UMFan83

They were close in that Halladay finished 1st and Wainwright finished 2nd :)

Yeah the challengers for the 2 wild card spots are 1) Loser of east race (NYG/PHI), 2) the 2 losers in the south race (ATL/NO/TB), and 3) the loser of the north race (CHI/GB). At this point I don't think anyone else can really contend unless they get really hot, as all the teams mentioned above are 6-3 or better, and there are no 5-4 teams in the NFC besides Seattle (who is 1st in West). So it will be 4 teams fighting for 2 spots. I gotta think Philly and NO are looking the best right now (without viewing everyone's schedules). But if one falters the Packers/Bears loser is looking better. 2 keys for the Bears in this race are: 1) They've already lost the tie-breaker to the NYG, and have a chance to win or lose the tie-breaker with Philly next week. 2) They currently have the worst conference record of all of the WC contenders at 5-3 (or NFC contenders in general). They have also played the most conference games of all of them, so there are chances for the other teams to lose conference games, especially in the South as I'm assuming they all have to play each other again. So that tiebreaker is far from decided, but right now the Bears are trailing.

The likliest scenario for a 10 win season would be @ Miami - W v. Philly - L @ Detroit - W vs. Patriots - L @ Vikings - W vs. Jets - W @ Packers - L But I find it hard to believe we are going to win in the dome. We never ever do. The only time we've done it since I think 2001 was in 2006, our 13-3 year. And in that game we probably should have lost if it weren't for Tommie Harris making a game saving strip of the ball. At that point in the game, there was 3 minutes left in the game and the ball was near midfield. Even then they still needed Grossman to get them a TD on that drive, which he did. Anyways, if we can find a way to go 2-1 at home and 2-2 on the road (where our 3 easiest remaining opponents are), we'll get our 10 wins and likely a playoff spot.

A couple of points 1) Unless the Vikings completely give up the next few weeks, I'd have to think the Vikings will still be favored in the dome against us. Especially if we go 0-4 or 1-3 in the games leading up to that game to have a 7-6 or 6-7 record. 2) We won't go 0-7. Even if the team just collapses, its hard to lose all 7 of those games. People have to understand that while supremely flawed, the Bears collectively are a talented enough team to be where they are. 3) While these 7 games are tough, I think I heard that we've played the easiest schedule in the NFL so far this season in terms of opponent record. The teams we've played are 2-7, 2-7, 6-3, 6-3, 1-8, 5-4, 4-5, 1-8, 3-6. Only 3 winning records, and we've played 4 of the 5 NFL teams that have 2 or less wins this year (Cincinnati is the only one we haven't played). What this hypothetically is, is an evening of the schedule. But even still it's not horrific. 5-4, 6-3, 2-7, 7-2, 3-6, 7-2, 6-3. It's hard but not impossible. We'll be playing 4 of the top 10 teams in the

Since we're bringing up everyone, I'd also attribute some to Pisa T. being on the field this year. He's been quiet in terms of big plays and mentions on broadcasts, but I always see him being a factor in almost every play on his side of the field.

You can almost say they "Ryan Field'd" Wrigley. Northwestern will feel right at home. (No offense to Northwestern fans proud of their home field)

There's an article on ESPN.com suggesting that Henne might actually start for the Dolphins on Thursday. Thigpen is still the most likely starter. But Henne's injury isn't as bad as first thought. They also said Pennington's injury is "career threatening". Isn't this like the 5th career threatening injury he's had in his career? http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=5809215 Long and Wake's status for the game is still unknown.

Ugh maybe. I just don't see the Pirates turning that team around. Maybe he does. I know they have prospects and all that, but I mean I'd just get depressed out of my mind playing with a rag tag group of no names in from of 10,000 fans en route to 90+ losses annually. Just doesn't seem like a very enticing job. Agreed that if has success there he'll be rewarded hansomely, but I personally don't see it happening. To each his own though.

Was it really ideal to take the "bird in hand" if that bird is the Pirates job? I mean the Pirates job is going to be 4 years of horrible losing in a small market town and then you get fired and getting another job is probably 10 times harder. I know there's only 30 manager jobs, but there are really good ones, good ones, ok ones, bad ones, and then there's the Pirates managerial position. It's a death sentence. I would have held out for the Mets job and if I didn't get it, join another team as a bench coach and wait for your turn.

I almost feel that works in the Bears favor, because under normal circumstances I hate their chances in Miami. I hate travelling on a short week. I hate primetime games. I hate going to Miami. Everything about this game begs for disappointment. But if they can win, that would be a huge shift in the potential final record, as much like the Dallas game, I've been penciling this in as a loss all along. Agreed on both. Last year, was the San Francisco trip on a short week. I chalked that up as a loss to start the season, but the Bears had every chance to win that game and would have if you take away any of the 5 Cutler INTs. UGH! That was the worst game ever to watch. We also had a Thursday night game against the Redskins, during the fallout of the Sean Taylor tragedy. In that game, none other than Todd Collins destroyed us (15-20, 224 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT, 144.6 QB rating in about 3 quarters of play). If it wasn't for our Thursday night win over the Saints in 2008, I'd assume we were just cursed on Thursdays.

When I was looking at the upcoming schedule, I actually was wondering if that game was gonna get picked up for Sunday Night football, or the 3:15PM FOX game. That's annoying, I hate 3:15 home games late in the year, it might as well be a night game.

Traditionally the Thursday night games are fairly sloppy for the first quarter, sometimes the entire first half until teams start to get into a rhythm. That's the scary thing about the game because anything can happen.

Hillenmeyer wasn't a starter going into this year with Urlacher and Pisa healthy. I agree we've been lucky in general with injuries this year, but the Cutler concussion might have cost us that game against Seattle, as he was clearly rusty from missing time. The only game this year that still irks me is the Washington game, but since one could argue that we stole wins against the Lions and Packers, I can't really complain. To be able to say that we've only let 1 game slip away out of the first 9 isn't bad. I definitely lament the Washington game more, but I feel like we let the Seattle game slip away too. But that game can't be whittled down to a touchdown that was left unchalleneged and was instead a turnover at the 1 yard line. It was more the defense having probably its worst game of the year, and the offense still in the "We're gonna make Martz's system work or die trying" mode. Still Seattle came into the game 3-18 in their last 21 road games. There was no reason we should have lost to them.

Great day in Redskins history. Vick has 45 fantasy points in my league at halftime. I did a little research and it appears that the best individual fantasy performance since 1961 was Clinton Portis in 2003. He had 218 rushing yards, 5 tds, along with 2 catches for 36 yards for 56 fantasy points.

Did Starlin get any votes?

I wonder of the mcnabb benching really pissed him off and all but gave up on the Skins and it took this much money to change his mind and make him feel like the team is committed to him. And the Redskins justified it because they have no options to bring in if McNabb bolts and the Redskins seem to have an endless supply of money so why the he'll not. It's probably not even the most ridiculous signing in the Snyder era. And I'm not saying that to downplay how insane this deal is. If the Bears did this I would have taken the rest of the day off work and cried all afternoon.

Is that not because they are by far the smallest school, and therefore have the smallest group of alumni by default? With just over 8,000 undergrads, it's mostly that. However, Northwestern is a far more national school than any of the other Big Ten schools. Only 40% of undergrads are from the midwest. I don't see how that makes them more of a national school. It's a huge difference. I just looked up Michigan's undergraduate student body for comparison. 66% come from Michigan alone. 40% from the midwest is a really small number. Since most students move back home after graduation, it creates a much higher percentage of Northwestern graduates who are spread out across the country. Do most students move back home after graduation? Even if they do, the one's that don't by and large move to Chicago. We are the capital of the Big Ten, even though there are technically no Big Ten schools in city limits. That's why I think it's funny that there's a big banner in front of Wrigley Field that says "Chicago's Big Ten team" when it's less than a block away from Purdue, Michigan State, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio St and Iowa bars (2 blocks from a Minnesota bar).

That sucks about Korver. Hope its not bad. Bulls are #12 in ESPN.com's power rankings. Ahead of the 5-3 Bulls are the 6-5 Blazers (#11), the 5-4 Nuggets who the Bulls beat last week (#9), the 5-4 Suns (#8) and the 6-4 Heat (#7). In Hollingers rankings, the Bulls drop from 7th to 9th, with the Bucks a spot ahead of them, but I think that's due to Milwaukees better SOS and the Bulls poor Home/Road ratio of 6/2.

Ah nice, they are up there painting it right now.

I read this at first as DBack sign Bum. I thought that was awesome, good to see Bum land on his feet after leaving NSBB.

Someone please tell me why the Marquee is purple. Did they put something over the real marquee?

My favorite part. That article is hilarious. His article as it pertains to the Bears: "The Bears are awful, Jay cutler is a knucklehead, the Bears will lose to Miami because they aren't good enough to win there, besides the Bears havent beat anyone good. OK they did beat the team that I am claiming is vastly superior to the Bears, but heck that was a month and a half ago when the Packers lacked the "win close games" skill that they now somehow possess."

I would mind it very much. But there's no reason why you can't make an "incidental PI" a 5-10 yard penalty plus redo the down while keeping blatant PI as a spot foul. I like this idea very much. I don't mind giving the refs the discretion to choose incidental vs. intentional.

I thought I read or heard him say one of three worst teams at one point. He's used words like terrible on numerous occasions. I've been hard on them because it's obvious they have the potential to be a 10-12 win team but they blew multiple opportunities with stupidity. I think they were a 6 win team if things went poorly, with the potential for many more. They have weaknesses but Cutler and the defense can make them contenders. Yeah the problem is that when someone like him hasn't taken a close look at a team and wants to make judgements on 32 different teams, he (and most of the media) uses generalizations combined with their performance the last few years. Oh also, if the team doesn't have many dominant skill position players, its that much harder to gain respect in the media. It seems Bill has done that too. They were pretty awful the last 12 games of last year, and despite their FA spending, they didn't improve the O-line and their WRs were still all unknowns besides Hester. And the biggest thing is the general media impression is that Cutler is talented but they've already decided that he'll be the wild 25TD-25 INT Cutler until he gets better receivers (or for some he will never grow out of it). So when it's time to Simmons to rank the Bears, he sees wins over below average Detroit, Dallas and Carolina teams, and bad losses to mediocre Seattle and Washington teams and assumes that the Bears had a few lucky games to start the year and now they are terrible. This is why I think its stupid for anyone to do these power rankings each week, although they are somewhat interesting to read. There are very few people out there, if any, that are in tune with all 32 NFL teams.

Yay we jumped all the way to 14th in Peter King's fine 15. Only 3 teams with worse records (Oakland at 5-4, Philly at 5-3 and San Diego at 4-5) are ahead of us. And we even have a team with the same record as ours below us (Tampa Bay). He did also mention that if Hester is receiving and returning like he did yesterday the Bears could be in line for multiple playoff wins. I'm really hoping to see what Simmons says about the Bears this week. I'm not trying to overrate the win because I think its extremely reasonable to still hesitate calling the Bears contenders. Heck I still do. But Simmons began the season calling them a 3 win team, and then started calling them dangerous when we started 3-0, and then called us one of the bottom 5 teams in the league when we lost 3 of 4. Now we've won 2 in a row and are sitting at 6-3. Still one of the worst 5 teams in the league Bill? Or have you gone 180 on the Bears yet again?