Preseason Game 2 Quick Recap - Raiders at Bears

Miniscule sample size, but it was a good night for the 1st team’s running game.

1. C Williams played badly all night.
2. Forte is healthy.
3. The O-line needs to show more improvement than it has thus far.
4. Izzy should start at DE and Anderson can come in for situational pass rush duties.
5. Hate to beat a dead horse, but T Harris played weak again tonight. When is he going to bring his B game?
6. Melton, K Davis and Bell should make this roster, Alfalfa and Gilbert should not.
7. Iglesias may not make the team and he’s definitely behind Davis at this point.
8. Harrison played better and Adams and Toeaina played well.
9. Patrick Mannelly is missed, but at least Clark improved; nice effort Dez.
10. Dave Toub is not real happy right now.
11. Cutler is the real deal, he’s tough, smart, and will be an elite QB by season’s end (assumning the o-line learns how to block well).
12. Hester is great on plays that do not require him to be on the LOS and get separation or fight through contact. He’s a great slot WR, but he’s just not a good enough receiver yet to be a starter. DA should start along with Knox. Hester will get plenty of touches, he’s just not an every down WR yet.
13. This defense should be a lot better by now. I’m worried.
14. D Manning is an OK utility DB, but he’s just not good enough at any position to start.

Cutler was sacked on over 20% of his attempts. And he’s above average at avoiding sacks.

Williams was very bad tonight. Giving up 3-4 sacks from one spot in half a season isn’t good, especially when they were all to a DE that’s not elite. Giving up that many in one half is inexcusable, even for the preseason. LT is now issue #1 for the rest of the preseason, IMO.

Even though his best run was called back for holding. So the Bell ran better than Wolfe argument is not true. Though I admit his drop was bad, at least he can get separation and receive out of the backfield unlike Bell.

Why didn’t we play Beekman or Kruetz at LS???

Orton is lucky he is in Denver where they have a solid O-Line. He would have been on the IR before midseason if he was still with the Bears last year.

I guess my concerns about the defensive line were unfounded.

Wait, you mean JAY was sacked 5 times?

DAMNIT!

Jay will be dead by November.

It’s preseason so the only ones who take any significance out of it are A) the talking heads whose jobs depend on crafting stories out of nothing and B) obsessive fans such as me and I assume most everyone posting here.

Things are gonna be OK this year. I believe!

Anderson was playing good but Izzy should start.
The wide outs are looking good.
Forte has his burts back.

Does anybody else think that are run defense was pretty good?

some good mostly bad its only pre season and i read somwhere that the colts are 4 and
24 in pre season so there is hope..
what does bother me as with last year even in pre
 season, teams just look better prepared then the bears and fired up didnt we start slow last season as well? and that may be the lovie ship setting sail if it continues through the season.. im thinking 8-8

Both sides of the line were getting manhandled, and our secondary was deja-vu from last year.

needs to be in a bears uniform within the next 5 minutes the o line is looking worse and worse. They needed to either draft a guard or sign for one and i definitely think they may need to look into trading for because at this cutler wont make it to the dallas game(which is only in week 2)

The o line play was terrible last night and i dont think they did all that amazing of a job in the running game outside of that one run. (btw nice block by G-REG on that play) Forte showed great speed to run away from huff and branch(these two guys can run) and it was a great sign that he is heathy.

The defense is back at it again, they play great for the first to downs forcing a 3rd and 10 or hell a 3rd and 21 and then collapse this must change. Peppers needs to show why hes dominant and the best DE in the league. In the last two games he has played “ok” not up to his standards and i am disappointed.

Bell is a good RB, he runs hard always falls forward and runs with some power and doesn’t dance around he should definitely get on the team ahead of wolfe.

Major wright is the other safety beside Harris this season, although he didn’t play tonight he left a hell of an impression on me last week. He tackles like an animal and will bring the pain im tired of seeing the arm tackles and i want to see someone step up and lay the opposition out.

Last but not least hopefully Urlacher is good and ready for week 1. I dont care if you like him or not, think hes washed up or not, this defense is in trouble without him plain and simple

I keep hearing how there is no game plan, its very vanilla – whatever and thats fine for the preseason. But when you see someone is getting to the qb why not make adjustments! Last I saw that is also part of the game – being able to make adjustments.
I do have reservations about this oline. I did notice that the run blocking was better this week.

The defensive play was reminiscent of last years team. On 3rd and long our D just isnt able to make the stop.

But, when you think of the first half, we had a couple of good plays from the offense – the long run by Forte and the ability of Cutler to scramble and elude the defense on the td throw to Knox. Our defense had the bend but dont break mentality – Raiders moved the ball up and down the field but only came away with 13 points. So if we take that into mind it was an ugly game but at the half we DID have the lead.

This time more closely on NFL network so I can better gauge what’s going on.

Dan Pompeii reviews the performances of key players and those who are playing for roster places (Matt Toeaina did well; neither Wolfe nor Bell have yet claimed the #3 RB spot). His credibility has fallen, though, since he wrote:

Never knew the Bears’ MVP was long snapper Patrick Mannelly. He’s out with a neck stinger. I wasn’t even sure how to spell his name.

To that, I think I speak for us all when I proclaim: Fie on you, sir!

I could have scored on that play.

We can worry then. Pre-Season is about learning, “gelling”, and evaluating.

We have learned that our OL has not gelled. Evaluating our D, we still lack 3rd down discipline and sufficient surge to impose our will on opposing offenses.

The world is not over. We still have time to improve. Our final roster isn’t even set yet.

I shall not despair. I shall remain cautiously optimistic.

But seriously, we lost to the F’in Raiders?? C’mon Lovie – grow a pair.

I was at the game and I thought maybe the tape woulnd’t look as bad but it was. No one has mentioned this but our safeties continue to be slow helping over the top and with all due respect Chris Harris’ coverage skills are poor. Now I see why we traded him the first time. Great in run support but in the passing game not so good. Peppers and Izzy looked good. Mark Anderson looked good against 2nd string guys in Q3. We had no cohesiveness on offense at all through the first half and our backup offense is a joke. I thought Forte looked good and the offensive line was the exact opposite of the first, good run blocking and poor pass blocking.

I’m not a big fan of phrasing things like this:

Forte’s big run skews things a bit

Because… this same “skewing” applies to all RBs in the league. It should be assumed that when you look over the season total #‘s for a RB, that he should have broke for a long one every once-in-a-while. “Skewed” or not, the other 20 yards he got on 4 carries, an average of 5, which I will take any day. Average the last two weeks out, and his numbers don’t look as bad as they did last week. That is the point of a large pool of data. You could say last week it “skewed” his numbers because he sucked. This week he “skewed” his numbers because he did good. But that is how it is for every RB in the league. And at the end of the season, I hope he has more days where his numbers are “skewed” higher than lower. (Rant over)

Lets take it for what it was, a great day for Forte.

I just watched the first quarter of the game at lunch, and I’ve got say Briggs (looked exceptionally horrible) and Hillenmeyer were nonexistent. Over persuing, missing tackles, etc. The D-line looked pretty good; Anderson, Izzy, and obviously Pepp got good pentration. Barring one good play covering Miller, DMS should never play safety again. The positive was the running game- I loved seeing the delayed hand-off plays (does anyone know the real verbiage?). I saw very good blocks by Olsen, Davis, Louis, and Omi.