Could be a long season.

[BC]

I'm sorry but this defensive system is entirely Lovie Smith's... The problem with it is that it is NOT designed to stop the run... As Washington is showing today, you can run on this altered Cover 2 defensive system all day and eventually wear the players in the system out...

(Note: This is the same system Tony Dungy runs, and you wonder why his teams in Tampa and Indy have never been able to win anything. This is why: The defense isn't designed to stop the run...)

[Paul]

Wake me in a few years when Orton and Benson are good.

At least ND is winning.

[BC]

If this is the crap we are going to see all season then let's just fire Turner and Lovie now and bring in someone that actually knows offense and actually knows how to stop the run.

Unacceptable that we lost this game against a p***-poor team that had to play their 93-year-old backup quarterback most of the game.

[BC]

166 total yards today for the Bears per WSCR just a few minutes ago

[CT]

Painful. Just painful.

Orton gets lucky on a ball he tosses up that Bradley pulls down for a big gain, so next play he tries to force it down the middle and gets picked off in the end zone. Same thing happened after Orton's big completion to Moose in the last preseason game. If he's going to throw an overconfident, stupid pass into the end zone after every big completion this year, and then say post-game that he'll "never do it again," he can be benched for all I care. Dumb ass.

Wow, weren't you driving the Kyle Orton Bandwagon about a week ago?  What a shock, a rookie QB struggles in his first NFL start (and against an elite defense).  Orton actually looked better than I thought he would.  He settled down in the 2nd half, and made some nice plays, other than the interception that he forced into zone coverage.  Kid needs to learn when to give up on a play and throw the ball away.  The o-line actually did a better job in pass protection than I thought, but they couldn't open any holes for the running backs.  Whether this is due to the Skins D or that they're just bad run blockers, I don't know.

As for the defense, they just couldn't get off the field on 3rd and long, and they still can't stop Clinton Portis.  The scheme isn't built to stop the run or pass, it's designed to force turnovers.  One of the biggest plays was Mike Green's penalty that nullified Vashar's 2nd interception.  Biggest dissappointment on that side was Mike Brown.  He wiffed on Portis on the long run that got the Skins away from their own end zone, and he couldn't cover Chris Cooley to save his life. 

[BC]

Mike Green killed us a couple times in the first half...

I hated that Lovie and our coaching staff showed no emotion today... Too Baker-ish for me...

As you can tell I'm not too happy with Lovie anymore... At least Jauron was able to get in the playoffs... Lovie seems to want to take this team farther and farther away from them... Too Baker-ish for me, thanks.

[Paul]

Painful. Just painful.

Orton gets lucky on a ball he tosses up that Bradley pulls down for a big gain, so next play he tries to force it down the middle and gets picked off in the end zone. Same thing happened after Orton's big completion to Moose in the last preseason game. If he's going to throw an overconfident, stupid pass into the end zone after every big completion this year, and then say post-game that he'll "never do it again," he can be benched for all I care. Dumb ass.

Wow, weren't you driving the Kyle Orton Bandwagon about a week ago?  What a shock, a rookie QB struggles in his first NFL start (and against an elite defense). 

It's not that he struggled. He didn't struggle. That's why I backed him. He's talented and relatively poised.

What pisses me off is that his mistake was not a rookie mistake; it was a Kyle Orton mistake. He's made the exact same mistake twice in his two starts. There's been a big completion downfield when he aired it out, and next play he gets overconfident and throws it carelessly up into the endzone, where it gets intercepted. He and Muhammad said it wouldn't happen again after he did it in the preseason game. His doing it again, immediately, in the exact same way he did it in the preseason game, shows either stupidity or a stubbornness on his part. If he doesn't do that, they win the game. He has all the tools to be good, but if he's going to be a stubborn, careless Brett Favre type down near the goal line, he can go to hell. This team doesn't have a good enough offense for him to make ill-advised throws out of pride down near the end zone. The rest of his performance was fine, as expected. He was hurt by the lack of a running game (Benson will help this - he played better than Jones even without having had a training camp), and his two fumbles weren't great, but on the whole he played great. If he'd thrown a basic interception, I'd still probably give him a B. But since he threw a stupid overconfident INT that he knew better than to throw, it's a C.

[Timmy B]

As you can tell I'm not too happy with Lovie anymore... At least Jauron was able to get in the playoffs... Lovie seems to want to take this team farther and farther away from them... Too Baker-ish for me, thanks.

Should Ryne Sandberg be hired as the head coach to take them to the Promised Land?

[KD]

I hated that Lovie and our coaching staff showed no emotion today... Too Baker-ish for me...

I know, right?  Black people suck.

[Mike D.]

Mike Green killed us a couple times in the first half...

And he's been benched.

Not bad.  It only took the Bears 5 seasons + 1 game to realize that the last player taken in the 2000 draft was drafted last for a reason.

[CT]

Mike Green killed us a couple times in the first half...

And he's been benched.

Not bad.  It only took the Bears 5 seasons + 1 game to realize that the last player taken in the 2000 draft was drafted last for a reason.

What does it say about the current GM that the last pick in the 2000 draft is still on the team, and our 1st rounder from 2002 has been cut?

[Chuck]

What does it say about the current GM that the last pick in the 2000 draft is still on the team, and our 1st rounder from 2002 has been cut?

It says that the draft is shorter today than it was years ago making the last guy drafted have a higher rating now than 10 years ago (Hilgenberg was undrafted in a 12 round draft!) and that the 2002 guy shreded his knee.

[Mike D.]

Mike Green killed us a couple times in the first half...

And he's been benched.

Not bad.  It only took the Bears 5 seasons + 1 game to realize that the last player taken in the 2000 draft was drafted last for a reason.

What does it say about the current GM that the last pick in the 2000 draft is still on the team, and our 1st rounder from 2002 has been cut?

You want to know why the Bears suck?  Look no further than the first-round picks from the past 14 drafts (I exempted 2005.  God help us if Benson's a bust)

91  Stan Thomas
92  Alonzo Spellman
93  Curtis Conway
94   John Theory of Relatively Awful Wannstedt Picks
95   Raashaan Saalaam
96  Walt Harris
97  Traded away for Rick Mirer.  First pick in 2nd round was John Allred
98  Curtis Penis
99   Cade McNown
2000  Brian Urlacher
01  David Terrell
02  Mark Columbo
03  Rex Grossman/MichaelHaynes
04  Tommie Harris


Including Rick Mirer (but not John Allred), the list is 15 players.

In that group you've got six total busters:  Thomas, Thierry, Mirer, Enis, McNown, Columbo
In that group, you've got six disappointments: Spellman, Conway, Salaam, Terrel, Grossman, Haynes (One could argue that Haynes is a bust.  He'll be on that list in December if he does nothing this year)

That narrows it  down to three players:

Walt Harris-  Turned into a serviceable corner, whose best years were at the end of his Bears tenure, before he was sprung as a free agent.
Urlacher-- When not spending time in opponent's huddles lobbying for Pro Bowl votes, he's generally been quite good, although he still gets his ass beat too much to be mentioned in the pantheon of great Bear LB's just yet.  
Tommie Harris-- looks promising, but he also got his fat ass beat so badly by Washington last week, I'll reserve judgement until he plays a few games this year without walking off the field with cleat marks on his chest.

Just sick.  And you can't just blame Jerry Angelo.  Mark Hatley, Rod Graves, Bill Tobin and Mike Ditka all had a hand in this.  The one constant is McCaskey so blame his ass if you must, but we've simply been cursed by extremely poor personnel management since the early 90's.

[CT]

I think you've got to put Terrell in the total busts category.

[Mike D.]

I think you've got to put Terrell in the total busts category.

His two clutch TD catches in that wild comeback win vs. the 49ers in his rookie year in 2001 is all that keeps him away from the "bust" pile.