By Jim Coffman

The key to just enjoying Devin Hester’s latest, greatest game was to avoid looking at his hands.
If you looked at his hands you noticed on his 48-yard touchdown reception that they were in position to take a hand-off, not haul in a high-arching pass (and what a beautiful scoring strike that was, Jay Cutler). Hester looked like a lineman inserted into a game as a third tight end near the goal line, ostensibly to block. But then the quarterback keeps the ball and the big galoot goes out and finds himself wide open in the end zone. Instead of opening up his hands to give himself his best chance to haul in the touchdown, he forms brackets around his mid-section and hopes the quarterback can find a way to get the ball in there.
Thankfully, Hester is talented enough to make the catch (some of the time) even if one hand is coming down on the ball rather than joining the other in the classic cradling action. He probably had coaches in middle school (and definitely in high school) who told him and told him and told him that if he wanted to be a consistent receiver he couldn’t have lapses like that. They grew tired of telling him at the U (Miami) and he mostly lined up at cornerback there (when he wasn’t returning kicks). Then he became a receiver again for the Bears.

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Posted on October 17, 2011

By Mike Luce

Leading up to the seventh weekend of play in 2011, most media outlets ran stories this week analyzing the beginning of the season and looked ahead toward the remainder of regular-season play, conference championships and postseason bowl games. You can have the first half of the season hashed, rehashed, even “smothered and covered.”
For example, ESPN.com has identified the “Midseason All-Americans,” looked ahead to the “second act” and offered up “midseason overviews.” CBS Sportsline joined in (and they were hardly alone) with projections for the Heisman and predictions for bowl game match-ups. And, not surprisingly, the annual “BCS Doomsday Scenario” articles appeared this week.
Yawn.

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Posted on October 14, 2011

Adrian Peterson Vs. Soldier Field Turf

1. SBRForum: “The Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears have both been disappointing teams on the year, due in no small part to their frustrating quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb and Jay Cutler, respectively.
“They face each other in a Sunday Night Football match-up in Week 6, but betting against one comes with the unfortunate circumstance of having to bet on the other.”

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Posted on October 14, 2011

By Carl Mohrbacher

“I” Before EEEEK!
Recently, my daughter showed me the list of 40 prepositions she has to memorize for English class. After I told her to be quiet and slide the latest issue of Ass-Mack Weekly under the bathroom door, my first thought was: “What’s a preposition?”
My second thought was: I bet Frank Omiyale feels the same way when he is told to play football.

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Posted on October 13, 2011

By Dan O’Shea

After almost engineering a second half comeback win against the Chargers, Tim Tebow is one of the hottest pick-ups in Yahoo! fantasy football this week.
He was added 21,237 times in Yahoo! leagues between Monday and Tuesday, and probably has been added a few hundred more times since you started reading this sentence.
Still, he was only about 20-percent owned as of Tuesday evening, which surprises me. Are there that many teams that need absolutely no help at QB?

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Posted on October 12, 2011

From Historic Monday Night Performance Against The Bears To Life-Threatening Depression

The most important part of last night’s Bears-Lions broadcast.
*
“Monday Night Countdown looks at former Detroit Lions quarterback Eric Hipple’s long journey to become the outreach specialist at the University of Michigan depression center.”

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Posted on October 11, 2011

By Jim Coffman

This is it.
Tonight is just about the whole season for the Bears. Of course it is still early and of course all sorts of squads come back from rough starts to make the postseason.
But if the team doesn’t knock off the Lions in Detroit tonight after losing to the Packers two weeks ago, it will find itself way, way behind two different divisional foes. It will take the rest of the season (and lots of good fortune) for the Bears to make up the resulting three-game deficits, and those huge runs would have to include even-up wins over rivals that have already knocked them off.
To venture way out into projection land . . . there would be a better chance the Bears would win the second wild card than that they would rally in the division after starting 2-3. And yes I know that would mean three teams qualifying for the playoffs from the NFC North. Skeptical? Well, let’s just say the rest of the conference fails to impress at this point. Only two teams other than the division leaders (Washington, New Orleans and San Francisco) have winning records in the East, South and West divisions and both off those squads (the Giants and the Buccaneers) have two losses.
So I suppose it isn’t right to completely write off the Bears playoff chances if they lose tonight. Instead, let’s go ahead and make one large prediction: If they drop this game, the Bears will not win the NFC North. If they don’t win the division, they won’t make the conference final, and if they don’t make the conference final, they obviously will fall short of last season.
Plenty of teams talk about their only goal being a spot in the Super Bowl. But if a team that only won four games last year grabs nine victories this time around and squeaks into the playoffs as a wild card, it has succeeded. On the other hand, the sad truth for a team that made the conference final a year ago is that there is only one more step to take. If the Bears don’t make the Super Bowl a year after grabbing a spot in the Final Four, the season really is a flat-out bust, no matter who was hurt or whatever else happened (the Packers suffered all sorts of injuries last year – enough said about a possible injury excuse).
As for a few specifics about tonight’s match-up, well, I don’t do “keys to victory.” More than 90 percent of stories written before games – copy that purports to break down what it will take for this team to prevail over that one, are full of it. Who knows what the heck is going to happen other than the absolutely obvious, i.e., if one team pressures another team’s quarterback consistently, it will have a much better chance to win. I’m guessing you know this already.
But I will go ahead and list some “keys to not driving Bears fans crazy.”

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Posted on October 10, 2011

By Mike Luce

Among the swirling debates on conference realignment and other controversies in the early weeks of the 2011 season, a long-standing question about the nature of college sports has moved to the fore. Should colleges and universities compensate football players?
The issue dates back to the early days of the NCAA but only attracted serious attention as broadcast networks began drawing huge national audiences (and associated revenues) for televised college football games in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1983, legendary football coaches Hayden Fry (of Iowa) and Tom Osborne (of Nebraska) answered the question in the affirmative. Both went on record to support the idea, with Fry going further in an interview published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

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Posted on October 7, 2011

By Thomas Chambers

If you think about it, we’ll have the perfect storm in Chicago dirt racing Saturday with the 75th running of the Hawthorne Gold Cup Handicap (Grade II, 1-1/4 miles main track) at beautiful Hawthorne Race Course.
Not a blow-you-to-Oz kind of cyclone, mind you, but a nifty little race that’s quite well entered for 2011. Add predicted great weather, a nice crowd and wagering possibilities, and it’s a can’t miss.
Most people think Arlington when they think Chicago racing, but since AP has put so much emphasis into the Arlington Million and other high-level turf races, “dirt” racing there has gotten short shrift. There’s been no shrift since they installed the artificial surface in 2007, and there are no current Grade I races on the main track.
Conversely, Hawthorne runs the Illinois Derby in the spring and this race each autumn. They’re the best in Chicago dirt racing each year.

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Posted on October 7, 2011

By Carl Mohrbacher

It’s Gonna Move Ya
While it had all of the creativity of an ’80s Juicy Fruit jingle*, last Sunday’s roughly 89-1 run/pass ratio against the Carolina Panthers got the job done and effectively moved the chains.
But don’t get your skis shined up too soon, Forte.
That’s probably the last time we’ll see you get a chance to shine like that this season.

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Posted on October 6, 2011