THE GOOD:- Matt Forté is really starting to seem like the real deal. After a year of the irredeemable Cedric Benson and Adrian "he can catch, and I suppose he sure tries hard, but damn" Peterson, it's amazing to have a running who can actually do most of, if not all of, the things you need a starting running back to do. He can move with some amount of speed both forward/backward and from side to side, he can catch, he can block, and he doesn't seem to be on the verge of a mental breakdown. It's sort of like having Thomas Jones, but taller, a hundred years younger, and without the offensive coordinator having something against him for not being "his guy."
- With everyone healthy, the defense is still playing more or less the way they were supposed to last year, aside from that whole second-half meltdown thing. People forget that last year had Mike Brown, Nathan Vasher, and Dusty Dvoracek more or less gone for the entire year, and Brian Urlacher and Tommie Harris at way, way less than a hundred percent, in addition to pieces of shit like Adam Archuleta and Darwin Walker out there, along with the "Mark Anderson as a starter" experiment. If the Bears had ever had an offensive plan beyond "well, let's just hope the defense holds them to 13 or less and scores at least once," this might actually be a pretty scary team.
- The offensive line has held up surprisingly well, and unless I missed it, Fred Miller hasn't stepped on the field to fuck it all up yet. Sure, John St. Clair still sucks, but Josh Beekman has at least played well enough to hopefully keep Terrence Metcalf out of the starting lineup. If recent performance is any indicator, a Miller/Metcalf combo on the left side would have the same practical effect as placing Forté and Orton against a wall, unloading a 12-gauge into them, and then letting unfed pit bulls loose on whatever was left. It would be like offensive Armageddon, and if need be, I would take an armored space shuttle to Chicago and detonate a nuclear device in a hole drilled deep in Fred Miller's core to keep such a tragedy from happening, even if it took my own life in the process. The greater good, you know?
- Mike Brown still isn't out for the year. My voodoo sacrifices have worked.
THE BAD:- The Bears bunch of receivers has been pretty much what they were advertised to be. Which is to say that the Seahawks are basically signing guys off the street to start at wideout just because they like the dude's face, and the Bears still probably have a worse group. Out of four wide receivers to catch a pass so far this year, only Brandon Fucking Lloyd has averaged over ten yards a catch, and none of the others have even managed seven. It could all be a result of Kyle Orton's noodle arm, but when two-thirds of your receiving corps is made up of washed-up castoffs and converted cornerbacks, you can;t expect a whole helluva lot. Even thinking back to the days when a running back with 45 catches used to always lead the team in that category, it never was quite this bad. I mean even back when that hard-nosed, "we get off the bus running" bullshit actually still worked, they had guys like Wendell Davis or Willie Gault who would have been good if they were on other teams. This is like a whole fucking team of Ron Morrises and Glenn Kozlowskis.
- Greg Olsen's two fumbles basically lost the game this week, and even though he's still one of only three Bears to average over ten yards a catch, he's still not playing as well as you'd expect a dude with that much hype to play. I'm almost starting to get the feeling that they drafted Kellen Davis this year so they'd have an actual tight end to replace Desmond Clark in a few years, instead of a non-blocking Junior Shockey who's too large to be a wide receiver. To make matters worse, he doesn't have the etiquette or decency to always aim below the eyes. For shame, G-Reg.
THE UGLY:- If you use the unscientific "take his stats and multiply by eight" method of calculating the whole year's performance, Kyle Orton is on pace to complete 60% of his passes and not throw any interceptions this year. But he's also on pace to throw for less than 2,400 yards and not one single touchdown. He's averaging 5.6 yards a pass at this point, which is about two whole yards less than what you want a quarterback to have. And understand, this isn't the 2005 Kyle Orton, who was like the fifth choice to be the starter and who was having the coaches tell him to never even consider throwing the ball more than two yards down field; this is the fucking guy who won the job. The handcuffs are off, the receivers are running down the damn field, and he just can't get the ball to them. That's probably why Rex Grossman was so exciting for those first few games of 2006; it was like having one of those real quarterbacks that only other teams seem to get to have. Of course, between the Cardinals game that year and the whole 2007 season, the clock struck twelve, and that fucker turned back into the rotten pumpkin he always was, along with his line turning back into some damn field mice. But don't get me wrong, Orton is sucking a dick out there with way less vigor and way more caution than you'd like to see a dick get sucked with, but by no means do I want Rex out there. Given the choice, I'll always take 150 yards, no TDs and no INTs, over 220 yards, one TD, three fumbles, and four picks.
- Devin Hester runs so fast that he apparently outran his own rib cage Sunday, and if he misses any significant time, the Bears lose their best scoring threat. Of course, the fact that a kick returner is the biggest scoring threat on the team is Ugly in and of itself, but I'm trying to forget that right now. Of course, Danieal Manning has shown that at least on kickoff returns, he might potentially be among the top guys in the league, but it's still a lot like replacing Superman with Aquaman. Sure Aquaman can talk to fish and probably beat up some bank robbers or something, be he's just not in Superman's league, because frankly, no one is. And the real shitty thing is that the injury happened on a return, rather than on offense, so there's no practical way to blame Ron Turner for this.
- But I can blame Turner for this one, so all is right with the world. Seriously, dude, what the hell. Let's see what happened here: Running the ball has been all that's worked all game, including the nine-yard run you just got on first down. There are two minutes left, you're close to midfield, and all you need is one field goal from a really accurate kicker to win the game. You've got no time outs, but you've got juuuuuust enough time to be able to play in no major hurry. Just do what you do, get a couple first downs, and you're money. So you throw a no-huddle pass on second and one. Okay, free down, and I would have tried to go long if I was doing that, but it was worth a try. But now, the clock has stopped, so you get two chances for a first. Just run Forté once, and you've probably got it. So you call another short pass on third down? Then run Jason McKie up the middle on fourth? What the shit, man. When I play video games, I almost never punt and usually fake every field goal attempt, and my dumb ass knows better than to pull something like that. It's like this guy's entire game plan is a combination of doing exactly what the other team is expecting and only surprising them by doing things they figured he knew better than to try.
Overall, the Panthers game wasn't enough to make me write the season off as a disaster yet, and things are nowhere near as bad as I figured they'd be, but the year is young, and it could go either way at this point. Based on the Colts game and the first half of this one, I'll remain cautiously optimistic, which is the modern Bears fan equivalent of irrational exuberance. But as soon as their record sinks to 4 and 2, I'll just give up on 2008 and watch the Chicago Machine reclaim sole possession of third place in the MLL Western Conference instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment