Magnetic Curses

He hit the majors last year in San Diego. Didn't do very well, so I expect he will get more time in AAA and be up somewhere between May 1 and August 1. as TT mentioned, if you're going to bring him up before september, you might as well bring him up for opening day. Yeah, just read that. It makes sense, but you don't want the kid to come up right away and struggle again. If LaHair hits at all this spring, I think Rizzo goes down. yeah, there are definitely other factors at play than just service time. i, personally, would like to see him start on opening day, though.

He hit the majors last year in San Diego. Didn't do very well, so I expect he will get more time in AAA and be up somewhere between May 1 and August 1. as TT mentioned, if you're going to bring him up before september, you might as well bring him up for opening day.

they need to let Jay audible, and they need to let him take the shotgun more often and not just on 3rd down.

maybe tice can call the running plays and the other guy can call the passing plays? that would work great

i think i'm going to be sick. where would the Catholic church be without the Popes? i'm wondering if tice will be handling the day-to-day side while the other guy handles the big picture stuff. If the "passing game coordinator" is some legit up and coming QB coach who can work well with Jay, I'm okay with it. If its' just some Terry Shea clone working on some knockoff version of the Martz system, I'll be completely disappointed. it just seems like a huge step back, but something the bears would do. it's going to be bad, tice will be out by the end of the season, and lovie now very well may be, too. this is the ultimate band-aid. jay isn't going to like it.

i think i'm going to be sick. where would the Catholic church be without the Popes? i'm wondering if tice will be handling the day-to-day side while the other guy handles the big picture stuff.

so they have 2 former NFL head coaches as coordinators, only, neither of them had been coordinators before.

[expletive], mckenzie looks to be off the market. http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7430468/source-oakland-raiders-hire-reggie-mckenzie-green-bay-packers-gm

vincent jackson and earl bennett are a pretty good 1-2. i'd be happy with that.

if you spend "big in one area", i mean, enough to hurt you in another, you're hurting your team. i don't see the bears being able to spend enough to hurt themselves, short of buying a pudding factory for a thousand million dollars.

ugh, you are disagreeable, aren't you? don't say no

At least in a salary cap sport there is merit to it. the bears have a lot of room, though, and even if they're up against it, they're going to make a lot of money. why should we even care how the money is spent if #1. it's not our money, and #2. the contracts they sign players to aren't keeping them from competing. Because it's a salary cap league and spending big in one area means you can't spend as much in another. Cutler and Forte are due big raises, and they are going to have to spend for help somewhere on defense. Chris Williams is going to get more money soon as well. Also, since we know the Bears will spend, but won't spend like Jerry Jones or Snyder, I'd rather not have them waste money. hence #2. they've been known to go up against the cap, i'm just saying that they're so far under the cap that it will be reasonably difficult to actually hurt themselves by overspending, either cap-wise or profit-wise

At least in a salary cap sport there is merit to it. the bears have a lot of room, though, and even if they're up against it, they're going to make a lot of money. why should we even care how the money is spent if #1. it's not our money, and #2. the contracts they sign players to aren't keeping them from competing.

Beautiful. yeah, not bad. i wonder if the ravens will shut us down

yeah, Gaither at LT would instantly be a huge step up from any option we would have at this point. that's not saying much, i understand, but he'd solidify our line. i like spencer at RG and Garza at C. obviously we'd have to look for a long-term solution for the center position in the draft, but for the time being, i think the line would look pretty good.

Why? lovie is a perfectly good coach that the current players already respect a great deal. chances are slim we'd find somebody as good or better. this idea of getting rid of him just to get rid of him is dumb. That idea is dumb, but getting rid of Lovie wouldn't be for no reason. It would be to open up more possibilities for GMs who want to be able to shape the team in their own image. It's also true that the team isn't in chaos. We could win next year, actually. If we do, then it becomes pretty difficult to not extend Lovie. Potential GMs can forsee that possibility. It's not like the GM would be coming in with a true option to fire Lovie after a short while. This person needs to mesh with Lovie potentially for the long term, depending on what happens. That's an extra qualification many won't meet. lovie also seems to be very well-liked throughout the league and came from a coaching tree that is almost universally respected as well. i don't think the GM is going to have much trouble with lovie, who is a defensive coach. the new GM will be able to bring in an OC that he hand-picks, and what GM wouldn't love to come in and be able to establish a new offensive system with a zombie-fighter franchise QB and the ability to rebuild an aging but accomplished and competent defense on the fly?

Then you're doing something wrong. yeah, we hired bruce instead of thad when we had the chance.

Why? lovie is a perfectly good coach that the current players already respect a great deal. chances are slim we'd find somebody as good or better. this idea of getting rid of him just to get rid of him is dumb.

It was, but god it was ugly. Well, they're a great defensive team and a bad offensive team. Ugly is what you get when you put those two together. with the type of offensive talent they have it's strange that they'd be so bad offensively......hmmmmm

Yes please. pass

why put off jay learning a new offense another year? and why replace smith when he wasn't the problem? lovie has been a good coach, he's been a level head and he's well-respected among all of his players. i'm betting that the bears' brass knew that they may have a full-scale mutiny on their hands if they got rid of lovie, the 4 leaders of this defense are sworn to him. i don't believe that lovie is on his last legs with this franchise and i wouldn't be surprised to see him extended before they hire a new coordinator, as a token of good faith for both he and the incoming OC. like i said, if they want to get a GM that's comfortable with smith, they'll most likely hire mckenzie. mckenzie and smith will work together, find a new OC from outside the organization and start fresh. we CAN start fresh with our old coach, as i said, the defense isn't the problem, it works. let's focus on getting the offense in shape with a new, fresh system that cutler can drive right away. The Cover 2 works because they have Urlacher covering a large amount of the middle of the field. We saw what happened without him. Even with Urlacher, good QBs (like Rogers, Brees, Manning) pick the cover 2 apart unless they can get a pass rush using only the 4 linemen. they did fine without him. actually, the linebackers looked pretty good in 2009. they definitely weren't the problem. and the cover-2 is really the only defense that works against rodgers, it limits big plays and the bears have been successful running it against him in the past.

I would be surprised. He's signed for 2 more years at very big money. I don't see them giving him another year right now just to convince some other guy who will make a fraction of his salary to sign with them. He's got 2 years and the explicit backing of ownership. There's no need for such an expensive gesture, which would by no means be just a token. i was thinking he had only one more year to go.

the illinois basketball operating expenses are actually a half million dollars more than ohio state's, and that counts "football revenue poured" into the basketball program. the illinois and ohio state basketball programs are, money-wise, very similar.

they were down, kevin o'neill was running that program, which miller just almost left for perennial basketball power.....maryland.

i bet he would. there aren't going to be any openings at any top programs anytime soon and xavier is not a destination job. illinois is a big ten program that gets plenty of publicity, regularly gets top 100 recruits of the 4-star variety, and is getting a renovation job on the assembly hall. furthermore, mike thomas is from cincinnati and i'm sure knows mack well. the last 2 coaches left for illinois-type programs, also. as far as the alumni thing, i don't see that as that big of a factor when we're talking xavier. it didn't stop lickliter (butler being a very comparable school to xavier) from going to iowa, and iowa ain't illinois. illinois is still seen as a very good job, no matter how much iowa folks would like to deny it. OSU and Arizona are not Illinois type programs. If you believe that, you're living in la la land. when they hired them they most certainly were.