Brad Biggs reports today that Robbie Gould may not be happy playing the lame duck season of his four-year contract but he's AT Halas Hall and participating in the off-season program. Good chance to reward a good guy here, Jerry, and pay the best kicker this team has had since Kevin Butler. As good as this defense can be in 2008, the special teams is what keeps us in every ballgame. That's three guys: Hester, Maynard and Gould.
For any football fan, the news that Hard Knocks is returning to HBO with the Dallas Cowboys is good stuff. You need characters to make that show work and America's Team does not lack for characters.
Do you still like this song? I do.
Roger Clemens popped a country singer and Ronaldo solicited a couple Brazilian prostitutes who happened to have penises. Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley with Divine Brown - who looked like Joe Louis in a wig. Tom Brady impregnated one model and (since that adds pounds) found himself another model. Brian Urlacher had a wife and a couple kids but decided to jump on Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley's sloppy second and make him a third baby. I can just hear Pissed Off questioning his monitor, "What in God's name is he getting at?"
What did Cedric Benson do? He had beer on a boat. What did Brian Urlacher do? He had sex without a condom. Full disclosure, kids. If the Sun-Times and Tribune ran a column about me every time I filled one of those two columns, the paper would cost $5.25 a day and weigh eight pounds.
So no more - at least not here. I won't write about players' personal lives. I won't link to major articles about players' personal lives. I don't care anymore. If you guys want to discuss things in the comments section, go right ahead. But this site will not longer be party(boat) to the "conservative" mainstream media's desire to villainize rich athletes for enjoying themselves. After all, won't Brian Urlacher's out-of-wedlock child live a hundred times better life than a majority of other children.
Craig Steltz earning a starting job beside Mike Brown. Fair game. Craig Steltz getting a tug job from while Mike Brown films? Don't care. Okay, maybe I care. But I'm not writing about it.
More Breaking News: Adam Archuleta stinks. The Bears are preparing a fax to make the release official. A fax? Really? Who the hell still has a fax machine? Answer: we do.
Sometimes dudes just have a bad week. Cedric Benson just had a bad week. As a matter of fact, Cedric Benson hasn't had a good week since we traded Thomas Jones to the New York Jets for two seats on the State Island Ferry.
There are two parts to the story. First Matt Forte became the darling of the Chicago Bears rookie camp by showcasing his tremendous speed and ball-catching ability, metaphorically pepper spraying Benson's role in the starting lineup. Benson sensed his job was in jeopardy and did what any committed athlete would do: rented a boat and got liquored up. Then Benson got actually pepper sprayed by Texas police. Steve Rosenbloom said it best, calling it "a move that seems a little over the top. Police apparently didn't know that the quickest way to get Benson to the ground is simply first contact."
So the Cedric Benson who cried after being drafted fourth...the Cedric Benson who has the heart of the cowardly lion at the beginning of the movie...the Cedric Benson who runs into the line of scrimmage like he's protecting himself from a swarm of bees...is finally through in Chicago. Whether they release him or not, it doesn't matter. Chicago Bears fans can excuse a lot of things in the name of desire to win football games. Just ask Tank Johnson. But Cedric doesn't even have that. He's done. Adios. Bye bye.
For it turns out that Benson wasn't only two numbers below Walter Payton's 34. He was also missing two other important commodities: his nuts.
John Clayton. Mark Schlereth. Todd McShay. Peter King. Each one has taken the opportunity over the past few days to question the Chicago Bears organizational decision not to take a quarterback over the seven rounds of this draft. Nobody - and I do mean NOBODY - preaches more consistently than I do the necessity of a great signal caller to win multiple championships in the NFL. No team not coached by Joe Gibbs or Bill Parcells has even BEEN to two Super Bowls in five years without a Hall-of-Fame QB (though you can argue that if Simms stays healthy in '90, he goes to the Hall).
But everyone join me in a collective chorus of....RELAX. Matt Ryan played a brilliant fourth quarter against Virginia Tech and disappeared down the stretch. Joe Flacco is an immobile quarterback who played at Delaware. Chad Henne couldn't stay on the field at Michigan. Brian Brohm lost Bobby Petrino and subsequently fell two rounds in the draft. None of these players in going to make an impact in 2008 and most likely not in 2009 either.
Here's what I'll say about Rex Grossman: he's started a total of 32 games. That's two full seasons in five years. That's a full season (plus a game) less than Eli Manning. And in that period of time, he has looked infinitely better than Manning ever did (and worse as well). For those Favre lovers out there, here's a fact. In Favre's second full season he throw 19 touchdowns and 24 interceptions and there was serious debate as to whether he'd ever start again.
SIDE NOTE: The revisionist historian Schlereth likes to say the Bears won in 2006 despite Rex Grossman and its just not true. They don't beat Seattle without his beautiful overtime toss over the middle and he was fantastic against the Saints. He had a bad Super Bowl - not a bad postseason.
I come here not to praise Grossman but to bury the notion that somehow the Chicago Bears would be a better football team if they were to take a quarterback last weekend. I'm frankly thrilled my ballclub has adopted the approach of "win now or fuck it." This isn't a build-for-the-future league anymore because the minute your young players get any good they ask for the entirety of your salary cap. This is a fill-your-holes-and-take-a-shot league and the Bears have done that.
Now we take a shot. And if we come up short in 2008, it won't be because we didn't draft Chad Henne. I say give Mr. Grossman a third season, it worked out just fine for the New York Giants.