Bears Lose Player in Final Preseason Game
The Chicago Bears were defeated by the Cleveland Browns in an exhibition matchup Thursday night. ESPN.com is running the AP report on the game. The Bears would have been a non-story for the most part, if not for the knee injury suffered by rookie tight end Greg Olsen. Olsen left the game and will have an MRI today to determine the extent of the injury. This will come as a huge blow to the Bears - who rested their starters for much of the game - as they were planning on using Olsen quite a bit during the regular season as a check-down option for Rex Grossman.
As for their adversaries, the Browns continue to have a QB situation. Brady Quinn has played extremely well in what limited playing time he’s seen after holding out to begin training camp. Though the Browns has been reluctant to name him the starter, he has outperformed their other two serious quarterback options at this point. Don’t be surprised if you see Quinn on the field sooner rather than later. The Bears will now prepare for their week one battle versus the San Diego Chargers.
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Bears Tops of NFC in Power Rankings
ESPN.com has released its final preseason power rankings. In many ways, not much has changed since the last time these rankings were released. However, for some teams, the change has been drastic. No change has been more dramatic or surreal than the complete free fall of the Atlanta Falcons, who plummeted from 19 to 31 after losing Michael Vick. Other notable changes were the Bears (from 5 to 4), the Ravens, (4 to 5), and the Redskins, who somehow jumped from number 28 to 19 despite the fact that I couldn’t name you one offseason Redskins acquisition.
ESPN.com once again feels that the Bears are the cream of the NFC this year. They moved ahead of the Ravens, presumably due to the end of the Lance Briggs holdout saga (let’s hope he can stay out of car accidents for the rest of the season). I think people are finally starting to wake up and realize that the Bears, despite their issues and despite Rex Grossman, are somehow still the best team in the NFC. If Grossman can keep himself in check, and if Benson can pick up the load running the ball, then this team has a legit shot at winning 12+ games again. However, those are some really big ifs.
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TMQ’s Bears Preview
ESPN.com’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback has released their NFC preview, giving their perspective on the upcoming football season as only TMQ truly can. You really should read the entire article, as it will give you a solid (and fairly humorous) perspective on your team’s entire conference. However, if you really don’t care to read TMQ’s take on the entire conference, you can simply read their take on the Chicago Bears and be done with it.
TMQ comes at the Bears with stats, stats, and more stats. They point out that the 2006 Bears were 5th in overall defense and 15th on offense. They point out that they had nine nonoffensive touchdowns, which was a league best. They also point to their 32-for-36 field goal kicking. Football games in the NFL are won on these types of stats - the types most fans pay very little attention to - and the Bears have known this for years. However, TMQ asks the same question everyone seems to have about the Bears. TMQ just wants to know if any team - even a team that has insanely stellar defense and special teams play - win in the NFL with Rex Grossman as their quarterback?
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Bears Briggs Charged in Car Accident
As promised, there is more on the story of Lance Briggs’ abandoned Lamborghini. Reports are now claiming that the Bears linebacker has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident after crashing his car and leaving it alongside an expressway on the city’s North Side. Apparently, Briggs thought that after running his car into a lamp post, the most appropriate course of action was to leave the car and not bother with it until the next day. Briggs was also charged with leaving the scene of an accident and improper lane usage, whatever that means. Briggs was released on 100 dollars bond.
This story grows odder and odder by the day. Apparently the car was found at 3:15 a.m. Monday, abandoned, on the side of the freeway. The Bears, for their part, seem unconcerned. Briggs spirits are high, according to his coach, and the rest of the team has been too busy getting ready for the rapidly approaching regular season to notice that their teammate had a little trouble keeping his car on the road. Briggs hasn’t spoken to the media since reporting to camp after his holdout, and he didn’t begin talking to the press after this incident either.
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Briggs Car Found Crashed
According to a report on ESPN.com, a car registered to Chicago Linebacker Lance Briggs was found wrecked this morning in Chicago. Very few details have been released. We do know that the car was found crashed into a light pole off of I-94. Beyond that, we know very little. It is not yet known if Briggs was driving the car when it was wrecked, or if he was even in the car at all. The car was not reported stolen, and is certainly registered to Briggs, but that proves nothing. So, as it stays right now, the public is still very much in the dark on this strange story.
Are you ready to cry? The car in question was a Lamborghini with a Kelley Blue Book value of more than 350,000 dollars. Ouch. Briggs can afford it, but still. That has to hurt. I don’t even want to see a picture. Apparently, Briggs was not injured, but no one will cop to whether or not he was in the car when it was crashed. However, he did call the police to discuss with them the whereabouts of his car, whatever that means. More on this story later in the week, I’m sure.
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Bears Support Grossman
According to a report in the Daily Herald, Rex Grossman’s Chicago Bears teammates have come to his defense against the media hurricane swirling around him ever since his 3 fumble, 1 INT performance in their previous preseason game. Teammates claim to have full faith in Rex Grossman and consider this move by the Chicago media to be predictable and unfair, going so far as to refer to it as “just a continuation of last year.” The Bears, for their part, still claim to have full faith in Rex Grossman’s abilities to lead them to a Super Bowl ring.
Seriously? Are we wall watching the same Rex Grossman here? Is he doing some unbelievably superhuman things in practice that the Bears are hopeful he can finally translate to actual game time performance? No offense to the Bears or their fans, but Grossman just seems to freeze up. He always seems to make a mistake at the most inopportune time, and once he’s made one error, you can almost pencil him in for at least two more in the same game, guaranteed. He was a liability for the Bears during the second part of the 2006 season and was a big part of the reason they lost the Super Bowl. And honestly, if he can’t figure it out early in the 2007 season, one has to wonder how long this support from all his teammates will hold.
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Bears Have Top Player in Madden
ESPN.com has released their John Madden 2008 Player Rankings, and the Bears are sitting pretty. Not only do they have the top rated player in the entire game (Urlacher), but they have three players in the Top 30. Urlacher is number one overall, with Harris and Kreutz at 27 and 28. If you continue to scroll through the top 100, you will see even more Bears, in a laundry list of NFC domination. The Bears, according to Madden, are stacked.
As far as Madden is concerned, Chicago should be a team looking to make a run at another NFC title this year. They have high quality talent on both sides of the ball and rate extremely highly on defense, according to EA Sports. If you believe Madden, the Chicago Bears defense will be an unstoppable force of nature in the NFC this year, rolling over all who oppose them. Unfortunately for Bears fans, though, it’s only Madden, not real life.
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Rex Back on the Hot Seat
If you read the papers in Chicago, then you already know that Rex Grossman is back on the hot seat with the local media. This article, out of the Chicago Sun-Times, exemplifies just how little respect he gets in Chicago. The article has little leaguers giving Rex “advice” via the column about how to not fumble the ball as it is snapped to him. Poor Rex Grossman is going to need some kind of miraculously record-breaking season as a quarterback this year if he wants to get this monkey off his back. 3 fumbles and an interception in a preseason game is only helping to turn that monkey into the 500 lb gorilla in the room.
No one seems to be able to figure out what is wrong with Rex Grossman. It seems that for some reason he just can’t figure it out. He has all the proper physical tools one needs to be a quarterback in the National Football League, but for some reason, he can’t put it together mentally. Fumbled snaps? Bears fans have every right to be upset. All they need is one passable quarterback (no pun intended) and they could win the Super Bowl. And they’re stuck with a guy named Rex.
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Bears Win Despite Grossman
If you really want to read it, ESPN.com is running a recap of Monday’s Super Bowl rematch with the Indianapolis Colts. The Bears defeated the Colts 27-24 in the meaningless in rematch. However, it wasn’t the final score that made headlines, but rather the amazingly terrible play of Rex Grossman, the inconsistent and turnover-prone quarterback/liability for the Bears. Grossman had 3 fumbles, and one interception while going 9 for 11 for less than 60 yards total. Like anyone would want their starting QB to do, he left a mess for his second-string to clean up.
What in the world are the Bears going to do if Rex can pull it together this year? If he doesn’t get it done, how many weeks does he have before you bench him? What is it about this guy that prevents him from “getting it” and playing up to his full potential? Does anyone actually have him in their fantasy football league, and if so, how hardcore are those people gripping right now? These and more questions can only be answered once Grossman steps out onto the field for a game that really matters, and after this game, Chicago fans must be wondering now more than ever, “which Grossman will show up?”
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Bears Gear Up for SuperBowl Rematch
The Chicago Sun-Times is running a fun article about tonight’s Chicago Bears game versus the Indianapolis Colts. The match-up is of course a rematch of last year’s Super Bowl, during which the Colts were able to get the best of the Bears last February. However, since the game is a preseason match, it will lack the intensity of a truly important mid-season head-to-head battle. Considering that most of the men who play for the duration of the second half of the game weren’t even on either team during the 2006 season, it isn’t even like they’ll be battling for revenge, either.
This is a puzzling matchup in every way. A preseason grudge match between last year’s two Super Bowl teams seems to make no sense no matter how you look at it. You could make the case for the NFL trying to raise interest in the preseason, but a marquee match like this will only bump ratings slightly during the preseason, when it would have astronomical numbers in the regular season. It just seems odd that the NFL decided to place this rematch squarely in the heart of the exhibition season, when it would have been so much better had they made fans wait until week seven to see such a game.
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