scarey

The ball clearly hit the ground. It clearly moved. What's your argument? You're not seeing it correctly. One shot shows it moves. Another one shows that it hits the ground. This isn't rocket science.

The ball clearly hit the ground. It clearly moved. What's your argument?

If I was a replacement ref, I would find it very easy to take a pay off. That's all I'm saying.

That Beast segment was awful. Since they can't do the Jacked Up anymore, they have to find something stupid to yell about to replace it?

Of course it would be a gift victory. Don't you know, any time a team beats the Packers it's because the Packers beat themselves. There's no other explanation.

I thought I remember in camp that one of the things the coaching staff was most impressed by out of Jeffrey was his ability to beat press coverage. Anyone else remember this or am I halucinating again?

First of all, every team in the league has to call time outs on the road from time to time in the 1st and 3rd quarter. This is nothing unique to the Bears and I think you're letting the non-audible offense under Martz sway your opinion too much because it was done at an unusually high rate in 2010 and 2011. By pointing out that the Bears have had this problem at home games during the Lovie tenure, you're supporting his argument. I would wager that it was not any less of a problem pre-Lovie. If you want to show me some type of proof to the contrary, be my guest. Do I think it is catastrophic? No. But it does hurt the team and is preventable. The preventable part is why I think it is a topic and why it annoys Bernstein (and myself too). I'm not supporting the argument because it's not noise that forces timeouts. it's disorganization from the offensive unit. They have consistently wasted timeouts (much like Lovie in general badly mismanages challenges). They will call timeouts on 2nd and 8 from mid-field. It doesn't have to be the red zone. The fans cheering is not the problem. The Bears have a horrible offensive line and just this year finally put together some offensive weapons, all under a first time coordinator. There are going to be miscommunications and errors, noise or no noise. Ok. Let's just assume it is that Lovie and company are disorganized. What do you feel other teams do to prevent this? Do other NFL teams do team building outtings? Communication activities? Do they have group therapy sessions together? I am extremely interested to hear what your theory on why players under Lovie Smith have this high capacity for disorganization.

First of all, every team in the league has to call time outs on the road from time to time in the 1st and 3rd quarter. This is nothing unique to the Bears and I think you're letting the non-audible offense under Martz sway your opinion too much because it was done at an unusually high rate in 2010 and 2011. By pointing out that the Bears have had this problem at home games during the Lovie tenure, you're supporting his argument. I would wager that it was not any less of a problem pre-Lovie. If you want to show me some type of proof to the contrary, be my guest. Do I think it is catastrophic? No. But it does hurt the team and is preventable. The preventable part is why I think it is a topic and why it annoys Bernstein (and myself too).

That would be a really strange argument to try and make. They were elite and they took a significant step back from elite. They missed beats. Why would anybody try to pretend otherwise? Maybe I'm misinterpretting your argument, but it sounded to me like you were arguing that they were elite five or six year ago, then went to average. I disagree if that is what you're arguing and I think the weighted defensive efficiency shows that. This may be a semantics argument, but I felt the tone of your post was basically indicating that they were an average defensive team. In fact, you states that. You also said they were not close to elite, and I disagree with that too.

How can you possibly say this? They went from an elite defense to just about average in a hurry. Then they ticked a bit higher again but are still not close to elite. They very much did miss several beats. They are very susceptible to the pass and have been for a few years after once being virtually impossible to throw against since you wouldn't get much yardage or would turn it over anyway. If you're judging their pass defense from last year, it was actually pretty good. Teams passed a ton on them, mostly because rushing was futile, but they held opposing QBs to a 79 rating. This all considering they played Rodgers and Stafford twice, Brees, Rivers, Newton, and Vick once. Their pass and overall defense in general the past 5 years compared to the couple years where they were elite. They missed beats, they've missed multiple beats. Not really. In terms of weighted defensive efficiency, they were the best defense in the league last year. Their only bad year in recent history was 2009 where they ranked 21st. Here's the last five years and the ranks they had. 2011: 1 2010: 5 2009: 21 2008: 7 2007: 10 Now granted, 2005 and 2006 they ranked 2nd both seasons, but I would contend that staying in the top 10 defenses for 6 of the last 7 years is hardly "missing multiple beats". Especially when you consider the injury woes of 2009.

Can anyone expand on this? I remember something faintly, but can't put my finger on his ordeal and why his contract was voided.

Anybody have an explanation for Dae Eun Rhee's horrid strikeout rate this year? Even last year in his first full season post Tommy John, he had 8.2 K/9. Could moving from A+ to AA really cause him to strike out batters at almost half the rate?

i don't know about that. wilken wants to be the director of amateur scouting somewhere, he wants to run a draft. to a guy like that, the only true promotion is to GM or that fake president tag Theo holds. he may have gotten a nice little raise, theo, jed, and jason may respect him a great deal, enough to give him that raise and keep him around. but he simply wasn't respected enough to be retained in the position that he was in. When did Elaine Benes get assigned into an organizational structure decision making capacity with the Cubs? http://sharetv.org/images/medium/seinfeld/346241.jpg

The Cubs left and came back to Peoria. I didn't expect their attendance to be that bad. There's plenty of history there and the area has tons of Cubs fans. I really liked them in Lansing. I can only really see them leaving Peoria if Kane County comes calling (say that 5 times fast). Not sure if they would do Cedar Rapids, with a team in Des Moines already. I'm not sure how these things work, but there's currently a team in Gary IN, the South Shore Railcats, that don't have an affiliation with a major league team. I wonder if it is even possible for the Cubs to move in. I don't know for sure that the Railcats are equipped to accomodate an affiliated team at this point and who knows if the Cubs even want a team in downtown Gary. Also, South Bend is an hour closer to Chicago than Peoria and there's plenty of Cubs fans sprinked throughout north central and northwest Indiana. It sounded to me, in the article Raisin posted, that South Bend may be exploring options to increase attendance. If the Cubs were to move to either place, I'd be pretty happy to get the opportunity to see some more minor league ball.

Did you seriously use jive and groove in the same sentence?

http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tumblr_lurveuGEoC1qlen6y.gif You guys suck. It was the best post in the thread so far.

Very mediocre in his minor league career, but has really come around in a big way since he's been converted to a reliever. 12.1 K/9 and 1.9 BB/9 between AA and AAA this year. Fastball/slider guy that can throw in the high 90s.

He also throws a 2 seamer, 4 seamer, and cutter, so it could be a matter of pitch mix. If he can spot all those pitches, he could be successful even at 87-89. That being said, I'm holding out hope that he can work in the lower 90s like some of these reports indicate.

CCP just posted he's been sitting 87-89. Yeah, I'm not really in love with the ceiling of a guy who got demoted down a level from the previous year's. He didn't get demoted. He pitched 3 innings in AA last year which, to me, says he was brought up for the playoffs because Myrtle Beach and Spokane didn't make the playoffs and Frisco did.

you can't just look at the numbers in a vacuum for these guys. I'm looking at levels and age too. Given that Villanueva is listed as 5'11 160lbs and just turned 21, I don't think that's bad at all at A+. If he can pack on some more pounds, he could profile as a slugging third baseman. Reports are that he's pretty good in the field too. I'm disappointed only because Buckel or Alfaro were not in the deal. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with these two if in fact these are the guys.

Buckel please!

http://rblog.rolanddga.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/alec-baldwin-glengarry-glen-ross-always-be-closing.jpg

http://roadto90.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/keithlaw.jpg though admittedly i did lift the nickname from some blogger who had some hilarious vendetta against him The smugness really shines through in that picture.

This one went completely over my head. How does Arodys Vizcaino = Keith Dumb Bunny? Keith Law = Keith Dumb Bunny. Oh... Still confused on the Dumb Bunny part.

This one went completely over my head. How does Arodys Vizcaino = Keith Dumb Bunny?