When was the last time we entered a Chicago Bears game with the primary area of focus being… guard? (Answer: Never.) But that will absolutely be the case Sunday on the Lakefront as first-round selection Gabe Carimi makes his first ever NFL start at right guard.

When this season began, all media and fan eyes were fixated on the left tackle, on the JWebb Nation, on the predictable failure to protect the blind side of the franchise quarterback. Webb has not been good but he has – outside of prime time road disasters in Green Bay and San Francisco – been serviceable on the edge. It was not the 7th round pick from West Texas A&M forced to the bench. It was the 1st round pick from Wisconsin.

Carimi’s collapse at right tackle has been the offensive line’s most compelling and important development. He was expected to be successful. He was expected to allow offensive coordinator Mike Tice to use his slide protections and chips to aid the left side. And while he looked physical and angry in the run game, he struggled with footwork and technique in pass protection. Often he seemed embarrassingly nonathletic when matched against faster and stronger defensive ends. (My theory is the NFL has yet to adapt to the talent gap between pass rushers and pass blockers at the collegiate level.) Even against the Jacksonville Jaguars in a rout, Carimi had a holding penalty, two false starts and a sack allowed. So to the bench he went and journeyman tackle Jonathan Scott stepped into the position successfully against the Minnesota Vikings.

Jared Allen. Launch. Lance Louis. Done.

Now Gabe Carimi will start at right guard Sunday against the ferocious front of the Seattle Seahawks – one of the top defenses in all of the NFL. And as all eyes are fixed on him, Carimi will have an opportunity to salvage his once promising career in Chicago. If he can string together half a dozen solid games at guard, the Bears may have found a solid guard to pair with a healthy Lance Louis in 2013.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Yes one would think the guard position should allow Carimi to accentuate the positives in his game and hide the negatives but a player as physically and emotionally fragile as he is can’t be trusted. And switching from tackle to guard is not as easy as sliding your feet to the left a few times. It is an entirely different position – the equivalent of switching from wide receiver to tight end. Can Carimi pull it off? It’s an impossible question to answer.

Sunday is about Carimi. And I know there will be one pair of eyes in Section 108 that rarely leaves his attention.

The game plan to beat the Seahawks feels exactly, almost EXACTLY the same the Bears implemented against the Vikings. Shut down their big running back. Shut down their pass rush. Win. The Bears did the former in 2011, silencing Marshawn Lynch. They did a poor job on the latter and Caleb Hanie vomit to the bedpan by throwing what felt like a half dozen pick sixes. This was THE Caleb Hanie game of 2011. He wrecked it like gangsters were holding his family hostage.

But he’s gone now. So I should calm down.

WHY DO I LIKE THE CHICAGO BEARS THIS WEEK?

• I always like the Chicago Bears.
• I will be sitting directly behind the Seahawks bench, taunting them until half their active 45-man roster has been driven to tears and their inactives have gone scurrying for the tunnel. (I’m looking at you, JR Sweezy.)
• I like the history. When Jay Cutler plays all four quarters and the Bears are favored to win, the Bears are undefeated through the last two seasons.

MARSHAWN LYNCH: TACKLE, TACKLE, TACKLE

Yes, when Lynch is tired on the bench, he eats Skittles for energy:

But that’s on the bench. On the field Marshawn Lynch is one of the difficult running backs to tackle in the league. It won’t take gap discipline or clever scheming from LoveRod to shut Lynch down. It will take old school toughness. It will take tackling from all three levels of the defense.

SEATTLE, HOME AND AWAY

At home the Seahawks are 5-0 with a +54 point differential. They average 24.6 points a game in those contests. They have one of the distinct and powerful home field advantages in all of professional sports.

On the road this season the Seahawks are 1-5 wit5h a -20 point differential. They average 16 points a game in those contests. They are simply a different side away from home.

Here are some more telling splits about these boys:

• Russell Wilson’s QB rating is 126.1 at home. It is 75.5 on the road.
• Their terrific front seven has 17 sacks at home (most against Green Bay) and 12 on the road.
• They average 152.6 yards rushing at home. They average 126.2 on the road.
• The most telling statistic? Russell Wilson has 8 interceptions on the season. All of them are on the road.

MORE ANALYSIS? OH, IF YOU’RE GONNA BEG…

• The Adderall Twins – Sherman & Browner – are good, physical corners and Sherman has become one of the five or six best corners in the sport. Many complain the Bears don’t have an offensive identity but they absolutely do. Jay Cutler throws the ball to Brandon Marshall. A lot. Let’s see if the Seahawks can take it away.
• We spent a week talking about Jared Allen and the Vikings pass rush but the Seahawks pass rush is deeper and more dynamic. Two guys should scare you: Chris Clemons (pictured above) and Bruce Irvin. Clemons dominated the Bears last fall for two sacks and a ton of pressure while Irvin has validated Pete Carroll’s selecting him 15th overall in April by recording seven sacks through his first eleven games.
• I would not expect the Bears to have a great day running the ball against a staunch defensive front, especially if Michael Bush is the primary back. Mike Tice should not be dejected by 15-20 carries, 60-75 yards and a few key short-yardage first down gains. Keeping the Seahawks front honest is Tice’s primary goal Sunday.
• It’ll be interesting to see what Armando Allen can do with non-garbage time carries.

THRIVE/SURVIVE: The Internet’s #1 New Feature

• Thrive: With Russell Wilson struggling mightily on the road and throwing an interception basically every road game, look for Major Wright to come up with a errant toss into the Soldier Field wind. The man finds the ball.
• Survive: I’ll say it. Where has Brian Urlacher gone the last few weeks? Sure he’s made a play here or a play there  but the Bears seem to be using Lance Briggs far more in coverage over the middle and Nick Roach was the best linebacker on the field Sunday. Urlacher will need to wrap up Sunday against one of the most difficult players to wrap up in the league. We need this kid:

PREDICTION

I don’t think this Seahawks team, and most specifically this Seahawks defense, is a group you can blow out without their offense putting them in difficult situations. The ‘Hawks defense plays big boy football and the Bears need to match their desperate intensity or suffer an upset on the Lakefront. I think the quarterback who plays better Sunday wins and I think Cutler will make one or two big plays down the stretch.

Chicago Bears 20, Seattle Seahawks 13

Note: To read yesterday’s late-posted Audibles From the Long Snapper (including an administrative announcement regarding our move from ChicagoNow) CLICK HERE.

I decided late Sunday night to write a column about Jay Cutler, the entertainment. My intention was describe the experience of Cutler playing the QB position. Win or lose, interception or touchdown, shove or shoe tie, Jay Cutler is quite simply the most entertaining football around and I believe we all should enjoy this era.

Then I read Tom Ley’s column on Cutler for Deadspin and, you know what, he nailed it. fter I was emailed or Tweeted the piece by the thirtieth person I figured it was time to share it here. To go to Deadspin and read the piece (which includes video) CLICK HERE. Below is the entirety of the piece’s text.

On Sunday, during ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown, Tom Jackson went on a mini tirade about Bears quarterback Jay Cutler that was as needless as it was brainless. Here was a grown man dispatched into sputtering agitation by a 10-second clip of another guy walking into a stadium. We’ve been down this roadmany, manytimes beforewith Cutler, whose (alleged) petulance and (apparent) aloofness have a way of encouraging the worst impulses of analysts like Jackson.

The shame of it is that in so many other ways Cutler is a pundit’s kind of quarterback, the sort of flinty-eyed leader whose manly virtues make Peter King’s socks roll up and down all Sunday afternoon. Consider his performance in the Bears’ 28-10 victory over the Vikings, which came just two weeks after Cutler sustained a concussion while absorbing a face-crushing tackle against the Texans. I picked out three plays from Sunday that, had they come from any other quarterback, would’ve been shown on a loop on ESPN while Chris Berman sang hosannas and Tom Jackson plucked at his harp.

First, there was the throw Cutler made on the Bears’ third drive of the game. He took a second-down snap from the 15-yard line, didn’t see any of his receivers open, and then threw ball anyway, right between two Vikings defenders and into the hands of Kellen Davis, who was brought down at the goal line. Davis was barely moving when Cutler threw the ball, and was not open in any sense of the word. It was a balls-out rocket of a throw by a quarterback operating inside the red zone, and it set up his team for an easy touchdown.

Then came Cutler’s lone touchdown pass of the day, a play that once again was the direct result of his ability to find a sliver of space in which to throw the ball. Rolling to his left, aware that Jared Allen was bearing down on him from the strong side, Cutler turned his shoulders toward the end zone, fired another perfectly located bullet toward the sideline that only a blanketed Matt Spaeth could get his hands on, and accepted yet another crushing hit from Allen.

Just as noteworthy, although far less consequential to the final score, was Cutler’s five-yard scramble toward the end of the first quarter. Once again running to his left, Cutler hugged the sideline as Vikings cornerback A.J. Jefferson sized him up for a big hit. Rather than skip out of bounds and avoid contact, though, Cutler laid a wicked stiff arm on Jefferson, driving him into the turf as the two barreled out of bounds. Still standing, Cutler then flipped the ball into Jefferson’s chest, earning himself an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

Am I cherrypicking? Sure, but no more than anyone plumbing the depths of a man’s soul based on 10 seconds of video shot in a parking garage. I can think of only a handful of quarterbacks in the NFL capable of the two throws described above. Quarterbacks have been called “gunslingers” for less. And that stiff arm was the kind of play that a pundit might otherwise readily attribute to a football tough guy who’s willing to “hit you in the mouth.”

Cutler does stuff like this all the time, and yet we are stuck having to listen to arguments about whether or not he “gets it” (oh he gets it all right), about whether or not he “knows how to be a leader”—this in a league that reckons Ryan Lindley a viable starting quarterback. Cris Carter felt comfortable referring to Cutler as a mere game manager in this bit of postgame analysis. Managing the game? Fuck that. Cutler returned to a Bears team that had been blown out the previous week and turned it into a football team worth watching. He was the game.

I agree.

Lance Louis to IR, Gabe Carimi to Right Guard?

Lance Louis was the Bears best offensive lineman in 2012 and he’s the second major player lost by the team to a dirty hit this year. The Bears will miss his toughness and they will certainly miss taking the majority of their run game off his right hip.

But now the table is set for Gabe Carimi. What we have heard about Carimi is exactly what the tape has shown through eleven games. He’s got fight in him. He’s an excellent run blocker who seems to thrive finishing plays. But he lacks the footwork and technique required to handle the type of athletes currently coming off the edge in the modern NFL. At right guard, Carimi will not have to worry about such issues. His job will be simple: line up and beat the man in front of you. Yes he lacks the experience at the position of Edwin Williams and Chris Spencer but this should be his job.

Quotes Jay Cutler:

“Maybe we’re on to something. Maybe he’s a guard. I don’t know,” Cutler said Monday on “The Jay Cutler Show” on ESPN 1000. “I know he’s a guy who took the demotion really personally. He was hurt by it. He wants to be in there. He cares about his performance. He’s hungry. Maybe him coming in at guard is going to be a blessing in disguise for him.”

If Carimi thrives in his new role, he could prove to be a stabilizing force on the team’s most maligned unit. I would imagine the look of that unit Sunday will be Webb – Williams – Garza – Carimi – Scott.

Final Five: Schedules for Bears & Packers

The race to win the NFC North is going to go right down to the wire after Sunday so the Bears retake control. Here is who Chicago and Green Bay meet down the stretch:

Bears: home Seattle, at Minnesota, home Green Bay, at Arizona, at Detroit

Packers: home Minnesota, home Detroit, at Chicago, home Tennessee, at Minnesota

How will it play out? Who knows. But I feel quite confident saying the Bears will win the NFC North by beating the Packers at home on December 16th. That’s the division right there. With a win there the Bears can afford to drop another game along the way and feel no worse for the wear. It will be decided at Soldier Field.

A side note to the 2012 season is quickly becoming the relevance of the Vikings down the stretch. The Bears should be rooting for Minnesota to stay relevant so they NEED that Week 17 encounter to possibly make the tournament.

Sherman, Brown Will Play at Soldier Field Sunday

The NFL says Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner used Adderall and the NFL also contests Adderall somehow makes you better at football. (It doesn’t.)

With Seahawks starting cornerbacks Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner facing four-game suspensions for allegedly testing positive for Adderall, the suspensions won’t take effect until the appeals have been resolved.

Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the NFL wants to resolve the appeals quickly.

The league wants to conduct the hearings next week.  The players are resisting, not in order to delay the punishment but because the challenge to the suspensions will arise from irregularities in the collection process.  In order to properly prepare for the hearings, the players and the NFLPA will need to consult with experts, and possibly retain one or more of them to testify.

Don’t know about Adderall?

Sherman and Browner may miss four games to suspension but they’ll be playing Sunday.

Administrative Note

DaBearsBlog will be leaving ChicagoNow on March 1st 2013 instead of the previously mentioned January 1st. We’re doing this partly to not bail out on our partner of four years in the middle of a playoff campaign and partly to ensure the newly-built DBB can handle all it needs to upon our immediate launch.

It was a Sunday that played out perfectly. The Bears rather easily dismissed Minnesota at Soldier Field and the Green Bay Packers were manhandled by the New York Giants at Snoopy in the Swamp. While it doesn’t mean much in November, the Bears are back in first place.

Thoughts on yesterday:

• I’d give Gabe Carimi a game ball. He loses his starting job midweek and responds by playing excellently in limited work early and ultimately playing half the game at guard. Ultimately I think Carimi is going to find a natural home as a tough, run-blocking guard and if Lance Louis is seriously injured that time may be sooner than later.
• Nice games, Jonathan Scott and J’Marcus Webb. I am going to look at the tape later today to see how much help these guys got throughout.
• Brandon Marshall is having a spectacular season but he sure does like to drop beautifully thrown touchdown passes, doesn’t he?
• Great job by Fox showing us the replay of Julius Peppers essentially cross-checking rookie tackle Matt Kalil to allow Shea McClellin a free route at Christian Ponder.
• Henry Melton is going to make a lot of money.
• Injuries are injuries. The team must deal with them. I’d guess Tillman and Briggs will be fine. It sure didn’t look great for Forte and Louis. I’m not sure Devin Hester couldn’t use a week or two off.
• If you didn’t know why Jay Cutler is terrific and the Bears can’t win without him, you saw on the Bears first touchdown drive of the game. Cutler completed two magnificent passes – one to Earl Bennett and another to Kellen Davis – that Jason Campbell would not have ATTEMPTED. The Bears continue to win games when #6 plays four quarters under center.
• The defensive play of this game belonged to Chris Conte. 10-3 Bears. Early second quarter. Third and six at the Bears 12 and Christian Ponder floats a perfect jump ball to Kyle Rudolph in the end zone. Conte, who was lost in no man’s land, sprints over the knocks the ball from Rudolph’s hands. That forced a field goal. That field goal was blocked. 14 plays and 79 yards later the game was essentially over.
• Dave Toub is a great coach but he’s also one of the funniest. Fake extra point?
• By the way, I have done the requisite statistical research and Adam Podlesh did in fact score the first two Jewish points in the NFL this season with his two-point sprint.
• And he punted well too.
• Eric Weems has a bit of Cortland Finnegan in him, doesn’t he? He’s the proper amount of energy and instigation.
• I think Mike Tice had perhaps his best guess as an offensive coordinator, despite the injuries up and down the offensive roster. There was a rhythm to his play calling and he continued running the ball despite a low production level outside of short yardage scenarios.
• If Devin Hester not on the field means Earl Bennett catches more passes then by all means keep Devin Hester off the field.
• Don’t look now but that was Nick Roach executing the Peanut Punch to perfection on Adrian Peterson.
• Remarkable throw and catch on the Cutler to Matt Spaeth touchdown.

We’ll leave it there. Terrific performance and a terrific rebound off Monday night. Bears now face almost the exact same opponent at Soldier Field next weekend – terrific front seven and run game. If they win that one they will solidify their playoff position.

Final thoughts:

• The first offensive drive is the most important offensive drive of the season. If the Bears collapse in protection and allow Cutler to be driven to the ground a time or two we could be staring down the barrel of a long final six weeks.
• If Jared Allen gets hot early he’ll stay hot. The Bears can win if Allen sacks Cutler three times but it’ll be considerably easier if he doesn’t.
• The run defense has come under some scrutiny due to a bit of statistical mismanagement by the Sun-Times’ Sean Jensen (and subsequently PFT). The Bears were run over by the San Francisco 49ers but they played solidly outside one drive against the Texans and dominated Chris Johnson until they took out ALL their starters in Nashville (with a thirty point lead). It is very easy to write “the Bears run defense is struggling” when Adrian Peterson is next on the schedule because AP usually gets his. One thing is certain: when AP is in the backfield, run defense is all that matters.
• It’ll be interesting to monitor the crowd today. Bears fans are an irrational lot and I could see them treating a 7-3 teams like a 3-7 team if things don’t start the way they’d like.
• Lost in the awfulness of San Francisco was Adam Podlesh having his best night punting all year. (I’m going to do pop culture here, which I rarely do, but I’m making an exception for material I believe has reached classic status.) To paraphrase the great Lou Brown of Major League, “You punted well today, Adam. If you punt well again tomorrow that’s called a winning streak.”

Bear down.

Picks Contest

Only four weeks remain in the blog picks contest – a raging success in its inaugural year. Home team in CAPS.

CHICAGO vs. Minnesota is off the board. Jay Cutler won’t be cleared till Saturday and, really, who has the time?

Pittsburgh -1.5 CLEVELAND

CINCINNATI -8 Oakland

INDIANAPOLIS -3 Buffalo

Denver -10.5 KANSAS CITY

Tennessee -4 JACKSONVILLE

Atlanta -1 TAMPA BAY

Seattle -2.5 MIAMI

NEW ORLEANS pk San Francisco

SAN DIEGO pk Baltimore

ARIZONA -2.5 St. Louis

NEW YORK GIANTS -3 Green Bay

My pick: Denver beats Kansas City 40-6 in a half empty stadium.

_________________________________

Updated Standings w/ Thanksgiving Bonuses. (Remember these are winning records only.)

I Bleed Navy + Orange 10-1

Viva 9-2

Crown 9-2

MikeV in Or 6-1

OsosFan 5-1

BobbyDouglass 4-1

ben in norcal 8-2

Enderwiggin 8-2

evantonio 8-2

Bearfanincb 7-2

MonkeyNuts 7-2

Artoo 8-3

Bears-4-Ever 7-3

Blogfader 7-3

jmcyclone 6-2

TheFifth 6-3

BearDown85 6-4

Reprisal 6-4

4EverBears85 (aka Butch Deadlift) 6-4

505Bears!!! 4-3

SirWiz 4-3

As always, tell me if I’m wrong by emailing jeff@dabearsblog.com

Simple game to evaluate.

WHY DO I LIKE THE CHICAGO BEARS THIS WEEK?

• I always like the Chicago Bears.
• I think Jay Cutler is coming back.
• I think the Bears defense is angry they looked so awful Monday night.
• I think Percy Harvin will be limited due to a nagging ankle injury. Harvin is an excellent player but once he starts to be hobbled by injury it usually don’t stop.
• The Chicago Bears have to beat two players Sunday at Soldier Field. Let’s talk about each.

THE BEARS ON OFFENSE: STOPPING JARED ALLEN

Jared Allen is arguably the best pass rushing 4-3 defensive end in the sport. He can wreck a football game. And while he’s entering Soldier Field with only seven sacks on the year one can logically assume he expects to exit with 10 or 11 in the stat column. That’s what a premiere pass rusher sees when they look at tape of the two gentlemen playing offensive tackle for the Chicago Bears. (And the backups aren’t exactly intimidating.) He sees a padded sheet. He sees glory.

The Allen Challenge does not belong to J’Marcus Webb. Webb isn’t in Allen’s class and he’s not going to be anytime ever. The Allen Challenge belongs to Mike Tice. How will Tice prevent a wrecked game? There are a dozen options. He can chip Allen with backs. He can bring Evan Rodriguez and Matt Spaeth to Allen’s side consistently. He can take James Brown or Gabe Carimi or whomever is not starting at right tackle and park him next to Webb, sticking with a “big” package for the entire afternoon.

If Tice can’t find the right scheme or package of players to slow Allen down Sunday then he’s simply unfit to lead this offense and should be dismissed as the primary play caller before the Bears and Seahawks kick off on December 2nd. The Bears have to simplify everything Sunday. Run it. Throw short. Block. Kick field goals. Win.

THE BEARS ON DEFENSE: STOPPING ADRIAN PETERSON

The Vikings don’t have a complicated run scheme. They hand off to one of the greatest running backs to ever live, Adrian Peterson, and he runs the ball exceptionally hard. This season he’s doing so after a miraculous comeback from tearing his knee apart at the end of the 2011 season.

Here’s what he’s done thus far:

The Bears were physically manhandled by the Niners Monday night. (Watch Frank Gore light up Lance Briggs again if you don’t believe me.) If they allow themselves to punished at the point of attack again Peterson will unload on them for 200+ and a couple touchdowns. If they allow Peterson to run wild it will allow Christian Ponder operate a manageable, play action offense and avoid big errors. It all comes down to holding Peterson to the 12 carries for 30-something yards he had a year ago at Soldier Field.

PREDICTION

A year ago the Bears went to Detroit on a Monday and were embarrassed in front of a national audience. Six days later they hosted the Minnesota Vikings and Jay Cutler threw them out of the building, winning 39-10. Now they’re hosting the Vikings again, six days after another Monday Night Football disaster. Will the result be the same?

Chicago Bears 24, Minnesota Vikings 10

A Note of Thanks.

Thanks to you all for making this another incredible year on DBB and I look forward to all of you following us as we head rogue (again) in 2012. We’re working daily to build something you will all love.

The Standings

I am only including those who currently have a winning record. Anyone with a losing or .500 record needs a miracle to win the contest. If you have a losing record, keep making picks and I’ll continue tracking them.

Viva 9-1

Crown 9-2

I Bleed Navy + Orange 9-2

MikeV in Or 6-1

OsosFan 5-1

BobbyDouglass 4-1

Bearfanincb 7-2

MonkeyNuts 7-2

Artoo 8-3

evantonio 7-3

Bears-4-Ever 7-3

Enderwiggin 7-3

Blogfader 7-3

ben in norcal 7-3

jmcyclone 6-2

TheFifth 6-3

BearDown85 6-4

505Bears!!! 4-3

SirWiz 4-3

Note: As always just send me an email to jeff@dabearsblog.com and let me know if there’s an error in your current status. I’ll correct it in short order if you’re right.

The Thanksgiving Bonus

This will be your best opportunity all season to get some bonuses and erase some negative weeks. The task is simple. Pick all three games against the spread. If you get two out of three correct, you’ll be awarded one bonus week. If you get all three correct you’ll be awarded two bonus weeks. You can go from having 2 losses to undefeated in one day.

The lines. Home team in CAPS.

Houston -3 DETROIT

My pick: I watched every snap of Detroit versus the Packers and Matt Stafford is playing football at a terrible level right now. Does Houston suffer the sniffles on the short week? Nope. Texans.

DALLAS -3 Washington

My pick: I don’t trust Dallas to beat anyone at any time anymore. I’ll take the Redskins.

New England -7 NEW YORK JETS

My pick: Everyone in the Jets organization has been ripped publicly for the last two weeks and rightly so. They are a dysfunctional, unlikable lot who’ve turned on each other in an almost glorious fashion. But one thing Rex Ryan has done well in New York is play Tom Brady and the Patriots. I think that continues. I’m taking Jets and the points.

If you’re going to pick all three games, those picks must be in by kickoff of the opener. You may pick the latter games only. Those picks must be in by kickoff of the second game.