Chicago Bears Review

Have we been talking too much about the Bears’ offense and are we too worried about parts of the offense, rather than the defense? We are so used to having the Bears with a great defense that we’re not accustomed to discussing ways to improve it. But now that the offense seems fairly well set for the next few years at least, we’ll have to watch the defense getting rebuilt. In 2006, when the team made the Super Bowl, the Bears’ defense was one of the top 10 in the NFL. But since then, many of the players have become older and less dynamic. Urlacher is a great example of a player who was able to make many offenses afraid and now they have his number. The defense can get by, but maybe some new players would be helpful.

Charles Tillman came out this week as a supporter of a possible return of Brett Favre to the NFC Central Division. To which many other people replied, “Are you nuts?” He said in response that he was serious and he actually wants to play against the best in the league. With Favre with the Vikings, Tillman and the Bears would be playing against him twice this season. He seems to get fired up at the idea of playing against teams and players that are especially challenging, because that brings out his best playing ability. We hope so, because if Favre comes to Minnesota, we will need all the best playing we can get in order to try to get this division. Minnesota is really the only team that threatens us in the first place, so we hope that it will get better soon.

Mike Brown, who has been a safety for the Bears for a long time, has signed a contract with the Kansas City Chiefs. He had been with the Bears for nearly 10 years, but he has been injured a lot lately. He is very talented, but the injuries have stopped him from being effective during most of the action. He will be working his way back into the starting defensive squad and hopefully he can remain healthy for the Chiefs and get to playing. Then again, we hope that he will miss a bunch of tackles whenever they play against the Bears. Anyway, we wish him the very best in his new city and he will probably have a lot of fun down there, with their many new players on the way for the 2009 season.

Jay Cutler has stated publicly that he would like to throw to former Bronco Brandon Marshall again. Marshall is slipping away from Denver this time and it’s going to be an interesting year for the Denver team. It can be difficult to tell what’s happening out there, but they seem to have Kyle Orton and a lot of annoyed players. But Marshall would be a good addition to the Bears, because we have kept saying that we need some impressive receivers and Cutler-Marshall has always worked out well so far. We’ll see what actually happens, because it’s the admin people who have to do it themselves and pay for it. But if they do, this may be one of the best Bears teams we’ve seen in a long time!

A report from Scout.com is very confident about the ability of the Bears to do very well with Jay Cutler in the driver’s seat this year. They suggest that they have been needing a franchise QB for a long time and that they will be happy to have one. They will probably want to have some kind of beefing up at WR later on, but Hester is a decent receiver and catcher. This year, he will be much improved over last year, because of experience and extra training. Cutler himself has never really had a bad season. He has made a lot of TD throws. He has had a number of interceptions, but according to some Denver didn’t have anything else to do. There were no running backs for him to count on. But Matt Forte and the others will give him another option for playmaking. It will be an interesting year, no matter what happens!

Rex Grossman is not a Bear anymore. I thought that was already settled several months ago, but it turns out that it wasn’t. He is, in fact, now a member of the Houston Texans. He will be competing for the top QB job there and hopefully he will get it. Many Chicago fans are laughing, because Rex just doesn’t have the following here that he once did. He was injured a lot and wasn’t really consistent under center back in those days. Now it’s going to be fun for us to actually see how well he does outside of the Chicago situation. But looking at it from another perspective, Grossman could easily outdo any other QB Houston has ever had. It would be hard to do worse. In his first practice, he threw several interceptions, but he didn’t know the system quite yet at that point.

There are a lot of different bits of information flowing around the Chicago Bears, where there are some players being signed, particularly the new draft picks. Charles Tillman is back and we’re going to see how good he looks following shoulder surgery this season. It’s going to be interesting for us to see what happens with this player who has been a little bit hit-and-miss the last few seasons. Brian Urlacher didn’t play during the organized team activities today and that set off a lot of discussions about what he was up to and whether he might be off the team, or injured. But these concerns were brushed off, saying that he just had a little ailment. Maybe the swine flu? I have no evidence that it was this or anything else. Maybe something like a small ankle sprain. A minor issue, we hope.

If you thought the last few months were busy for the Chicago Bears, just imagine what it’s going to be in the next few months. One of the discussions that is still hanging on, despite the fact that we thought it was pretty well settled, is whether Plaxico Burress is coming to the Bears. There are a lot of people pushing for it to give Jay Cutler someone real to pitch to. Other people think the sideshow isn’t necessary to make this team good. Speaking of sideshows, the Bears might have reason to fear that Brett Favre will be actually coming to the Minnesota Vikings this season. It’s reported this morning that Favre has gotten surgery on his injured right throwing shoulder. Looking at the news right now, it looks like Favre is supposed to make a decision by the end of the week, so that the Vikings can organize themselves. It will be fun to see what happens in this issue.

Tony Dungy, the former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, is one of the really respected people in the NFL right now. He was even picked up as an analyst with NBC recently. In an interview this week, he claimed that the Cutler trade was a risk that he might not have done himself. Dungy said that Cutler has some maturity issues and might not be the kind of leader that the Bears say they’ve found. But how can he know? The situation in Denver was just untenable for him and his leadership wasn’t even really well established. His whole legitimacy was called into question, in a way, because of the whole Josh McDaniels trade discussions that pushed him away in the first place. It’s hard to see exactly why Dungy can say this, but he is and it’s making some people question their team.

Pisa Tinoisamoa was signed by the Bears over the weekend. It’s an exciting time to be in the Bears’ world, with lots of great possibilities for wins. This is one of the first times that the Bears have been able to sign an experienced player for a not-unreasonable amount of money. Tinoisamoa has played for the St. Louis Rams for the last few years and he led the team for much of that time in tackles. Last year, he had 88 tackles on his own and over 130 total. He’s going to be a good addition to this team. The Rams didn’t want him anymore because they were interested in having more size and power in their line as opposed to a relatively small running player.