Three final thoughts heading into tonight’s game:

• Martellus Bennett not playing tonight would be a huge blow to the Bears. Packers had no answer for Bennett during their first meeting and to expect his level of production from Rosario or Annen would be misguided. If only the Bears had two big, talented wide receivers to cover that production…
• Someone needs a great game in the pass rush. Anyone, really.
• Barring this game getting away from the Bears early, I’d be shocked if they run the ball less than 25-30 times with Forte and Carey. Packers are the worst run defense in the sport and Cutler is most dynamic in the play action attack. Defense can’t let Rodgers score on every possession if this is to be their approach.

Bear down.

In for the Reverend, our old friend FQD1911 (or Doug)…

Here’s the story on this one.

One of my work colleagues and I made a bet on who would win the NFC North last year. Obviously, this came down to the last game of the season. I 100% thought this was in the bag FOR SURE when it happened.

Cutler turnover here, Brandon Marshall dropped pass there and Randall Cobb burning Chris Conte for the season-crippling (and ending) touchdown.

For the record this is the first time in my twenty-eight years on earth to ever have a Packer jersey touch my skin.

If someone were to challenge my fanhood, I would go nuclear on them.

NOTE: Have a picture or story you want to share on DBB? Send it to Jeff@DaBearsBlog.com and we’ll share it on the RevZone Channel one of these Saturdays.

Can the Bears hit Aaron Rodgers enough times to make him not want to finish the football game?

Greg Blache was the first person in professional football I heard publicly state sacks were an overrated statistic. He was no longer Bears defensive coordinator a few months later.

Sacks are important. They are more important than pressures and hurries. They are more important than the newest ludicrous stat: disruptions. (According to Adam Hoge’s disruption chart Lamarr Houston was having a Hall of Fame year.) The reasons sacks are important should be obvious to anyone who has ever watched an NFL game. (1) It involves hitting the opposing team’s quarterback and potentially knocking him from the game. Nobody roots for injuries in the league but knocking the opposing QB out of the game has been a goal of defensive coordinators since defensive coordination began. (2) When you sack the quarterback, he is holding the football and thus there is a chance he will drop it and you might pick it up.

I’ve never heard of someone hurrying an opposing QB out of a game. Nobody has ever disrupted a fumble.The Bears need only to look at their win at Lambeau a year ago to understand why they must hit Aaron Rodgers Sunday night. (And I’m talking about hitting him in the black-and-white highlights on an old Zenith, John Facenda symphonic narration kind of way.)

Rodgers is a rhythm passer who will dissect any defense without hitting the ground repeatedly. The Bears need to make Rodgers aware that every attempt more than five yards down field comes with a bruise. If they can’t achieve this with their front four, they must manufacture the pressure. Can they do it? Will they try to do it?

Read More …

November 6, 2014

Chicago Bears
Halas Hall
1920 Football Drive
Lake Forest, Illinois 60045

Dear Bears,

Each week since late 2005 this internet space has predicted the Chicago Bears will win their upcoming football game. It has done so by prefacing each column with the simple question, “Why do I like the Chicago Bears this week?” The answer has become a sort of rallying cry for those who frequent this site: I always like the Chicago Bears.

I am writing to you today because I have a confession to make. I apologize for the impersonal platform email provides this painful and stirring admission but your ignoring of my texts and phone calls has left me with no other recourse.

I should stop stalling. My admission is this. As I sit in front of my computer preparing this letter I must acknowledge that right now, at this moment, I do not like you.

Read More …

PHIL EMERY DID WHAT?

Bruce Arians is a cool guy, a terrific hat wearer and his personality would have been a perfect match for the city of Chicago. (Look at how “beer and a shot Maddon” was universally beloved by Chicago media Monday.) To assume, however, that his not being hired by Phil Emery was some kind of administrative debacle is second-guessing of the worst kind. Yes, Arians won Coach of the Year. But he won that award less because of his work and more because his head coach that season was sidelined due to intense cancer treatments and he was put in charge of Andrew Luck. You know who else is going to win a lot of games as a head coach of Andrew Luck? Every single head coach with the luxury of having Andrew Luck as his quarterback.

Bruce Arians would not be any guarantee to make Cutler and this offense better. And his defensive coordinator of choice, Todd Bowles, would be no more successful with this absence of defensive talent.

Less his final decision, Emery’s approach to hiring the head coach has come under scrutiny recently and seems to have been something of a masterclass in weirdness. Think that’s too harsh? Let’s look at the two major elements revealed in various reports:

• Arians was asked to do a mock press conference less than a month removed from doing multiple press conferences almost every single week of the 2012 season. I can understand a general manager wanting to evaluate the media savvy of a potential big market head coach but it wouldn’t take longer than nineteen seconds with Arians to understand he’d be just fine.
• Arians is quoted as stating it was “awkward” being told he’d need to keep certain assistant coaches (including Rod Marinelli, who didn’t stay) and said in no uncertain terms it was not going to happen. Why would Emery insist on a head coach keeping a defensive coordinator who had yet to commit to the organization for the following season? Maybe before telling Bruce that Rod would be his defensive coordinator he should have asked Rod? The whole thing is, just, weird.

Also, was Marc Trestman so desperate to be an NFL head coach he would have accepted any terms? Does a man so desperate for his shot have it in his system to take over the leadership of a locker room?

Read More …

Preparing a rather lengthy Audibles. In the meantime here’s a radio spot I did with Trent Condon at the tail end of last week and never posted.

“I think every team at some point faces a little bit of adversity in the season, and the measure of that team is how they react to that adversity,” [George] McCaskey said. “We’ll see what these guys are made of. We have every confidence in Phil and Marc and the players to pull us out of this.”

-From a Michael C. Wright piece for ESPN

Ponder this question when someone asks if you believe the Bears would consider firing Marc Trestman at the end of the 2014 season. What is the worse crime: changing the offensive system on quarterback Jay Cutler for the 212th time during his tenure in Chicago or potentially wasting another season of one of the NFL’s best collections of offensive talent?

Because that question exists, because it can be asked, the next seven days are the most important seven days of Marc Trestman’s professional coaching career.

Read More …

Normally we don’t talk draft around here until the month before the event itself but I’m growing weary of debating players with fans who don’t watch any of the actual football games played by the prospects. On the call, our pal Scott Wright breaks down possibilities for the Bears at safety, corner, edge rusher, linebacker, right tackle and kick return/scat back. He absolutely adores Landon Collins of Alabama (and he should). Other than Collins, a few names I think make sense at various points in the draft:

• Duke Johnson, Miami as a dynamic playmaker
• Derron Smith, Fresno State as the second safety on the board
• T.J. Clemmings, Pittsburgh at offensive tackle

Hopefully you can use this podcast with Scott as something of a guide for watching the college games over the rest of this season.

The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.

This coaching staff, through eight games, has not been good. Here are the questions that should be asked when issuing a grade:

(1) Are they getting the most out of their offensive talent?

Absolutely not.

(2) Are they getting the most out of their defensive talent?

No, their deployment of linebackers has been misguided. There’s nothing they can do with the secondary.

Read More …

The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.

Special teams must be taken element for element…

• Robbie Gould has been steady.
• Pat O’Donnell has shown flashes of being a superior punter. He’s a rookie so growing pains are expected and he needs to develop his short-punting game. But that leg, especially late in the year at Soldier Field, will be a weapon for this organization.
• Mistakes have been rampant and mistakes, like it or not, get pinned on the coaching staff. In the case of the Bears, mistakes are far more the product of a constantly, in-flux bottom of the roster. No play summarized the error-prone ways of these Joe D units more than the brilliant P.O.D. punt covered about three seconds too early and subsequently returned for a touchdown in Carolina. It was a flash of brilliance, a terrible mistake and ultimately a lack of attention to detail causing the club six points.
• At some point is the coaching staff going to convince the kick returners to stop taking the ball out of the end zone? I would hazard a guess this season’s collection of useless kick return men have cost the Bears upwards of a 100 yards of field position.
• Santonio Holmes’ greatest contribution to the season has been not fumbling punts.
• Strangely enough the Bears kickoff return against average is top ten in the league. Their punt return against average is bottom ten.

Grade: C