Five Questions With Windy City Gridiron

Vikings included

Your line looks like pro-bowlers compared to ours, lol. If Angelo has half a brain, The Bears spend the Entire draft on OL and Corners.

This has been the worst year ever for offensive lineman across the NFC. I don’t even know if the Pack are going to be thinking about the offensive line in the draft unless they find a can’t-miss acquisition at their draft position because so many other teams will be looking to draft them.

Don’t the Bears have another year of late picks anyway? I thought they sacrificed a couple of years worth of draft relevance in order to field the team they have now…

I kind of think the Bears will go after a guard/center type of player. Contrary to what people think, I haven’t heard Omiyale’s named mentioned too much in recent weeks. Imo- he’s been pretty good at keeping Jay’s blind side covered. My biggest issue is the interior of the line. Garza and Kreutz are on their last legs with no real replacement for either.

last night and he had a just a gorgeous looking block on a Brandon Jackson screen. I agree, he looks better. ‘Course, it’s hard to give Colledge recognition because Josh Sitton has been so good the entire year.

The division was formed in 1967. It looked the same as it does now but was called the Central Division. From ’77 to ’01 it included Tampa Bay. Sweeping a division is extremely hard to do, and the Packer have never swept the division.

The Bears have only done it twice. In the 15-1 season in ’85 and in the 11-4 ’87 season, but that one comes with an asterisks. The Bears went 7-0 in the division beating the Vikings, Packers and Bucs twice, but the Lions only once. The season was shortened to 15 weeks because of the strike and some of the games were played with “scabs”. (Sean Payton, the NO Saints head coach, was a scab QB for the Bears, lol) and because of that, the Bears swept the division, but only faced the Lions once. But the Bears hold the distinction of being the only team in the division to sweep needing more than 6 games.

The Vikings have also swept the division twice, in ’69 and ’73, winning all six divisional games in both.

The Bears have had the opportunity to sweep 3 times in the last 6 years. Minnesota stopped the Bears in a meaningless game in week 17 of the ’05 season. Green Bay stopped Chicago in a meaningless week 17 game in ’06 and Green Bay has an opportunity to stop the Bears again in a meaningless (for Chicago) game this week.

As I researched the above post, I found that the “Black and Blue Division” is a name that is very fitting for our Division. Not only does it seem to be the least swept division in the NFL, but the teams in the division seem to generate more of their losses in division than out of it. Even when a team dominates, such as the 13-3 ’07 Packers, the 15-1 ’98 Vikings and 14-2 ’86 Bears, their losses come mostly come from the division. (The ’07 Pack lost 2 to the Bears, the ’98 Queens lost their game to the Bucs and the ’86 Bears lost to the Vikings)

This division beats the hell out of each other.

I just can’t see the NFL owners allowing a lockout to happen, there’s too much money to be lost, and the NFL is the #1 sport in the country, and I don’t think they want to do anything that would hurt that.

I disagree about windows. I think that, as long as teams do a good job of infusing young talent yearly, that windows are mostly media created garbage. Green Bay and New England are two very good examples of this. Of course they are going to occasionally have a down year. But both organizations are very good at adding new talent yearly. Because of this, both organizations are consistently good. Windows only qualify if the front office is not good at replacing leaving and aging talent. And, in truth, that isn’t even as much a window as a GM/Head Coach slamming a door of ineptitude on the team.

Yeah, I think he’s probably been overlooked. Ever since Martz started committing to the run game, he seems to have come on strong.

So I wouldn’t expect it, but good luck!

And Happy New Year to all bears and Packers fans, both the class of the league!

Some will argue with you that the Bears have tons of mediocre talent this year and still won the division and over-achieved, just as they did in ‘05 and ’06. I wouldn’t be one of those people.The Bears did overachieve in ’05, ’06 and this year and Smith was the head coach in all three of those years.

But in ’05, the Defense saved the horrid Kyle Orton rookie offense. It was Ron Rivera, not Lovie Smith, who was behind that. ’06 saw Ron Turner having an uncharacteristically good year with an offense and Rex Grossman having third best season by a Bears QB in our 87 season history (to that point) while Rivera continued to coach the defense to dominance and create Pro-Bowlers out of guys like Nathan Vasher and Tommie Harris, while Devin Hester was ridiculous. How much did Smith have to do with that? He let Rivera go after the Super Loss and the defense dropped from #2 to number #21 with Bob Babich as the DC/puppet (and while Babich sucked as the DC/puppet, I believe that had more to do with Smith than Babich. Consider that Babich is considered one of the best LB coaches in the game).

The defense got no better when Lovie took over the DC duties himself. In fact, it got worse. Chicago gave up the 6th most points in their, then, 90 year history with Lovie DCing his own group. He was forced to replace….himself.

This year, Chicago has possibly the worst offensive line of the last decade anywhere in the NFL, a sub-par secondary and an interior defensive line that leaves much to be desired, as well as the absence of a consistent WR, yet they are at least the second seed in the NFC. Lovie? Nope. Mike Tice coached that horrid offensive line into playing over their heads, Mike Martz worked his scheme around to fit the line and the receivers and Rod Marinelli took the defensive groups and has Izzy Idonije looking great as a DE, and Anthony Adams, Matt Toeaina and Henry Melton playing solid ball in the interior line. He has an aging Charles Tillman looking decent and a overachieving Tim Jennings playing well as the #1 Corner. And he has both Chris Harris and the musical chairs aficionado of the secondary, Danieal Manning, playing safety well enough that even some non-Bears affiliated sportswriters have suggested that both deserved Pro-Bowl consideration. They are again a top defense for the first time since Ron Rivera left. We’ve even had a few Tommie Harris sightings.

Smith is going to get the credit this season, but it was really the promotion of Marinelli and the hiring of Martz and Tice that turned this team into the overachievers that they are.

Don’t get me wrong, Smih isn’t horrible (a 63 – 48 record isn’t horrible, but it is a 9-7 season average, which ain’t great either. But he is 8-5 record against the Packers makes me smile) but a .568 winning percentage isn’t special, either. And the fact that he’s now proven he cannot run his own system effectively is not a comforting thing.

you would probably expect a biased answer from me in the vain of “Rodgers is a douchebag”. But I would guess that it makes what I’m about to say more credible, not less.

My mother-in-law was a Packers fan (recently deceased). She attended GB training camp every year. She also has several items signed by Rodgers and a photo taken with him. She had nothing but glowing things to say about him, and talked on and on about how he was out signing autographs long after most everyone else had quit. And considering that she wanted to hate him because she loved Favre, it took an awful lot to change her opinion of the guy (and believe me, the woman could hold a grudge, God love her).

Take it for what it is, but according to her, he was a class act before he took the reins and just as much so, if not more, after he became “The Man”.