The Bears Den, Friday September 17th Edition

They gave the Redskins absolutely no credit for beating them, and say they’ll have it all fixed for the Bears. Why does this sound like the 2007 Bears to me?

Kosier and Columbo are essentially playing their first real game coming off injuries. Give Romo a big dose of Peppers early and he’ll start dumping off the ball like he did against the Redskins. Martz has to be smart early and expect a lot of pressure and play call accordingly. The Cowboys are PO’d and looking to make a statement, if the Bears can withstand the first quarter they should stand a chance. One last thing, Felix Jones will get the ball a lot on Sunday. Hit him hard and he’ll start hearing footsteps when the ball comes his way.

I understand the Halas Hall spin machine is going to be in arms trying to “stroke” Harris’s ego and rally the Bears meatheads who will blindly champion anything remotely critical about our beloved Bears, but if you pay attention to what Sapp said in the 670AM interview…

… It was nothing but blatant truth.

Sapp’s comment (once you get past the country analogy of being compared to a “blind dog”):

What I am talking about is you have to have some awareness. You know that San Diego game, it was like first-and-20 and they run a draw play and he’s on the wrong side with the offset back and then another time, it’s second-and-15, I’m like, ‘Jeez, do you not see the back? Do you just want to run up the field? You can’t do that as an under tackle in that defense. He needs to set the table and have a quarterback sitting right there on the stage for Julius (Peppers) to come around the corner. He doesn’t have a problem with getting up the middle. It was just the awareness of the game that really eluded it for me. From what I know about the position, it just looked bad."

I thought this assessment was spot on! The great thing about Albert Haynesworth in Tennessee and Casey Hampton in Pittsuburgh is that they set the play up for the ends to come right along the side and make the sack. In 2006, raw-talent Mark Anderson was able to get double-digit sacks because of the pressure and containment of Harrris and Tank in the middle. Urlacher and Briggs were able to clean up a lot of tackles without having to ward off a blocker because those two really held their own in the middle.

Marinelli’s comments of…

"We all understand the expectations at that position, and [Harris] and I, not him alone, are accountable to get this thing right to the highest level we can do," Marinelli said. "I’m looking forward to it. I totally believe in him. He’s going to be a dominant player this year."

… Seem mroe to appease Harris. The Bears staff befuddle me at times because I’m curous as to why they didn’t seek Marinelli’s former standout DT to provide instruction over the offseason— just as they did with Hester and Bruce? Why didn’t Tommie do so?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Roy Williams is a bust, Dez Bryant is a rookie, in this game Jason Witten is a blocker, Romo has repeatedly shown himself to struggle in pressure situations, their O-Line is banged up and crappy, they use Felix Jones incorrectly, and MB3 is broken down.

Over on Blogging the Boys, they have an article that predicts that they’ll win by double the spread. To do that wouldn’t they have to score at least 19 points on the league’s #2 defense and shut out the leagues #1 offense?

The Cowboys’ fans arrogance has no basis in logic.

There has to be a level of “intent” to harm for some of these penalties and fines being assessed to players and coaches. Anyone coulds ee that Peppers was not “purposefully” trying to club Stafford in the head.

1.) Be efficient of offense— The Bears have to get the same performance of efficiency— MINUS the turnovers on Sunday. IF they can move the ball down the field early and often and get points, that will put pressure on the Cowboys to be a passing offense and take away their strong suit of running the football. Their offensive line is sub par and coming off of a few injuries (i.e.— Colombo). Forcing them to pass will allow the front 4 to “tee off” and go after Romo.

2.) Stop the 3-headed monster— Dallas is going to come out running and throwing off of the play action. I will bet that the 1st quarter ratio of rush-to-pass will be somewhere between 65-35. If the Bears can shut down the run game early and keep the Cowboys from being able to exploit the play action pass from it,t ehy will force teh Cowboys to be a primarily passing team.

3.) Field position— The Bears had EXCELLENT field position all afternoon against the Lions in week 1 with an average field position of starting from almost the 40 yd line each rip. That’s about 25-30 yds out from scoring range each possession. That was created by a.) Daniel Manning getting good returns from SP/Ts b.) solid punting from Brad Maynard and c.) Defense pinning the Lions ears back for nearly 3 qtrs of football. If they can continue to keep Romo and Co. from having a “short field” to work with, then they will have an easy time creating offense and keeping the opposing offense from making the big plays.

… An area of concern for me is the passing pocket of Tony Romo. Although I don’t think it’s necessarily a “key”, I do think it’s something we should all be aware of— especially considering the comments Sapp made on Harris recently. Romo likes to get out of the pocket and “extend plays” just like Jay Cutler. In fact, he operates a lot better when he does. That being said, Harris has to have “gap containment” and really PUSH the pocket into Romo’s comfort zone and allow those DEs to close it down. Romo’s going to look to move out of it, but if containment is kept— he will have a difficult time all afternoon.

Go Bears!

haha, good line there, great movie, Mike Judge kicks ass.

Solider Field and the Field Museum are slightly isolated from the rest of downtown, there isn’t great food directly by the stadium, but it’s Chicago, shouldn’t be too hard to find some good stuff.

They may be America’s team, but come Sunday, they’ll be facing the president’s team(not the steelers, the other team)

Morrissey and Rosenbloom are plenty whiny for a team that’s 1-0.

are there any positive pundits in the press rooms. everyone are giving it to the cowgirls. i have my trepidations about sunday, but if we score early and get our running game in gear , who knows. any given sunday. BEAR DOWN.

The Bears have the no. 1 offense (has that happened EVER before to the Bears and I mean post 1950) and the no. 2 defense. Does either ranking mean anything after 1 week against the Lions with their backup QB? Maybe, but maybe not. I think the Lions could be a frisky team once Stafford is back. My point is, as good as the Bears played the Lions still had a chance to win at the end.

The Cowboys on the other hand the Cowboys too had a chance to win their game at the end but didn’t because of bad o-line play. Now their starters might be back, will it be enough to improve them? Maybe, but maybe not.

My point is it’ll be a an interesting game because we could see what our teams are actually closer to being, rather than sluggish, turnover prone teams with bad o-lines.

Lots of teams use It’s us against the world and it can work well, so I’m not sure if he’s been living under a rock, or what.