and last weeks game was suppose to be a shootout with the eagles. even though the D couldn't stop anything, cutler put up a lousy 8 points vs the eagles pass D who is dead last in the league. and i know the whole team didnt perform well, but 8 points? this is your starting QB???

if you look at the past years with cutler, i think its safe to say the D bailed him out way too many times. without the D from those years, cutler is a losing QB.

Cutler is better than McCown moving forward but that doesn't really matter with the size of deal that may be incoming. He isn't good enough for the money but I think the bears are going to give it to him.

Is Cutler even in the top half of starting QBs right now?

Yup from everything Ive been hearing it seems like Cutler will almost assuredly be signed to a long term deal with us. So at this point we should all just get over the whole Cutler vs Mccown thing and hope he stops being a moron with the ball

Yeah he has seemed mildly improved this year, most likely just Alshon Alshoning, I have faith he will always be a moran with the ball.

Meh, I've kinda just resigned myself to the fact that no matter what we do at QB, it'll blow up in our face.

We could bring back McCown at a 1/5th of the price and draft McCarron/Boyd/Manziel to succeed him...and then McCown turns into a high school phys ed teacher again and our pick busts like every other ****ing QB pick we've ever made. So whatever.

Just go DT/DE with the first rounder and look to shore up the rest of the D moving forward in the draft.

So? The point was Jay's significant improvement under the Trestman offense.

Okay, welp. Have you taken into consideration at all the horrific offense lines, WR's, coordinators that didn't know how to coordinate, what the offense looked like when Cutler was injured?

I think the killing clock thing is a fallacy. The team that scores the most points wins the game. Who cares if it takes one play. Before the Dallas game, McCown struggled to get in that endzone against Minny and STL despite sustaining drives, getting first downs, etc. Jay Cutler gives you the best chance to score the most points, which is important.

The reason why Jay is starting is because he is better.

Right. I understand. He also put up 30some points against a really good D the week before. I just think that we are doing ourselves a really big disservice when we look at one game and then try to large to draw a larger conclusion about a player from that one game. Football is gonna football sometimes. Any team can be beaten at anytime.

Bears signed Robbie Gould to a four-year extension through 2017.

$15 million over four years with $9 million guaranteed.

It's a loaded question. What is struggling? If we are talking first half of the Browns game, no he doesn't. If we are talking second half of the Lions game yes he probably does. But everybody will say it is too late because there is no way they could come back and win.

Blaming the Eagles game on him is stupid. They were down 21-0 in a flash and the Eagles pass rush was just running wild at him. Plus Forte, who has been great pass blocking all season, went terrible all of a sudden. There were some silly drops and feet tangled up that affected much of it. It was a bad game by the whole offense. McCown would not have helped.

I'm kind of hoping that they do let Cutler walk after making a team friendly attempt to sign him. With a great offensive system, it's easier to not flame out a QB. I fully trust Trestman to groom a QB that might not have all of the talent of Jay Cutler.

I also feel bad for Trestman. He has taken garbage QBs and made them great his entire career. Now he has his most talented QB since Bernie Kosar and Cutler just doesn't want to buy all the way in. Must be maddening.

Gould's contract is the most lucrative ever given to a kicker, fwiw...replacing his last deal which was, at the time in 2008, the most lucrative deal ever given to a kicker.

Kid's done well for himself!

gould has been mega reliable and i doubt that anybody in this thread will have issue with him getting paid.


cutlaahhh- it's the kobayashi maru- sign him long term and it looks like the bears overpaid for an overrated qb, let him walk- watch him play well with minny or something while trestman is chased around chicago with pitchforks when the mccown experiment finally flames out.

my standard tl;dr post

while Gould's been great and rookie K's are generally lolbad in chicago, I have to cringe at paying a kicker. I just don't see the value in paying any kicker over replacement but yeah not mad about it since if we're gonna blow it, I'd rather have it blown on a producer so w/e (and it's not the worst thing to have it spent on a guy who knows how to kick @ soldier--esp since it's not something you can just find out in the preseason). Kickers are pretty similar in the NFL these days overall tho.

Much much much bigger decisions looming this offseason no matter what the result of this game is (in obvious spots QB/def/replace hester (a true GOAT, pains me to say that we should replace you) [sidenote, still think he should be in the HOF [my hof view is essentially did the opponent hate playing against this guy/play him differently vs the rest of the league? hester was up there in that category for quite awhile and the NFL HOF is a weak HOF compared to other sports]

regarding the O--I have to say I'm impressed with the offseason job Emery et all did here, there was a lot of total aids to fix in one offseason and they basically all got there (oline is a miracle from where they were) [Kellen Davis was the WOAT so a cardboard box would've been an improvement, WR2 is now a threat, LT isn't aids, LG has been good, Long in theory should improve a lot this offseason and emerge, and this was about the best I think we could expect from Mills this season tho he needs to improve obviously. [and offense was pretty darn healthy outside of the bennetts and mccown was better than cutler] aids) I don't want to consider trestman as an offensive guru on the bears yet based on "because before we used to suck" when the talent is clearly better/was relatively healthy all year. Just trying to avoid the results bias.

so I guess it's possible tho unlikely the D can be fixed all at once too. D did catch the injury bug a bit but most teams (except apparently the 49ers [before this season they had an absurd 2 year stretch where almost nobody got hurt]) usually suffer just under as many as this team did overall.

NFL has so much turnover due to injuries or suckitis out of nowhere (nnamdi anyone? that eagles deal was 2011) that I think we shouldn't be pigeonholed into drafting D necessarily (but yeah our most likely pick *should* be a DE or possibly a CB but obviously whoever the best defender at our pick is we have to strongly look at selecting regardless of position.

btw we lose that eagles game with whoever you think the best QB ever was in his prime playing QB. Eagles run blocking coming in was #1 by far. We had to not punt the entire game to have any chance. (field position game is nearly irrelevant if you can't force the other team to punt)

Marshall > Alshon for the pro bowl is criminal.

Good post, on the bolded I think there are some things that can be reasonably attributed to Trestman, like Forte getting 70 receptions and putting McCown in generally good positions to succeed.

Plenty of good questions that justify discussion itt. Is Cutler the guy going forward? Is our roster starting to look like a roster that will have multiyear super bowl equity? Are Packers fans the lowliest group of people assembled for a common purpose since the latest board meeting at Comcast or the John Mayer tourbus or whichever employee training meeting teaches the assembly line workers how to bury that small plastic scooper at the bottom of a new bucket of protein powder so I have to fish around with my hand and germ the whole thing up???

And while I think the answer to each of those questions is "no," I think that this morning they are also missing the point, because guys we've got to snap out of it: Today we play the last game of the season, in Chicago, against the Packers, winners go playoffs, losers go home.



Playoffs! And if we make the playoffs, anything can happen, right? Just get in the playoffs, clean slate, chip and a chair, and then it's a brand new season right? So let's just win today and we'll just take it one game at a time, right???

No...no, that's wrong. We are men here, and as men we musn't kid ourselves--if we get in the playoffs then my friends, we're going to get raped, in our mouths and ears and anally in our hindparts, repeatedly, vigorously, without mercy or tenderness or fear of meaningful retribution. But none of that matters now.

Today we play the last game of the regular season, in Chicago, against the Packers, the loser goes home and the winner goes playoffs. And even if our playoff prospects are bleak, I'd rather go down swinging in the playoffs than go down on my aunt while only listening to the playoffs on twenty television sets at once in walmart's A/V department like a snaggletoothed median Lion fan with nothing to live for beyond the dream of a comedy central Kid Rock roast. Now is not the time for analytics or foresight or half-empty glasses or ****ing excuses. We're talking about the Packers! We're talking about the playoffs! And while I get the impulse to rationally discuss our litany of gripes, today is not the time for rational thought, today is not the time for emotional hedging, and if for the rest of the afternoon any of us starts to slump over into the modern posture of a thoughtful pessimistic Bears fan, then maybe we should try sitting up a little straighter, a little manlier, a little more ursine, maybe we should imagine that somebody is pulling a string on the top of our heads because that's a great first step to outstanding posture, and THEN maybe it's time to take our glasses that are half-empty and to fill those glasses up with coffee and whiskey and cocaine and a sauce that is hot and red until the cup runneth over and then we should drink deep until our thirst is quenched and then break the glass over the nearest packers fan's head found swaddled somewhere in the mesofoam of a cartoonish hat of cheese, and then gather all the broken glass bits and chew them up and then BEAR DOWN for as long as it takes until you can crap out even sharper and angrier glass to arm yourself with against today's invasion of lemony limy mustachioed twinkletoed dorks who look like they are taking time off between pinewood derbies to cheer their sons on with literal cowbells for the big 2A quarterfinal game. And THIS is the team that is going to come into CHICAGO and take our PLAYOFF SPOT???

not gonna happen



NOT TODAY



go Bears go Bears go Bears GO YOU ****ING BEARS LET'S GO



respect the rivalry



respect the players




and when our work is done don't gloat in their thread just silently smile at the excuses, "waaah but Rodgers was hurrrrrrt" "booohoooooooo but he was obviously russsstyyyyy" "oh who cares NFC Norrrrrisssssssss" "McCarthy costs us three winnnnns a yearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" "waaaaaaah" "waaaaaaaaaaaaaah" "I live in an unincorporated township I gargle the cheese that I coax from the loins of godgers godgers godgers"



BEARS BEARS BEARS



BEARS BEARS BEARS



GO BEARS



GO



VOLLEYBALL



PRETTY



CHICAGO



BEARS



FLAG



EGG NOG

LOL JESUS CHRIST YES

BEAR DOWN

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EPIC POST

588-2300 never disappoints

Nailed it EM.

Let's f###ing do this!

totally rooting for the bears based on empire man's post.

that empire man post is going to will the bears to victory.

Bear Down.

Lol punting

Tresstman confirmed top 5 coach, elite punt

LOL trolling in-game in a STST. Get a life.

Its weird how inconsistent he is with 4th down decisions, he needs to write a new the book imo.