I’m putting $100 on each of these bets all season. Will be keeping my total down below. (For those of you who are not gamblers, if you lose a $100 bet you actually lose $110. If you push a $100 bet, you lose the $10 vig.)

Tennessee +2 at Cleveland

Anti-Manziel pick. When I watch Johnny Football on an NFL field he reminds me of a young kid wearing his father’s suit. His lack of awareness inside the pocket is usurped only by his lack of understanding that the men sharing the field with him are faster and smarter than just about every player he faced at Texas A&M. Titans 23, Browns 16

St. Louis -3 at Washington

Washington v. Miami was the worst game played last Sunday. Neither deserved to win. Now the Redskins, without Desean Jackson, face the most ferocious defense in the NFC? Rams win on the road. Rams 20, Redskins 7

Jacksonville +6 vs Miami

Line is too high. Simple as that. Dolphins 24, Jags 21

Record Through One Week: 1-1-1

(-$20)

Looking Back

As nice as it was for the Bears to look like a professional football team and compete with a  team we all expect to be playing in January, the Bears still lost and nobody should be happy about that.

The Bears had their chances and didn’t execute. They followed the recipe almost perfectly. They kept Aaron Rodgers off the field, running for nearly 190 yards and dominating time of possession early on. But they didn’t make enough plays. That’s what decides the outcome of games.

Outside of Cutler and Forte, the Bears didn’t have a single player make a big play. While James Jones was jumping over Bears defensive backs and Eddie Lacy making one-handed grabs, the Bears got nothing. The biggest play was made by Clay Matthews, perfectly reading Cutler’s eyes for an interception. A good reminder that defensive players get paid too.

One thing that was clear is that the Bears have confidence in their coaching staff. They know they’re going to be put in a position to succeed and it’s up to them to come away with the win. In Week 1, they didn’t.

Looking Forward

It’s hard not to look at the Cardinals and wonder what if Phil Emery had hired Bruce Arians instead of Marc Trestman? Arians wanted the job, he practically begged for it, but Emery went in another direction and it cost him his job.

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Welcome to our first in-season Audibles of 2015!

ACHIEVEMENT OF OPENING DAY

From last week’s game preview:

The 2015 Chicago Bears have to earn back the excitement of people like me. They have to display on the field they are worthy of the passion many have displayed in good times and bad over their lifetimes. They can do that this week, against the Packers, at Soldier Field? How?

Be in the game. With five minutes left, be in it. That’s all I ask. If the Bears achieve that, a week from now I’m in.

They were spirited. They were professional. They were well-coached. Did they make mistakes? Of course. They don’t have a great roster. Were they outplayed? Of course. The Packers are a better team. But they showed signs they will be competitive each and every week, a massive departure from a year ago. Excitement returneth.

The Sun-Times Should Be Embarrassed

For those of you following DBB on Twitter, you would have noticed an attack launched at @suntimes_sports Monday. Why? Because they insist on serving fans, beside the wonderful work of people like Adam Jahns, crowd-sourced, social media horseshit like the “article” titled “Bears fans already want Jay Cutler benched after Packers loss.” It included these two gems:

@ChicagoBears @SoldierField bench jay cutler he throws too many interceptions

— Ryan (@SavnRyansPrvate) September 13, 2015

I don’t know why Soldier Field, which to the best of my knowledge is an inanimate structure on the lakefront, needs a Twitter feed or why this individual thought it necessary to share his thoughts with a building.

Romo…that was pretty clutch! If you lose interest in Dallas come to Chicago @tonyromo#BenchCutler

— Braden Fogal (@BradenFogal) September 14, 2015

“If you lose interest”? Who wrote this, a 5 year old? It’s one thing for the Sun-Times to post this idiocy but do they also have to be lazy about it? Couldn’t you find a fan or two with a coherent, adult thought?

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There is reason for optimism in the Kingdom of Bears Fans today. With a brand new collection of coaches installing a brand new scheme the Bears went toe-to-toe with a better foe and for a majority of the game held their own. Give Rick Morrissey, a guy I generally don’t care for, a lot of credit for this passage:

The Bears looked like a professional football team Sunday, no small thing after last season’s debacle, though they still walked away 31-23 losers. There are no moral victories in the NFL, but there are losses that don’t stink to high heaven. This was one of them.

It will be a long year, but maybe it won’t be the kidney stone many of us thought it would be.

Here are my rapid fire thoughts.

• Jay Cutler threw the crucial interception. Aaron Rodgers did not. Rodgers never does.
• On the Cutler pick, this wasn’t a typical pick. He was duped into that interception. He didn’t try to force a pass into a tight window.
• Packers had to make every single play to win this game. James Jones was heroic. Eddie Lacy pulled in one-handers. Clay Matthews chased down sure thing touchdowns. Did the Bears have anyone on their offense do anything exceptional?
• Catch the ball, Forte.
• Paging Pernell McPhee. Come in, Pernell McPhee. (Side note: I earned this will become a thing if McPhee no shows a few games. Ravens have a history of letting the right guys walk out the door.)
• With the complete absence of a pass rush it’s hard to complain about the secondary’s overall performance. Fangio didn’t get overly aggressive with blitz packages. Approach seemed vanilla but that may require a second viewing.

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They were so close to being great. Adam Gase almost called a perfect game. Jay Cutler almost played one. Almost. But they weren’t and that was the difference.

In a game in which they ran the ball at will, the Bears had a second-and-goal at the two-yard line and did not run the ball once. Three incomplete passes, the third coming on fourth down when a blitzed came in free and the Bears gave the ball back to Green Bay.

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Sell Your Chicago Bears Tickets with FrontRowTickets.com!

Welcome to our first game preview of the season, sponsored by FrontRowTickets.com. The online ticket marketplace will join us as sponsors for game previews and game threads throughout this Bears campaign and we’re happy to have them on board. Click the image above to visit their site and buy/sell Bears tickets.

A NOT-SO-QUICK THOUGHT

When I was a kid in New Jersey, I couldn’t watch Bears football. Until I was about 12 years old, outside of the occasional national television appearance, my experience of Bears football was:

• ESPN’s Primetime highlights – still the most important sports program of my lifetime.
• Scoreboard ticker at the bottom of Giants and Jets games. I used to run in from other rooms when the little jingle would play announcing a scoreboard update and pray the Bears had done SOMETHING. (They rarely did.)
• Actual league scoreboard at Giants Stadium, where my family had Jets season tickets. I used to have the entirety of section 324 cheering the Bears updates often more loudly than the Jets game in front of them.

This didn’t change until I was 12 and a bar called Jersey Sports Cafe (now closed) opened in East Rutherford. They had a satellite (one of the big ones) bringing in the Chicago feed and now I could sit on a bar stool (illegally) and watch the Bears PLAY FOOTBALL. I didn’t go every week but I went enough.

This is why I cherish the sixteen games we’re guaranteed each season. Because I didn’t have them until I went to college. This is why the night before Bears football begins has always felt like Christmas Eve. I’m wandering down the carpeted staircase in my feety pajamas and there’s a big old box under the tree. What’s in there? What am I going to get to play with for the next few months?

It won’t be the same this season. At least not this Sunday. The 2015 Chicago Bears have to earn back the excitement of people like me. They have to display on the field they are worthy of the passion many have displayed in good times and bad over their lifetimes. They can do that this week, against the Packers, at Soldier Field? How?

Be in the game. With five minutes left, be in it. That’s all I ask. If the Bears achieve that, a week from now I’m in.

PRESSURE UP FRONT

The Packers will miss Jordy Nelson. They just may not miss him this week. If the Bears front seven, and yes all seven will need to be involved, don’t harass Aaron Rodgers he will rip their secondary apart and throw for upwards of 400 yards. Many have reported defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s success against the Packers quarterback but that success came when Fangio was armed with one of the most talented defensive rosters in the league in San Francisco. He doesn’t have that here.

Here’s my stat. Anything less than four sacks and the Bears lose by two touchdowns.

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Three Picks for Week 1

Steelers +7 over Patriots

Line just feels too high for a week one match-up between two fairly decent teams. Patriots 24, Steelers 21.

Bills +3 over Colts

My favorite mismatch of the first week is the Bills defensive line against the Colts offensive line. Andrew Luck is in the conversation for best player in the sport but I continue to argue that his coach is mediocre and the roster construction around him is poor. Bills win outright. Bills 16, Colts 14.

Cowboys -6 over Giants

Historically, nobody has been wronger about a team as I have about the New York Giants. So my instincts you should me to ignore my instincts entirely and pick them to win the Super Bowl. But not with that defensive roster and not with the questions along their offensive front. Cowboys 27, Giants 20.

Season Record: 0-0

So ends the longest offseason in Chicago Bears history, running roughly from Thanksgiving until this morning. Everything has been hashed and rehashed. Every story angle has been dissected within an inch of its life. Every player and position group has been thoroughly evaluated by the blogging / beat multitudes. There is literally nothing left to say. So what’s left? Questions only the real games can answer.

QUESTION #1

Can the new front office and coaching staff produce an entertaining product on the field?

QUESTION #2

Where is Kyle Long’s future along the offensive line?
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Last year’s column caused a FIRESTORM when readers had the nerve to question the veracity of my claiming a more than 50% success rate on the 2013 version. What did I do? I answered with a stunning 51.38% success rate in 2014. This success was not lost on the American public but I did not know how far my column reached.

So without further adieu, fifty prognostications, pontifications and ponderings on the 2015 season with a nod to every single team in the league.

#1 Nobody’s opinion of Jay Cutler will be different on January 4th 2016 than it is right now.

__________

#2 Andrew Luck will win the MVP award if his offensive line figures out a way to block people.

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