soapy

Because I want Cutler to be a lot better than Favre, and Manning threw his his 28 picks as a rookie at age 22. He only broke 20 once after that. Wait, are you saying you want Cutler's career to be better than Favre's career? If that's your expectation than I can see why you'd be disappointed, damn.

No point, because the fundamental disagreement is going to be that I'll take a season with fewer yards and touchdowns in exchange for a lot fewer picks. Everyone else in this argument has made it clear that they don't think the picks are nearly as much of a negative as I do. That's going to be where we differ. No. I can only speak for myself, but of course the picks are a horrible problem. I just don't think it's going to continue to happen at that level. Not one person here has suggested that 26 picks isn't horrible, it is.

I can't believe I'm going to do this, but let's see your list of QBs that would have been better than Cutler on the 2009 Bears, Kyle.

I'll give it a try. I mean, this exercise can only be purely subjective, but whatever: P. Manning (If he could survive the beating that Cutler took) Brees Brady Roethlisberger Rogers, Ryan or Rivers maybe? I don't think so but I'm trying to be generous.

I have no idea how to answer that question, but i don't think it would be many. And honestly, it doesn't matter. We're talking about 2010 and beyond and how Cutler is likely to perform. The value of the trade isn't determined by his first season only, which is what I've been saying over and over again. At this point I'm surprised you haven't stated his record as a starting QB to try to prove your point.

I still don't understand why you continue to ignore his play prior to 2009, Kyle. You are acting like his 26 picks in 2009 are the only indicator for his future performance and it's going to take some sort of monumental overhall of his game for him to be a top-tier quarterback.

And to pretend that the 26 INTs he threw last year isn't out of line with his history is insane. Meanwhile, he's gone 20, 25 and 27 TDs the last three years and had almost no weapons surrounding him last year along with a horrible offensive line. You can't be serious, Kyle. You can't be serious. Before the season, if Bears fans had been asked if a 26-INT season would be okay, there's no way they would have said yes. But now that it happened, it's too painful to just admit how awful Cutler was, so it's got to be rationalized. Yes, the rest of the offense was bad. But there's no amount of awful surrounding a quarterback that makes the kind of season Cutler had to be okay. And it's not as if this were an uncontroversial move. A lot of people, including most of the rest of the NFL, thought the Bears paid way too much for Cutler. Then he went out and was even worse than expected. Jesus, of course 26 ints is awful and not acceptable. I don't understand why you are acting like he doesn't have a history of performance to look at prior to 2009 in which he was quite good. He had a horrible amount of turnovers last year. I'm not disputing that. I'm saying it doesn't mean that's going to happen going forward. His history doesn't suggest that at all. If he continues to struggle it may end up that the trade was bad for the Bears. I don't think one can accurately come to that conclusion because he had one bad season, turnover-wise, in which he also threw 27 TD to a pretty shoddy receiving group.

And to pretend that the 26 INTs he threw last year isn't out of line with his history is insane. Meanwhile, he's gone 20, 25 and 27 TDs the last three years and had almost no weapons surrounding him last year along with a horrible offensive line. You can't be serious, Kyle.

We traded two first-round picks for a guy who threw 26 interceptions. And he definitely won't have several more years of playing time from which we might be able to more accurately analyze him. Nope, 26 INTs in year one. Loser.

Every Cubs fan I know in person (i.e. not people on this board) had the exact same thing to say about the Bradley/Silva trade: "I'm just glad he's gone." Most people don't want to think about the other stuff. They just don't really care, or want to be told why (I think) they should.

http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/mlb/news/story?id=4965307

Despite his flaws, losing VJ would be a big blow IMO. They all the scoring options they can get right now. Honestly, losing any one of VJ, Watford, Hulls, Creek and to a far lesser extent Elston would be pretty horrible right now. I don't get the Elston tranferring talk though (or any of it, really).

Care to mention any names? please don't. i'm depressed enough as it is. All I have heard is Derek Elston. Are there others? I heard something about Watford, but I doubt it's anything. If that happens I'm going to lose my [expletive].

Care to mention any names? please don't. i'm depressed enough as it is.

I support Crean. Can he get them back to top 15-20 status? Eh......I don't know. I think he is capable of making them into a program that is regularly (I don't mean every season) ranked in the top 25. I don't think they'll ever get back to the sort of success they had from the mid 70's to mid 90's though. I don't mean that as a knock on Crean. There probably isn't anybody out there capable of doing that and also willing to take on the job in it's current state. Basically, I think they did about as well as they could have hoped when they hired him given the circumstances. The '11 and '12 classes are huge, particularly '12. I give him some leeway on '10, because he was still pretty far behind the curve on those guys. Picking up Abraham would help some with that, though I don't think it's really likely.

We've had this discussion before, but the off-the-field stuff for Marshall is too big of a risk for me. Most off-the-field stuff doesn't bother me, but I'm pretty damn leary about taking a chance on a habitual wife-beater.

fair enough. i don't disagree

Worse. And with all the Notre Dame prestige, would anybody here take that job over Texas or Florida or USC? A big problem some IU fans are having is the same problem some ND fans are having where they expect their teams to be national title contenders every year all because they won titles before any kid playing for them was born. Agree with the first part, the IU bball position is worse. I think your second paragraph might be off in terms of IU fans expectations. I don't really know anyone at this point that expects IU to ever go back to having the sort of success they enjoyed from the mid 70's to the mid 90's. Or at least, that portion of the fan base is extremely small at this point. ETA: And I think your bolded drops IU a lot further down this list than most people have them. Recruits don't even remember a time when IU had that kind of success. I don't imagine they get that overwhelming impression of IU having some storied tradition. I mean, they can see the banners, but I'm sure that seems like an eternity ago.

I'd be extremely interested in Taylor. Much more so than LT or Westbrook.

I'm not talking overall, I'm talking lately. Not that anyone else has been lighting the world on fire either. I see. Well there's no question that their inside play is suspect at best, even considering their talent level. Pritchard in particular has been bad. He plays like a pansy most of the time.

But he looks like a baseball player now. More specifically, a baseball player that used to play football (must be the hair).

I thought it was rumored that Williams wasn't happy with Story(his roommate and best friend maybe?) being shown the door, so he followed him out. That may have been Illinois fan rumor mongering to make Crean look bad though. Yeah, William left right after Story (they were definitely roomates but I don't know about "best friends"), so there could have been something going on there, but I never really saw anything to support that other than fan speculation. Most stories indicated that Williams went to the coaches immediately after the season to discuss his role with the team and I guees didn't like what they had to say.

The Nick Williams transfer was one that I never really totally understood. I'm sure he figured he was going to be behind Creek on the depth chart (and maybe Dumes?), but he followed Crean from Marquette to IU. Seems he'd give it more than a year and see where he fit into this team. I think any reference made by Crean to someone getting the boot for a lack of effort is empty. They can't afford to lose anyone (particularly frontline players) as they don't really have any coming in next year. If Watford leaves they are fucked. ETA: and I disagree that Watford hasn't played well, overall. He needs to get stronger but he's been respectable.

I don't really disagree with anything you've said, CCP. I certainly didn't expect them to win any of those games. It's the way in which they've failed to "compete" (I really hate using that word, but I can't think of a better term) that's been a shame. They absolutely can not defend anyone. The help defense is a joke and teams are free to take either an easy layup or a wide-open jumper. It seems they've regressed a great deal in that area, which I think is largely from a lack of effort. Rivers absolutely can not get into the lane at this point and goes long stretches where he doesn't even try. He's almost a liability at this point offensively. Pritchard seems to be out-worked by everyone he faces (the only thing he's done well is run the high screen and roll). These guys seem to be regressing, and that's discouraging. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really as down on Crean as some seem to be getting, but it's just frustrating (even if expected). As I said, I didn't expect to win any of these games. It's just the way in which they've lost that has been disappointing.

I think the two heartbreaking losses back to back to UI and PU did them in. Well they certainly haven't looked the same since.