Although Lovie Smith said that this past week marked the beginning of the '08 season, I have a feeling that the roster on this year's version of the "'08" team is drasticaly different than the one of the real '08 season will be. In my opinion, the Bears aren't as far from relevance as many think they are. Here is a unit-by-unit, position-by-position breakdown of the Bears, followed with some suggested additions and subtractions.

Defense

Their defense was plagued by injuries this year and aside from safety and possibly outside linebacker, they don't have any problems.

Linebacker- I was getting increasingly worried about the performance of Brian Urlacher with each passing week, but in the last few weeks he showed he can still be a dominant force in this league. The Lance Briggs era at OLB is coming to an end, and it appears that the Bears have no problem with their replacement, Jamar Williams. Whether or not he is an adequate replacement is debatable, but what is not is that if Lance does leave, the Bears will give Jamar the job. Hunter Hillenmeyer is a smart, steady player that makes the most of what he has.

Defensive End- Mark Anderson, who was handed Alex Brown's job in training camp, showed that he is not ready to step in and be a full time defensive end. In the time Alex has had on the field, he has played very good football and has made it clear that come next year, he, not Anderson, needs to be lining up opposite Adewale Ogunleye. Wale, arguably the Bears' MVP this year, has had an excellent season and will only benefit from the return of Brown. Their second round choice this year, Dan Bazuin, hasn't even been seen and is an unknown at this point. If he becomes the player that most of Angelo's middle round picks become, he will only bolster an already strong unit.

Defensive Tackle- Tommie Harris, who has been playing on one leg this year, has showed enough to warrant unwavering confidence in his inabilities. However, his partners at tackle have been disapointing. Dusty Dvoracek was IR'd after just one game, Darwin Walker has been a bust of epic proportions and the Bears have been reduced to playing practice squad guys, who have surprised me with some solid play, considering their shape and that they have been with the team for about two weeks. Anthony Adams played well this year, but he is undersized and was IR'd a few weeks ago. If Dvoracek, Adams and one of the two newcomers can all stay relatively healthy next year, i see no reason as to why the Bears' tackles can't be a top five group.

Cornerback- Not much to say about here. Both Vasher and Tillman are upper echelon cover guys and have both proved to be durable. Vasher has missed a large chunk of this season, but his groin injury is his first significant injury in the league and is most likely the exception, not the rule. Tillman has had an excellent year and has added the ball punch and punt block to his reportoire. Moreso, the play of Truman McBride will allow the Bears to let go of the useless Ricky Manning Jr. and slide Trumane in at the Nickle slot. He plasyed well for a rookie and is already an above average nickleback.

Safety- The soft spot. Mike Brown is as injury prone as Danieal Manning is bad. Brandon McGowan has played better as of late, but he is not the answer at safety. Sadly, there doesn't appear to be an answer in the draft or free agency. Yeah, Bob Sanders is available, but he is too expensive considering his Mike Brown-like injury problems. The draft doesn't offer all that much in terms of safeties either. The Bears could try and bring back Chris Harris or some other run of the mill backup, but even if they do that, it looks like they have no choice but to rely on the Manning-Brown combo yet again, that is unless Kevin Payne emerges as a legitimate player and wrestles the starting spot away from Danieal, which is a distinct possibility. The good news is that Adam Archuletta and his 5.5 million dollar's will not have to be seen again after this season ends.

On this side of the ball, their biggest needs are at safety and OLB. The former most likely can't be adressed and the latter, in the eyes of the Bears, already has been. The Bears will go into next year with almost the same exact unit, minus Archuletta, Walker, Ricky Manning Jr. and most likely Briggs. On the other hand, those subtractions will free up quite a bit of cash for the Bears and will allow them to pursue replacements for their offense.

Offense

This is where the fun begins. Angelo will have to have a tremendous offseason to repair this unit. The problems begin with the....  

Offensive Line- While the unit has been really bad this year, there are more good starters in this group than bad ones. Roberto Garza, John Tate and Olin Kreutz all will, and should, be back next year. If the Bears do go ahead and draft a tackle in the first round, which I hope they do, not only will that draftee be an upgrade over Fred Miller/John St. Clair, it will allow Tate to move to right tackle, where he is better suited to play. The other weak spot is at guard. Ruben Brown was IR'd a while back and will probably not be back next year, although he wasn't all that bad considering he might have been playing on a broken arm for a majority of the season. Still, he isn't under contract for next year, and seeing as he probably won't be back, his possible replacements are Terrance Metcalf, Anthony Oakley and Josh Beekman, all of which are unproven/bad, most likely the latter. There seems to be a lot of guards in the draft with decent skills set, and I think that if the Bears can land Radovich out of USC, Kraus out of Michigan or Young out of Tennessee, all of whom are projected to go in the middle rounds, the line would be in pretty good shape.

Quarterback- Not only are the Bears options at QB bad bad, but the options in free agency and the draft are bad as well. If the Bears do chose to go with a QB in the first round, fine, but I would rather take a lineman. However, the Bears could possibly land a second teir QB in the second round or late first round via trade.(Oh, and don't imagine for a second that McNabb will be in Chicago next year, I dont see Andy Reid letting it happen.) Still, drafting a QB wouldn't fix anything in the short term. The Bears would do best to take a lineman and go into training camp with an open competition between Orton, Greise and Grossman.  

Runningback- Here the Bears have problems galore, but thankfully they have options. Michael Turner, Julius Jones, Chris Brown and Jesse Chatman will all be free agents and all of which are equal to or better to who the Bears have now. I would like to see the Bears sign Turner and either Brown or Chatman(Fargas is available, but he probably will demand close to Turner-like money, and the Bears can't affor to sign two top free agent tailbacks.). A stable of backs made up of Turner, Benson, Peterson, (Wolfe) and Chatman/Brown would be a huge upgrade for this team. Benson was a good number two and even if his struggles continue and/or he doesn't get back into shape, Peterson and Brown/Chatman are both excellent #2 backs. Wolfe is in parenthesis because he is not an NFL back, rather just a garbage time player.

Wide Reciever/Tight End- Things get really sketchy here. Bernard Berrian will probably leave and hopefully Muhsin and his juicy contract will get cut out of town. He isn't even a good #2 at this point, but seems to think he is a #1, so good riddance. Personally, i think the Bears have no choice but to resign Bernard, but i have a feeling Angelo  won't see it that way. That leaves Devin Hester, Mark Bradley, Rashied Davis and the glorified Mike Hass, all of which aren't good #2's even on their best day. Free agency doesn't offer much either. The only players that i like from the list of FA's are Oakland's Porter and Jacksonville's Wilford. Neither are very good. If the Bear's don't do much to improve their stable of recievers, the pressure on their tight ends will only increase. Desmond Clark has been steady and Olsen has shown flashes, but neither has stepped up as a go-to guy. Olsen could be that guy, but he hasn't done enough yet. However, if he does step out next year and the Bears make their offense more tight-end oriented, which they should absolutely do, their offense should improve. Still, I am banking on the Bears improving their running game enough to allow a barely decent passing game to "thrive." 200 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT would suffice if the Bears running game and offensive line improves as much as I think it can. 

If I were Angelo, I would, for once, almost exclusively draft offensive players. The Bears, if they lose could end up with a top ten pick, but even if they win, they will probably end up with a top fifteen pick. In the first three rounds, i would take two offensive linemen and possibly a QB, if the right one is still around. I wouldn't mind trying to trade up and getting a second first rounder, but Angelo's history of trading down probably makes that highly improbable.Either way, my draft prioritees would go in the following order: Offensive Line, Quarterback, Wide Receiver, and then go with maybe a linebacker, safety or D-tackle in the last two or three rounds. Obviuosly, that order could change depending on who is available, but the Bears must address their offensive line needs first and foremost.

PS- I have read up on a certain receiver from Duquesne by the name of Bruce Hocker, and he seems to be a very good sleeper candiate in the middle-late rounds. He has a good combo of size andspeed and if anybody knows anything about him or where i can find clips of him, some info. would be highly appreciated.

As has become tradition for the Chicago Bulls(See Tim Floyd), John Paxson fired Scott Skiles this morning, on Christmas Eve. The fallout and repsonse from the media, fans and players has been overly predictable. "Skiles is an A to B type coach." "Skiles lost his players." "Skiles lost his job because Aaron Gray isn't getting enough tick."(yes, someone actually threw that one out there. Other speculation is that he was fired so the Bulls could trade for Jason Kidd.(Trading for a point guard a year after giving Kirk Hinrich 10 million per over five years, yeah, that really makes sense.) The fact of the matter is that this firing is no different than almost every other coaching change in any other sport. The coaches go, well, because someone needs to go and they are the only ones that can't be fired. How much has Rick Adelman done for the Rockets? Phil for the Lakers? Isiah for the Knicks? Some coaches are worse than others, but it is a bit ludicrous to think that Skiles is to blame for Ben Gordon's and Kirk Hinrich's severe regression.

To understand what Skiles has had to deal with, lets take a look at the challenges he has this season.

1) His guards: Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, Thabo Sefolosha, Chris Duhon. 

 

            While Kirk has always been a favorite of Skiles and Paxson, i have never really been a big fan of his. He puts up respectable numbers in the traditional categories, but his defense is overglorified, his passing(for a point guard) is subpar and his shooting is as streaky as it gets. I say his defense is overglorified because with his trouble staying out of foul trouble, his defensive abilities, which admittedly are very good, are rarely able to be used. Ben Gordon is a sixth man, and anybody that has watched the Bulls consistently for the last few years should know that by now. His defensive effort is there, but his defensive abilities and size aren't. He can score in bunches but play no defense, and players with those skills are best utilized off the bench against the opposition's second wave. Thabo Sefolosha, although given very little chance to showcase his skills, has done little to impress. He is a strong defender and has good size, but he can't shoot a lick, has mental lapses way too often and seems to think he can do things which he clearly can't. I like Chris Duhon as a backup point guard and a floor general, but he isn't a starter. He is a smart player who was clearly taught very well at Duke, but he is physically challenged and is not starter material.  To sum it up, Skiles had a streaky, frustrating combo guard in Hinrich, a one dimensional bench player in Gordon, a defensive 2 guard(2 guards must be able to score in this league) in Sefolosha and a nice bench guy in Duhon.

 

2) Small Forwards: Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni, (Tyrus Thomas).

            This is the only position where the Bulls have adequate talent. Luol Deng is perhaps the only balanced and complete player on the entire roster. He can rebound, pass( a bit), shoot and defend. The problem is that although he can do everything pretty well, he does nothing amazingly well. I really like Luol, but he is not a centerpiece type player like The Carmelo's, Lebron's and Kobe's of the world(although there is no shortage of Bulls' fans that would argue vehemently against that.) Andres Nocion is a good player and has probably been the Bulls' second best player this season, but he is just a solid player. He is easily frustrated and often gets too trigger happy on a team with better outside shooters, although this year the latter is probably false. Tyrus Thomas, at this point, is more of an athlete than a basketball player. He clearly has worked on his shot and it has shown in some of the latest games, but he still is somewhat of an offensive liabilty and lacks the size to match up one on one against most of the better post players in the game. His help defense is very good, but i sometimes wish he would block balls into play instead of into the stands, which looks better but is not all that beneficial.

3) Power Forwards/Centers: Joe Smith, Joakim Noah, Aaron Gray, Ben Wallace, (Tyrus.) 

            This is probably the weakest unit on the Bulls. Only one of these players has performed well for the Bulls over an extended period of time, that being Joe Smith. He is scrappy, runs the floor pretty well, has an above average mid-range game and is a good mentor for the younger players. On the other hand, the trio of Wallace, Gray and Noah, for lack of a better word, sucks. Wallace is washed up, and even with the recent article on Fox Sports on his dicline, people that don't watch the Bulls really have no idea how worthless the 60 million dollar man has become in just over one full season. He isn't even starter material at this point, making him the most expensive one-dimensional bench player in all of sports. Noah and Gray were both very good in college, but they are both clearly overmatched at the pro level. They get their shots, and easy putback dunks/layups, blocked routinely and aside from scrappy play and decent size, offer almost nothing. They warrant no more than ten-fifteen minutes a night, but since the Bulls are weak at the position, are forced to play starter's minutes pretty often.

There is not just one problem with the Bulls. Rather, there are problems up and down the organization. The players do seem top have given up on Skiles, but could it be that they are just burnt out? The amount of effort this team has to exert to play competitve ball is greater than any other team in this league, and the last few years of intense work may have finally taken a toll on them. A team can only scrap and scrape for so long. John Paxson is also responsible for this, probably more than anybody else. The contract extension to Hinrich looks really foolish right now, but pales in comparison to the ontract Wallace got, which by the way will hamper the Bulls for another 2+ seasons. The draft day trade of LaMarcus Aldridge for Tyrus Thomas looks terrible right now, as does picking Noah ninth overall just a few months ago. From the looks of it, either Deng or Gordon, or possibly both, will be gone after this year, leaving the Bulls in even worse shape than now, if at all possible.

Scott Skiles is a hell of a coach, and i highly doubt that any other coach in the league could have done significantly more with the Bulls than he has done. The Bulls simply are not that talented of a team, and it's a shame that Paxson hasn't come to terms with that yet.

PS- It appears that many fans that are happy with the firing seem to think that Skiles' biggest failure was his inability to develop his young players, Tyrus Thomas, Thabo Sefolosha, Aaron Gray and Joakim Noah. The idea that Skiles, while coaching a team expected to go to the conference finals, can afford to play severely underdeveloped players AND take his team to the next level is laughable. This isn't baseball people. To really develop a player, a coach must give him real time experience, and with a team only able to put 5 players on the court at one time, a coach of a team with championship expectations can not afford to put his lineup at a disadvantage to help bring along a specific player. Baseball has the minor leagues and even when a player comes up, he can be shoed in the seven or eight hole and learn from there, but in basketball, players and teams don't have such a luxury. John Paxson put Scott Skiles in an impossible situation. Teams that win champonships grow together and eventually reach their pinnacle together; championship teams usually don't consist of a couple of role players and first and second year projects. John Paxson will see that while the team he assembled in Chicago was decent enough to fight it's way into a second round exit, it was nowhere good enough to meet the expectations put upon it. You see, Paxson, and perhaps Skiles, were naive enough to believe that a team full of solid but not excellent players with great work ethics, good values and team-first mentalities could win championships. The idea is great and can work in the college level(see Duke), but the NBA is a big boy league with mean, grown-ass man that feast on the type of players that the Chicago roster is full of.

Oh, and to the inevitable "Well the Pistons won a championship" comment, please. In their championship season, the Pistons had four players better than any one on the Bulls right now. Rip, Chauncey, Sheed and Tayshaun are all all-star calibur players and would be superstars on any other team aside from the one they find themselves on. All of those players, aside from Rip(maybe), could create their own shots and take advantage of mismatches. Tell me one player on the Bulls that on their best day could hang with any of the  aforementioned Pistons.

Let me preface my blog by saying that my opinion on running backs and the perspective i view them through is vastly different than how most others do. While most marvel at the impressive accomplishments of backs like Steven Jackson, Ladanian Tomlinson and Adrian Peterson, and rightfully so, I marvel at the work done in the trenches by those tailback's offensive linemen, who I think decide the outcome of a game more than any other player beside the one that takes the snaps. While Adrian Peterson is a phenominal player and his backup Chester Taylor is anything but, both run behind a line stacked with five unfathomingly large behemoths. Ladanian Tomlinson is an undisputably great tailback, but his linemen, while not as good as those in Minnesota, are nonetheless excellent. Granted, Steven Jackson has been running wild, when healthy,  behind a makeshift offensive line, he has a passing game that can prevents opponents from stacking the box. It sounds like i am trying my best to take away credit from running backs through any means possible, but i am merely trying to build up the point that rushing the football is, in my opinion, more dependant on other, external variables than any other task in football.

Also,. with all the attention Lewis and the Browns have drawn in recent weeks, the fact that Lewis's season has been very hit or miss(dare I say Grossmanesque), has been overlooked. Through Week 11, Lewis, who missed two games in that span, ran for over 100 yards just once and averaged over 4 YPC just twice. Also, four of his 9 touchdowns came in week 9 against St.Louis, when he ran for 37 yards on twenty carries, hardly a strong performance.  When you include his last four games his performance overall has been solid, but still not as good as one would think judging from the attention Lewis has generated.

With that established, the answer is yes and no. I am not surprised at what Lewis has done on his own. (Even back in Baltimore, when Jonathan Ogden was out with injury, Lewis's performance suffered and it was clear that Lewis was largely dependant on the performance of his enormous blocker. The same can be said for Edgerrin james, who suffered a massive letdown when he left Indianapolis and the fantasy that is playing alongside Peyton Manning.) Rather, what does surprise me is how quick the Browns' first draft pick, Joe Thomas, has risen to the upper echelon of offensive linemen, and how the passing game went from non-existent to often unstopable. Braylon Edwards is a top ten reciever, Kellen Winslow a top 5 tight end and Derek Anderson a very competent, if not above average quarterback. What I am trying to say is that while Lewis has put up some nice numbers this year, those numbers have less to do with him and more to do with the offense he plays on and the beasts, particularly Thomas, that he runs behind. Throw in the fact that his four triple digit yardage games came against Cincinatti, Houston, New York(AFC) and Buffalo, and his season is even less impressive.

To sum it up, i would say that I am surprised with how well the Browns have run the ball, not how well Lewis has run the ball. Running the ball is the ultimate team effort, and if one player misses his assignment, the run play can easily get blown up. So when analysts look at the Browns and attribute their success on the ground  to Jamal Lewis, i get upset. It's not Jamal that is getting it done, rather the most unerappreciated unit in the game, the fat, one ton brotherhood that its the Offensive Line.

Before I come off as overly callous and insensitive to the needs of those that have made the game what it is today, let me say that i think that what Mike Ditka is doing needs to be done. What bothers me is the way he has gone about drawing attention. While I am only twenty and am not overly familiar with Ditka, I have always seen him as a pontificating, over-generalizing blabbermouth with no sense of what to say and what not to say. The saddest part of it all is that since Chicago is chock full of Ditka worshipers that would like nothing more than to buy every one of his ridiculously named products(Kick Ass Red Liquor is one of his lead products), Ditka has, for the most part, gotten away with his antics. Because of that, it was even nicer to tune in to the Boers and Bernstein show(with Lawrence Holmes filling in for the former) on 670TheScore and hear Dan Bernstein laying it on Ditka. Bernstein isn't the only to notice that almost nothing Ditka says(not does) holds water. Hunter Hillenmeyer, a Vanderbilt graduate and the Bears' outside linebacker, voiced his displeasure with Ditka's empty claims in an interview almost a month ago. While i don't have access to what exactly he said, it was something along the lines of what I said, that Ditka is more or less just puffing smoke and that his statements are very empty and lack context. His recent episode aside, if you were to listen to Ditka on any of his radio shows in which he is simply talking football, it would be easy to see what i am talking about. When he talks football, which he undoubtably knows lots about, his claims are almost always vague, broad and very generalistic(Is that a word?). When Ditka went in front of Congress with his complaints regarding Gene Upshaw and the Players' Union lack of funding for the injuries of the retired, in reality, all he did was act like a bully. He went up to the stand red faced with his neck veins bulging and spewed out threatening sounding sentences with very little stress on the facts and very empty claims. I'm not going to put up any quotes on this blog, but if anyone is interested in what he said in congress, or in any of his Gridiron Greats rants, the quotes are plastered all over the web. When all else fails, he usually falls back on his "Da Coach" charm and although thats enough for most fans, its not enough for me. Now with the recent accusations directed towards Ditka's charity, his filibusters and attacks on Upshaw seem even less impressive, if at all possible. I have always felt that the best type of charity is one that doesn't garner any type of attention. Yeah, those that donate won't get the recognition they want, but really, if you are giving donations for publicity reasons, thats not much of a donation at all. If you use publicity to get donations its one thing, but the opposite really bother me. Ditka really needs to get his stuff together. I am not sure as to what Ditka should do from here on out, but it is pretty clear what he shouldn't be doing.