Several months of nothing.  Not a significant word spoken about the NFL in any sports media circle that did not involve the tedium of labor negotiations.  Now we have arrived.  Finally.  To the first week of the NFL season.  The Bears have an opponent.  And they’re good.

• On the offense, the Bears need to block the edges.  John Abraham has resurrected his career in Atlanta and the Falcons wisely went out this offseason and added Ray Edwards at a hefty price tag.  I don’t think Edwards is an elite rusher but he doesn’t have to be when teams are so focused on stopping Abraham.
• If you block those edge guys, there are plays to be made all over the field.  The Falcons are not overly impressive at linebacker and their corner combo of Dunta Robinson and Brent Grimes is talented but often take too many chances on the ball.  If the Bears use three and four-receiver sets, they should have a lot of success quick tossing into the slot.
• The Falcons have a rookie punter and Matt Bryant kicking field goals.  I don’t trust either.
• The Falcons have Eric Weems returning kicks.  I don’t fear him.
• The Falcons offense?  I fear.
• By the end of the year, hell maybe sooner, we’re going to be talking about Roddy White and Julio Jones as the best pair of WRs in the league.  Both of these guys are capable of taking a five-yard slant to the house.
• Michael Turner is the kind of workhouse back that gets better as the game goes on.  In the past we’ve seen the Bears rush defense wear down in the fourth quarter if the offense doesn’t keep the ball for extended periods.  This is the key to this game.
• Tony Gonzalez will get his.  Good tight ends always do against the Bears.
• Matt Ryan can’t have a bad season and he knows that.  There might not be a QB with more pressure squarely on his shoulders in the conference.  And outside of Flacco, the whole the league.

Overall I put the Falcons in the conversation as Super Bowl contenders.  Without reservation.  But who knows how far either of these teams will be along in Week One.

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It is not a move that will be the difference between winning and not winning he Super Bowl but the Bears signing of Pats safety Brandon Meriweather should not go unheralded. Anyone who watched Conte and Steltz play the position this summer knows the club was an injury away from disaster. Meriweather is not a top tier guy but he is a more than capable professional with a knack for big plays and big hits (sometime illegal ones). The Bears are better with him.

September 9th ends the Chicago’s Most Valuable Blogger Award run by CBS.  Go vote.  Every day.  CLICK HERE.

Chester Taylor was the first big-ticket signing of the 2010 offseason for the Chicago Bears.  He was, seemingly, a perfect run-pass option in the Mike Martz system.  What happened?  Matt Forte happened.  Forte is a better, younger version of Taylor and the Bears simply realized Taylor’s organization use was slight at best.  They needed a short-yardage back and they found him when they signed Marion Barber.  The emergence of Kahlil Bell as a legitimate halfback meant there was no room at the inn for Taylor.

Marcus Harrison (photo above) ate too much this offseason.  Now he’s cut.  He’s a terrific talent and when he’s in shape can have his moments on the inside.  But really?  You ate too much this offseason?

I’ll be away from the computer for most of the remainder of the day but will try to pop back on should anything shocking happen.

Here are a random number of predictions for this year’s NFL campaign.  My theory is I’m correct on 50.1% of them, I’m doing okay.  Remember something about predictions: they are dumb.  If the Giants don’t blow a 700 point lead to the Eagles last year and the Bucs don’t blow a home game to the Lions in December, the Green Bay Packers don’t make the playoffs.  Anybody predict that?

1. Let’s start at home.  The Bears will go 10-6 or better.  They’ll make the postseason win (at least) one playoff game.
2. Lance Briggs will play for them all year.
3. Jay Cutler will be mentioned in the MVP race come November.
4. Rod Marinelli and Lovie Smith will realize they’re starting two strong safeties in Week 2 when Drew Brees beats them deep a few times.  They’ll rectify the situation in short order.
5. The Miami Dolphins have a coach the owner doesn’t want and a QB the coach doesn’t want.  They’ll finish 4-12.
6. The Bears will injure Matthew Stafford’s shoulder.  (You can’t even get odds on this in Vegas, it’s such a no brainer.)
7. When Jim Harbaugh is losing a lot of games with the Niners around mid-season, the discussion will be whether he’s tanking 2011 intentionally to bring Andrew Luck there in 2012.
8. This will be the year the Colts miss the playoffs.  (Special advance prediction: they make the playoffs as the #2 seed in 2012.)
9. The Jets will lose opening night to the Cowboys, causing both camps to overreact to the result.
10. The Jets will realize the New Meadowlands sucks as they lose prior to reaching the AFC Championship Game.
11. The Giants won’t be able to blame the stadium for finishing 7-9 or worse.  They can blame failing to re-sign the security outlets for a shaky, turnover-prone QB.  I really see this team and making the largest plummet in the league.
12. Six playoff teams in NFC: Eagles, Saints, Bears, Falcons, Cardinals, Packers.
13. Six playoff teams in AFC: Jets, Pats, Chargers, Steelers, Ravens, Titans.
14. My darkhorses.  NFC: Redskins.  AFC: Bills.
15. No, I didn’t pick the Texans.  Because adding Wade Phillips to your staff, signing Danieal Manning and changing the position of your best defensive player don’t add up to division titles in my book.
16. MVP: Phil Rivers.
17. Tarvaris Jackson will not make it through half the season as the starting QB in Seattle.
18. Same for Donovan McNabb in Minnesota.
19. Same for John Beck.  Sexy.  Rexy.
20. After winning their division narrowly, the Texans will be embarrassed by the Pats in the first round of the playoffs (at home) and Gary Kubiak will find himself unemployed with 24 hours.
21. Devin Hester will lead the league in kickoffs returned from inside the end zone.  And it won’t be close.
22. Kyle Orton will have a productive half-year at QB and still get benched.  (Another bet Vegas won’t even take.)
23. The Buffalo Bills will allow more sacks than any team in football but also be fun as hell to watch.
24. Three surprising teams from 2010 will take a step back: Tampa, St. Louis, Kansas City.  All because of slightly regressing QB play.
25. Steve Smith will realize Cam Newton is not capable of being an NFL starter yet and try to get out of Carolina before the trade deadline.
26. The Browns will move from 5-11 to 8-8 and become the trendy pick in 2012.
27. The Raiders will move from 8-8 to 5-11 and no one will be surprised.
28. More Bears stuff!  The Bears will have a top 6 defense in both yards and points allowed.
29. Jay Cutler’s season numbers: 61%, 3,485 yards, 29 TD, 11 INT
30. Matt Forte will lead the Bears in reception yards.
31. I will spend most of the season trying to come up with a good Rookie of the Year joke for Dane Sanzenbacher.  (Rosinbagger!)
32. The Bears will use three plays to cover early offensive line deficiencies: the quick toss, the screen and the draw.  They’ll be effective.
33. Julio Jones will have been worth it for the Atlanta Falcons.  He’s the year’s top rookie.
34. Offensive Player of the Year: Chris Johnson
35. Defensive Player of the Year: Julius Peppers
36. The teams I’ll be rooting against hardest: (1) Packers (2) Eagles (3) Jets.
37. The teams I’ll be rooting for outside Chicago: none.
38. I’m already regretting not picking the Colts to make the playoffs.
39. 38 is enough.  Isn’t it?
40. Oh yeah!  Super Bowl prediction: Chicago Bears 31, New England Patriots 30

I don’t believe, at least I hope, the Bears are not using tonight’s meaningless game against the Cleveland Browns to make any roster decisions of significance for the 2011 campaign.  But since we all need reasons to watch these worthless exhibitions, let’s come up with a couple.

1. Winston Venable is reportedly fighting for a roster spot as a special teams contributor.  With Dane Sanzenbacher and Kahlil Bell unlikely to add much in that department, the club may roster up someone who lives in the third phase.  (See video above)
2. The third QB is active on Sundays.  But if the Bears send Nathan Enderle into a football game, that game is over.  Will they slide him to the practice squad, hope he doesn’t venture elsewhere and use that roster slot for a productive contributor?
3. Who will fill in for Corey Wootton while the Bears await his return?
4. Who will take the final spot along the offensive line?

I got nothing else.  I frankly expect Lovie Smith to keep everyone out of uniform tonight.  So you know what you should do?  You should vote DaBearsBlog as Chicago’s most valuable sports blogs by CLICKING HERE.

ABOUT THIS WEBSITE…

So yours truly has finally embraced the Twitter craze.  It realistically is becoming the only place on the internet to receive up to the minute updates from the Bears beat writers.  If you’re on Twitter, be sure to follow me by CLICKING HERE.  You can also follow the Twitter feed directly on the main page by just looking to the right.  Somewhere over there —–>

INTERESTED IN THE FIRST DABEARSBLOG CHICAGO PARTY?

I know this might seem premature but I know folks face scheduling/financial issues in life and it’s best to simply have this information out there and available.

This year we’re going to try and have a party to celebrate the community we’ve built here on DaBearsBlog.  That party will be held on Saturday December 3rd in Chicago. (The Bears plays the Chiefs the following afternoon at Soldier Field.)

Everyone who has spent even a few minutes on this site is invited.  If you’re interested, just drop a line me at jeff@dabearsblog.com.  I won’t do the event if there’s not enough interest in it.  If we do have the party, I’ll let you all decide what it is specifically in the months to come.

HOW VALUABLE ARE WE IN CHICAGO?

September 9th ends the Chicago’s Most Valuable Blogger Award run by CBS.  Go vote.  Every day.  CLICK HERE.

So Alex Brown is back on the open market, after being released by the New Orleans Saints.  Is he finished as a serious NFL player?  I don’t know.  To be honest, I didn’t follow much of what he did down in Louisiana.

But he’s still Alex Brown.  Still one of my favorite Chicago Bears of the modern era.  And he seems the perfect option to fill the void at third defensive end.

This is going to be an interesting campaign; an exciting one I think.  I think this Bears team is pretty darn good and I think they’re going to be the most exciting offensive unit we’ve seen at Soldier Field in twenty-plus years.  (I’ll be making my full list of season prognostications this time next week.)  But I think being a Bears fan in itself will be an interesting endeavor.  Here are my four keys to surviving the experience:

HAVE PATIENCE WITH THE TACKLES

The second J’Marcus Webb or Gabe Carimi have a difficult afternoon, it’ll be met with a chorus of overreacting columns/blogs from David Haugh and Steve Rosenbloom.  Don’t give it to their panic button mentality.  The Bears may, may I repeat, have found their bookend tackles for the next decade.  But it is rare for NFL teams, especially ones on the cusp of the Super Bowl, to be in the position of starting fresh faces at both positions.  Even for the Hall of Famer, the NFL brings a learning curve.  Bears fans must allow these two guys the time they need.  The result may be years of stability.

KNOW THEIR WEAKNESSES

I don’t look across the starting roster of the Chicago Bears and see glaring weaknesses.  It is when you go beyond the starting roster things get dicey.  Brian Iwuh does not inspire confidence as the first linebacker off the bench, especially if he’s put in the position of replacing all-time Bears like Briggs and Urlacher.  If Major Wright or Chris Harris miss an extended period, the Bears will be playing a sub-professional at safety.  (Unless you’ve seen something from Conte I haven’t.)

EARLY SCHEDULE IS TOUGHEST ROAD

Home Falcons.  At Saints.  Home Packers.  I know NFL schedules are impossible to predict as one injury can change the complexion of an entire team.  (If Chase Daniel is starting for the Saints in Week 2, for example, it obviously becomes a must-win for the Bears.)  But on initial glance the first three games of the Bears season look to obviously be the hardest stretch.  Understanding that 0-3 does not spell doom for the 2011 season and 3-0 does not mean a guaranteed Super Bowl will be of the utmost importance for a fan base that likes to let their extreme emotions get the best of them.  Survive it.  Win a game or two.  And move on.

AND ABOUT THE QUARTERBACK…

He’s good.  He’s very good.  And to this point he has not opened his mouth and said a word about the lack of a true number one receiver being available to him.  Not a word.  He has never blamed his offensive line for almost landing him in the morgue in 2010.  Not once.  He has never said, “It was easier to play quarterback inDenverwhen I had a running game.”  Not ever.  I don’t excuse his interception sprees or failures to throw the ball away and avoid unnecessary contact.  But I know that if you look through the history of Super Bowl champion quarterbacks, it’ll be tough to find one who has achieved that goal with a mediocre head coach AND mediocre receiving corps AND mediocre offensive line.  Cut the guy some damn slack.         

September 9 is the final date to vote DaBearsBlog asChicago’s most valuable sports blog by going to this link: http://chicago.blogger.cbslocal.com/most-valuable-blogger/vote/sports/

I’ll have a full recap of the third preseason game for Monday morning.  In the meantime, go vote DaBearsBlog as Chicago’s most value sports blog: CLICK HERE.

You walk into a diner.  Order your cocktail and open up the menu.  Under Specials you see bacon-wrapped scallops.  You love bacon-wrapped scallops.  You had bacon-wrapped scallops on Martha’s Vineyard a few years earlier and it was the finest meal you’ve ever had.  And those bacon-wrapped scallops were expensive.  These are only a few bucks.  You have to order them.  Maybe they’ll be as good as those scallops you had on the Vineyard!  You know it’s a diner, and a diner is not known for its seafood, but at that price what’s the harm?

That should have been Roy Williams.  At worst, he’d put you on the toilet for forty-five minutes but your wallet wouldn’t mind.

The difference?  Your buddy Mike Martz, also ordering the scallops, told you he’s had them before at this diner and they’re going to be the best meal of your life.  He also told that to the table beside you, where Brad Biggs and Jeff Hughes are questioning your choosing nostalgic seafood when there was reliable Rice available.

One thing became abundantly clear watching the Chicago Bears third preseason game: they have no #1 receiver.  They are a WR collective and the quarterback does not mind.  (The quarterback, by the way, looks primed for a pretty spectacular year.)  Earl Bennett will make the big catch.  Johnny Knox will make the big play.  Devin Hester and Williams and perhaps Sanzenbacher or Hurd or the tight ends will find the ball in their hands in key situations.  The screen game will be the offense’s backbone.

Is that preferable?  No.  My belief is that you always want a player on the outside opposing defensive coordinator’s need to game plan against.  Someone to draw the opposition’s best corner for sixty minutes.  Someone who forces a safety away from the box.  The elite wide receiver, prima donna or not, can make an ordinary offense seem spectacular at times.

Is it sustainable?  Absolutely.  If Duke of Earl and Jackass and Skunk take logical strides during their second year in a complicated offense, the Bears passing game will be improved significantly.  They are more than capable, professional wide receivers.  And all it might really take it the five guys up front giving the quarterback enough time to allow them to finish their routes.

So that you all know, little old New York City is preparing to get slapped in the face by a hurricane.  So it’s doubtful that I’ll be able to get any kind of content up on the site Sunday/Monday.  But we shall see.  If you are a reader of this site and you’re in a dangerous area, be prudent and get yourself somewhere safe.  There’s nothing courageous about putting yourself or a first-responder in a life threatening situation.

For the rest, enjoy the game tonight.  The season is a mere two weeks away.

For the Bears, stay healthy.