The Daily Warning

I guess this deserves a brief explanation, considering I’ve only done one other football post since I started this thing.  I’m a football nerd, I got as interested as I am after reading about this story in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 where he rode in a limo with Richard Nixon and they had a really fascinating conversation about the Miami Dolphins.  I’m really excited that training camp and the preseason is starting soon, and I’m pretty excited about the Bears’ chances this year.  That said, there’s a lot of important stuff that we’re going to know a lot more about once training camp gets under way.

So here are my thoughts. The area I am most concerned with is the defensive line.  We have more talent in our defensive line than most teams in the league.  If they were cohesive and each achieving their maximum potential, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be top 10 in the league.  Last year they were a joke, and that is absolutely crippling in a Tampa Two defense.  We had to blitz on almost every play, taking a guy out of the pass coverage and creating massive and predictable holes.  Sure we had a great run defense last year, we had five guys rushing almost every play, so we were eaten alive by the pass.  Sure we blamed the secondary for it, but it was absolutely preposterous schematics, which were our only option because our d-line was getting no penetration.  And realistically, as much as I think he’s a great guy and I hate thinking about this after the great success he had in the early part of his tenure as our head coach, if Lovie Smith can’t light a fire under the d-lines ass and get them to perform he might be better serving the Bears as their defensive coordinator.  That said, it appears like he gets this and he’s handling it.  He’s essentially made Bob Babich, the defensive coordinator, the linebackers coach holding the d-coordinator position only in an emeritus sense.  Lovie Smith will be serving as head coach and defensive coordinator.  And he brought in Rod Marinelli to be our new d-line coach, about whom it needs to be said that he was a good enough d-line coach in Tampa Bay that they gave him the head coaching job in Detroit. It seems Lovie’s figured out that he’s on the hot seat, and so he’s taking it upon himself to get it done.  

If the d-line handles their business and performs like everyone knows they are capable of, the Bears defense will be a force like it was in 2006.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Corey Graham impressed some people at safety, same with Kevin Payne.  Alex Brown is always a force to be reckoned with, and I’d like it if he emerged as a leader in camp.  Tommie Harris’s playing time might have to be budgeted to keep his knees working into the post-season.  Injury is also a concern for Dusty Dvoracek, and so the two main guys at tackle might have to take more of a back seat.  That said, Israel Idonijie has been developing into a quality starting tackle, and Anthony Adams and Marcus Harrison should be able to step up and play at near-starter levels if they’re motivated to reach their potentials.  Our linebackers should be very good.  Brian Urlacher is getting older, but if he gets excited about the defense this year I could see him not going quietly into the good night.  If he decides he’s going to shove it in all the pundits’ faces and make the pro-bowl, come on, he’s Brian Urlacher.  On top of that, Lance Briggs seems to be hitting the prime of his career and may be out to prove that he should be remembered as one of the great Bears linebackers.  I think Hunter Hillenmeyer very well might not be starting, Nick Roach was pretty good last year, and they didn’t bring in Tinoisamoa for nothing.

So the defense all comes down the d-line.  Everything else ranges from relatively solid to pretty damn great.  I don’t see a middle ground for the d-line, because either they’re playing as the stars they should be, scaring the hell out of every quarterback that has the misfortune to be facing them that week, or they’re going to be who they were last year.  Obviously I’m hoping for the former.  If they show up the Bears D will be a force to be reckoned with, and I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t be Super Bowl caliber.

The offense is going to be solid at absolute worst.  Last year, despite the defense, the Bears came within a few points against the Texans from winning the division and going to the playoffs.  I was and still am a huge Kyle Orton fan, I hope he impresses the hell out of everyone in Denver, but Jay Cutler is a definite upgrade.  This means all of the targets Kyle Orton used last year, Matt Forte and Greg Olsen primarily, should be prime to at the very least improve upon last year’s performance if the receivers prove unready.  Kevin Jones could very possibly be able to share a lot of the carries with Matt Forte, revitalizing his own career and extending Matt’s.  At the very least they have them.

They also have Devin Hester.  Now I’m not bashing either Kyle Orton or Devin Hester when I say that the combination didn’t maximize either’s potential.  Kyle Orton is a very solid, smart, hard working quarterback, and his arm is stronger than he often gets credit for.  That said, he wasn’t comfortable with the long balls, and there was a reason.  Combine that one with Devin Hester being a converted CB who’s still figuring out the whole wide receiver thing, and you’ve got something that isn’t going to work.  I think Kyle Orton could be very very good in Denver with Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal, as they both have the talent to make up for that little something that Kyle Orton lacks, and similarly I think it could help Devin Hester a lot now that he’s going to have an extremely talented quarterback putting the ball exactly where it needs to be.  The rest of the WR core is a definite question mark at best.  Rashied Davis should not be a starting receiver, he’s a hard worker and blue collar as hell, but he just doesn’t have the hands of a starting receiver.  Johnny Knox is amazing in a t-shirt and shorts, he’s fast enough that adjusting to the speed of the NFL shouldn’t be a problem, but the sheer violence of the NFL might be.  He’s someone I’m really excited to hear about in training camp and see in the preseason.  Juaquin Iglesias should be a pretty good #3 guy from day one.  Earl Bennett was Jay Cutler’s main target at Vanderbilt, and they are said to have good chemistry, and he’ll probably be starting as the number 2.  There is a lot of potential upside with this receiver core, if Johnny Know can handle the violence he could be a real threat at #2, and then we’d have potentially great options at number 3 with Earl Bennett and Juaquin Iglesias essentially rotating between number 3 and number 4.  And if the receivers all turn out the way the true optimists expect, then yeah, Bears could have a Super Bowl caliber offense as well.  The problem is that the world is a cruel and unfair place.  There is no guarantee that Johnny Knox is going to be able to handle getting regularly hit by the guys who have established themselves as the best in the world at hitting people in this specific way.  We didn’t see anything of Earl Bennett last year, and it makes me nervous that he didn’t bother to learn the playbook last year.  Sure he might be pretty good, and his chemistry with Jay Cutler might be good, but he also might not be better at doing what he does than the opposing CBs are at doing what they do.  Juaquin Iglesias was really good in college, but from what I’ve heard the NFL is an entirely different game.  Just ask Tim Couch.  So I mean, I’m somewhere between cautiously optimistic and measuredly pessimistic on the wide receivers.

I don’t think they need everyone to turn out as good as they could possibly be this year for the Super Bowl to be an option.  There is no powerhouse in the NFC, there are a lot of really good teams, but there is no team that the Bears can not realistically beat on a good day.  As long as that’s true, then there’s no reason why they couldn’t go to and win the Super Bowl.  The Arizona Cardinals came within an absolute miracle play by Santonio Holmes of winning the Super Bowl.  The Vikings have two things I’m afraid of, their d-line is absolutely terrifying, and Adrian Peterson is absolutely terrifying.  That said, their o-line is greatly improved from last year, and Adrian Peterson can’t be realistically expected to outscore our entire offense all of the time.  The Packers always are a threat.  I’d say they could go anywhere between 2-4 and 6-0 in the NFC North.  They could realistically beat the Steelers and Ravens on a good day if the Bears are good this year, the Seahawks, Bengals, Browns, Cardinals, 49ers, Eagles and Rams range between pretty good and probably not going to be good at all.  The truth is that on any given sunday any one team can beat any other, and so they’ll almost certainly lose a few, but there isn’t any team they’re playing that I don’t like their chances against if the Bears show up.

 The people I’m going to be most interested in at camp are Anthony Adams, Marcus Harrison, Mark Anderson, Adewale Ogunleye, Corey Graham, Pisa Tinoisamoa, Nick Roach, Johnny Knox, Earl Bennett, Kevin Jones, and Devin Hester.  I’ve got some injury concerns with Tommie Harris and Dusty Dvoracek, but obviously camp can’t really do much to alleviate those.  The Bears could go all the way this year, and we’re going to start finding that out very soon.

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