The 2007 season for the Chicago Bears was a failure. Nobody can really debate that.... but Bear coaches and management sure as hell are trying. The Lovie Smith cliches were in abundance last season, and the offseason has been no different. "We are close," "We finished the season strong," "We are a running football team" and "Rex is our Quarterback."(At least thats what they told Brandon Lloyd, who in just his first day gave a Greise-esque performance.) The sad thing is just how short-sighted and diluted those statements are.

"We are close." To what exactly? The bottom of the North. Oh wait, we are already there. The Bears are close to being a professional football team, which is one thing they were not last year. From the Greise "I called the plays...... oh, and Ront Turner helped a bit too" debacle to the "Mark Bradley is our #1 receiver" claim, the Bears have done and said a lot of dumb and confusing things.

"We finished the season strong." What a consolation prize, winning a game against a bad Saints team and a Packers crew that would have allowed the Bears to score just to get back to the sideline heaters. And Lovie, i though the Bears season was broken up into quarters, not eighths? The Bears finished 2-2 in the final quarter, so they didn't finish all too strong after all.

"We are a running football team." Thats the sad part.not only were the Bears awful running the ball, they bragged about it. In the last few months the running game has taken some huge hits overall. Cedric Benson has had surgery, Adrian Peterson has shown he is nowhere near a #1 back and Garrett Wolfe has shown he is no more then a screen play here or there, an extremely poor man's version of Leon Washington. The Bears haven't brought in a free agent tailback either. The offensive line, which was bad last year, is now bad and incomplete after releasing Fred Miller and not resigning Ruben Brown. Olin Kreutz is still very good and John Tate and Roberto Garza are also decent, but the line needs some real help.

"Rex is our Quarterback." I really am not all that upset with Bears resigning of Grossman, but they still need an upgrade at this position. Still, he was th best guy readily available and the best option for a team that needs a guy to keep the seat warm. What irks me is that Angelo and Lovie keep telling us that there is an open competition and Rex will have to fight off Orton to win the job. The recent communication breakdown with Brandon Lloyd really says it all. The Bears are habitual liars and either they  believe that their fans are idiots or they just don't care about the fans. As far as the open competition goes, anybody that has watched Rex play in training camp knows he will win the job. He is great without a real defense going against him, but is not really good real-game QB. Barring any complications, Rex will win the job.

Now that i have finished venting, what have the bears done in the offseason? Really, not much of anything. On offense, they have let Bernard Berrian and Muhsin Muhammad leave, and if the recent rumors are true, Rashied Davis will them out the door. Rex was resigned and Marty Booker and Brandon Lloyd were brought in. Overall, they lost their #1 and #2 guys, but Berrian is more of a #2 at this point and Moose is a #3. They replaced them with a younger, better player then Moose and a perennial underachiever in Lloyd. If Hester develops a bit more and Mark Bradley takes that ever-elusive next step, the group of receivers will be decent, but the odds of both of those things happening are very remote. Hester is nowhere near the #1 receiver the Bears think he is and Bradley is getting talked up an awful lot after spending most of 2007 in Lovie's doghouse. The Bears haven't added any tailbacks or linemen. On Defense, they haven't done much of anything, which is a bit disappointing. resigning Lance Briggs was a good move, but it doesn't make them better than last year. What will make them better than last is better luck with injuries and the swift cutting of the garbage players that are Ricky Manning Jr. and Adam Archuletta. Archuletta isn't roster material and Trumane McBride is already a better nickleback than Manning.Nathan Vasher, Mike Brown, Dusty Dvoracek, Tommie Harris, Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs all got bit by injuries. Of that group, Harris, Vasher, Urlacher and Briggs should all be expected to play full season next year, albeit with a bit of pain for Brian. Brown is injury prone and Dvoracek is quickly entering injury-prone territory, and while both are good players, they should not be relied on.
On Special teams, the Bears lost ace Brendan Ayanbadejo to the Ravens, but he wont set the Bears back all that much.

So what do the Bears need to do in the offseason? The Bears need to address the DT, S, OL, RB and WR positions in the near future, and they also must draft a QB, maybe on day 1. What i think will happen is that the Bears are pretty much done with free agency outside of maybe a minor acquisition or two. I would like to see them grab Kevin Jones on the cheap, and he would immediately be the most talented back on the roster. Grabbing a lineman like Max Starks shouldn't be out of the question either. The group of FA receivers is pretty thin at this point, and as i write this reports are circulating that Bryant Johnson, the best available WR, is signing with the Niners. The Bears need help at all 6 aforementioned spots, and after their wholly unsatisfying free agency work, they will try to do it all via the draft. Expect the Bears to as usual, hit on defense and mostly miss on offense, although for some reason i have a really good feeling about this years draft class. Considering how poor(and mysterious. Anybody even know what Dan Bazuin or Josh Beekman look like?) last year's class was, the Bears absolutely must hit big come April's draft.