The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; my post-game summary

other than the ubiquitous drive where the bears d allows even the worst offences score, the d looked good. The dline was penetrating, the linebackers were solid, and the dbs were more active then i have seen in a bears game in a long time actually contesting passes as opposed to just tackling after the catch. I wonder if that is just do to bad bills qbing or if the bears have actually changed what they are coaching and emphasizing, or if it was just a coincidence.

Oh and the 2 of the 3 sacks allowed by the first string oline were coverage sacks.

Is the reason why we didn’t pick up a free agent or drafted a guard is because the Bears brass feels that Tice can somehow work his magic and build a line using his teaching skills with no regard for talent other than Carimi?

There was a reason why teams passed on Louis and Webb until the later rounds in the draft yet the Bears seem totally content with allowing 9 sacks on a preseason game.

I have a feeling this is gonna be a long season- especially for Jay Cutler!

Shine a light into his eyes and ask…

“So Jerry, about that Offensive Line..”

it sounds like our o-line sucks our o-line sucks our o-line sucks our o-line sucks our o-line sucks. say it five times before and after sleeping. and all should be put right in angelo world

might think we did in that free agency rush (myself included), there is a possibility that we might have built a defensive line rotation that could develop into a dominant force. melton looked good last year and looked pretty damn good last night, adams will be a solid player for a few more years, i think peppers is going to age pretty well, and if we can just get 3 guys out of okoye, wooton, toeina, paea, and gholston to just hit their potential we could have a situation thats similar to what the giants have had over the past few years

could be a strength and has been such a black hole for so long.

in pass and run blocking

Only how good or bad they be. I thought the first string offensive line has the potential to either be totally awful or just servicable enough to win with, which my guess being the latter. The Bears to me are like an enigma, they don’t have a lot of superstars on that team, yet they play fundamentally sound defense and special teams is just outstanding.

The offense will probably still be smoke and mirrors with running the ball off of screens, misdirections, and draw plays. Look for Martz to try to air it out if the run game does stall or if the o-line actually keeps Cutler off of the ground.

I’m still counting the Bears into the division contention talks despite some of the major issues with the o-line and not ensuring help for Cutler with a true #1 receiver who has proven to be a consistent threat. The Bears are coached very well, play true to their scheme, and don’t take many chances. Its worked for them in the past so I don’t expect anything less.

O-Line: I was impressed with C. Williams (surprising), E. Williams, Carimi and Spencer last night. I was scared of Webb, which is where I left off last season…but of those 9 sacks we gave up, only 3 of them were the sub-2.5/3 second kind at 1st&2nd look (not that I stopwatch timed it, but I did rewind and re-watch the sacks a couple times). Hanie and Enderle both seemed to be holding onto the ball a bit more than they should have. Now, we didn’t have great pockets, but it didn’t look like the kind of free run at the QB we often saw last year. I personally thought the run blocking was stellar. It wasn’t perfect every play, but we opened some huge holes against Buffalo’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd team defenses for Barber and Bell.

D-Line: I noticed that nobody talked about Gholston much Sat/Sun (before I had seen the game late Sun. night on DVR). His first step was disappointing, maybe a result of not playing edge rusher the last few years, but he had good push, got a couple pressures, tipped a pass, assisted Hurd with that ST strip (negated by penalty on Hurd). I liked his game in the “backup DE” kind of way. If Wootton won’t be 100% by week 1 we could be very thin and tired at DE again this year (last year Pep and Izzy just took too many snaps IMO). I don’t think it would be unreasonable to re-approach NYG about Osi and just lock the whole D-Line up. Okoye made some plays but Melton was slicing through and redirecting, he is going to be the starter. Paea and Toe looked good too.

The DBs: played a lot of 1vs.1, which I bet was done on purpose to evaluate their coverage skills, and I saw some say Buffalo had a lot of dropped passes…But I saw a lot of Bears DBs getting hands on balls and laying big hits on receivers. Jennings, Bowman, and Josh Moore showed up some on game day, Wright was EVERYWHERE, and Harris showed his typical power.