Tough loss (Bears/Titans post game)

[CBS7]

We win that game with Orton.

Pros - Run D (29 carries 20 yards), Forte (126 total yards and a TD), OL (1 sack allowed, solid run blocking), Hester made a few big plays
Cons - hmm. Rex aside from 2 drives (20-37, 173 yards, TD, rush TD, INT, 64.4 rating), pass defense (30-41, 289 yards, 2 TD to Kerry Collins), coaching, pass defense, lack of adjustments, playcalling, and pass defense. Also, pass defense.

A tough loss, but not a crippling loss. We need to look to next week, hope Orton can play, we got a big date with the Packers.

Still tied for first place with whoever wins the GB/MIN game.

[Chewie]

Rex sucks. Plain and simple. He stares down his receivers and still throws off his back foot. Just doesn't belong in the league. That the game was that close was amazing.

Titans saw our defense was going to put 8 in the box to take away the run so they were more than happy to pass it. And when we didn't adjust, they just continued to pass.

[CBS7]

- Rex sucks. I know he had a couple nice drives but you need more then that to beat a 8-0 team.

- WHAT THE HELL is exactly wrong with our pass defense? It CAN'T be our players. Vasher and Brown were pro bowlers. Tillman is a good player who gets burned once in a while but he makes up for it with those forced fumbles. Graham and Payne look like very good young players. IMO its a combination of crappy scheme, no adjustments, and no pressure on the QB. If we're doing anything this year, we have to fix that up. If we get Orton back soon and we fix this, we're the best team in the NFC.

- Forte is so good. That's what, is 5th or 6th game with over 100 yfs. He's easily the 2nd best rookie. Not to Chris Johnson like so many people think, but to Matt Ryan. Ryan is winning ROY.

- Nice performance by the OL, opening up holes for Forte and giving Grossman time that he did nothing with for most of the game. Just 1 sack allowed against one of the best defenses.

- Hester had a crappy return but he does look like he gets closer and closer every week to breaking one. He gets one soon and finishes the season with a couple.

[NLK]

I agree with Chewie on Rex. He has yet to learn how to look off defenders when he passes. There's just too many close calls where he's just telegraphing those to receivers. Its obvious now why he didn't win the starting position of QB.

Additionally, why in blue hell did we not blitz on 3rd Down. We show the threat to do so, then back off into a our usual Crappy Cover 2, get passed on for 1st downs. I'm sorry, but that front four ain't doing jack. The fact that in week 3 or 4, Griese passes the ball for 60 something attempts and doesn't get sacked is a reason why we have to blitz. Tommie Harris makes some flashes to make a play, but he ain't totally healthy. Adewale, Alex, and Dusty are getting stopped if Tommie can't make the impact he once did, thus rendering them neutralized. We have to rush at least a 5th guy in there if we're going to go with those four.

[CBS7]

Forte has 189 carries for 713 yards with 4 TDs and 37 catches for 282 yards with 3 TDs.

On pace for 336 carries 1268 yards with 7 TDs and 66 catches for 501 yards with 5 TDs.

[Susan]

That performance against the run was the most impressive thing I've seen in a while. It would have been Kerry Collins vs Kyle Orton+our running game had Kyle been healthy. Forte had a whole lot of yards against one of the top rushing defenses in the world without any sort of consistent passing game, he's going to be able to do that against ANYBODY in the NFL.

You can all scream 5-4 all you want but this team is winning this division and they're going to head into the playoffs far more dangerously than the 2006 team did.

[NLK]

NFL Post Game:

"Where Susan happens!"

But Susan is right though. Kyle returns, the NFC North can be owned by the BEARS. And it will be owned by them!

[CBS7]

I'm surprised we didn't see Forte or Hester in the wildcat or more bombs to Hester.

[CBS7]

That performance against the run was the most impressive thing I've seen in a while. It would have been Kerry Collins vs Kyle Orton+our running game had Kyle been healthy. Forte had a whole lot of yards against one of the top rushing defenses in the world without any sort of consistent passing game, he's going to be able to do that against ANYBODY in the NFL.

You can all scream 5-4 all you want but this team is winning this division and they're going to head into the playoffs far more dangerously than the 2006 team did.

After defending our pass defense for a while, I'm really concerned about it now. If it gets back to form I really think we can go to the superbowl, if not, playoffs aren't guaranteed...

Huge game next week. Hopefully the Vikes lose as well.

[CBS7]

Here's something sort of insignificant but Forte has had quite a few TDs poached from him. McKie has 2 1> yard TDs and so does Grossman. And Forte was huge on at least 3 of those 4 drives, if I remember correctly.

IMO he'd get more recognition if he had 11 TDs instead of 7.

[Ruben Douglas]

The pass defense is bad. But I can't really blame the secondary completely. Sure there were a few plays here and there where guys were out of position, but there's no way in hell that any secondary can cover WR's for as long as they were asked to today, and for that matter, most of the season. The Bears need to find a way to get some pressure on the QB, plain and simple. On the few plays that they were able to get in Collins' face he made poor passes. It comes down to Babich creating a better pass rushing scheme and the DL executing for once.

[blumeany]

Grossman can eat the crap sammich for this loss.

He is a HUGE drop off from Orton. While Orton can change plays at the line, throw accurately, move out of the pocket, run, check down - Rex can do NONE of those things. He absolutely crippled our offense. The dude can't even see over his own line. I never thought there would be THAT big of a dropoff between Orton and Grossman, but Orton has grown so much this year and he's really distanced himself from Rex. A crippled Bears offense basically meant that the Titans had awesome field position all game. They rarely had to start at their own 30 let alone their own 20.

If Orton was in there, I could see the Titans only scoring 7. And the Bears would have probably scored 28.

[dougthonus]

You can all scream 5-4 all you want but this team is winning this division and they're going to head into the playoffs far more dangerously than the 2006 team did.

I doubt we'll be a better team than 2006 in the playoffs. I do think we'll win the division though, it's hard to say, we've been really struggling defensively. We shut down the run by absolutely stuffing the box and then got destroyed in the passing game by a pretty mediocre QB/WR group because of it.

Orton is clearly much better than Grossman at this point, but with the whole league getting a lot of film on the Bears, I think we'll see a 2006 Rex Grossman like adjustment of the league on Orton. He doesn't seem like he rattles like Rex did, so I doubt it will be as bad, but I expect a dip in his numbers.

[CBS7]

It was pretty simple to plan for Grossman though. Pressure him and take away the deep ball. Its not the same with Orton.

Its tough to say that we'll be better then the 06 team. That team could play defense, better defense then we're playing now even without Brown and Harris. But our offense is better.

If we can somehow fix the pass defense, we're set.

[NoSkyy]

This game was lost on the field position. I wouldn't say Rex Grossman killed us because he did lead two decent drives that resulted in TDs, but the whole consistently being behind the 20, punting from the end zone(we had 9 possessions in which we ended up, punting like 8 times). I don't want to defend our pass defense because it was atrocious, but seriously, the Titans consistently started from like, the 50 yard line. I'm surprised they didn't blow us out.

I also think we're blitzing the wrong people. You see people like Briggs consistently drop back with like, Nick Roach blitzing? We need some more aggressive blitzers that will bring something instead of waddle around. I think part of it is that we're doing a lot of run blitzing(which is effective) but after the LB/safety sees it's NOT a run, they try to back out into pass formation which absolutely SCREWS up. I mean, if you're blitzing, just GO! I don't care who you are, you're not getting back to defend the pass after going 3-4 steps through their line of scrimmage.

I don't know about the front four though, they absolutely get pressure(otherwise we wouldn't be dropping RBs for such momentum losses) when it happens to be a running down but they're like **** when it comes to passing downs.

Ontop of NoSkyy's draft wish list is Impact Possession WR, Run Blocking O-Linemen, Pass Rushing D-Linemen, and a ball hawking safety.

[Chewie]

There's simply no excuse for how that last offensive series went. NONE. That game was there for the taking.

[ChronicKerr]

That 2nd down run on that last offensive drive should have been a shot deep.. if you don't get it then you can run on 3rd and 1. The losing of the 4 yards really urked me.

[Chewie]

That 2nd down run on that last offensive drive should have been a shot deep.. if you don't get it then you can run on 3rd and 1. The losing of the 4 yards really urked me.

I had no problem with that 2nd down run call but the execution left much to be desired, obviously. Still, we had 2 downs to get 4 yards and Grossman couldn't get it done.

[batman_crip14]

it was a tough loss. Only upside was Matt Forte. I would say the rush D too, but you don't let old man Collins throw almost 300yards on our supposedly stingy defense. Grossman did what most of us expected... not a whole lot of good to please/but enough to make us more pissed off about him. I was hoping for better from Grossman. You can clearly tell that this Offense is more built for KO.

Lovie Smith and Buddy Bob... one has to go. All my fingers/toes point to Buddy Bob. Ron Turner... takes forever to realize something works, but never goes back to what his working and grow from it.

Devin Hester... now 8 games without a return/longest in his career.

[Mr Smoke Weed]

its absolutely mindblowing to me that the pass defense could be so bad, still pissed about it