UMFan83

I bet Chad invited Jay out to dinner, but Olsen went because Olsen goes everywhere Jay goes. That said, I do not like teams fraternizing with other teams, especially a day or two before a game between the two.

Despite the 3 of the first round series being sweeps and the other 4 games, and the NLCS only being 5 games, these have been a pretty fun playoffs with a lot to talk about. A lot of close, back and forth games.

Just taking my weekly stroll through the "expert predictions". I figured that the "experts" would be slightly in favor of the Bears, but that doesn't seem to be the case. CBSsports.com's Prisco (23-14), and Harmon Forecast (20-19) pick the Bengals, as well as the Super Bowl predictor Peter King (24-23) who thinks the game is still at noon. ESPN's "experts" are mixed as to who wins, as 4 pick the Bengals, and 4 the Bears, with Accuscore taking the Bears and the fans picking the Bengals. As far as CBSsports.com's ATS picks, 4 pick the Bears (taking 1.5 points) and 2 take the Bengals and the points. Whatifsports.com's computers picks the Bengals over the Bears 20-18, with their 10,000 simulations favoring the Bengals 54.1% of the time. All 3 of Yahoo.com's "experts" pick the Bengals, but their fans actually pick the Bears (52-48). Finally we come to Foxsports.com's expert Peter Schrager. He is the only person to pick the Bears and put a score to it. He says the Bears will win 24-20. So if you put them all together, 14 "experts" pick the Bengals, while 11 pick the Bears. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing. But it's personally fun to look at them each week to gauge our respect around the web. My personal pick....I want to pick a somewhat easy Bears win, but the thought of Ced Benson being focused on revenge makes me thinking it will be a bit closer than it normally wood. Plus every Bengals game this year, save maybe last weeks, has been really close so I'll take the Bears 27, Bengals 21. At least I hope that's the case. I'm driving down to Cincinnati tomorrow and going to the game Sunday with my girlfriend (Bengals fan) and her entire family of Bengals fans. Could be a crappy drive back home if they lose.

The division's gotten worse since an 83 win team won it? Or maybe that was the exception to the rule not the 3 years following it.

No dude it was Eckstein and pixie dust Edit: or maybe the division's quality has gotten worse over the last 4 years.

The third straight year a team sweeps the NL Central champion out of the first round and then gets destroyed in the NLCS. Shows something about our NL Central maybe.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/chi-22-bears-chicago-oct22,0,554457.story Booooooooooooooooo

Most if not all of the ones posted on here aren't "published" by Sporcle for widespread exposure. The published ones are considered their best of the best or appeal to the widest spread audience. This is why I think something called Cubs Opening Day Lineups 90-09 wouldn't be published. On the top right hand corner of the home page, you can search from published and unpublished quizzes to play, which is how I found all of these.

If he played for the Royals maybe.

Yeah, on an appeal. And of course he didn't leave early. This umping is pathetic....then again the inning continued because of a botched call so why not?

Peter King tweeted that the Bears could be active today in trade talks. The trade deadline is in 25 minutes.. I bet most likely nothing happens but its at least interesting to follow...

What would it do? You can already surf the board on Safari. It would be pretty cool to listen to podcasts through the site though.

I don't believe so. The White Sox went 11-1 in 2005, though. The 1976 Reds went undefeated back when only 7 wins were needed to win it all (7-0) The 1999 Yankees also went 11-1 in the playoffs

Wow Abreu. Leads off the 8th with at least a double, maybe a triple in a tie game. Stops dead in his tracks between 2nd and 3rd and gets thrown out trying to go back to 2nd. Wow

I swear I never wanted a non-Cub player to hit a HR as much as I wanted to see Vlad go yard there. He's been struggling all year, all postseason for the most part. They talked about moving him down in the lineup or out of it altogether. Angels down 3-1 with a runner on and 2 outs in the 6th, down 2-0 in the series. I sat there hoping through the entire at bat that Vlad would knock one out, and he did...awesome moment.

He's not smart. Seriously. He probably thought he needed to get out of bounds to save time. Even Forrest Gump could figure out "catch the ball and run to the end zone"

I thought so too, but one of their replays on the broadcast as from the Falcons endzone, allowing you to see all the way upfield. When they showed that angle, I specifically looked for players up field and only saw the ones in the above pictures.

I'm obviously obsessed with this play, but since I saw it again replayed, I decided to take a picture of it and post it online. I just can't believe any media organization has even question whether Hester could have scored on this play. I must be missing something obvious I guess. Also, I have seen other angles of this play. The 3 Falcons that are closest to Hester are the only Falcons near him or past him on the field. If the picture was in motion, the Falcon to his left was actually running faster then him (if you could zoom up a few frames, you will see he almost gets equal to Hester, albeit at a bad angle to tackle him). The player to his right is running slower than him (Hester catches up to him with relatively the same distance between them a few frames after this). The player behind him is running slightly slower than Hester and is not an issue. Finally the player on the far right....the only potential doubt I have. He might end up with the angle to catch him, but even if so, it would be 30-40 yards farther down the field than where they are at right now. That's the best case scenario for him...the worst case is Hester proves he's the fastest man on the field and races for a game tying TD. http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/7729/photoowk.jpg Edit: Since I keep talking about what's happening a few frames after, I took a picture as Hester is making his ill-advised cut. I couldn't get one just before but the defenders haven't had time to adjust yet so it's a good look at the progress he's made since the first photo http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/9585/photo2lx.jpg Also, I just saw a replay of the 4th down play at the end and Cutler had Forte open in the flats which would have likely have gotten him a first down. Unfortunately, he didn't make his move until about 1/2 second before Cutler tried to force that pass to Clark.

Troll!

It's not a horrible idea, but I don't think we have the receivers to do it. Some of NOs receivers are big and can go up and get the ball. We cannot.

Incomplete list of things that, if executed properly, would have at least gotten us into OT: -Interception in the red zone -Unable to produce any points in 6 straight plays inside the 12 yard line -Lost fumble at the 1 yard line -Lance Briggs tries to grab a fumble and run it in, instead of just falling on it at Atlanta's 20 yard line and instead whiffs and the Bears don't get the ball -20 yards of penalties on the final set of 4 downs in the game. Instead of first and 10 from the 14, its essentially 1st and 30 from the 44 -Devin Hester cuts towards the sidelines instead of running up the middle of the field, taking away a likely touchdown -Cutler overthrows Hester who is wide open and, if caught is at least going to give the Bears the ball inside the 10 -Cutler has a pass tipped on a slant to Olsen inside the 15, which likely would have been a TD Just think about how many points the Bears left on the field....and we ended up losing by a TD. Kick a FG in one of those red zone possessions, and have Hester take it to the house on the final drive and the Bears win in regulation. Surely a game of missed opportunities.

Kreutz is going nowhere. He should. How old is he now? How long is his contract? How much longer do we have to put up with him? Like Raisin said, he's not going anywhere. He is the undisputed leader of the Bears offense and he is extremely respected by the players and the organization. I'm not saying if he keeps playing bad he could be cut, but it's not likely unless he has a few awful seasons in a row.

no, that's not even a little bit true They can compete with any team in the NFC in any game. that's sort of besides the point. putting up a fair fight is nice for moral victories or whatever, but the Bears really don't have "elite talent". who's even got a shot at the pro bowl, besides Briggs? they aren't outclassing teams and beating themselves like people are suggesting, the reality is they just have an inconsistent QB and merely a decent supporting cast. he's got to force the issue to compensate for the guys around him. Elite teams win the games they are supposed to. They don't say "well if we did this" or "we did some good things but we didn't do them with consistency". Every team in the NFL or at least the upper 2/3 of the league do things well at least from time to time, but the best teams do them with consistency and execute when they need to. The Bears did some good things tonight, but didn't execute when they needed to, and it's now the second loss that you can say that. This isn't baseball where you can say "oh well we'll do it right next time", there are 16 football games in a season, and you don't execute like the Bears did today when they needed to and its the difference between winning the division, or making the playoffs altogether.

I just saw the replay of the Hester catch on that last drive...he was gone. He's the quickest guy on the field and the closest 2 defenders to him were even with Hester when he made the cut.

I've seen him on the field for maybe 10 minutes of total game time this year and basically have loved his play. It blows he can't stay healthy. Agreed. And if he's done for the year, he's done as a Bear so we'll never know how much he could have helped us.