Players I’ll be watching: the starters. I want to see them leave the field as quickly as possible.

This is something of a job listing. DaBearsBlog is looking to hire someone for a very specific project this coming season.

Job Musts:

1. You must be available for each and every Chicago Bears game this coming season and be willing to “work” during the course of the game.
2. You must be comfortable with Twitter. This does not only mean creating Tweets but also engaging potential followers.
3. You must be able to put together coherent sentences. (Literacy is a definite plus.)

As most of you know, DaBearsBlog’s move back to independence has been delayed by my own career. This position would be the first time I’ve welcomed someone into the inner circle of DBB and you would be at the top of the list for our first string of hires once we leave ChicagoNow. It’s not a guarantee but it’s a nice step for someone looking to get involved.

Contact:

Email me if you’re interested: jeff@dabearsblog.com

Losing Jeremy Maclin was bad but the Eagles still have enough weapons on the offensive side of the ball to compensate. Dennis Pitta and Dan Koppen are solid players but by no means irreplaceable.

The Packers believe they’ve lose left tackle Bryan Bulaga for the season. The converted right tackle is the best player on an already shaky Packers offensive line and is arguably one of the three or four most important players on the Green Bay roster.

From the Journal-Sentinel:

If the injury is significant, the Packers would have two options.

They could move right tackle Marshall Newhouse back to left tackle, where he played all 1,103 snaps in 2012 and started 13 games in 2011.

Or they could keep Newhouse at right tackle and start rookie David Bakhtiari, their impressive fourth-round draft choice, at left tackle. Bakhtiari alternated with Newhouse at right tackle in the scrimmage and didn’t have an obvious bad play in his 31 snaps.

Don Barclay, the late-season starter at right tackle a year ago, has focused on center and right guard in the last week.

Andrew Datko, a second-year tackle, doesn’t appear to have made much progress this summer.

Tackle Derek Sherrod remains on the physically unable to perform list with a leg injury dating to December 2011. The coaches say Sherrod is close to being able to practice, but he has done nothing on the field yet.

This injury does not shift the balance of power in the NFC North…yet.

Footballs don’t have personalities. They don’t have hopes and dreams, fears and regrets. They are, by most accounts, inanimate objects. But sometimes they seem to be more than footballs. When a diminutive Boston College quarterback cocked back his arm the ball had to know the opportunity for immortality was present. When Sweetness electrified the city of Chicago he held the ball in his palm like the Olympic torch – fitting for a man who was the organization’s only beacon of light for so long.

For five years I thought the football was afraid. Afraid of what came next. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid to leave the peacefulness of the Sunday sky and find the waiting arms of Devin Hester. The ball hovered in the sky long enough to drain every bead of sweat from the opposing sideline and every audible gasp from the sixty-thousand plus gather on Chicago’s lakefront. When Hester was right these were the most exciting moments in the NFL. The moments before the moment.

Hester has not been right for some time. Everyone has their reasons why, ranging from the limited shelf life of elite kick returners to an overload of information in Hester’s main frame due to the previous regime’s ill-advised insistence on making The Skunk into a full-time wide receiver. Hester was not only failing to score with regularity. He was also failing to move the ball forward and – in many cases – failing to catch the ball period.

Then something happened. Phil Emery surprised a majority of the football world and fired head coach Lovie Smith. Hester responded with the emotionally irrationality:

“I don’t even know if I want to play again, man,” Hester said. “You know, that’s been on my mind for two years now.

“It’s not (as much fun anymore). It ain’t. So, I have my workers’ comp papers in my pocket. See how I feel, go home and talk to my wife, my family. See where we go from there. I’ve got two beautiful kids, man, young. Two boys. A lot of stress has been on my mind lately.”

All of sudden the fan base that adored Hester began to sprinkle the words “trade” and “done” into conversations about him. As Dave Toub left Chicago for Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs, the writing seemed to be on the wall that Hester was also moving southeast.

Hester and the Bears were at a crossroads. And while I hate using the phrase “at a crossroads” I simply don’t have a replacement in the vocabularic arsenal. (Side note: if vocabularic is not a word, it should be. Because it’s wonderful.)

Now it was on the Bears.

Phil Emery said the organization did not take seriously Hester’s retirement talk:

“Obviously, Devin’s under contract, so if he sent his retirement papers in, I would know,” Emery said, via Adam J. Jahns of the Chicago Sun-Times. “But I don’t anticipate that. I think he’s a great competitor. I think that was an emotional situation that evoked an emotional response, and I certainly understand that.”

New head coach Marc Trestman iterated a desire to keep Hester, with one caveat: “Devin is strictly a specialist right now”.

New special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis set out his goal to not only return Hester to the return ace of years gone by but also utilize his speed and football instincts in other facets of the special teams game From a Potash piece in the Sun-Times:

‘‘He’s definitely going to be fresher to do those things [by not playing on offense],’’ DeCamillis said. ‘‘That’s something we’re evaluating. He’ll be working on all the cover teams and working some other things for us, too. He’s a great weapon, and we want to use him as much as we can.’’

If Hester can avoid blockers like he can tacklers, he would be an ideal gunner on the punt-coverage unit.

‘‘The biggest thing about a great gunner is sometimes it’s the guy who can get there the fastest,’’ DeCamillis said. ‘‘We had a guy in Denver who was an Olympic sprinter named Sam Gaddy. Sam wasn’t the best tackler in the world. But he sure caused a lot of fair catches. Hopefully we can expand [Hester’s] role and see what happens.’’

Suddenly Hester was happy again. He said so himself:

“Me and coach Trestman talked before I went home for the break and we came up with the idea that I would just go back to being a key return man — a punt return and kickoff return man — and a little bit more special teams,” Hester said. “That would be what I know as of now my role to be for the upcoming season.”

It all begins anew for Hester on Sunday September 8th. Can Hester regain the form that should have, in my opinion, cemented his Hall of Fame status as the greatest return man to ever live? Can Hester alter opposing game plans in the Joniak-coined ridiculous fashion that forced punts into the third row and kickoffs barely by the midfield marker? Can he reignite the passion of the Soldier Field faithful who would have paid the exorbitant ticket prices just to see him field a few punts on a cold Sunday afternoon?

Will the ball ever again hover afraid in the Chicago sky, anticipating the unknown moment to come? There can’t be a Bears fan alive hoping for anything else.

Jeremy Maclin and Dan Koppen tore up their knees. Dennis Pitta, one of the best young tight ends in the league, is out for the 2013 campaign and possible beyond. Three NFL stars gone in just three days of NFL training camp.

The discussion has already begun in Bourbonnais. Kyle Long looks tough. J’Marcus Webb looks flat. Corey Wootton and Shea McClellin are ready to make the leap. Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery are diving for grabs up and down the sideline.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Training camp is the low-hanging fruit for sports writers and bloggers. The football fan tries to go clean for the better part of six months and now is knocking on a Baltimore tenement door in hopes of scoring that much-needed fix. “You got the stuff I need, baby.” The media accommodates, now with the technological absurdities that are Twitter camp play-by-plays.

None of it means anything. Nothing the Bears are showing the media and fans is real. What matters is not seeing the following words scrolled across the Twitter feed: carted off. Camp and the preseason is a survival game and the goal is to reach Soldier Field and the Cincinnati Bengals with the bulk of your roster intact.

So enjoy the thrilling Cutler completes pass to Jeffery down right sideline. Crowd cheers. Tweets. I will sit and wait for the most important Tweet of every session. Practice. Over.

Training camp begins at 9 AM this morning. Here is a list of questions a Bears fan might be asking as the 2013 campaign begins. (The questions are easy. The answers will be far harder to come by.)

1. Will Jon Bostic or Khaseem Greene work their way into the starting lineup at linebacker or will the one-year veterans hold serve at the position?
2. Will Devin Hester display the cheetah-beatah burst he’s been personally lauding to anyone who’ll listen?
3. Will the new marriage of Trestman and Cutler be one without contentious on-field moments?
4. Will there be a real battle at right tackle between Jonathan Scott and J’Marcus Webb? Will Webb’s demotion to the right side motivate him to stay out of the McDonald’s drive-thru and use his abilities to be a successful offensive lineman?
5. Will Bears defenders adapt to the play calls coming from Mel Tucker and the in-huddle calls coming from Lance Briggs? There has been a leadership change at the top of the organization but there’s been just as significant a change in the defensive huddle.
6. Will Brandon Hardin stay healthy and challenge the Wright/Conte combination for playing time?
7. Will Jordan Mills, Cornelius Washington or Marquess Wilson become the player the beats start Tweeting about as “one to watch”? (James Brown was this guy last year.)
8. The only question that matters. Will everyone stay healthy?

Let’s be honest, I only care about #8. What am I missing? You add more.

Moon Over Blog Post!

GM Phil Emery and head coach Marc Trestman addressed the media today in Bourbonnais. I watched them speak. Here’s what I thought:

•  Marc Trestman made his first brilliant decision as Bears head coach. He put on a hat.
• Emery acknowledges a number of expiring contracts in 2013 but does not anticipate any extensions until the end of this campaign. That includes Jay Cutler, Peanut Tillman…etc. This is news, I guess.
• Lance Briggs asking to make defensive calls a “sign of leadership” to Emery. I always believed Briggs would not only get over the absence of Brian Urlacher but would relish the opportunity to make this defense his own. It’s happening.
• It is very clear that Kyle Long has made a wonderful first impression on the organization. (I was sold on him in March.)
• Trestman’s introductory press conference was defined by his awe and humility. That has been replaced by confidence now. Who knows how his tenure will proceed but the man believes he’s going to do quite well.
• Trestman is obsessed with tempo. He wants this team to play fast. Lovie Smith always wanted the same but you got the sense he was only referring to the defense. Trestman is discussing everyone.
• Trestman is not detail-oriented. He is detail-obsessed. He just laid out the first few days of practice in mind-bogglingly boring detail.
• Emery says the entirety of the Bears roster has been medically cleared to practice Friday. That has to be a rare thing for an NFL team heading into camp. Can’t remember last time the Bears were in this situation.
• Trestman says Cutler has improved “at every level”. The coach also admits they reviewed Cutty’s fundamentals – an element of his game that needed to be refined.
• Trestman knows the mechanics of quarterbacking. It is obviously where he gets most excited about the inner-workings of football.
• Trestman moving the practices to the morning is about simulating the experience of the 12 PM kickoff time in-season. Believes the body needs to be acquainted to being ready to go early in the morning.

I like these two, Emery and Trestman. I will be interested to see how this thing rolls out in September.

A well-dressed, downtown man walks into a Chicago dive bar on the corner of Nowhere Street & Future Is Bleak Boulevard. He asks the bartender for a wine list. The bartender is caught off-guard by the request. He takes a bar napkin and a pen from beside the register and writes in capital letters:

Red

White

He slides the napkin across the bar. The well-dressed looks at the writing, smiles and says quickly, “Old Style”.

Does this story have any meaning or relevance? Not really. Is it fun? I think so. And that’s how I feel about training camp and the preseason. Shakespeare wrote better than I do and he said it pretty damn well. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I spend a vast majority of the next six weeks muttering/writing a refrain that seems to drive a stake through the vampiric heart of the Bourbonnais die-hard: it’s all meaningless.

There will be things to look at this summer. Young linebackers attempting to meld their skills into a veteran defensive unit. A new group of offensive linemen trying to find themselves as a unit. A quarterback-guru head coach and a quarterback looking to get on the same page.

These are things worth looking at but you will never have the opportunity to see them. Every moment of practice shown to the public is a mere performance. Nothing of value is implemented or practiced. Teams are far too secretive for that. And preseason games are intriguing for the those hovering around the fifty-third roster position. You know, those who’ll make the roster and spend an overwhelming majority of the sixteen-game schedule in jump suits on the sideline.

Watch it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Just don’t come to any conclusions based on what you’re seeing because the truth is simple: you’re seeing nothing.

A well-dressed, downtown man walks into a Chicago dive bar on the corner of Nowhere Street & Future Is Bleak Boulevard. He asks the bartender for a wine list. The bartender is caught off-guard by the request. He takes a bar napkin and a pen from beside the register and writes in capital letters:

Red

White

He slides the napkin across the bar. The well-dressed looks at the writing, smiles and says quickly, “Old Style”.

Does this story have any meaning or relevance? Not really. Is it fun? I think so. And that’s how I feel about training camp and the preseason. Shakespeare wrote better than I do and he said it pretty damn well. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I spend a vast majority of the next six weeks muttering/writing a refrain that seems to drive a stake through the vampiric heart of the Bourbonnais die-hard: it’s all meaningless.

There will be things to look at this summer. Young linebackers attempting to meld their skills into a veteran defensive unit. A new group of offensive linemen trying to find themselves as a unit. A quarterback-guru head coach and a quarterback looking to get on the same page.

These are things worth looking at but you will never have the opportunity to see them. Every moment of practice shown to the public is a mere performance. Nothing of value is implemented or practiced. Teams are far too secretive for that. And preseason games are intriguing for the those hovering around the fifty-third roster position. You know, those who’ll make the roster and spend an overwhelming majority of the sixteen-game schedule in jump suits on the sideline.

Watch it. Enjoy the hell out of it. Just don’t come to any conclusions based on what you’re seeing because the truth is simple: you’re seeing nothing.

Henry Melton is the most significant, successful position project of the Lovie Smith/Rod Marinelli era. He has been molded into a solid defensive tackle by two of the finest defensive minds in the sport. But one thing should be made abundantly clear about Melton after three years playing defense for the Chicago Bears: he is not great…yet.

Great defensive tackles – specifically in the LoveRod system – register more than 6 or 7 sacks. Great defensive tackles take over games. Melton has rarely done that for more than a handful of plays.

To the best of my comprehension Phil Emery’s decision to have Melton play out the 2013 season on the Franchise Tag has no substantial downside. Let’s look at the potential outcomes of the coming campaign.

1. Melton stinks. The Bears can write off his early success to the system and let someone else pick up his next tab under the dreaded “change of scenery” moniker. (See: Cowboys, Dallas or wherever Lovie lands in 2014.)
2. Melton is mediocre. The Bears will have saved millions upon millions of dollars and have the opportunity to bring Melton back in 2014 for a severely discounted rate.
3. Melton is good. The Bears have increased leverage as Melton can no longer demand top tier defensive tackle money. The organization could re-sign Melton and see a motivated player in 2014 and beyond.
4. Melton is great. The Bears pay him. A lot. But let’s be honest here. “A lot” in 2014 won’t be much more than “a lot” today. Will the Bears have to pay MORE next off-season than they do this off-season? Yes. But that difference will be negligible when it comes to cap implications.

If Henry Melton turns into Warren Sapp and puts up a 12-14 sack season he will have won his contract standoff with the Bears. But the Bears will have most likely won a bunch of games as a result of his play. Would every Bears fan on earth not accept that tradeoff?