Fire Ryan Poles | Fire Ben Johnson

Frustration. That’s how I felt this entire game. The Bears, who some people thought would just roll over the Vikings, were in a fight to the end. They had numerous opportunities to take the life out of the Vikings early, but poor calls and turnovers messed those up. In addition, the feed kept going in and out and we ended up missing a touchdown by the Vikings at the end of the first half. The Bears didn’t deserve to win (How many times have I said that before?) but regardless, they pulled one of out of their asses to stun the Vikings. Before one of my arteries burst in ANGER, let’s go over this quickly.

Offense: When there is first and goal on the 1, what is the smart thing to do? RUN THE FUCKING BALL. I thought Lovie and his turds for offensive coordinators were fired for a reason? Instead, a bad call by Trestman. I am not off the Trestman bandwagon by any means, but come on, that was a horrible call. If it’s third down, I could understand it. Instead, Cutler throws in a crowd of defenders and it ends up being picked off. Before that, Cutler fumbles the ball while the Bears are mercifully driving down the field and it turns into a touchdown for the Vikings. Cutler was completely off today. He, alone had three turnovers (fumble, two interceptions). He finally put on his big boy pants in the final drive and threw the game-winning touchdown to Martellus Bennett with seconds remaining. Holy shit. A tight end who catches passes and gets touchdowns? We haven’t seen that shit since Ryan Wetnight or even DITKA. MY FRENDTS. Forte ran the ball well but fumbled it in the 4th quarter and that could have sealed the deal had the Vikings scored a touchdown on the following drive. Phew.

Defense: Tim Jennings had an interception for a touchdown. Great. The Bears defense still wasn’t all that great. This is a concern. Adrian Peterson only had 100 yards rushing so they contained him for the most part. However, the drive before halftime was terrible so I am glad we didn’t get to see the touchdown pass that Ponder threw to Kyle Rudolph. At least the Bears held the Vikings to two field goals in the second half. They could have put the game away with a touchdown in their last possession. The defense needs to get better in a hurry. One of these games, the breaks aren’t going to go their way if this doesn’t change.

Special teams: Hester is awesome. He nearly took back two or three all the way. The conditions might have had something to do with it but he gave the Bears great field position throughout the game. And before I forget, Cordarrelle Patterson took one back on the opening kickoff for the Vikings. Bad coverage by the Bears there.

The Bears don’t get style points but it’s a win. 2-0 and a meeting with the Steelers in Pittsburgh next Sunday Night.

Fire away.

Well, that was exciting. It’s good to know that the Bengals are still morons by sealing the deal late with a dumb penalty. The Bengals dug themselves a large hole by committing quite a few dumb penalties as well as using their timeouts because they either had too many or too few men on the field on defense. Anyway, maybe it was because of the garbage we have seen the last decade (or even the last two), but you would assume that the Bears would just fold it up after being down 21-10 in the 3rd quarter.

Well ladies and gentleman, these aren’t your ordinary Bears.

Alright, that is probably a bit over-the-top but I will say that the Bears didn’t quit. The defense had their “I-Pass” moments and I will get to that eventually. The offense took a while to get into a groove but at the end of the day, the Bears came back and beat the Bengals. Let’s dissect this victory, shall we?

Offense: After the first half, the fans were booing pretty loudly. That’s because the Bears only had 97 total yards on offense at the time while the Bengals had about 250 yards. Martellus Bennett made an amazing catch for the first touchdown of the season. Then, the second half arrives and the offense wakes up big time.  Brandon Marshall made some key catches and totaled up 108 yards receiving. Five different receivers caught at least a pass in this game.

Matt Forte had a touchdown along with 50 yards rushing on 19 carries. That stat (cue Yeti) doesn’t look amazing but Forte had four catches also including one where we jumped up to get the ball. Forte is a better receiver than what the Bears have had over the last few years. Anybody remember idiots like Johnny Knox or Roy Williams. My oh my, have things changed. Back to Marshall, he had the game-winning touchdown on a catch where the ball was bobbling in his hands. Awesome. I was so much in a frenzy over how they came back that I almost forgot to mention the offensive line. Kyle Long and Jordan Mills did an excellent job in this game. One game at a time but I like what I see so far. Can you believe that the Bears didn’t give up any sacks? That’s right. Zero sacks. Yeah, I am shocked too.

Defense: It was up and down for these guys all day. Let me start off with what went shitty for them. Andy Dalton had no problem on three drives going 90+ yards on two of them and 80 on the other. The worst part of those drives was that the Bengals scored quickly on all three. I think the longest drive only went five or six minutes. There is no excuse for that. The defense has to play better than they did in this game. Yes, three turnovers resulting in ten points is great and that includes the game-winning drive but letting teams have three quick drives with them deep in their own territory isn’t good. When the fourth quarter came, the defense shut them down including a forced fumble by Tim Jennings. Charles Tillman is the player of the game in my opinion with two interceptions.

Special Teams: Robbie Gould nailed a career-long 58-yard field goal right before halftime to get the Bears to within four. Obviously, that was key as the difference in the game was a field goal. Also, why is Roger Goodell an idiot? They might as well get rid of kickoffs because just about everything was a touchback today. Player safety my ass. They should get rid of punts too. What a turd.

The Bears play the Vikings next week. Well, another “must-win” game, right guys? Win this and the Bears put the Vikings two games out of first place. Your thoughts in the thread.

Well, here are we are with another season about to begin for the Bears. I will be at the game Sunday along with our good friends from Fire Ron Turner. This is also another year where I will be contributing photos for their sister site and the most important one on the internet, Drunk Bear Fans. So please, take a minute to check out both of those links. You won’t will regret it. Before I forget, the recap will be Sunday night or Monday at the latest.

Anything else you guys want to talk about, feel free. Have a good weekend everybody.

While I have mentioned countless times that it doesn’t matter who wins in the preseason, I cannot help but be excited about what could happen with the Bears this year. This year feels different and maybe I am drinking the Phil Emery/Marc Trestman Kool-Aid but with what we have seen so far, this team is much better on paper.

The Bears will have their first and fifth round picks in Kyle Long and Jordan Mills starting on the offensive line Sunday against the Bengals. The line will feature four new starters with the others being Jermon Bushrod (by Cracky) and Matt Slauson. I was one of the many bitching over the last few years that the reason why Cutler has been “terrible” is because he’s had less than two seconds to throw the ball after it was snapped. Other good news is that Aaron Kromer and Marc Trestman are much more efficient with calling plays, that Cutler may not have to burn timeouts early in games like he had in previous years with Lovie and whichever dumbass was the coordinator.

Then, you have the defense. The first-team guys created a lot of turnovers in the preseason and with the drafting of Jon Bostic and Khaseem Green, the depth at linebacker is being built. D.J. Williams seems to be still hurt so it looks like Bostic is starting at middle linebacker. Fine with me.

It’s important to know, however, that the depth at other positions like the secondary or even the offensive line is still a concern. Emery cannot fix the entire team in one or two drafts but rather, three, four or five. That’s how teams are built. Sure, any team can go from shitty to a playoff contender the next year, but to build a team that can contend consistently for years to come takes time. The Bears are doing it right now. As I have shown above, three draft picks from this year will probably be starting Sunday. Emery is getting rid of Jerry Angelo’s garbage in a timely manner but getting rid of most the guys he has drafted.

In two years, we have went from Angelo saying “We like our guys” and that “We believe that Devin Hester is a number one wide receiver” to Emery telling everyone that is a business and for example, he will not negotiate any contracts until after the season ends. He is showing that if a player wants to get paid, they better perform in a positive way or the team will show them the door. That’s how any business should be ran.

It’s time to be excited as a Bears fan again.

I am not sure if I am only one who believes this, but is anyone else getting frustrated with all of these new channels, more specifically, sports networks that are being created? With all of these new channels being created, we are seeing our favorite sporting events moving from the over-the-air television to cable/satellite. Call me old-school, but this is sad and pathetic in every way. Let me say first that I am fortunate enough to have cable TV despite the shitty prices (Thanks Comcast you greedy fucks), but not everyone does. I understand that we live in the age of the internet and these events can be streamed free of charge, but the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t cost any money to watch a game with an antenna. We have to pay cable/satellite fees to watch the ones being moved to these stations.

Ever since I can remember, the NHL has been the worst with TV deals. If I was close to or in Canada, it wouldn’t be a problem because most  of their playoff games are on CBC. Here in the states, we are forced to tune to NBC Sports Network for most of the games. Even the Stanley Cup Final has two games on their cable channel. You would think the NHL would be smart and try to get better ratings by having all Final games on over-the-air and instead, they sign a new 10-year deal last year.

In a matter of a decade, we have seen nearly all of the NBA playoffs, including the conference finals, be moved to either ESPN and TNT. In 2012, the entire Eastern Conference Finals were on ESPN and not ABC with the Western Conference games on TNT. They alternate every year for conference finals. This past year, the Western Conference Finals just had one game on ABC (Game 1). Ten years ago, ABC had all the games and NBC did previously ever since the early 90’s.

When I actually gave a shit about baseball, most of the playoffs were on Fox or NBC when I was growing up. Even ABC and CBS had games when I was younger. With what I read, all playoff games will be on either TBS or Fox Sports 1 starting next year. Just another reason not to give a shit. Then, college sports has begun the transition as well. The college football championship is exclusively on ESPN now instead of ABC. College basketball will alternate channels every year for their championship between CBS and TBS.

And of course, you can’t forget about the glorious NFL and village idiot, Roger Goodell. The glorious NFL Network and their Thursday Night Football. Goodell preaches player safety but yet, let’s the NFL schedule games with every team playing at least one Thursday in the season. Yeah. Make players go right back at it after only three days off. WE WANT TO KEEP OUR PLAYERS AS SAFE AS POSSIBLE.

All of these companies think they can profit off of these channels big time and I am not an economic genius, but one would think ratings would be so much better if these games were over-the-air because more people get Fox or CBS than Fox Sports 1 or CBS Sports Network. Companies intend to attract the attention of young viewers and children but that won’t happen all the time because some kids don’t have cable and a portion of them can’t afford it.

In conclusion, all I can say is, don’t be surprised if the Super Bowl, of all games, is on cable in the next ten years. All of these people in charge of the networks are a bunch of greedy scumbags.

It was very nice to see football back on my TV in the last week. I did watch the entire Cowboys/Dolphins game last Sunday and this past Friday, the Bears made their return, albeit in the preseason. I often say that the preseason doesn’t mean much and while that may be true, I was for sure more excited this year for games to start than in the past. There is a lot of buzz going on and for all the right reasons so far. I mentioned this in the last thread but for everyone who watched the game, it was very refreshing to see someone other than Lovie Lee Smith standing on the sidelines as head coach. None of us know what the future will hold, but I feel much better with Marc Trestman at the helm. It seems like players on board with what he is doing and buying into his system. He has a track record of improving an offense within a short amount of time.

So the first preseason game had some good things and of course, some bad. I could just imagine meatballs ready to call The Score after Cutler’s first pass for an interception demanding that he gets benched for Josh McCown or (gasp) Matt Blanchard. I thought Kyle Long played pretty well on the line J’Marcus Webb was still terrible. Good thing the Bears have depth to move players around if need be. Webb has already been benched for rookie Jordan Mills. Already? Fine with me. You can already see the difference between Lovie Smith and Marc Trestman. Webb could be on his way out of town by September.

Let’s save the good for last and talk about something that was also, not very good but not worried about quite yet. The second-string defense who let Derek Anderson march the Panthers down the field for a touchdown at the end of the first half. Some of these guys are going to be backups and in the NFL, injuries are going to happen and these are the ones that need to step up. Speaking of injuries, Pat Mannelly has a rib injury, Henry Milton has a concussion and Jonathon Scott still has a sore right knee. The Bears already have Kelvin Hayden out for the season with a torn hamstring. What’s with the NFL already? There are a million injuries and only one week has passed in the preseason.

Alright, some good: How about rookie linebacker Jon Bostic? The Bears have two or three new linebackers for the same amount of money that Brian Urlacher would have received. This is very good. Bostic took an interception for a pick 6. The guys at Fire Ron Turner are stoked about this guy and count me in too. The defense had four takeaways on Friday night.

The next game is Thursday against the Chargers at Soldier Field. I would probably guess Cutler plays into the second quarter. For this game, I will probably focus more on the offensive line since two rookies (Mills and Long) will be starting. Look for Forte and Bush (by Cracky) to get more carries.

Dear A-Rod.