It is not a dress rehearsal. People should stop calling it a dress rehearsal. Dress rehearsals are attempts to recreate exactly what the performance of the play will be. Coaches don’t game plan these third preseason games and they won’t put anything on tape their week one opponent will utilize.

But here is some stuff you can look at.

(1) The most alarming moments of this week’s podcast with Adam Jahns was the concern in his voice when discussing Kyle Fuller. If Fuller does not perform to a solid level in 2015, the Bears secondary has a chance to be historically awful. He could use a decent performance in August to set the stage for September and this Saturday night he’ll get an opportunity against one of the league’s best receivers, A.J. Green.

(2) Right tackle. You can look over there but don’t look too closely.

(3) Eddie Goldman played far deeper in the second preseason game than I expected or would have liked him to. But it might be interesting to see the big monster out there with the first stringers this weekend, clogging the middle of the line to set the young linebackers free.

(4) Injuries. The Bears have ailing wide receivers, an ailing and aging left tackle, a suspended nose tackle…etc. If they are going to make anything of note out of the 2015 season, it would be helpful to put a decent roster together for their three difficult games to open the season.

Can the Bears hit Aaron Rodgers enough times to make him not want to finish the football game?

Greg Blache was the first person in professional football I heard publicly state sacks were an overrated statistic. He was no longer Bears defensive coordinator a few months later.

Sacks are important. They are more important than pressures and hurries. They are more important than the newest ludicrous stat: disruptions. (According to Adam Hoge’s disruption chart Lamarr Houston was having a Hall of Fame year.) The reasons sacks are important should be obvious to anyone who has ever watched an NFL game. (1) It involves hitting the opposing team’s quarterback and potentially knocking him from the game. Nobody roots for injuries in the league but knocking the opposing QB out of the game has been a goal of defensive coordinators since defensive coordination began. (2) When you sack the quarterback, he is holding the football and thus there is a chance he will drop it and you might pick it up.

I’ve never heard of someone hurrying an opposing QB out of a game. Nobody has ever disrupted a fumble.The Bears need only to look at their win at Lambeau a year ago to understand why they must hit Aaron Rodgers Sunday night. (And I’m talking about hitting him in the black-and-white highlights on an old Zenith, John Facenda symphonic narration kind of way.)

Rodgers is a rhythm passer who will dissect any defense without hitting the ground repeatedly. The Bears need to make Rodgers aware that every attempt more than five yards down field comes with a bruise. If they can’t achieve this with their front four, they must manufacture the pressure. Can they do it? Will they try to do it?

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The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.

Shea McClellin had a breakout game and broke his hand in practice the following week.

Jon Bostic had a breakout game and his back decided it had enough.

Darryl Sharpton had a breakout game and has been relegated to situational defense since for some reason.

Lance Briggs can’t stay on the field. D.J. Williams is a useful if unspectacular player in the middle. Khaseem Greene struggles as the Bears can’t find a position for him and the sample size is far too small to evaluate Christian Jones.

The unit as a whole deserves credit for helping to improve last year’s porous run defense and some blame for their struggles in coverage. But when a team has found themselves starting their fourth, fifth and sixth linebackers in a game how fair an evaluation can one actually provide?

Grade: Incomplete

Note: The Bears won’t do this but they should go full youth movement at the position over the second half of the season. Sit D.J. Williams. Sit Lance Briggs. Find out what you have in a combination of Sharpton, Bostic, Jones. Move McClellin around and see where, if anywhere, he can be most productive. Bears have eight games to learn what they have at linebacker for the next several years. To misuse that time would be a terrible mistake.

Keep reading to learn how bad the secondary has been!

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Thought 1

The Bears are 1-1 through two games. Exactly where everyone thought they’d be. But if they had achieved this record in the conventional manner – beating Buffalo at home and losing to San Fran on the road – the team would currently be shrouded in questions regarding their status as contenders. Instead they endured a media storm of criticism and responded by playing their most complete half of football in the Jay Cutler era. Now they are being showered with praise on the pages of the dailies and on radio airwaves. They should be 1-1 after two games, no question, but how they’ve reached that mark should inspire them through this difficult stretch of the 2014 schedule

Thought 2

I have often stated Charles “Peanut” Tillman is my favorite Chicago Bear of the modern era. And I can’t remember a more difficult-to-watch sequence in my football viewing than Tillman, tears pouring down his cheeks on a Santa Clara sideline, coming to the brutal realization a second consecutive season and perhaps career had been ended by a flukish injury.

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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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Congrats to Scott Vandermoon, winner of the DBB draft weekend ticket contest. He’ll receive a pair of tickets to a Bears home game this year.

The Bears drafted eight players over three days. They were Kyle Fuller (CB, Va Tech), Ego Ferguson (DT, LSU),Will Sutton (DT, Arizona State), Ka’Deem Carey (RB, Arizona), Brock Vereen (FS, Minnesota), David Fales (QB, San Jose State), Pat O’Donnell (P,Miami) and Charles Leno Jr. (OT, Boise State).

They also signed as undrafted free agents: Jordan Lynch (QB?, Northern Illinois), James Dunbar (OT, TCU), Christian Jones (LB, FSU), Brandon Dunn (DT, Louisville), DeDe Lattimore (LB, South Florida), Tana Patrick (LB, Bama), Lee Pegues (DT, East Carolina), Cody Booth (TE, Temple) and Ryan Groy (OG, Wisconsin).

There is a lot to discuss when it comes to this bounty of players. I, of course, am starting with the punter.

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Note: As far as I can tell, three people accurately predicted Kyle Fuller as the Bears first round draft pick: Austin Augsburger, Brian, Scott Vandermoon. Each of those three individuals should drop me an email today to confirm ownership of that account (jeff@dabearsblog.com) and then be sure to get their position selections in for tonight. You can’t win this contest if you don’t make it to tomorrow!

CONTEST PICKS SHOULD BE MADE ON THIS POST. THE NEXT UPDATE TO THE SITE WILL BE AFTER THE BEARS SECOND ROUND SELECTION.

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I received many emails and Tweets last night asking me the same question: why would Phil Emery pass on the position of desperation (safety) and select a cornerback? Why would the Bears not grab the ballyhooed Clinton-Dix or Pryor when they already have their two starting corners for 2014 on the roster?

Here are my answers to that and some other things:

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Kyle Fuller is the newest addition to the Chicago Bears.

Thoughts and information on Fuller:

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