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Bears Pre-season Opener does little to squash concerns
Posted by: mfrost on August 17, 2009 at 3:21PM EST
All pre-season long we've been hearing that "we've got really good receivers" repeatedly from Halas Hall.  Whether it be from Jay Cutler himself,Jerry Angelo, or Lovie Smith with his horribly misguided stance that Devin Hester will be a legitimate number 1 receiver at some point in his career.  I promised all my Bears fan friends that I wasn't going to panic after one preseason game, so rather than doing that and begging on my hands and knees for Kyle Orton; I'm going to stay positive....for now.

 Jay Cutler didn't look horrible, but he didn't really take all the cautious Bear fans by the hand and say "see everything is going to be alright".  Aside from the Grossman-esque interception that was thrown to the "Number 1" receiver, he was fine.   It was his first two drives as a Bear against people wearing differnet helmets.  I can understand that the game timing still isn't there.  It's fine, it really is.

I remember Erik Kramer, Moses Moreno, Kordell Stewart, Henry Burris, Mike Tomczak, Jim Miller, Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffle, and the countless other quarterbacks that took snaps under center in the last 2 decades.  You can tell me that Jay Cutler is good all day long, but I'm not going to believe you until I see it with my own 2 eyes.  I've seen Jay Cutler play in Denver - Jay Cutler is a quality starting quarterback...in Denver. 

The thing that concerns me the most is the Bears secondary and sure I know they were without Peanut Tillman, but there's not a real good excuse for allowing the Bills to throw all over you when their best WR is out with an injured toe.  Either the front 4 need to generate more of a pass rush or the defensive scheme needs to improve.  If you look at where all the completions end up, holes in the zone.  There is a time and place to play zone coverage, but it'd be nice to see these corners man up a little bit more too; well of course with the exception of Nate Vasher.

Urlacher looks to be back in great shape again, Briggs looks as good as ever, and Tinoisamoa fills the gap that Hillenmeyer left open nicely. Tommie Harris has taken the perennial question mark award away from Mike Brown, now that he's gone.  I've not been of the opinion that the Bears don't have the talent, I think the Bears issues are more in the coaching game.  Should we really be excited about Jay Cutler in Ron Turner's offense?  Is the Head Coach who loses 1 to 2 games a year on coaching blunders really going to be able to work wonders for this defense?  What is Bob Babich getting paid to do now?  All valid questions, and they do just enough to temper my enthusiasm for the time being.

Tom and I are going to be live blogging the Bears games this year...so look for our commentary on the ups and downs as the Bears push for the playoffs.

-Matt

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