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• If there is starting to be a position of concern (not  called safety) it might be right tackle. Jordan Mills left practice Wednesday with pain in the same foot operated upon earlier in the year. His projected backup Eben Britton is sidelined with a hamstring pull and has spent most of his career battling injuries. Kyle Long and Mills taking the next step on the right side of the line was a huge part of the belief this Bears offense is about to take the next step to dominance. Will be interesting to see how Mills handles the balky hoof.
• Two of my Tweets from yesterday regarding the Martellus Bennett suspension:

Way Bears are expertly handling Martellus Bennett is why I thought troubled player like Will Hill would have found perfect home in Chicago.

Emery/Trestman exude authority, project confidence and lead with genuine compassion. Rare in sports.

• What Emery and Trestman need to do now is win. (Side note: I’d expect Martellus Bennett reinstated no later than middle of next week.)

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SPOILER ALERT: FOOTBALL PLAYERS ARE CRAZY

Both the major Chicago dailies feature columns disparaging Martellus Bennett for body slamming first-round selection Kyle Fuller to the ground in a fit of rage. Mark Potash in the Sun-Times wants the alarm sounded and Bennett read the riot act:

The Bennett-Fuller dust-up might end up being an isolated incident, but it’s a red flag nonetheless. Martellus Bennett is a Pro Bowl-caliber tight end and a good teammate who defers to more productive players in the offense. But on the field and off he’s an acquired taste that is not for everybody.

“I’m not here for friendships,” Bennett said.

That’s all well and good. You don’t have to make friends to be part of a winning team. But you definitely have to avoid making enemies.

If Bennett would have seriously hurt Fuller this would have been an unmitigated disaster. But he didn’t. Fuller is fine. And Bennett is a football player. I’m sorry if I don’t expect gigantic, jacked up Neanderthals to be well-adjusted human beings.

Also, on Potash’s last sentence…really? Do we spend so much time celebrating the 1985 Chicago Bears we actually forget who and what they were? There were plenty of enemies on that roster and two fierce enemies on the coaching staff.

Marquess Wilson Injury Makes Preseason More Interesting

I bet you didn’t expect THAT headline from me, did you? Let me explain.

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I received a list of questions from Charged.fm relating to the 2014 Chicago Bears. These are my answers.

1) After an injury-riddled 2013, what should we expect from Jay Cutler this season? Will Mark Trestman’s offense help solidify him as a great starter in this league?

I think fans need to accept Jay Cutler is going to throw interceptions. Part of what makes him special is his belief he can fit the ball into spaces other quarterbacks would not even consider and the downside to that belief is turnovers.

Comfort in Trestman’s offense, the weapons around him and finally a stable, talented offensive line will all contribute to this being by far the best year in Jay Cutler’s career if he can remain on the field.

2) As we know, Cutler is one of the most injury-prone quarterbacks in the game. For this reason, having a good backup quarterback seems like a must in Chicago. How worried is the team about their backup quarterback situation now that Josh McCown is in Tampa Bay?

Well, fans were concerned about Josh McCown this time a year ago. Why wouldn’t they be? All the word since his workout is both GM Phil Emery and Trestman like Jimmy Clausen quite a bit. I was hoping to see the club bring Kyle Orton back but it doesn’t seem to be something they are interested in doing.

3) The Bears defense was among the worst in the NFL last season. The team signed Jared Allen, Jay Ratliff, and Lamarr Houston this offseason, but didn’t do much to upgrade at linebacker or in the secondary. Are the Bears in for another long season on the defensive side?

A healthy Charles Tillman is a HUGE upgrade to the secondary as both he and Tim Jennings are only a year removed from being Pro Bowl corners. They drafted Kyle Fuller and Kelvin Hayden is healthy so they are set in the nickel.

They have no safeties. It is the most glaring flaw of the roster and I wouldn’t look for it to be corrected until next spring.

People seem to forget what happened to their linebackers a year ago. They intended to start a veteran trio of Briggs, DJ Williams and James Anderson and bring along Bostic and Greene. But injuries to 2/3 of the corps forced them to start rookies who were not ready for game action. If Williams and Briggs stay healthy, providing stability in run support, look for Mel Tucker to maximize the athleticism and speed of Bostic and Shea McClellin both in space and in the pass rush.

4) Who do you think will be the two starting safeties be when the season begins?

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NFL fans have the patience of my orange boy cat (named Bear, pictured above) once he knows his wet food has been moved from the can to the plate. There’s a lot of walking in circles. His sweet-tempered meow morphs into a more desperate, restless MEOORRRRE. He is so hungry for a taste of what he knows is so close he is unable to control himself.

Telling an NFL fan training camp and the preseason are meaningless is the equivalent of placing Bear’s plate on the ground and then holding him ten feet away. Telling them what I’m about to tell them, that 2014 is but a stepping stone to the mountaintop, will elicit more than a MEOORRRRE. It’ll end with my blogging hands scratched until blood is drawn.

2013’s edition of the Chicago Bears established a new direction under the leadership of Marc Trestman and excommunicated the old direction (Lovie) and leadership (Urlacher). It was only an 8-8 campaign but for a fan base desperate for big league offense it left even the most pessimistic fan with a firm understanding the arrow is pointed in the correct direction.

2013, coupled with Emery’s 2012 offseason, were the first step in what Pat Riley calls  “the innocent climb.” Here is a publisher’s summary of that notion:

The innocent climb is the surge that occurs within a team as they are accomplishing more because of the synergy that occurs within a team. Innocence means understanding that the team comes first and being carried along by that; being naive means being ignorant. Innocence doesn’t mean being naive. Teamwork and all of its benefits happen when everyone puts the team first. innocence comes when the leader believes in something and puts him or herself out to accomplish that.

Climbing innocently began with the establishment of this new direction and the building of a new identity. But something funny happened on the way to Soldier Field. Trestman and Emery were successful at a more rapid rate than expected and produced a championship-caliber offense in the first year of this new program.

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You walk into a bar. A fella says, “What do you think of the Bears this season?” You sit there in that moment, raise the cold glass of Bud to your lips and realize the fella just ordered a sandwich that don’t fit his mouth. He expected a “they’ll be pretty good”. He’s getting a lot more.

Thoughts…

• Optimism in camp is usually a synonym for bullshit but there seems to be some legitimate optimism surrounding the linebacker position. Shea McClellin seems finally able to utilize his athleticism. Khaseem Greene and DJ Williams have been making plays. Lance Briggs has stopped bitching and moaning about the ghosts of defense past. Hell, even Christian Jones has received praise from Phil Emery.
• If you don’t know much about Greene, he’s a sound man. CLICK HERE to read an article detailing his decision to wear number 52 as a tribute to his friend Eric LeGrand.
• The only way Phil Emery is cutting Pat O’Donnell is the rookie having a couple nightmare performances in the preseason and Tress Way is sound. Emery can say what he wants about the best players making the squad but there would be a significant egg stain on his cheeks should he be guilty of wasting a sixth-round pick on a dud punter.
• Side note: Tress Way is a great name.

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Kyle Fuller interception! He’s going to be great!

But Jordan Palmer THREW the interception! Get Jimmy Clausen out there!

These are meant to be written in jest but I can 100% assure you in some miserable cubicle somewhere a Bears fan is following camp updates on Twitter, sweating profusely through his free Joseph A. Bank suit shirt and having these very same thoughts.

Here would be my rules for enjoying the information as it exits Bourbonnais without committing the family savings to its relevance.

#3 Practice Field Results Don’t Matter

There is a simple fact individuals forget when it comes to camp results. For a Bears player to make a positive play, another Bears player needs to make a negative one. Someone must throw the pass on a brilliant interception. Someone must miss the block when a new defensive end gets to the quarterback unabated. When a receiver makes a great catch down the sideline, someone was tasked with covering him.

For instance, Larry Mayer of the Bears Tweeted this:

LM: #Bears QB Jordan Palmer hits WR Chris Williams deep down right sideline, beating CB Kyle Fuller.

This is presented by Mayer, who has never Tweeted or written a negative word about the Chicago Bears since a McCaskey started signing his checks. But nly one of those three individuals is going to be depended upon for success in 2014 and it ain’t the first two.

#2 Reps Matter in Total/Location

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There is a chance fourth-round selection Brock Vereen will earn his way into the Bears defensive starting lineup come the end of August.

There is a chance Shea McClellin will thrive in his new role as strong-side linebacker, playing against opposing twos and threes for most of the summer.

There is a chance the new additions at defensive end – Allen, Houston, Young…etc. – will wreck havoc in Bourbonnais and throughout the preseason.

There is a chance the Marquess Wilson will solidify the third wide receiver spot and complete the best receiving corps in the sport.

There is also a chance none of it will matter. A strong chance. Because if Jay Cutler turns the wrong way on his knee during 7-on-7s or Matt Forte takes an awkward shot to the ankle or Brandon Marshall pulls up running through the seam, it will be that moment and nothing else that defines this summer for the Chicago Bears. NFL training camp has become a war of attrition, survival of the fittest, Thunderdome.

It has become a month-long breath hold for every die hard in the league.

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I call it The Joe Anderson Boner.

“What is The Joe Anderson Boner?” you ask. Well, I shall tell you now. The Joe Anderson Boner is the yearly occurrence in the pants of Bears fans caused by the over-hyping of meaningless performances in the summer leading up to the NFL season. It might be the result of a few Larry Mayer Tweets that resemble something like, “The player who really jumped off the field in Bourbonnais today was Joe Anderson” or a 7 catch, 110 yard receiving performance in the second half of a preseason contest wherein Joe Anderson is being covered by someone of the skill equivalent to Loni Anderson.

This is not idiosyncratic to Bears fans, mind you. Every team has their summer boners. My brother Jon, a diehard New York Jets fan, once made a tee shirt that said “Kellen is the Answer” due to the boner-inducing camp performances of Kellen Clemens.

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There are some great people working over at the Chicago Sun-Times, most notably friend of the blog and Bears beat man Adam Jahns. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that many of the newsrooms around this country are populated by daft, insignificant morons.

Kate Grossman is one of those. Hell, she might even be two of them. The Sun-Times editor was on some dopey chat show, sliding off her chair at the very thought of a George Lucas museum on the lakefront. The museum would, of course, be the nail in the tailgating coffin for Chicago Bears fans at Soldier Field.

I’ve pulled the quotes from a blog over at ChicagoNow and thank emailer Laura for the notification:

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