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What Emery is asking prospective Bears' head coaches - Hiring a new head coach is a lengthy process. Kip Lewis breaks it down and discusses what sort of questions Phil Emery will be asking his prospective candidates.
PFF's Free Agent tracker - A list of all the Bears set to hit free agency, along with their snap counts and ratings. #54 didn't grade out well.....
Peter King's MMQB - After seeing some some lousy football from the wild-card round, how ugly would it have looked with a 16-team playoff system?
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Bearsss
Reviewing Bears season by the numbers - Larry Mayer: The only numbers that ultimately mattered for the Bears this season were 10 and 6. But there are other team and individual statistics and rankings that are interesting to digest.
Wootton in line for big raise - Jeff Dickerson: Corey Wootton's impressive season earned the former fourth-round draft choice a minimum $733,000 raise next year.
Free agency has OT options for Bears when the time comes - Moon Mullin breaks down the list of possible free agent OTs that the Bears could be interested in during the offseason.
Rod Marinelli may remain Bears' DC - Dan Pompei: A good chance exists the Bears will hire a new head coach but retain Rod Marinelli, and possibly other key assistants, according to those with knowledge of the situation.
Roster news - The Bears signed QB Matt Blanchard and WR Terrence Toliver to reserve/future contracts on Monday.
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(Search for the next) Ditka
Bears management has faith in Emery to pick right coach - Larry Mayer: The candor and thoroughness that Phil Emery displayed in discussing the Bears' future last week is exactly what Ted Phillips saw when interviewing Emery for the GM job a year ago.
[Video] CTL discussion - Looking at Phil Emery's criteria and the candidates.
Bruce Arians seems best-equipped for Bears - Sean Jensen makes the case for the Colts' OC .
[Video] CTL discussion - Shannon Sharpe thinks Cutler is a coach killer. What do the panel think?
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Polish sausage
Know thy enemy: Vikings - Kevin Seifert's Free Head Exam: The Vikings still have needs at CB and WR.
Know thy enemy: Packers - Kevin Seifert's Free Head Exam: Dom Capers stacked the box more in the wild card game than in the two regular season games against the Vikings AP.
Know thy enemy: Lions - John Niyo: Ownership considered the team's image and Schwartz's "management style" the key problem areas, in addition to the Lions' record, but stick with Mayhew and Schwartz.
Selected musical obituary of 2012: Whitney Houston died in January, aged 49. (Etta James obituary here.)