These things are called duckies.

When a city boy is going whitewater rafting in the Rocky Mountains he expects to be in a large raft with several other individuals and have minimal influence on the proceedings. Sure he’s happy to drop a well-timed refrain of Pocahontas’ Just Around the River Bend or lightly tap somebody on the ass with his oar. But he really doesn’t want a major role in the maneuvering of the watercraft.

Not in a ducky. A ducky, pictured above, is more an inflatable kayak. I piloted one of these devices, if you’d like to call what I did piloting, down the Roaring Fork Valley. Because I was terrible at this and managed to hit every rock available for contact, I spent much of my journey with the kayaked guide at the rear of the field. (If this were a race I would have been the guy receiving thunderous applause for merely finishing.) The guide, called Ryan because everybody in the Aspen area seemed to be named Ryan, was a die hard Denver Broncos fan. We had time to speak.

The Denver Broncos broke offensive records a year ago. They were the most exciting team in the sport by a significant margin. They won the AFC seemingly uncontested. Then they botched a snap in front of the world’s largest television audience and the happiness kite drifted from the young child’s hand into the cloud-lined sky, never to be seen again. To hear this shaggy marijuana machine in a kayak talk of his beloved team’s 2013 campaign, you’d think they shamed the state of Colorado and all members of the Elway family with a 3-13 record.

They finished second in the NFL. Better than thirty other franchises. Only worse than one. And that’s the harsh reality of the NFL. Only one team, only one city, only one fan base leaves the season firmly satisfied. Nobody derides the club that loses the World Series or Stanley Cup Finals or NBA Finals (unless LeBron James is on that team). They give large trophies to the runners-up at golf and tennis major championships and grand slams. Supporters of the English Premiere League’s second-place side don’t pout in kayaks.

The loneliest loser in all of professional sports is the team failing on Super Bowl Sunday. So how does one set fair expectations for an NFL season?

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DaBearsBlog has performed the Ice Bucket Challenge and donated to ALS. Normally you call out two or three people on Twitter but to hell with that. There are a lot of loyal commenters to this site – gpldan, MB, Trac, Canada, AlbertinTuscon, the rest of you.

So I am calling upon ALL OF THE BLOG REGULAR COMMENTERS TO TAKE THE ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE.

Make a YouTube video of your bucket pour and I’ll post them all to this site once the URL is emailed to me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.

The dumpers: Bears plastic cup, Richard Dent & Walter Payton pint glasses, Bears flat-brimmed cap full of ice water, actual ice bucket, cold shower finale.

The hair: long.

The face: hungover, bloated and unshaven.

Enjoy the unofficial end of the summer while dunking your heads with ice water. Full slate of content coming next week in the lead-up to the opener.

What, if anything, can be gleaned/enjoyed this evening?

• Do the Bears currently have a kick returner on their roster or are they going to be scouring the waiver wire this weekend for some speed? (I’d like to see Senorise Perry given a good run back there tonight.)
• Hey, you get to watch Jordan Lynch carry the ball for the last time before he’s buried on the practice squad for the 2014 season!
• David Fales can follow Matt Blanchard and Caleb Hanie as fourth preseason game darlings: quarterbacks who thrive against third-string defensive units.
• Pat O’Donnell is playing.

I will be watching the game live tonight and responding on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter by CLICKING HERE or just watching the right rail of this page.

Last year’s column saw my predictions ONCE AGAIN surpass the 50% mark though down slightly from the previous year’s 67%. But as my daddy always said, “If you’re right half the time, that’s better than being wrong a bunch.”

Here are 50 prognostications and thoughts for the 2014 NFL season. Every team gets their moment. The Bears get more.

1. If Jay Cutler stays healthy he’ll throw for 4,000 yards but come up short of his career high 4,526. 

__________

2. In a deliciously dramatic moment, Devin Hester will break the all-time return record not against the Chicago Bears but against his former head coach Lovie Smith on week four’s Thursday Night Football installment.

__________

3. If the Broncos beat Seattle the third week of the season I give them a more than plausible chance to go undefeated. The offense is a machine. The defense is going to be terrific.

__________

4. Bears tied the Jacksonville Jaguars for fewest sacks in football last year with 31. (Carolina had 60 last year. That is DOUBLE!) This year they move to mid-table and finish the season with 45.

__________

5. Kelvin Benjamin will win offensive ROY because of this depth chart:

__________

6. I completely agree with Brandon Marshall’s assessment on Jay Cutler. If he stays healthy he is going to have an MVP-type season this year. But there is no way the writers will give Cutler the MVP. None.

__________

7. Never rent an apartment from a guy calling himself Tom Benson! From Scambook:

The so called Tom Benson claims to be the doorman of an apartment complex that is situated just across from the Crowne Plaza. He mentions that he is the doorman and that the owners are away for vacation but that they rent the home. He then goes on to send you pictures and says that he will even offer a free airport shuttle. This is an illegitimate offer and the Department of Homeland Security has already investigated this crime. I sent out a money transfer, only to then quickly cancel. I was lucky and I hope that this helps other people as well.

__________

8.  Sammy Watkins (and all NFL fans) will wake up midseason and wonder aloud, “Why did he have to end up in Buffalo?” Bills will be forced to get Watkins the ball on bubble screens and underneath when they realize EJ is both afraid and unable to get him the ball over the top.

__________

9. Every season a team goes from worst to first they tell me. This season that will not happen. I repeat: this season that will not take place.

__________

10. Tampa Bay will have them some…

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I am heading away into the mountains of Colorado for the next 5 days. Reverend Dave does not return from Malaria Malawi until the end of my trip. Being that we are less than a week or so away from DaBearsBlog becoming my full-time job, I figured why not give my brain the rest for the week. But that means I need a writer.

Enter Andrew Dannehy. I’ve conversed and debated with Andrew on Twitter for about a year now and while I don’t always agree with his opinions, I respect them. He is a diligent collector of information and passionate defender of his beliefs. I believe he will be an asset to this site and hope the following week won’t be his only contributions moving forward.

From Monday to Friday of this week, this site will be run by someone not me for the very first time. I may come back from Colorado and say never again. Or…I may not.

Be nice, people. My next column will post on Monday, August 25th. It will be my 50 predictions for the 2014 season column. I will still be somewhat active on Twitter.

Here are some thoughts on last night’s “game”.

• Starting with the pregame interview, it isn’t easy to adapt to Jared Allen in a Chicago Bears uniform.
• I think we saw a few clues last night as to how Shea McClellin is going to be deployed. DJ and Lance will be behind the defensive line and Shea will be sent at the quarterback.
• Both McClellin and Bostic made excellent pursuit tackles. Good to see them showing instincts for the position.
• If Chris Williams is going to be the starting kick returner against Buffalo, great. In the meantime the Bears need to be giving someone other than Eric Weems a look back there. I don’t know what Weems does well but I haven’t seen it.

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The 2013 Chicago Bears season came to a fittingly sad conclusion.

Chris Conte, one of the emerging stars of the previous campaign who seemed to have not only lost his way in the secondary but his confidence as well, missed an assignment. The physical side of the game had let him down all season long. Now the mental side was delivering a final, crippling blow. Peppers leaps. Kuhn blocks. Rodgers scrambles. Cobb scores. The culprit was Conte. Not only had he, in that moment, become the poster child for this devastating loss. That wasn’t enough to pour onto the slumping shoulders of a beleaguered safety. No, in that moment, Conte became the symbol of the entire season’s defensive futility.

Shots were fired at Conte from every discernible angle. Once news of an off-season surgery surfaced many, myself included, wrote off Conte’s potential future with the Chicago Bears. When Marc Silverman of ESPN Radio bet Tom Waddle Conte would not play a down for the Bears this season, Conte met that challenge with a Twittery terrific, “fuck u all.”

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NFL sold me their Preseason Live package. They might as well have sold me the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the night the program failed to load. When the program loaded it was awful. I shall keep you up to date on the battle I began with folks at the league last night. Apparently I’m not alone.

A few thoughts…

• If you’re Martellus Bennett, what are you thinking this morning? You are away from the team because you’re an insane person and last night you watched two tight ends with a tenth of your ability – Rosario and Miller – flourish in what should have been your role. Maybe, I don’t know, stop being crazy, apologize and get yourself back to practice.
• Anybody can look at the numbers and state Jimmy Clausen played well. But what struck me was how confident he looked from the second he walked onto the field. He was lost throughout his tenure in Carolina. He looked like he didn’t belong in the NFL. Last night he looked like he very much did.

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I posed a simple question to DaBearsBlog’s followers on the Tweet machine. What do you, as a Bears fan, hope to see during Bears 1st preseason game tomorrow night? 

My favorite answer came from @sjaskovi:

I hope to see none of the starters.

But while I have begun notorious for my preseason cynicism I will admit the Bears do need to see SOMETHING over the course of this preseason.

(1) They need to see a backup quarterback emerge from the Jordan Palmer v Jimmy Clausen competition. Anytime either man is on the field this August I think every Bears fan should be paying awfully close attention.

(2) They need to see the ball long-snapped to their punter and holder accurately. This is the only “starter” I want to see in all four preseason games.

I disagree with the assessment that anything happening defensive tonight has any relevance but here are some more responses I liked.

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