Carimi on the Way Out

From everything I am reading on the web, Gabe Carimi looks to be on his way out as a Chicago Bear and it breaks my heart – I really wanted him to improve and contribute. I am not sure how all the cap structure stuff works, but I think June 1 is the day that they can drop him and not take a hit on the cap.

I think the last straw was when he didn’t show up for OTA’s last week.

I remember watching him play here at Wisconsin. He was fantastic. He was good the first few games for the Bears, then that horrible injury. He never played the same after that.

From this video, it sounds like at least he will have some money left over. He is taking a realistic view of the world and sounds, if not savvy, at least like he possesses basic financial knowledge. I found his thoughts on the lockout interesting as well. The questions are also pretty good from the crowd (outside of the dumb football questions, but hey, they are kids):

I honestly wish him well.

Jelly Angelo made a ton of mistakes, but this wasn’t really one of them. Jelly drafted a great college offensive lineman and got him way later than anyone thought he would in that draft. In the NFL, you just never know when guys are going to have their bodies absolutely blown up. You just have to deal with it and move on.

I Want It

Everyone hates Tim Teblow, even me. But. I Want It.

Most of the bleating sheep in the media just make noise to make noise. If you ever really listen to them, they make no sense, or have opinions that aren’t based on any facts or research. They say he can’t throw. Really?

I will be the first to admit that I don’t know squat about quarterbacking in the NFL. But I have seen a few guys throw the ball around in my short years on this earth, and that wasn’t too bad of a throw. Was it?

Sure, all the Bible thumping and “Tebowing” and all that shit is annoying. But it isn’t any more annoying to me than dumb sack dances like this:

Anyway, Teblow is damaged goods now, for whatever reason. And I want him.

So if he lines up at tight end, he could THROW the ball, if he gets it, which is an option that opposing defenses have to think about if he is on the field. Speaking of option, why not throw him in there for a play or two here and there to run the option just to keep the defense from cheating? And I am sure he could block better than most TE’s in the league.

I am positive that the Bears could get him for league minimum at this point.

But here is the real issue – would Teblow improve our backup qb position? To me, the answer is YES, on top of all of the other things he would bring.

I don’t really see too many downsides on having a guy like Teblow on the team, besides all of the bedwetting press getting their panties in a bunch over it.

We will see where Tebow lands. I hope it is in Chicago.

On Marc Trestman

I just took the time to read, cover to cover, the Marc Trestman biography that Dan reviewed here.  I am very glad that I read it.  I really didn’t understand all the success that his teams had while Trestman was the offensive coordinator.  When you read that book, it seems astounding that he had to wait all these years to get a head coaching job, even in the CFL.

Here’s my favorite quote (other than the one that is now up on our masthead about full violence on every play) on p70

PASSION, confidence, and a clear concise vision often are the difference between who steps up to lead and who falls back.

The all-caps in “passion” is mine.  This is what I hope will distinguish Trestman from Lovie.  Lovie may have had passion in private, but in public and with Bears’ fans, Lovie showed no passion.

As far as a “clear concise vision”, the only thing Lovie ever said that made any sense to me was when he said that his mission as coach was to “Beat the Packers”, which we did for a little while and then fell into a horrid rut of defeats to our bitter rivals.

When you read a bio on a guy like Trestman, who has a law degree, a consulting business, and who sold municipal bonds for 3 years between coaching jobs, you realize that it is a bit strange to be holding the “fire” next to his name when the guy is pretty accomplished coming in.  What gives us the right to pre-judge him in that manner?

From our admittedly deranged viewpoint in the 17th section of the Bears’ seats (since we are up near the highest point in the stadium we are probably 17 1/2) we want Trestman to succeed more than anyone else; we are the people who’ve been watching through bitter defeat after bitter defeat for all those years.  We want to see a game plan that makes sense – we want for our players to improve rather than regress as players – and we want to bring a championship back to Chicago, one of the founding franchises of the NFL.

So we really want him to win and for the best for him; we want what is best for the Bears – and we want to have an offense and a game plan that meets the realities of 21st century football.  We want to have some innovation – the first since the “T Formation” as they sing during the Bears’ fight song – and we hope Trestman will bring it.

Right now is the time for optimism – Dan and I have been called “nut huggers” for Cutty but Trestman has been a bona fide QB expert in the league and a consultant called in to help top college picks prepare for the NFL draft (by their agents) – so if we can put it together and get Cutty running big then this whole thing could come together.

While it is optimistic we’ve all been optimistic before only to have our hopes crushed, most notably during the 2007 season (a season that we don’t even talk about around here).  We are hoping to send that URL with “fire” in front  of it back out in cyberspace where it belongs, instead of redirecting here.

Your Wall to Wall Draft Coverage

Well, except it won’t be wall to wall, or coverage in the literal sense of the word.  The draft is the most over-hyped, boring, over-watched spectacle that football has to offer.  But I will check in on it a few times this weekend to see if the Bears make any trades, and will definitely have a few thoughts on the players we select once it is all over.  My initial thought is that we will see a new philosophy as regards the draft, this being the first one under the Emery/Trestman era.  No more of this bullshit best athlete available nonsense.  And it is also good that the new collective bargaining agreement screwed the new draft picks so badly so we don’t have to spend a zillion dollars up front for an unproven commodity (Sam Bradford can count his lucky stars – he is the last guy who signed the mammoth deal under the old agreement).  Your thoughts are also appreciated and we will be checking in throughout the weekend here and there, as time provides.

D Rose

The NBA playoffs begin another grinding road to nowhere… and the Bulls have low expectations despite their better than expected record. Our friend Fro Dog renamed his site to fire Tom T our Bulls coach for the sin of grinding our best players into dust during the regular season when it is the playoffs that truly matters.

D Rose doesn’t appear to be coming back at all this year. While Adrian Petersen came back for the Vikings and ran all over the NFL D Rose went down in the playoffs last year (late in a game with a big lead where he shouldn’t have been playing, of course) and hasn’t come back at all.

The joke now is that Kobe will come back to the NBA sooner than D Rose even – funny and possibly even remotely true.

Why doesn’t D Rose come back? No one knows. Apparently he is cleared to play.

Likely he figures Tom T the coach will just break him the same way he utilizes all the other players on the team, or maybe it is some other reason. We are all just speculating.

It is amazing though that the Bulls just keep paying him an astronomic salary and I see his face all over town on billboards and he is just sitting there on the bench while the Bulls fail in the playoffs, which is supposed to be the most important thing (not the regular season).

The Sad Big Ten

As a side note on the NFL draft you can see clearly how pathetic the Big Ten is relative to actual football schools.  Dan and I coined the term “Division Zero” which would include pretty much the SEC, some other powerhouses like Texas and USC and Oregon, and that’s about it.  Those are the teams that actually play college football at a higher level.

Dan knows 1 million times more about college football but even a relative dunce like me can see the vast gap in speed, talent and hitting between any of these schools and anybody in the Big Ten.

To highlight this giant gap, LSU and Alabama dominated the draft while the entire Big Ten was just a joke.  This article shows how far down the conferences’ players fell in value relative to the SEC.

As Illini fans we want them to win, badly.  We are tired of having our Illini teams run over by the better teams in the Big Ten (Wisconsin, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and now Nebraska) and it is even sadder to know that the best Big Ten team would get obliterated by virtually any SEC team (OK, Missouri doesn’t count, but what the hell are they doing in the SEC, anyways).

The draft shows the future for football.  I think that if you stacked your team with  whomever played for the mighty SEC teams you’d have a pretty good team.  Rather than paying millions for Forte, just get a replacement part from LSU or Georgia or Alabama or Florida and call it a day.  Sure, I like Forte, but is he really worth millions more than an interchangeable part from one of those schools?  Hardly.

I am hoping that the new Bears management knows what they are doing.  We LOVE the pick of the linebacker Bostic from Florida for that insane SEC attitude.  Both Bostic and of course Long are viewed as a reach by many NFL prognosticators but for now, hell, we will just assume that the Bears management has an actual plan and this is all part of it.

LaTroy Hawkins

I was eating in a restaurant tonight and saw a NY Mets baseball game out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t believe it… LaTroy Hawkins was pitching!

He was the terrible closer for the Cubs way way back and I looked in wikipedia and he is still playing at the age of 40 years old (nearing 41).  The amazing part is that he was never a dominant reliever and only occasionally a decent reliever but apparently that is good enough to continuously earn millions in baseball.  Actually his stats aren’t that bad but he pretty much sucked here in Chicago when we needed him.

I remember in the mid-2000′s I was at a White Sox game and saw John Franco pitching.  It was after interleague play started because Franco only played with NL teams.  That guy was flat out ancient – I remember in college we used to play RBI Baseball on the old Nintendo 64 and Franco for the Mets had that underhanded pitch that just dropped on the plate.

Compared to football the baseball guys lived charmed lives and make millions more, to boot.