1990-2017 ALL-TIME TEAM: STRONG SAFETY

(like last time, the free/strong distinction has no meaning here, and this is just the second batch of dudes.)

THE GOOD: Mike Brown (2000-2008) – In the early 2000s, the Bears had put together a core of a handful of star players that probably would’ve resulted in at least one championship with competent management. Mainly, this was on defense, which featured perhaps the best cornerback the Bears ever had in Charles Tillman, seven-time Pro Bowler and potential Hall-of-Famer Lance Briggs, a guy who briefly the best defensive tackle in football in Tommie Harris, and Alex Brown, all all-around playmaker who was way better than his stats ever indicated. Oh yeah, and they also had impending first-ballot Hall of Fame middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, who was pretty much the face of the NFL around 2002-2003ish. And, gentle reader, are you guys ready for the HOT TAKES? Well, while all this was going on, Mike Brown was the best player on the Chicago Bears. Urlacher may have been the face and the heart of the defense, but Brown was literally everything else. Brains, balls, pancreas, everything. He was in all places at all times, and could single-handedly decide the outcome of a game, as evidenced by literally winning two straight games with defensive touchdowns in 2001. (That was a magical season, where the Bears were awful, but finished 13-3, becoming the first “that’s true, but you know they lost eight of those games by a total of 13 points” team to ever actually score an extra 14 points) Eventually, the cursed 2004 season happened, and began a long and horrifying string of trips to injured reserve that crippled the Bears’ defense, and lasted until he was let go in 2009, but had that not happened, I truly believe the Bears would be sending two guys to Canton soon, instead of one. The Bears with Mike Brown on the field win Super Bowl XLI. I will always believe this.

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1990-2017 ALL-TIME TEAM: LEFT TACKLE

(Again, like the strong/free safety thing, left/right doesn’t mean anything here; these are just the guys I decided to type about first when #7 came up on the random number generator, and left comes before right on the Tecmo Super Bowl team data screen . It makes sense to me, and that’s all that matters, pissant.)

THE GOOD: Keith Van Horne (1981-1993) – This dude never made the Pro Bowl as far as I can remember, he was never part of an all-decade team, and I’m assuming he’ll never be in the Hall of Fame. But he was always there for thirteen years, and while he was never an offensive line superstar like Jim Covert or Jay Hilgenberg, he was always at least good. And living with the reality we live in now, where finding offensive tackles who are at least good enough to start in the NFL is something the Bears try (and usually fail) to do every other year, that’s hard to fathom. Imagine it: Thirteen years of not having to worry about something. My god.  Also, it’s funny, because I just remembered how when I was a kid, this guy seemed like the largest man in the history of the non-WWF world, just massive. And looking him up now, he was listed at 265 pounds, which is probably 50-75 pounds less than a 6’7″ offensive tackle tends to weigh in the modern world, which might have something to do with how 13-year starters don’t happen anymore. Love too take “supplements.”  Anyway, I’d just like to say thank you, Keith.  If you threw a party and invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say “thank you for being a pretty good offensive tackle for a decade-plus.” Continue reading 1990-2017 ALL-TIME TEAM: LEFT TACKLE

1990-2017 ALL-TIME TEAM: KICKER

THE GOOD: ROBBIE GOULD (2005-2015) – I’m suddenly and horrifyingly realizing how hard it is to type things about a kicker being good at kicking, because a kicker only does like two things, and with a few glaring exceptions, they do it in the same way. Crap. But yeah, after the miserable failure of Doug Brien, the Bears got desperate and literally signed this guy off a damn construction site. From there, he went on to become one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history. And it was weird, because for the longest time, he had a reputation of having a really weak leg, and apparently, this pissed him off real bad, because he eventually got The Eye of the Tiger and turned into a dude who never missed from fifty yards or more. He’s currently on the 49ers, where he just had his best season, including a game where he kicked 5 field goals to single-handedly beat the Bears, and FUCK YOU, JOHN FOX.

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1990-2017 ALL TIME TEAM: FREE SAFETY

(DISCLAIMER: the free/strong safety designation means nothing here. A safety is a safety is a safety for these purposes, and I’m not far enough on the spectrum to differentiate right now)

THE GOOD: MARK CARRIER (1990-1996) – The 1990 draft was the first one I ever paid any real attention to, so I was really excited about this guy as a rookie, which was precisely the time period during which he exploded the entire goddamn league. He busted right out of the gate and led the league with ten interceptions, won Defensive Rookie of the Year, made the Pro Bowl, was on everybody’s All-Pro teams, and was really useful on Tecmo Super Bowl after using Mike Singletary on every play had made the game too easy. Thing is, such a statistically-rich season never happened again, and this led to the Internet Blood Libel of Mark Carrier being a guy who had one good year and sucked forever after that. This is all double-bullshit though, as he remained excellent, and just didn’t have quarterbacks trying to pick on the rookie (and failing miserably) anymore. As such, he made a couple more Pro Bowls and remained perhaps the only useful player to control on the default Bears roster in 1995’s Tecmo Super Bowl III. (Donnell Woolford had no hitting power, so running backs would just smear him, you see) So if you see anyone out in the streets badmouthing Mark Carrier, stab them. It’s okay, you’ll be okay, trust me. I am a scientist.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Horror: 1990-2017 Chicago Bears All-Time Team

INTRODUCTION: We all knew when this thing started so many days ago that it would eventually break down into an endless series of long, boring position-by-position breakdowns. So I’m just going to go ahead and begin the latest in my life’s long and unending series of online projects that I’ll never finish, which is the ULTIMATE POSITION-BY-POSITION BREAKDOWN. A position-by-position breakdown so vast, it’s actually four position-by-position breakdowns rolled into one. A position-by-position breakdown too large for a single blog post; a position-by-position breakdown to both please and horrify the gods themselves. My god, it will be beautiful. Of course, I’ll never finish it.

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I am football genius

The blog post directly before this one has multiple references to Tremaine Edmunds as an inside linebacker, plus a part where I wonder why no one thought the Bears were taking an outside guy.  And , uhhh, turns out he’s probably going to play outside linebacker.  I remind you all that this was a whole thing dependent on Google searches.

Extremely Semi-Annual Pre-Draft Pretending-I-Know-Things Festival: Top 10 Guys That Are Supposed to Go to the Bears.

Never forget the Wee Baby Sheamus

This is a semi-annual tradition for me in the NFL offseason, in that I did it exactly once, in 2012.  Basically, I know nothing about college football, because I don’t watch it, but I can weave a strong enough web of nonsense that it sometimes sounds like I do, which puts me right up there with a lot of dudes who get paid six figures for their version of the same thing.  I guess my career downfall is that I don’t own a suit, and my voice kinda sounds like the Goldbergs kid on testosterone-replacement therapy.  Or maybe Kevin from The Office on speed.  I dunno, use your imagination, and remember that it’s why I never started a podcast.  Anyway, in 2012 Armchair Linebacker style, (And for the record that blog has been reborn anew, and it’s just about the Lions now, but it’s real, and it’s spectacular)  I hit the Google Machine, typed in “2018 mock draft” and sifted through other, more “respectable” websites’ NFL draft speculation until I had ten guys that the Bears were alleged to be absolutely guaranteed to pick, followed by HARD-HITTING ANALYSIS, FOOTBAWWW YEAAAHHHHHH Continue reading Extremely Semi-Annual Pre-Draft Pretending-I-Know-Things Festival: Top 10 Guys That Are Supposed to Go to the Bears.

Hello, This Will All End Badly

You know, I almost did it. The NFL almost beat me, or more accurately, I almost escaped the NFL. It was all too much:  I couldn’t take another season of endless truck commercials, another season of nonsensical and inconsistently-applied rules, another season of mindless flag-waving, another season of pink footballs that will never help anyone, or another season of wondering how many players on the field will die before they hit fifty.  Most of all, I couldn’t take another season of disappointing Bears football.  But I thought 2017 was another disappointing season?  Quiet, Voice in My Head; I’m getting there. Continue reading Hello, This Will All End Badly