UMFan83

I think I remember him picking the Braves and the Yankees in the pre-season. I can't remember for sure though, let's see if he responds and tells us.

Phillies over Reds in 4 (Crazier things have happened, but I cannot envision a scenario where the Reds win this series. I'm being generous giving them a game, meaning I am assuming they can beat one of Halladay, Hamels, or Oswalt) Giants over Braves in 4 (Don't really have much input in this series. The Braves could probably win but I like the Giants hitter better and the Braves struggled the last couple of months) Rangers over Rays in 5 (more or less a pick of hope. The Rangers have had a pathetic history. This is the 4th ever playoff series they've been in, they've never been to an ALCS and they've only won 1 playoff game ever. I also think that they have played the Yankees in every playoff series they've had so it is nice to see them playing someone else, although they almost drew the Yanks again.) Yankees over Twins in 3 (Just a gut feeling. I really like the Twins team, I just don't like the matchup with NY and I feel the Yanks are gonna step it up come playoff time. The Twins can be competitive in this series and it wouldn't shock me) Phillies over Giants in 4 (Just can't see the Giants hitters keeping up against the Phillies bats. Phils will be able to score enough off the Giants to make this an easy series) Yankees over Rangers in 6 (yeah a repeat of last years WS. If the Rangers can get this far that means they are playing well enough to compete in this series but the Yankees will be in control all series. I see it being a series where the Yankees go up 3-1, the Rangers take game 5 and then the Yanks finish them off in Texas). Phillies over Yankees (revenge. The series should be closer than last year. I actually don't mind seeing this matchup again. They are clearly the 2 most talented teams in baseball and it would be a good matchup) Really looking forward to these playoffs. Good to see some teams that never make the playoffs get in (Reds and Rangers), a couple of moderate to low payroll teams (Rays, Twins), 2 teams that haven't been there for at least a few years (Giants, Braves), and the mainstays (Yankees, Phillies).

They were saying those things last year too at this point in the year. Also weird the timing of his comparison. I could have told you that at the time of the trade Kyle Orton was a really solid qb. His numbers in 2008 pre ankle injury were pretty solid. The difference between him and Cutler is that Cutler is a statistically more accurate passer and gives you a definite added dimension. But it comes with added risk. Put orton and cutler in a vacuum and cutler has better numbers.

In what might the last relevant update of this thread, the aforementioned Blackhawks Stanley cup box set is released tomorrow. Gonna be broke after buying this and NBA 2k11 tomorrow.

He certainly could be. But why would he casually mention that he fell with a closed fist? Did he have a doctor tell him that the only way he could break that bone was with a closed fist, so he figured he had to mention that so his lie matched up with the injury? I guess its possible. In the end it doesn't really matter how he got hurt. I don't care if he's lying as it doesn't benefit my life one bit to know the truth.

Yep...it was in David Haugh's column this morning. He's the only one that apparently noticed though. Others are saying that his teammates on the sideline noticed he wasn't acting like himself in the second quarter. They thought something was up. I'm just criticising to criticise at this point, but if teammates noticed him acting strange on the sidelines, he walked to the wrong sideline for a play, and on several plays he was for some reason unable to get the ball out of his hands while staring at an open target, why did it take until halftime to put 2+2 together and get him out of the game? Not that having Collins in earlier would have done anything but still.

670 in Chicago was saying that from the research they did, almost all injuries of the fifth metacarpal occur due to punching something. Well wouldn't falling to the floor and bracing yourself with a closed fist constitute the same motion as punching something. Boozer himself said that if he had managed to hit the ground with his hand open instead of in a fist he probably wouldn't be in this situation right now. So most likely for whatever reason he tried brace his fall with a closed fist and broke it. He must have had something in his hand that made him not want to open his hand to land with an open palm, because I'm pretty sure the natural reaction is to open up your hand to brace the fall.

I know Bears game threads are jersey's birthright, but I've only seen one post of his since before yesterday's game started, so guess I'm gonna take the reigns since Week 5 news is already leaking into last week's thread. So since yesterday's game was about as depressing as the entire 2010 Cubs season, let's stick to positives. -The Bears are 3-1 and got there by beating a couple of preseason Super Bowl candidates -Cutler is alive and there are very early signs that he will play next week -Carolina really sucks and Steve Smith is looking like he's going to be out so Peanut won't have nightmares all week. -The schedule is a lot easier for the next several weeks -The offensive line can't get worse, and it was so bad yesterday theres no way Martz comes in with a "lots of 5-7 step drops" gameplan to start this week's game. -The defense has looked inconsistently great so far (made up term I know). -At game time it will be mid-October and the Bears will be in 1st place. So let's get off the mat, dust ourselves off and get some revenge for 2005 against the hapless kittens (sorry Andy).

Or maybe Cutler didn't have a concussion at all and he was just pouting in the locker room!!! /wilson

Ronnie Brewer won't play tomorrow either because of a hamstring issue. Wouldn't normally be a worry except a hammy injury is something that bothered him all year last year and caused him to miss significant time. Keith Bogans will start in his place.

Yeah it was partially a joke. I mean I could see the Bears deciding what Philly did...if Cutler is out and no one is going to be able to stay upright with our o-line lets bring in Vick/Juice. The issue is that Juice does not have the arm accuracy to be successful in the NFL IMO. He's fast, but how many "fast" college QBs can be a successful run/pass threat in the NFL? Hell even Vick is like 75/25 Pass/run these days.

THE JUICE IS ALMOST LOOSE!!! TBH, I'd rather start Todd Collins again than Juice.

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.