UMFan83

This read up was a little sobering at least. Horton was 3rd on their list but mentioned being in the back end of the top 100 so I'm guessing at most the Cubs would have 4 prospects in their top 100? Pretty low of Caissie too who I've been excited about. I don't follow the prospects nearly as much as many of you do so just one somewhat uninformed person's reaction

I swear I read on Michigan insider boards last year that Harbaugh's choices were Michigan or an NFL team in California. His wife hated the cold and was only interested in warm weather teams if he moved on from UM.

I'm glad the Ricketts acted quickly in responding and inviting him back. I get the gist that the Cubs and Sosa worked on the wording of this behind the scenes and ended up with a statement both sides could live with. That said, it never should have come down to Sosa needing to apologize IMO. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, he is a Cubs legend and provided the fans so many positive memories. He may have cheated and that sucks (though we all pretty much knew), but I don't think that deserved a blackballing from the Cubs, especially as the Ricketts didnt own the team back then. Whatever its done, welcome back Sammy

That would be nice. Don't forget though, we scored 3 points at home against the Patriots who are something like 31st in defensive DVOA this year. One of Caleb's best games this year was against the Vikings (the first game), so who knows what we'll get.

Eh. While Eberflus is largely to blame for the Washington and Green Bay losses, it still took rather improbable things to lose games - a deflected hail mary and a blocked kick (even if GB saw something on tape and exploited it, its still not a particularly easy thing to do). Win those 2 games and we probably win the NE game and then need just one of the last 3. I know I'm stretching a bit here, but I could definitely see a scenario where the fired version of Eberflus wins 8 games. Heck he won 7 games last year and that was despite blowing 3 different games where the Bears had a 90+% win probability or higher in the 4th quarter. He was also largely to blame for much of those losses, but again a luckier version of this same Eberflus is winning 8-9 games.

Yes the highest draft pick possible would be nice, but I really really don't want this season to end on an 11 game losing streak. We need some positive vibes going into the offseason and our QB needs that confidence boost. If we were tanking for a QB, absolutely lose out. But I'd prefer the Bears win 1-2 more games. Heck even if we lose out the best we're getting is likely 9th anyways.

Damn I'm blown away. Hopefully it looks as good on the field as it does on paper

Yeah that season was pretty frustrating. But at least that season we could blame on some ****** injury luck and felt like the team was in decent shape moving forward. (though the defense was getting old and Lovie was apparently 1 year from being fired). This season just feels so demoralizing. We tanked for 2 straight years to get to this point, got the gift of a lifetime with the number 1 pick from Carolina, there was a no doubt QB available that teams had been salivating over drafting for 2 years, seemed like many of the other pieces were in place based on the last 2 years of team building. Then the season starts and it looks like things are actually happening as hoped and not only that, the QB looks legitimately elite...like no doubt in my mind that we actually managed to get the elite QB we've wanted forever. Then over the next 6 weeks we suffer 4 different horrific losses that at worst we should have gone 2-2 or 3-1 in, the QB considerably regresses (note: I'm in no way out on Caleb or anything but my confidence in him being an elite QB is noticeably less than it was after the Jags game. It just has to be), the players force the coach out, holes start being exposed all over the roster, the GM seems like he might be out. Feels like we're about to start another rebuild/reshuffle and like, I just can't deal with this crap anymore. 2011 was incredibly frustrating, but this feels more frustrating in more of a big picture way. It just feels exhausting to put any emotional energy towards this team anytime soon and while there are still plenty of positives on this team, its going to take a lot for me to feel excited about the team again. Like tangible results on the field, not just hiring the hotshot coordinator, or actually using our cap space to address holes (crazy idea!). I'm just spent.

Yeah its really hard to measure things like momentum or whatever, but I'm convinced the hail mary, and the fallout from it (like Eberflus completely deflecting blame, Stevenson's actions/benching, etc) absolutely had an effect on the season. The margin for error was always going to be small because of the gauntlet the last half of this season but I can't see us losing to both Arizona and New England if we win the Washington game...beyond that we start to get into butterfly effect type of conversations. The season was still salvageable but we didn't have the leadership in place to pick ourselves up for the next 2 critical games. Amazingly we did fight through those demoralizing losses to put us in position to win the next 3 games, all against divisional opponents but managed to blow all 3 of them in the final seconds. Like Kyle said, I don't think this team is 4-13 bad based on talent. It probably wasn't a 11-6 caliber team either but the possibility of a borderline playoff team was always there. Such an unbelievably frustrating season....we've had many frustrating seasons as Bears fans but all factors considered this might be the worst...this or 2013, but at least in 2013 we were fun with a good offense.

Meh, I understand the arguments for trading him but I thought he could have been quite useful next year. Glad that we're mostly completely wiping his salary away though, assuming its used to improve the team elsewhere. These kinds of moves have the potential to tank seasons when you are trying to build upper 80's win teams with less margin for error though.

I was bored so I put this together comparing the rookie QBs. I wish I had access to PFF's stats for things like Big Time Throws and Turnover Worthy plays, Average depth of target, time to throw, etc.

im not sure whats worse: when he misses WRs (meaning he doesn't see them) or when he misses WRs (meaning he throws an inaccurate pass towards one). He's gonna break all these records for not throwing INTs but look thoroughly mediocre the entire time. I am still in on Caleb but I feel like the more he plays this year the more he gets ruined.

Thats a good way to put it. I've watched almost every Bears game for the last 15 years or so, I've watched them even when awful, I've even gotten excited for primetime games when bad just for the additional national attention, even if I know its likely we'll end up getting embarrassed. Yesterday was different...wasn't really excited at all leading up to the game and at no point did I enjoy watching any of the game. I'm just tired of it all and feel very defeated after hyping myself up that at the very least we'd have a decent team that's fun to follow. It's going to take a lot to get me excited about Bears football next season. Sure hire another coach and GM, maybe by some stroke of luck they'll actually be good. But most likely they'll horsefeathers this one up too and even if its Ben Johnson or some other highly regarded offensive mind, I'm sure they'll turn out to be inadequate at leading a locker room, or in game decisions, or something else. It just feels like we'll never get it right.

Haven’t been particularly impressed with him. Occasionally he does something impressive and gives me hope but definitely been a bit underwhelmed at what I’ve seen. Still think he’ll be a solid WR though

Garbage time Caleb continues to be elite

3 drops on this drive for the Bears elite WR trio

They should have fired Eberflus when the season was cratering and it was clear that Eberflus wasn’t it. But they waited so long the players eventually decided to take action. Now the inmates are running the asylum and the season is over so Thomas Brown never had a chance

Welcome to being a QB for the Chicago Bears. Probably gonna request a trade in the offseason.

What a complete disaster from our LT. Again never should have been in a position to start. Poles had 4 picks going into last years draft after tanking for 2 years and and spent half of them on a punter and an extreme project lineman

I agree with there being no reason why Ben Johnson would come here but I do think they’ll have their opportunity to hire just about whoever else they want. There are only 32 of these positions and football coaches in general think very highly of themselves. They’ll see the mess but they’ll see enough talent here to believe they can fix it. Ben Johnson is just an unusually picky hot shot coordinator (which he has every right to be)

3rd and 7 conversion now. Wonderful

Of course the Vikings start 1st and 20 and convert

Great tackling Bears

So the Bears have gotten the ball inside the 30 on 3 drives today and inside the 1 on one drive and have 3 points to show for it.

Haha there were literally points on the board. I saw the 6 on ESPN’s graphic. This team is so indescribably bad