creating outs, but I think a secondary job has to be not giving up extra bases, along with turning extra outs that cannot be measured as easily. For example, the throwing arms of the Cubs outfielders allowed runners to move up on a consistent basis. Also, I saw more easy double plays last year turned into no outs than any year I've ever seen of Cubs baseball. I could go on, but those two things hurt the Cubs greatly, along with some particularly bad defense with runners on (for example, how many errors of Cedeno's were throwing home with multiple runners on and throwing it 30 feet wide of the plate? 5 or 6? That's exceptionally high, and caused a couple of games to swing with the big innings that resulted-those errors hurt worse than an error with nobody on).

Then what do you base your opinon on, their astrological signs? Even the most saber-inclined fan (myself included) will admit that there isn't a tried and true, reliable way to measure defensive ability yet for baseball players. There are some decent metrics popping up, but nothing that's nearly as widely accepted or respected as some of the offensive metrics. That's how I feel-the people are doing a good job at refining the defensive metrics, but they shouldn't really be seen as nearly as reliable as the offensive metrics just yet, and even the offensive metrics cannot account for quite everything (nothing ever really can put all the variables in correctly). They should be looked at and given weight, but given pause when looking at a thing like the Cubs defense that struggled mightily at times, especially in the 2nd half of the season.

Yep. Oh, and yes - our defense is crappy. There's Lee...and...that's about it. Can't follow you there. We were 6th in defensive efficiency in '06, and 13th in '05 and '04. I simply can't follow you there. In a sport like basketball, a team can have good team defense without having good individual defenders. In baseball, one must have good individual defenders to have a good team defense. Last year, the Cubs didn't really have it. Murton was average, Pagan was below average. Pierre and Jones were good at getting to the ball, and terrible at throwing. Ramirez was better, but still not great. Cedeno was below average. Neifi was very good at second, Theriot was average, and Bynum was terrible. At first, Walker, Mabry, and Nevin were average, with Lee being very good for his few games. Barrett was below average, while Blanco was above average but slipping. How can you have a significantly above average defense when there are very few plus defenders on the field? Let's tackle this another way. The Cubs are ahead of the Cardinals last year. The question is-how can that be? Molina is much better than Barrett. Pujols is better than the Cubs first baseman that were there last year. Eckstein was better than Cedeno, and Rolen is better than Ramirez. The Cardinals OF defense isn't great, but they are probably about the level of the Cubs. With all these advantages-how does it turn out that the Cubs have a better defense than the Cardinals?

I found myself doing that once. Don't you just feel dirty now? Let's just say that it's an experience that will be even harder to repeat than it was to do it the first time :D

Simmons has had us losing a ton of games this year-----the fact that he picks against us is a positive. Yeah, and if he picks us, I'm not going to be happy either. In fairness to Simmons though, he is picking against the spread, and the Bears and Colts both were heavy favorites in many games, which makes it tempting to pick the underdog to cover. In addition, both the Bears and Colts played the Patriots, and of course Simmons is going to pick the Patriots in that case. Ugh-I can't believe I just defended him.

But you can't forget that there's significant statistical proof of a Coors Field "hangover" effect. You can make the point that his numbers have been dropping, yes... but his away numbers certainly aren't reflective of his actual talent level right now. I wholly expect Helton's numbers will be better than his away numbers-but I do think there will be a dropoff from Colorado. Coors Field is perfect for a hitter like Helton, and I'm not sure that Boston will be as kind to him. I could see him putting up an 830-900 OPS next year (which would be significantly better than his away numbers last year) but would that be enough to justify the contract, the talent given up, and the small loss on defense that the Red Sox would give up? Considering the length of the contract, I would say probably not.

One thing that should be mentioned that hasn't is that Helton's numbers will likely seriously drop moving away from Coors field. Here are his home/road splits from the last 3 years: 2004: home-.368/.490/.693, away-.326/.446/.544 2005- home-.353/.471/.616, away-.287/.418/.453 2006- home-.338/.445/.531, away-.266/.360/.421 He's 33, his numbers have declined each of the sharply between both of the last 2 years, and his home and away splits have been around 200 points each of the last 3 years. This is most certainly not a sure-fire trade for the Red Sox. In fact-it's certainly possible that they are getting the last 5 years of a contract like Soriano's (depending on how much the Rockies pay) without getting the benefit of the first 3 years of production-and it could be even worse than that if he can't pull those away numbers back up to where they were pre-2006. I think this is an extremely risky trade for the Red Sox, and if they have to give up decent talent, I wouldn't make the deal. Helton might work for 2007, but he's not likely going to work well beyond that.