UMFan83

When they didn't resign Thome I thought it was explained that they didn't want to have a full time DH and would rather have a rotating DH so that guys could take a break from the field occasionally. And now they take on.....a full time DH!

PS what happened to the Dodgerblues forum? I cant find it on the site anymore

It seems a little strange that Ramirez was let go by the Dodgers for nothing. Was he that much of a malcontent that they couldnt live with him on the team for 2 more months? I know the Dodgers are trying to shed salary because of their owners issues, so I guess it saves them $5 million. I'm just surprised they couldn't coax a PTBNL out of the Sox. I bet the White Sox claimed him, and then knowing the Dodgers money woes said they would only take him on a straight claim, and the Dodgers had no choice but to let him go or lose $5 mil for a non playoff team to have Ramirez for 2 months.

It's the same thing as last year. Our offense looks amazing but our defense looks suspect, although quite a few guys haven't played in the preseason. The team was very laid-back in their approach when the real season started and we weren't real crisp on offense. They've vowed to change that this year and use the same approach that we did in the second half of the season last year, but we'll see. Overconfidence is a major issue with a young team and I really hope we learned from our disappointing first half last season. Nobody is confident about our defense. I think everyone is fearing the types of games that we had against Pittsburgh and Arizona last year, especially if Harris is PUP-bound. I'm pretty optimistic that they'll be better against the pass this season than we were at the end of last season, but that's not saying a whole lot. Opening day will tell us a lot about where we stand defensively against the Eagles attack. Wasn't the Packers defense much improved last year? Until the Cardinals got a hold of them. Stupid pixie dust. Oh wait wrong Cardinals.

The difference is that team scored on defense and special teams. The Jets don't give up yardage, but they aren't a great giveaway/takeaway team either and don't threaten to score at any point in the game like those Bears teams did. Fair point, but the Jets are starting off on a higher ground considering they scored 88 more points last year, without that scoring defense and special teams, than the 2005 Bears did. Who knows if the Jets defense is going to be as good as last years though...

Sanchez was terrible last year, and he showed nothing in the way of hopes for improvement. He's also been crap this preseason. I understand them being in the picture for contention, what I don't understand is the level of expectations for this team. Their over/under for win total is just 9.5, but people talk about them like a 12-14 win team in the making. Yeah I don't think they are a 13 win team or anything like that, but going 11-5 wouldn't shock me. The Bears managed 11-5 with a worse offense than that and elite defense is 2005. The NFL is so impossible to predict anyways. The Jets, like you pointed out, were barely a playoff team last year and had to have multiple things go their way the last 2 weeks of the season just to get in. That said, their pythag record was something like 11.4-4.6. Pythag records in football are of course very dubious based on the sample size, but where there is a 2.5 game discrepency between actual and predicted, it does raise eyebrows. As far as Sanchez, he was very awful at times last year, but he was also pretty decent as well. The mark of a rookie QB. He was solid when the Jets had him "manage the game" and I think when they started letting him open it up, he immediately got into big trouble. But I would expect some improvement there this year, and if at worst he is a respectable game manager that's probably all the Jets really need. I'm talking way too much about a team I generally dislike so I'm gonna stop.

I think Minnesota could stumble a bit. I don't understand what everybody sees in the Jets. They were 9-7 last year, and lucky to get that 9th win. They squeeked through in the playoffs thanks to some missed field goals and then got bounced. Their best defensive player is sitting out, they have a starting LB who is going to miss time. And their QB is a mess. They were the #1 defense, but it's tough to win consistently with defense. They could win their overrated division, but they don't look like world beaters to me. Top 5 overall defense, top 5 offensive line, good RB corps, rookie QB that is likely to improve over last year, decently deep set of WRs (although no truly elite guys - S. Holmes, Edwards, Cotchery, Coles). NFL is way too unpredictable to say the are for sure going to contend. But the team has a lot of talent and pretty good depth. I can certainly understand why they are a popular SB pick, even though my expectations for them fall a bit short of that.

Yes its possible. And its also the last 4 games of the season, so it's possible that 1 or more of those teams are going to play with everything locked up, and will be resting key people.

Unfortunately the first 4-5 games are arguably the toughest part of the Bears schedule. The last quarter looks impossibly difficult: home New England, at Minnesota, home NY Jets, at Green Bay. Yup...our schedule is insanely hard this year.

BTW, I just noticed this on ESPN.com To the moment.... Colvin .259/.318/.511/.829 Soriano .259/.317/.511/.828

PS Castro is a doubles machine!

Their soon to be 8-4 record against us says otherwise. I bet we lose the other 2 games this series.

It doesn't really mean all that much. The Cowboys struggled but they went to the 2nd round of the playoffs last year with almost the exact same cast. They can get away with struggling. I understand your point though that struggling doesn't mean that come week 1 we're going to suck. Winning and losing doesn't matter in a game where the playbooks are fairly vanilla compared to what will be run in week 1. So you can't really measure the performance in terms of results. You can however, notice how things like the pass rush looks or the run blocking. It's still not completely accurate because you need to factor in things like intensity, which sometimes you just can't duplicate until the curtains go up. You can try but if you had a guaranteed starting position, and are comfortable with the offense, its hard to give 100% out there when your main goal is not getting hurt. I remember a similar complaint about preseason performance in 2006 when the first team offense hadn't scored a TD the first 3 preseason games. Coming off such a mediocre offensive performance in 2005, many people were thinking 'more of the same". Instead the offense came out and scored 34+ points in 5 of our first 9 games of the season.

He's due $18.5 next year, the final year of his deal. My biggest question would be where to put him. Could he conceivably play first? If not, there's really nowhere to put him since we have Colvin, Byrd, Soriano and Kosuke all in the outfield and Brett Jackson potentially ready to come up sometime in the second half of next year. Trade Kosuke and make Colvin the 4th OF/backup 1B so he gets 400 ABs if management really thinks he's a legit future player. I have no idea how good/bad Beltran's defensive metrics have been as he's aged and went through injuries, but if he's been a liability you can still move him to right with Byrd staying at center. Of course, I really want to see him finish this year with much better than a 634 OPS if we're going to pay him 18.5 million to play baseball for us.

When (if) the O-line fails again this year, will this be the offseason where Angelo (if it's him) finally decides to make it the number 1 priority in the offseason ?

LSD is a hell of a drug. Awesome

Especially when the team is 20 games under .500 in mid-August.

That show is over, but yeah.

My biggest issue is was pass protection. I don't know how the O-line looked ok when Cutler was sacked 4 more times, another time the pressure forced a fumble, and Cutler threw 2 INTs which I'd have to watch again but would think at least some of that was getting rid of the ball under pressure. The Bears can move the ball...they did last year a lot. But with no pass protection and a QB like Cutler that tends to throw a couple of dumbfounding passes per game, way too many possessions end in an INT, lost fumble or a couple of sacks making it a long 3rd down conversion. I don't think the Bears running game and WRs are good enough to overcome multiple turnovers per game by the QB. It's just really frustrating because the Bears have tried everything, signing potentially undervalued FA Olinemen, hiring one of the better oline coaches in the game, etc to improve the line. But the one thing they haven't done was commit the offseason to building the O-line which to me is the most important thing to have. Instead they decided to go with what they had in house which was awful last year, and move them around to their more natural positions and hoped that this and Tice were gonna make the Bears O-line average...I say average because I don't even think Angelo was dumb enough to think that what he built was good enough to build an above average O-line. Oh and he put even more pressure on this O-line when he hired Martz who relies on 5 step drops and perfect timing to make his offense work. You can't do that with an offensive line that is going to leave the QB scrambling multiple times per drive.

I saw that Antonio Bryant was cut by the Bengals today and for a half second I thought that maybe we could pick him up and it would be a good pickup. Then I realized that receivers are probably the 5th or 6th biggest problem on this team. I don't think adding a receiver the caliber of Bryant would make the offense all that much better.

Its a very creative outside the box idea. But it seems like that is the kind of move a middle or small market team does in order to strike gold with their limited resources. Color me unimpressed if we ended up with him instead of a Dunn or AGonz. Not saying it would turn out badly but there is a bunch of risk too of course.

Jay Cutler interception count: 2 I've been saying all preseason that I don't take much out of the preseason. Although the playbook is still way too vanilla, if there is a game I take anything at all from its the 3rd preseason game. And we've looked downright awful this game. Lovie has to be geting nervous for his job.

Lou Canillis is right with 2 out of our 3 starting LBs out again, it's looking like last year in this game. I hope Briggs' injury isn't bad.

And now a missed FG. It can't get much worse.

Man our special teams has been absolutely atrocious this preseason. Gave up long returns in the first game, 2 botched snaps on an XP and FG in the 2nd game, blocked FGA in the third game.