O NOESAfter the first game of the exhibition season, it's important to keep things in perspective. Offenses and defenses aren't going to be showing all their best material, the players that really matter are barely going to see the field, and in the end, the outcome of a preseason game is absolutely meaningless. Remember, the 1985 Bears team that won the Super Bowl, had a defense that was almost as good at the 1986 Bears, and came within one Mercury Morris voodoo curse of going undefeated only won one preseason game that year. (I totally looked that up, because one thing we believe in here is quality.) But since this is the internet, I'm legally required to overreact to things, so: oh holy shit, the sky is falling, the future is in ruins, and nothing surrounds us but endless fire. But for reals, here were some observations I got from watching parts of the game through shady illegal internet means, listening to other parts through perfectly legal (but still free~$) internet means, and just sort of gleaning the rest from shit people who know more than I do have written about the parts that I missed:
OFFENSIVE LINE: Oh man, not good. The running game went absolutely nowhere but occasionally backward, and Bear quarterbacks were running for their lives all night. This team is hurting pretty bad from their policy of waiting until the later rounds of the draft to look at offensive linemen and their free-agency policy of just signing other teams' shitty castoffs who were cast off after their old team had signed another team's shitty castoffs to replace them. (Whew.) In the end, you've got an o-line mostly made up of would-be disposable "camp body" type players - throwaway draft picks and barely-on-the-practice-squad rejects. And behind the starters, there's no depth at all, made all the more scary by the fact that at least three of the current starters shouldn't be counted on for much more than backup depth in the first place. (And of those, Frank Omiyale is mostly just useful for making sure the bench doesn't seesaw and tip over when another 300-pounder sits on the opposite end)
So unless magical fairy line coach Mike Tice can revert Olin Kreutz and Roberto Garza to the year 2006 and polish turds like Omiyale and Lance Louis into viable NFL players by early September, this year is going to be ugly. We could be seeing some awful Passion of the Cutler shit this year, with poor Jay just flogged and beaten for about six weeks, until he's finally nailed to a piece of wood and jabbed in the side with Jared Allen's frog-giggin' stick, dying a bloody, horrible, mopey, surly death.
QUARTERBACK: You know, I'm honestly not too worried about Jay Cutler, aside from the "being physically murdered by opposing, unblocked players" thing. A lot of people already declared the sky to be in mid-fall around interception #20 last year, but for some reason, I have more of a peaceful easy feeling about the starting quarterback position than at any time in the past, really. Because some weird misfire in my brain truly believes that he'll thrive in the new Ron Turner-free offense, and shit, even with all those picks last year, he still probably had one of the top five all-time seasons by a Bear quarterback. Which is sad, but hey, it's better than normal.
But if the line can't get their shit together, and Cutler is to be made a human sacrifice, we are fuuuuuuuuuucked. The Bears have already paid for the San Diego game with the most precious blood of backup Caleb Hanie, and if he's not ready to go for the season opener, it's gonna be a really tense-ass time watching Cutler absorb all those hits with nothing behind him.
We've already released Fire Marshall Brett Basanez and cut/waived/injury-settled/whatever camp arm Mike Teel, so all that leaves is rookie Dan LeFevour, and god damn, that is a dude who does not presently belong in the NFL. And without much left to choose from in free agency, by Week Six, I could seriously be watching some bullshit like Josh McCown hitting opposing safeties right between the numbers or JaMarcus Russell having to be hoisted into his Rascal Scooter with a crane to get his fat ass off the field in time for the punting unit to come out, all wheezing into the oxygen mask in between sips of his "special grape Gatorade" or whatever. God, Allah, Vishnu, Xenu, Zeus, Odin, or whoever else is out there, please watch over and protect Jay, so I don't have to suffer through that shit all year. Jesus.
WIDE RECEIVER: Hey, you know, it's gonna be alright this year, man. It's gonna be allllriiiiiight. Johnny Knox looked like the real thing, like in those movies where there's a scene where a bunch of horses are running, and the one good-guy horse the movie is based on is all running faster than the others, to the point where it almost looks like everyone else isn't moving at all, but it's clear that they really are running, and that the good guy horse is just making it look like they're standing still, because the good-guy horse is AMAZING. What I'm trying to say is that Johnny Knox is like a good-guy movie horse, because he was born free, free as the wind. Meanwhile, Devin Aromashodu continued last year's practice of making everyone on Earth wonder why Devin Hester has been anointed the Chosen Devin. The news wasn't all good, though; Juaquin Iglesias is seemingly ahead of schedule on his two-year plan to not play pro football anymore, and none of the other WR6 hopefuls did anything special. But between Knox, the two Devins, and Earl Bennett, you've got four dudes I could live with as starters, and Rashied Davis doesn't seem as bad lately as he's been since I stupidly started talking him up as a "dude to watch" two years ago.
I just hope the Bear fan base at large never finds out about the existence of no-hope practice squad dude Zeke Markshausen, though, because in a town diabolically obsessed with slow, bad, white wide receivers, I'm sure they'd go abso-fucking-lutely nuts over one who has such an unstoppably white name as "Zeke Markshausen." Like the only whiter name that I could think of would be some absolute nonsense, like "Whitey Hitler" or something.
SAFETY: Oh man, Major Wright is awesome, and he actually knows how to tackle dudes, which is something that's been missing here since Mike Brown's body turned against him, and he's... hurt. And so is Craig Steltz. And Josh Bullocks... Aaaaand Danieal Manning, too. I guess I shouldn't panic too hard here, since Wright and Steltz should be back in time for the regular season, Manning is as bad at playing safety as he is good at returning kickoffs, and Bullocks was pretty much a dead man walking as soon as Wright got drafted. But man, this is the Chicago Bears. Minor injuries are never minor on this team. Tommie Harris has only had "minor" injuries for the past few awful seasons, Matt Forte's terrible 2009 season was caused by injuries too minor to appear on the injury report, and Neal Anderson's career fell apart after a pulled hamstring. For all I know, by Week Ten, one of these dudes could be stone-ass dead from complications following an ankle-taping. Man, what I typed that now, and it ends up really happening? I should just stop, so no one else gets doomed.
NEXT TIME: More gnashing of teeth after something bad probably happens against the Raiders.
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