Soul

I don't think they're the prohibitive favorite, but they've got an easy schedule the rest of the way: @Denver (against a QB making his first NFL start) @Arizona SF SD @TB I think they go 4-1 with that schedule and win their division going away. Dallas has three fairly tough games (@NYG this weekend - don't underestimate the difficulty of a big divisional game; vs NO, @Atl) and two cupcakes (vs Philly, vs Detroit). NO should beat SF and Washington at home, but has to play @Dallas, @NYG and vs Carolina. So, it's certainly possible that Seattle could get the bye and only have to play one game at most on the road. Hmmm...I don't view that schedule as being easy. I think Seattle will lose to Denver and SD. On the other hand, I feel Dallas has a good shot at winning out. I don't see any way Seattle goes to Dallas or Chicago and wins. But hey---I've been wrong before.

The stupidest network in the land, ESPN (although they may have them behind Dallas, since apparently Tony Romo is a god... hmm he's started 5 games so far... Grossman had 5 games for the Bears before things started to have issue... maybe we should keep his bust away from the Hall for a little longer?) Romo does have a pretty easy schedule in front of him as far as defenses he will face. There aren't any Patriots or even Phins-quality D's to face, so I guess the Romo praise is likely to continue. I actually think the Boys are good ballclub though. Seattle is much more marginal in my book. That defense leaks like a sieve, they have the worst TE in the league, the right side of their OLine is junk.....I could go on.

Who is saying the Seahawks are favorites? We absolutely destroyed them even with Hasselbeck. They'd be coming to Soldier Field. They barely staved off the Pack--Packers were winning that game well into the 3rd quarter. No way that ballclub beats either Dallas or Chicago.

Murt - Soriano - Manny Is this Jim's master plan? Or could it be Manny - Lugo - Soriano (Murt off the bench)? Wowow.

He'll definitely get more run support. It's the Cards. They'll manage to get solid performances out of him. Only Ankiel can claim to be immune from that magic St. Louis pixie dust.

You know, this is starting to concern me: I hope he doesn't have some kind of hidden physical problem, but that just doesn't sound good. I hope the Bears are on top of that, because there really is no reason for Harris to be playing this poorly, despite the double-teams. He has the speed and jump off the ball to split most double teams, as he was able to earlier in the year. It's definitely a good article. Where the hell has Ogun been? That guy has been invisible pretty much the whole year other than solid run coverage.

Actually his QB rating is worse than Delhomme and Pennington, and he has more turnovers than Mr. No Mistake. And Eli's backup is Jared Lorenzen, who I don't think has ever played an NFL down. If you think people haven't been killing Roethlisberger this year, you haven't been paying attention. The only reason people aren't talking about him now is because the Steelers have rendered themselves irrelevent. The Bears are a playoff team. Anyway, I think the reason people are criticizing Rex Grossman is because he's had three games in which he has totally killed the Bears. Pennington has had a couple of lousy games, and Delhomme hasn't been great, but their lows haven't been as low as Grossman (ratings of 10, 23 and 37 in the three worst games). Like it or not, he's younger and hasn't proven what either of those guys have proven. I think what everybody notices is that if come playoff time, Grossman lays an egg like the ones he's laid against Arizona, Miami and New England, the Bears are done. Even Rex said it himself - he can't be AS bad when he's not on. The guys i mentioned are pretty much in the same boat as Rex is when it comes to QB ratings. Rex needs to get better and eliminate the lousy games, i wont agrue that. I hate QB controversies and this one is toatlly unnecessary. Well today i at least heard media talking about Eli and what to do with him. Maybe the Pillsbury Throw Boy will subplant Eli. What also i dont like is all this talk about last year. Last year the Bears barely frickn won almost every game and people are talking like it was glory days last year and we should try that again on offense. It's silly. Grossman has been better this year than Eli. Eli's only saving grace this season has been the ability to just toss it up to his 6'6" bail out man and pray he makes him look good. Once Plaxico starts to suck, magically Eli starts to suck too. Funny how that works. Rex is working with what I still consider to be no better than a middle-of-the-road WR corps, probably a bit below average. He can't get away with the prayers, they usually come back with three letters stamped on them: I.N.T. His TE is not as good as Shockey, either (though I think Shockey is a tad overrated). Also, the pass blocking of this offensive line hasn't impressed me. I don't care if teams are blitzing. Teams blitz everywhere in the NFL. There's way too much pressure coming up the middle and into Rex's face. There's going to be criticism, I understand that. But to hear guys like Doug Buffone calling for Griese like he did last night is disappointing. Doug should know better than that. We know what Griese is, and it's not a Super Bowl champion: he's a guy who has played 9 years and never once in the playoffs. He's also had a nasty INT problem himself through his career.

ALL WHILE WEARING A HEADBAND :D So that's why Curry stunk as a Bull. Anyone surprised he hasn't had any heart problems since? No, not suprised at all. The guy went to many doctors, and all but one said there's no problem. The other doc said it's very unlikely there's a problem, but you might want to get a genetic test to be sure. The Bulls seized on that instead of going with the preponderance of the other opinions. Still -- I like having those 2 first round picks. Glad it was the Knicks on the other end of the deal when the Bulls dumped Curry.

Most interesting thing you can take from this situation: ESPN doesn't do a real good job of checking its facts before putting out their reports.

See my above post about agents floating info. You'd be surprised at how many national (and some local) reporters run stuff without ever calling the club for confirmation. don't the clubs pretty much not provide information anyway? I am pretty sure we can all recall GMs denying reports and then they turn out to be true. This rumor doesn't matter to me because I don't think that contract will get Schmidt signed anyway. Really? $15mil/yr is a lot of money.

yep yep. would be nice if we could acquire some serviceable players at decent prices and then just get good performances from them. But no. It's the Cubs, so we must pay through the nose for premium players and hope they just lift us to the playoffs on their own.

Not one chance in hell it's us. You can flog me later if I'm wrong. If I am, then Hendry is even more desperate for pitching than even I thought.

Jason Marquis is the really puzzling one. He's always been way too hittable for a sinkerball pitcher, and last year he was a train wreck. Plus, the Cards, who are an intelligent and well-run organization, apparently have no interest in him. That should tell the Cubs (a stupid, poorly-run organization) something. My experience with watching the Cards, when they decide to give up on a player the rest of the league should run screaming. How is that JD Drew guy doing? The exception that proves the rule. And from an attitude standpoint, the Cards were vindicated on Drew. There's a reason he keeps bouncing around.

Jason Marquis is the really puzzling one. He's always been way too hittable for a sinkerball pitcher, and last year he was a train wreck. Plus, the Cards, who are an intelligent and well-run organization, apparently have no interest in him. That should tell the Cubs (a stupid, poorly-run organization) something. My experience with watching the Cards, when they decide to give up on a player the rest of the league should run screaming.

Source: http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/features/rumors Hendry will bid 4/60 soon. Would rather have written off 2007 and given our stable of 4A pitchers a chance to earn a rotation spot, then evaluate and address needs in the offseason. Sadly that ship has sailed(sigh). Was there even a ship to begin with? Outside of Hill, our current crop of youngsters ain't too pretty. I'm thinking some of them will improve, but do you really think any of them until Veal and Gallagher would improve THAT much? I don't know, but it would have been nice to find out. Not having humongous bubble-year contracts on the books for the next half decade would have been cool too. Hopefully you weren't one of the people saying "please I don't care what you have to do, just win a World Series" during last season. Look the fans want to win now, and that is what the management is trying to do. I know its completely short sighted and we'll regret it, but within reason, I'll worry about the future in the future. In terms of our 'crops' of pitchers, I saw enough of that last year. Yeah, really Marshall is the guy who impressed me most, and only marginally. I don't think guys like Marmol and Mateo can be counted on for much. Gooz either. It's a stable of very shaky back-of-the rotation guys, and if we roll the dice on 'em again in '07 it's quite likely to come up snake eyes.

That's basically adding one year to the deal on the table. I'd probably still do it with some kind of option / incentives. One would think if the Dodgers or Mariners were prepared to pay this much to Schmidt, then they would have made such an offer long ago. This looks very much like the 2 teams Schmidt wants to go to aren't really all that hot on paying him the level of cash he wants. That opens the door for the Cubs, even the Yanks and probably a few others.

I should eat crow on him. He's steped it up. yes he has. I love the way he and Chris Harris hit. makes me think of the Plank years I'm not going to eat crow on Johnson just yet. He lays some big wood on pass plays, but his run support is still spotty. Harris came in and showed his superior run-stuffing skills almost immediately.

His numbers will probably improve coming to the NL. His cost to aquire is a lot more palatable than paying Gil Meche or Greg Maddux. Yea, coming to the NL will help, but you never know - I don't think that's a variable you can count on to come true. Secondly, I would actually rather pay/overpay to acquire Meche. In the playoffs, Westbrook's stuff wont win you a game, neither will Maddux' - at least with Meche you have a chance. I don't see how Meche would give us any more of a chance than Marmol, Mateo, or Marshall. He's no better than any of those three are now. I think too many people put too much stock into him because of that nice little early season fluke-of-a-winning streak he had a couple of years ago. Have you seen Meche pitch or read numerous scouting reports on him? From what I understand (and from seeing him pitch a couple times) he has very good stuff. I think the poster was saying Meche has the potential to pitch great on any given day, while he believes Maddux and Westbrooke only have the potential to be average or a little above average. Hey, nothing wrong with going after Meche if that's what Hendry wants to do. What I see in Westbrook is a 200+ inning guy in the back of the rotation....say the 4 slot. I think he would be very valuable in that role. The back of our rotation has been so spotty, with guys being plugged in and out on a regular basis. Westbrook would apparently be a stabalizing force.

2 great catches earns you $50 million in baseball. I knew I went into the wrong line of work. Just knew it.

This team is going to be in a bind 5 years from now anyway. Schmidt or no Schmidt. Just because of Soriano and ARam (and hopefully Zambrano)? I doubt it. But regardless, I don't want to guarantee than Schmidt will be on this team when he's 39 years old. His pitching arm might not even be attached by then. True. I like the 3/44 rumors much better than those pesky 5/70 ones.

Come on, pull it off Jimbo. Even with declining skills, Schmitty is exactly the kind of gritty vet we need in this rotation.

If that happens then the level of complaining is going to ratchet up several notches. Lose to Minny @ home and it's going to start getting nasty, despite the 9-3 record. Hope it doesn't happen, but you know 'Any Given Sunday.'

and most importantly eliminated from the NFC North Hopefully you guys can beat Minnesota on Sunday. I haven't given up hope yet on a wild card spot yet...if we win out, we should still get in and we have a legit chance to win all 5 remaining games. And yes, I think we can beat the Bears, but only because they should and probably will be playing practice squad players for 45 minutes in that game. Depends if the Bears can actually take care of business on the games up to that final weekend. BTW, when I watch Favre now, it's becoming obvious he's lost a lot of zip on his passes. That arm is finally beginning to show its age. I was actually rooting for the Pack last night, because I consider Seattle more of a threat to the Bears for HFA. Unfortunately, that defense in GB is just terrible. Way too lightweight for a ballclub like Seattle.

What a stupid rule. If I was out there sweating like that, I would want to wear a headband too. I don't think it comes solely from Skiles though----sounds like Paxson likes this rule too. Man if something stupid like this fractures this ballclub, I'm going to start throwing furniture. :evil:

Minnesota is the #14 passing offense at 211.6 yards per game. They have the #15 rushing offense at 112.5 yards per game. Big key: Minny has 18 fumbles this year, tied for 3rd in the league. They also have 11 INTs, somewhere in the middle of the pack.