UMFan83

Good God Amos make a play

Amazing how big of a 180 this season took after the GB win. I have no idea why I'm watching. I'm guessing because the football offseason is the longest of the 4 sports so I'm getting my last fixes in

I enjoyed the Brendan Ryan era much more than both the Aaron Miles and Jose Macais eras.

Doing a Google search for "Bernstein Derrick Rose" is fun. That dude hates on Rose so much you'd think his daughter was the defendent in Rose's civil suit.

They should have won that NW game too. If you look at the teams they've lost to there are no terrible losses, all to power conference teams, except Arkansas Little Rock who was undefeated until last night. OK who am I kidding, they are horrible, GW was probably overrated based on their win against Virginia the first week of the season.

The problem with the cap exploding is that many teams will have a ton of money and the Bulls have always lost out in those scenarios. Also I'm not sure exactly how this works but I believe that with the cap exploding the cost of a max contract explodes as well. We might have enough for a max guy but possibly not much else. And yes the 3 star method has been a successful model in the past but one of those stars has to be a top 10 guy. Curry, LeBron, Dirk, Kobe, Garnett, Wade. The exception was SA (Leonard wasn't at top 10 level at this point and might be now) but they have the best coach in the league. The Bulls don't have that and it will be difficult for them to find that guy in the draft or FA.

I feel dumb

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SPOILERS also don't you remember him being a kyle meme for any value-sink player making the roster At some point in late 2012 I blocked out any of kyle's doom boner posts

Wait not only played for the Cubs but started on opening day?

I saw Ball State's HC is resigning to be an assistant at Maryland. Does this happen a lot? I find it a little odd that a head coach would resign to be an assistant for a rookie head coach at a bottom tier Big Ten school.

look out st. louis area macy's stores

Tampa a 3 point favorite I keep hearing people saying that the Bears will get up for this game because its against their former coach. I count 4 projected starters that played for Lovie on the Bears. Cutler, Forte, Jeffery and Shea. Jeffery and Shea were both rookies in his final season, so yeah, I don't think any of them care that Lovie is on the other sideline.

It's debatable. He's having a good year though. On pace for his highest QB rating and has a chance to finish with the lowest turnover rate he's ever had. He's also given a pretty bad team a chance to win at the end of most games. However, I actually thought he was playing his best football in 2011 under Martz before Knox fell down. Similar low turnover rate. I think that 2011 team could have done something in the playoffs had he stayed healthy. yes to all of this The Chargers game was the high water mark. At the time before Jay got hurt, they were one of the top teams in football. Jay was playing like a hero. People were calling the Bears one of the most dangerous teams in football before he went down. They were definitely looking like contenders and Jay was playing awesome. In retrospect that play altered the course of the Bears for the next several years. Because Jay was out, the Bears tanked and went 1-5 down the stretch against an easy schedule. Jerry Angelo was fired and replaced with Emery after the season and Lovie came into 2012 with a playoffs or bust mandate. Despite going starting 7-1 and finishing 10-6, Lovie was indeed fired so Emery could pick his coach, who was a disaster. Meanwhile several non-impact drafts later the aging defense faltered and there was no one younger to step in and the Bears are where they are now

I don't think this a one or two FA fix (unless its a guy like LeBron or Durant), but I could just being overly dramatic. I count 4 players on the roster who are long term fits for the team, Butler, McDermott, Niko (for now), and Portis. Other than those 4, what assets do we even have that will bring us something back that we can use in the future? I guess we could package up something like Gasol + Dunleavy to a contender for an unprotected 1st rounder a couple years from now and hope that team sucks. Again, maybe I'm being overly dramatic, I havent thought about the future of the Bulls in depth. It just sucks that recently we had a ton of pretty good assets like Niko's rights, the Bobcats pick, low paid Jimmy Butler, the Sacramento protected 1st, plus had a few guys we could get really good returns from in a trade like Rose, Noah and to a lesser extent Taj. Now Niko is disappointing (but still time to improve), the Bobcats pick turned into 1/2 of McDermott, the Sacramento protected 1st is probably going to end up being a 2nd round pick, Rose and his contract are an albatross, Noah has some value as an expiring but is simply not the same player he was 2 years ago, and Taj is 30, oft injured, and no longer a guy that other teams might consider a starter. We do have all of our 1st round picks which is good, but I am not sure if the team is going to try to be the NBA version of the White Sox (same aging owner) where they try to keep patching it up and remain a middle of the road playoff team that's a non-contender or if they would consider starting over. I think the off the court stuff is going to be more interesting than the on the court action for the next couple of years at least. Hope I'm wrong.

Man it takes years to get [expletive] done in Wrigleyville. I had long forgotten about this....had to be proposed originally around 2007. The triangle building has been discussed since at least 2004 and is finally going up.

I'd like to keep both. Tough to lose Gase just because right now the offense is the more talented side of the ball and having continuity seems important. This would be their 5th offensive coordinator in 6 years. As a team, statistically the results might not show a great job, but considering the influx of WR injuries and the fact that Jay is having his best season statistically in a Bears uniform, I'd say he's done a good job. The one downside has been the line, and I'm not sure how much should be pinned on him (like I have no idea, should a lot of blame be put on him?) Fangio seems like the better coordinator of the 2 but for some reason I don't see him leaving after this year...for a coordinator with his level of success in recent years he doesn't seem to be mentioned as a head coaching candidate, except in SF.

I'd add Grasu. Depending on how liberal you want to be with the word potential there's some other young guys too. On the other hand, an older guy like Slauson could fall off quickly. Not sure if your count Royal or just don't see him in their future. Obviously assuming Bennett is not part of the future in that analysis. But anyways, even super bowl winners start some average and below average players. Getting a couple impact players could go a long way in lifting up a whole unit. Another top 10 pick and $60M goes a long way in a quick turnaround if done right. Exactly. 11 guys he likes with 5 of them added over Pace's first year seems like we have a long long way to go? When there are like 22 starting positions on the units that matter (yeah yeah special teams matter blah blah...that's not what we're talking about here)? It's not like you need those types of players at every position. No you don't but there's a difference between above average and elite, and there's a difference between the rest of the starters being "mostly average or slightly below" and mostly below average. Also there's depth, of which the Bears are currently filling many backup roster spots with scraps. Look at the 2006 Bears, probably an average Super Bowl team at best (going off gut I could be completely wrong statistically). Backup DL? Mark Anderson, Alfonso Boone, Israel Idonije, Ian Scott. Backup DBs? Daniel Manning, Ricky Manning, Todd Johnson. Offensive depth was less but they still had guys like Griese, Benson, Metcalf, St. Clair in backup roles. Not a ton of depth at LB but you can't be deep everywhere and if the Bears lost Briggs or Urlacher that year the season probably goes a lot differently. Finally of the 11 guys, Cutler, Young and Slauson are all over 30 so while they are currently part of the short term future they may not be when the Bears fill talent holes. So yeah I do think they have to add a lot of talent to be a super bowl contender, but am happy with the progress we've made and do think we can contend for playoffs next year.

So ignoring my dumb comment about Fales... How many players do the Bears have that are in their future and either are above average at their position or have the potential to be above average? I have: Long, Slauson, Cutler, Langford, Jeffery, White, Goldman, Young, McPhee, Amos, Fuller So that's 11 guys, with 5 of them added over Pace's first year. It seems like we have a long long way to go in terms of adding talent before we consider ourselves a team that can legitimately contend for a super bowl. Im happy with Pace's first year overall, aside from the issue with Ray McDonald, but he needs to get some more talent on this team quickly or I feel like we are going to be similar to the 96-2000 era Bears

4 playoff appearances in the last 21 years. I know we aren't even in the conversation for most pathetic franchises of the last 20 years but still we aren't much higher.

2nd time in 3 weeks he is picked off on a screen pass inside their own 20. Just a brutal game all around from all phases except ironically special teams Let's get Fales out there and see what weve got

Thought we were finally building something at least halfway decent on the line but now I think we are back to having one of the 2-3 worst lines in the league.

I think any goodwill and positive vibes the Bears got this season are being washed a way. Fairly or not. 5-6 start the last two seasons and looking like a similar ending this year.

At least we have our kickoff return man