Alex Brown said it best. “It was a good day to be a Bear.”
Before kickoff yesterday, Lovie called the team together and told them somberly that a big news story was going to break and it would be in all the papers on Monday. The players looked at each other and wondered if somebody else had been hit in the head with a dumbell. Then Lovie smiled and said the headlines would read that the Bears had beaten Carolina and were a pretty damn good football team. Hey, if you’re not going to listen to a large black man in a leather jacket, who are you going to listen to?
Nathan Vasher is ready to play a postseason game “across the water.” Whether he meant Honolulu or Detroit is of little consequence. They don’t call him The Interceptor for nothing.
The Moose caught the only TD of the game, but didn’t play well. But you had to love the Moose hats he had the kids wearing in the south end zone.
Rick Morrissey says the Bears are trying to erase one doubter at a time. They had me at Minnesota.
Phil Jackson had some advice for the Bulls on how to beat the Lakers. He suggested they play all five defenders on Kobe. They did. Kobe scored 43. The Bulls own. Thanks, Phil.
I saw the Illini on Friday night and am already a huge Chester Frazier fan (is there any other kind)? But it sounds like we’re all grateful that the Texas-Pan American game was not televised. At least not where I could find it. And if you ask me, it looks to me like Dee Brown would rather be anywhere but Champaign. Not that I can discount that on merit. Hey, it’s no DeKalb.
Teddy G. says we’re unlikely to get a Notre Dame-Penn State bowl game. Then again, they play in week two in 2006 against each other, so we’ll just wait until Michael Robinson goes away.
Groucho tries to get KG out of Minnesota and figure out ways to get Al Harrington or Peja to the Bulls. He also closes with an excellent Vlade Divac joke.
Look out, Mariotti is putting down the doughnuts to try to climb on the bandwagon.
Chris DeLuca, so competent that the Sun-Times runs his stuff on Saturday (you know, the day nobody reads the paper) says the White Sox are going to get Juan Pierre and the Braves will keep Rafael Furcal. Given his past track record, this guarantees the Cubs will get both.
Underwear model Len Pasquarelli enjoyed watching the Bears thrash the Panthers. He even got Panthers’ d-lineman Brentson Buckner to say the Bears are the best defense Buckner’s seen in his 12 NFL seasons.
Peter King grudgingly gives the Bears some credit.
Peter Gammons says Josh Beckett is out the door in Florida (probably to Texas, maybe to Boston) and that Carlos Delgado is all but gone, too. I wondered at the time how long Carlos would be a Fish. His huge contract only paid him $4 million last year. Now the big money kicks in. Shrewd.
The Cubs dumped four guys off their 40 man roster: Mike Fontenot, comedian Richard Lewis (who should just have Larry David shove a pillow over his cousin, Louis), Ross Rohlicek and our old buddy Adam Greenberg. Will Greenberg be lost in the Rule V? It’s hard to believe anybody can stash him on their roster for a full year, or will want to.
Brian Giles might take less to stay in San Diego.
The Mariners new catcher doesn’t speak English. Or Spanish.
America’s finest news source with the scoop on a tremendous new Animal Planet reality show.
Speaking of big news stories, somebody ask Lovie if I’m dead yet.
You had to love the little hula dance Vasher did after his second pick.
However, I still feel this team could finish with a 2-4 stretch. That would still be good enough to win the North, but it would break the momentum.
Of course, Bill Maas thinks that a whistle is no longer enough to stop a play. Dumbass.
I am quite manly, no?
Maybe Kreutz should bust up John Tait’s jaw, seeing how well I did against Julius Peppers in spite of the fact that I eat my meals through a straw.
Don’t forget, Fred, you lost me in a single week.
Does Steve Smith suddenly prefer to be called “Steven” or was this the invention of William Maas & Samuel Rosen?
Having heard Maas and Rosen call that game yesterday, I get the feeling the pair was nowhere near me at the time. Good bet they were down at Butch McGuire’s watching the thing on TV.
They continually mis-identified players and speculated incorrectly about penalties. What exactly do these two numbskulls do for a living?
Anybody have me in the dead pool? You might be about to cash in.
On the Illini:
Apparently Texas-Pan Am played zone and the first 15 or so minutes looked like that UGLY Providence game from two seasons ago at Madison Square Garden.
Luckily, Texas-Pan Am isn’t as good as that Providence team was and the Illini were at home.
My favorite part about doing commentary on the Bears game is when I click on a player during a replay to make the little icon with the player’s face and an arrow appear on them. I’ve pointed out how great of a DT Tommie Harris is in the wins over SF and Carolina by highlighting him as Chris Harris.
What will it take from our team for us to get broadcasters who don’t suck ass?
Probably one of me #10.
#10, quick, name some NFL announcers (currently working) who DON’T suck ass.
And let’s leave Bonnie Bernstein out of this “sucking ass” category.
On behalf of the 2001 Bears: Ouch.
Sure, they got some terrific bounces to go their way and they got beat unmerciful in the playoffs, but they deserve a better place in the annals than dismissed as a smoke and mirrors operation. They won 13 games because they gave up the fewest points in the league that year, which is a pretty good job refusing the opposition the end zone.
Fair enough, but the illusion that they lucked their way to 13-3 was formed mainly on unbelievable wins against the Niners and Browns, when if any one bounce had gone the other way they go 11-5 finish behind the Packers and go home in round one instead of getting a bye.
Dick Jauron did a great job with that team, and if he’d been a little more ruthless (i.e. replaced John Shoop with a competent offensive coordinator) he might very well still be around.
Speaking of “competent offensive coordinators” how nice is it that we finally have one? Not that Ron Turner’s anything exceptional–he’s not–but after the debacles of Shea, Shoop, Crowton and Cavanaugh…well let’s just say that Turner’s the last competent coordinator we’ve had since, well, Ron Turner.
Why am I still on? Why do I exist in the first place? I am a terrible show.
What a win yesterday. It was the most satisfying Bears win since I could ask one of my best friends who is a Cleveland fan how many hail marys he said after the game against the Browns in ’01.
I think I’m going to punch the next person who tells me that Urlacher is ‘overrated’ and then force them to watch him chasing Smith down over and over again. That play, as much as anything, tells me how awesome our defense is. When a MLB can catch a WR running free down the sideline… damn you’re fast.
A win next week, and we’ll go from being ‘for real’ all of the sudden to maybe getting a bye in the first round. Amidst that talk, will anyone notice that Rex is even holding a clipboard on the sidelines?
And if we can figure out how to score 20 points a game… we might be able to do some great things.
Bear Down!
Not just any WR, I am one speedy little dude.
Sid Luckman was the quarterback when I became a Bear fan. You should have seen it, Lake Michigan was really a special lake in those days.
My first Bears game I saw Butkus and Sayers. Sold for life at that point.
Sweetness is still #1 with me though. Butkus 2nd and Ditka 3rd.
The Bears won yesterday? Hard to give a fuck when it’s 85, sunny, and there’s lots of bikini’s around.
Only downside here is that the Maui Classic is about 90 miles east on the other side of a wide swatch of ocean.
Well, that and Murton’s kids are with me.
I’ve been ripped off and used in a post on NSBB’s transaction forum. Look under the Josh Beckett trade thread.
Chuck, you log on to Desipio on HOLIDAY IN HAWAII, thus wasting valuable beer/bikini time? I think you need to have a long, hard think about your priorities, man.
Tonker,
Last time I was in Hawaii, I frequently checked in on Desipio. Granted, there was the little matter of the National League Championship Series between the Marlins and the Cubs, but I don’t know if it makes it any better.
Seen and heard on Sunday as actual NFL television announcers:
Rich Gannon: CBS, Oakland at Washington
Thom Brennaman: FOX, Arizona at St. Louis
Neil O’Donnell: FOX, Arizona at St. Louis
Stephen Baldinger: CBS, Jacksonville at Tennessee (I think that was the game he did, anyway)
Yes, the current crop of NFL announcers is really horrific. It doesn’t get much better as you head to the top. Dick Enberg, as #2 at CBS, is probably the best play-by-play man left, but he’s dropped off badly in the last few years. Jim Nantz is the #1 at CBS, and he’s all right, but his golf announcing habits are almost the opposite of what you need for football.
Joe Buck, the #1 at FOX, is terribly overrated as both a baseball and a football announcer, although I will give him credit (What?!?!?) because he has improved his football announcing from what it once was. Although his post-Randy Moss celebration outburst still gets him the “Acting Horrified To Score Cheap Points Among Your Media Friends” lifetime achievement award.
With the color analysts: FOX seems to hire any former 90’s Cowboy with a pulse, and Darryl Johnston is an indication of what that’s a bad thing. Aikman is decent and improving, although his tendency to support any quarterback is a little annoying and self-serving. CBS has Phil Simms, who usually does a solid job, although his job during Colts/Bengals was below average at best, and that’s about it. You know what you’re going to get from Dan Dierdorf (Who Rich Gannon is replacing at CBS because Dierdorf has a health problem at the moment), which isn’t all bad but isn’t great either.
So, where does this lead us? Sarcasm survey says…
Bonnie Bernstein is the only great NFL announcing crew member right now on our television screens. Who can top “Two Dicks, Wow!!!”?
Psst, #14/15 [To take the revised version of Bears history to its logical conclusion]: If you take our respective individual crunch-time gakks in tight, low-scoring losses to the Bears, combine them with the erasure of the miraculous wins over SF and Cleveland, and include the whole schmear in the Bears’ annals (vol. 2001), then you’re looking at a likely 9-7 finish and getting nosed out of the final playoff spot by the Bucs (who would’ve finished 10-6 had they accepted the gift the idiot Jauron spent the entire second half trying to hand them in that game away at Tampa that should’ve been over midway thru the third quarter) –great defense refusing the opposition the end zone all year notwithstanding.
There’s a timely lesson in there somewhere…something about how, if you have any expectation of winning in this league, your offense has to score points sooner or later –and without the benefit of training wheels provided courtesy of takeaways, three-and-outs forced, good returns on special teams, et cetera.
Jason and Martin, which of you has been carrying the purse that holds all these what-ifs for 4 years?
“If”, “erasure of wins”, “could’ve”, “would’ve”, and “notwithstanding” is a full house of excuses for one sentence that’s supposed to be a logical conclusion. I’ll pass on sentence 2, The Lesson on Winning In This League.
What’s wrong with me?
Okay, so I scream a lot. For no reason. On almost every play.
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Anybody remember me? Nobody made a two-yard Walter Payton plunge sound as exciting as I did.
Brad Palmer was my partner.
Also, I weigh, like, 400 lbs.
Tonks:
Murton’s kids were napping. Had to do somehting.
Happy turkey.