UMFan83

I don't think it had anything to do with prep or overconfidence. The defense played inspired most of the game. We didn't make any glaring mistakes on special teams. The WRs were getting open at least some of the time I was focused on them. The entire game comes down to the fact that the Giants D completely manhandled all of our blockers and quickly knocked our QB at of the game by completely ramming them to the ground. If the line blocks like even a slightly below average line would, we probably win that game. But instead we were treated to a historically bad performance. Maybe their D-line came ready to play, maybe that's a part of it. But if you put Peppers, Straham, Ware and Reggie White all in their primes on the same line going against an average O-line and they get less pressure than the Giants got last night. Even the best lineman in the league don't get past their man on every play. And it's nearly impossible for 2+ rushers to get free on 80% of all passing plays. So maybe their Dline had a little to do with it, but it was only combined with a historically bad performance by the Bears o-line. I still can't decide what is more frustrating about this game, the fact that we could have easily won this game with a league average O-line, or the fact that I could easily see us having this type of performance in more games this year.

I'm sorry, I know some of those teams listed had a long run of ineptitude, but any franchise that has won a WS since 1990, I cannot say it's worse to be a fan of them than the Cubs. My GF is a Reds fan (sorta) and she always tells me about how happy her family was when they were in the WS in 1990. I walk through their house and they have framed newspapers from the morning after. I tell her about that one time Aramis hit 2 HRs and we got to within 1 game of the World Series. And then she asks me what happened after. I dunno I might rather have a World Series title followed by 20 years of mostly irrelevance than no World Series title in a 20 year period with sporatic relevance, even if that team was easily more popular during that time span.

Those were 7 awesome wins. All against St. Louis IIRC

Yeah but I don't think he really wants to go anywhere but NE. The last thing about him is that he was content in waiting this out and trying to play the last 6 weeks of the season for whatever reason. I would think we would have heard his name already at this point if he was a possibility.

Did anyone else read that apparently after one of his many sacks last night, Jay started walking towards the wrong sideline?

Also, Adrian directly responded to this article saying the quotes were taken out of context. I forgot exactly how but I read an article about it the other day. Adrian was asked a couple of questions about his thoughts on the Cubs and their young players or whatever and said some complimentary things about the Cubs, and next thing you know it looks like AGonz is ready to bolt to Chicago at his first opportunity.

O/U on number of Olinemen drafted in the first 4 rounds of next years draft by the Bears: 0.5

This season sucked badly, but for some reason I didn't really care most of the season and then when I started watching a little bit in August and September, they played a bit better. I think the season could have been a lot worse.

Oh wait.....penalty on the Packers as well.

Jay Cutler just got sacked.

I actually think this weeks game against MSU is fairly winnable for a few reasons. 1) it's at home, 2) it's a rivalry game, 3) Michigan's players have to have a lot of confidence right now being undefeated so far this year. If it came later in the year after we surely lose a few games, the confidence might not be as high. We just need 1 of our last 7 games to get to a bowl. Please do this.

No offense to our Northwestern posters here, but I see absolutely no reason why NW should be ranked. 2 point win over Vandy, 5 point win over Central Michgan, 1 point win over awful Minnesota. Sure they are undefeated, but they've played no one and won close games over bad teams. They don't look like a team that can win any game against a halfway decent team. I don't like to rip on Northwestern because they are probably my 2nd favorite Big Ten team but it's just weird that they are ranked. For the record I don't think Michigan should be ranked either. They won't be for much longer.

It just infuriates me to think about how bad the O-line is just knowing how many years we've all clearly known it was subpar. I just don't understand the thought process on Angelo almost completely ignoring it the last few years. Normally people complain about something the GM does, and there's usually much more known behind the scenes or something. But in this case, I can't really see a justification for what they did. The TE they signed who I'm not going to attempt to spell correctly has looked horrible from what I've seen this year. Looks like another Orlando Pace. Shaffer? Omiyale? 35+ year old Orlando Pace? These are the acquisitions that are supposed to rebuild an aging O-line. It's like Angelo got lucky picking Reuben Brown and Fred Miller off the scrap heap so he believes this is the best way to build an o-line by limiting resources spent on that position and signing past their prime guys hoping for a final spark, or unhearalded backups from other teams and hoping to strike gold. Hasn't worked very well Angelo, and your stupid o-line is the biggest barrier to having a pretty damn good offense. Instead it's extremely inconsistent. For all the talk of the offense looking good the first 3 weeks, we scored 19, 27, and 20 points in the first 3 games, now 3 this game. That's now an average of 17 points per game. Not good enough, but I tend to think we are just fatally flawed. It's not something where players just need to play better, its a matter of simply having little to no talent at the position.

Bears point differential for the season is now +1

I agree it's fishy, and that was my first thought until I learned about the concussion. I'd imagine that the brain isn't running too quickly when your concussed like that. He shouldnt have been in there. Blah.

CSN broke down the 9 first half sacks to determine who was the blocker that allowed each sack. Manumaleuna - 2 Garza - 1 Olsen - 1 Omiyale - 1 Louis - 1 Shaffer - 1 Kreutz - 1 Cutler running out of bounds - 1

Doesn't make sense for these reasons: 1) By all accounts Cutler is a fierce competitor who wants to win above all else. I doubt he purposely plays bad in a completely winnable game 2) Cutler is smart enough to know that the O-line is not going to get better in season barring a miraculous trade for a quality guy. There's really no point to prove that can be fixed this season. He just has to roll with it I guess. 3) It's very possible that he was concussed earlier in the half and tried to play through it. I'm thinking the concussion was somewhat minor because if it was a decent concussion, he's not staying in the game.

I don't know we'll see. I agree that him going home with the team is a good sign, but as you know the NFL is so much more serious about concussions than they were even 2-3 years ago. There's not a ton of precident to know what the likely result of this one will be.

Well I think giving up 10 sacks is just one of those games. They won't play that bad again. But the line is still probably the worst in football and you just can't gloss over that. But remember the stat NBC showed early in the game. Martz will bring more offense to a team. But his offenses, at least in their first year, always lead the league in sacks due to Martz's play calling. And that was with a good to decent line in St Louis wasn't it? Sacks are something you have to live with, just not 10 of them. Don't forget that the Bears have two of the most unintelligent receivers in the league (Bennett and Hester). I am not sure that they can find the hot reads and exploit them to get the underneath stuff. To me 'one of those days' means we just had a bad game, and it happens occasionally. But based on statistics, the Bears o-line was one of the worst 7-8 in the league coming into today. The o-line is really really bad, it was even worse today. This wasn't just a bad game you have occasionally, it was threatening to break NFL historical records for futility. And the 10 sacks or whatever doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't account for all the plays where the QBs had to throw an awful pass because of immediate pressure. Blah theres really nothing we can do but wait until next week and see if anything is different. At least the Hawks start this week and the Bulls preseason starts, even if half the luster of that is gone due to Boozer's freak injury. Great day in Chicago sports.

Lovie is saying that he's chalking up the o-line play as "one of those games" and will be better next week. I would pick this statement completely apart but I know even he doesn't believe that.

Yup, I expect Lovie's PC to be typical where you cannot tell if the Bears won or lost by listening to it.

Yep. Jay didn't bother to check down the entire first half. It doesn't appear like Martz believes in checking down. I rarely see a check down option and I know SpongeWorthy has pointed this out a few times. It's why his offenses have always taken an incredible amount of sacks, especially away from the super-talented Rams team. Lots of 7 step drops with lots of deep routes that take a long time to develop. He doesn't use the TE's traditionally and if you have to keep your RB in to help protect, there aren't going to be many check downs at all. Once again, a completely perplexing hire for the Bears to make seeing as the only piece that could be a good piece for a Martz offense was Cutler. Everything else suggests an offense that should do everything possible to limit sacks because their offensive line is beyond horrible, a offense that uses the TE and checkdowns a lot because the WRs are inexperienced and again the Oline is bad.

I don't know if he was just saying this or he heard something, but Jim Miller just said he thinks Cutler suffered the concussion on the 1st play of the 2nd quarter.

Can't stay off the field when the offense is going 3 and out almost every drive, you are going to break down eventually.

hopefully he won't have the chance. He's already pissed away 3-4 seasons by not addressing the O-line why start now.