Knox and Hester are the buzz, but Aromashodu will be a good late pick in most fantasy drafts

Oh, it’s an easy sleeper pick.  The Bears move to Mike Martz on offense and BAM – suddenly the media expects good things from a receiving corps they’ve bad-mouthed for years.  WRs Hester and Knox have been hyped to fit the offense spectacularly due to their speed and will likely be drafted a bit too high in some fantasy leagues.  My money is on Aromashodu.  He’s big and athletic, the type of receiver that will go up and grab an errant pass from QB Jay Cutler – which is why he became a late-season favorite last year.  Aromashodu should be drafted somewhere near round 10 (or later – a good waiver wire pick up), and has been projected by the experts to nab near one hundred fantasy points for the season.  Sure that’s nothing to write home about, but someone you may want for bye week starts and handcuffing opponents.

The Bears WRs will be the experts and analysts’ favorites for fantasy sleepers and supposedly under-the-radar stars in 2010 – just make sure you get the right one.

Without the Samoan safety, the Steelers let Bruce Gradkowski pick them apart on his way to a game-winning TD pass with :09 left to play, as well as supplying all kinds of “the last time” stats in regards to the Raiders.  Of course, almost any Raider win is going to be chock full of “the last time” stats, including “the last time” they won a game.

But this particular game included 5 lead changes in the 4th quarter, even though Pittsburgh was only 2-5 in the red zone.  It’s hard to imagine that the final period went down like that and the Steelers didn’t win.  That’s 4 in a row, now including losses to the Chefs and the Raiders in that stretch.

Another crazy game was New Orleans and the R*dsk*ns, with New Orleans winning a game they never led in until the final gun sounded in OT.  It was playing like a classic trap game for the Saints – big win in the previous week against a high-profile opponent, and then playing down to a lesser opponent on the road.  Then the 4th quarter happened.  Washington missed a chip-shot with less than two minutes to play that would have put them up by ten, and it was all downhill from there.  Depending on your allegiances, it was either a complete meltdown by the ‘Sk*ns or a heroic comeback by New Orleans.  Saints coach Sean Payton seemed determined to punish the D.C. Football Franchise by sending his offense back onto the field after “icing” timeouts directed at their kicker.

The Saints had been set up for a FG attempt with 7 seconds left by an interception thrown by D.C., when Jim Zorn tried the classic “Ice the Kicker” routine, to which Payton responded by putting Drew Brees back out there to try to pick up more yards.  It didn’t work – Brees threw incomplete and the Saints missed a 55-yarder that put the game into overtime.

In OT, Zorn again tried to “Ice the Kicker” by calling a timeout that was so close the officials’ whistle didn’t even come before the snap.  Instead of attempting a 33-yarder that wasn’t a sure thing, Payton marched his offense back onto the field, which promptly ran the ball down to the one-inch line.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Zorn again called a timeout before the chip-shot attemot from the 1, which of course didn’t work.

The Saints karmically kicked the game-winner, and I pronounced that if I were Sean Payton, I would have greeted Zorn at midfield with either a loogie-lubed handshake, or simply Happy-Gilmored his ass by shaking with the left, pulling his jacket over his head from behind with the right and then punching his teeth out with his arms defenselessly pinned down by his shirt.  What a punk.  I guess it’s not enough that your team has a blatantly racist and offensive mascot, you gotta play like a dick too.

Capping off the Week 13 Wackiness was Miami beating New England and New York beating Dallas. The latter game really isn’t a shock, but the Patriots losing kinda was.  Or was it?

Mike Florio pontificated of the fishy line movement on this game right before kickoff, wondering why exactly the spread had moved from favoring the Pats by 6.5 at the start of the week to a push in most books by kickoff.  It was pretty strange, and the speculation was that Brady was not playing and insiders had the info that the league and media didn’t.  That turned out not to be the case, but the public was correct in some fashion, betting heavy on the Dolphins to beat the spread and Miami ended up winning outright.  Hmm.

BEARS HOMER SECTION

Is this really even worth it?  Yep, Chicago beat St, Louis today, with our $50,000,000.00 QB completing all of 8 passes for 143 yards.  Matt Forte, lead rusher for the NFL’s dead-last running attack, was able to muster 91 yards against the NFL’s dead-last running defense.  Way to go, boys!

Team President Ted Phillips, thoroughly enjoying this tripe

The Monsters of the Midway rip-roared their way to an anemic 248 total yards of offensive production, and I no longer have the energy or patience to even rip this pathetic squad, let alone try to spin a victory against a crap team into something Bears fans should care about.  The only thing I will say is that this team’s 3 victories that have happened since the long-ago month of September have come against Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis.  In those 3 victories, Jay “$50,000,000.00 Extension” Cutler has averaged 169.2 yards a game.  Whoo-motherf*ckin’-hoo.

I will however say this: in 6 weeks, when my team is packing up their belongings and going off to their Hawaiian or Jamaican villas for the month of January, I will be pissed that my season is finished.  With only 4 games left for my Bears’ season, I must appreciate the fact that I am a fan, and have something to do on Sundays instead wait to go to bed.

If I may finish with one final statement for this week, it is “Go Cardinals!”

Email: nick.thomas@flyingpigskin.com

In other words, the guy’s never wrong, and is too much of a SOB to admit it.  One Bronco-fan buddy of mine suggested a drinking game while watching Cutler this season:  Wait until the cameras zoom in on him after an incomplete pass, and every time he looks at his receiver and makes the ‘Wrong-route-you-were-supposed-to-cut-this-way’ hand gesture followed by the ‘Shoulder-shrug-WTF’, you take a drink.  He suggested wine coolers as the featured beverage, because otherwise you’ll be throwing up by the 3rd quarter.  

Oy.

That string of highlights involving Vick running around opposing defenses had me reminiscing about the good ol’ days and the initial advent of created-players in football video games, players that you created to simply run circles around opposing outside linebackers on sweeps and option plays. Being somewhat of a purest in my video football, however, my created players didn’t make the cut very often or were scaled back to fit the mold of an average athlete with room to improve.

I’ve always loved speed (and unlearned attributes), however, and the recent buzz around Vick has gotten me thinking about some of my favorite NFL speedsters:

Bo Jackson

Bo Jackson was a bad-ass, plain and simple, and had a reel with the best of them.

Darrell Green
Green means go and I will always remember that Darrell Green meant go. He was recorded as running a 4.09 40 time. That’s ridiculous.

Deion Sanders

Deion was “Primetime” and definitely put on a show.

Additional favorites, you may ask?

Willie Gault - The Bears’ quick WR had a gold medal to go with his Super Bowl ring.

Randy Moss – I’ll wager that if you doubt Randy’s quickness, he’s already behind you.

Devin Hester – His rookie season returns put him on the list by themselves.  Anything else is just fodder.

And then there’s always Dickerson, Walker, etc. etc. etc. – The list could go on and on, but these are just a few of my favorite speedsters to sit and watch.

All videos above are from YouTube and though I cannot claim responsibility for them, please enjoy.

Cheers.

Jay Cutler at Chicago Bears training camp - Online Photo

The time is finally upon us. Training camps are underway, and the speculation, machismo, and rhetoric of the NFL media starts to ramp up.  I enter the season with a new quarterback at the helm of my team, beatable division rivals, a promising young tailback, and…something…to look forward to on defense, I guess.

It’s a foreign sensation as a Bears fan to go into a season excited about the quality of the offense while deciding to ignore the problems on defense.  Typically it’s much more the other way around. But I’ve managed to convert nicely.  In fact I spent an entire picturesque Saturday watching Jay Cutler highlights from 2008. My jaw moved to the ‘dropped’ position upon watching this highlight early in the binge.

I vaguely remembered the game. It was Week 2 and I didn’t see it, but I recalled the image of Jay Cutler with the slapstick fumble in the last minute of the game. I recall ridiculing him, as an open discussion regarding who was more despicable – Jay Cutler or Phil Rivers – had broken out between my lady and me (Cutler usually won). I didn’t remember Cutler getting up and throwing the game-clinching touchdown and 2-pt. conversion.  

The fumble will remind any Bears fan of You-Know-Who, but his poise afterwards sure won’t. I know Cutler throws picks, and bad ones sometimes, but I’m past it. I’ll take the guy who has a rocket arm and who doesn’t fumble two snaps a game. And who doesn’t throw picks for TD’s to D-Ends. Or post 0.0 passer ratings in crucial division home games late in the season.

Indeed the quarterback position has me pumped.  But then I am deflated like a guy wearing a purple Brett Favre jersey when I look at the defense, particularly when I get an eyeful of the secondary.  They’ve replaced Mike Freaking Brown with Josh Freaking Bullocks, and their underachieving cornerbacks are barely making it through camp.  

I like what Rod Marinelli brings to the table as a D-Line coach, but the players are as suspect as they were last year, when Chicago did a pretty decent impression of The Three Stooges trying to go through a door at the same time.  They blitzed more than any team in the league and rarely even got pressure.  As the Bears’ D-line improves, so do the Bears.  Nate Vasher and D.J. Moore will look like world-beaters if Tommie Harris (uh..), Mark Anderson, and Tank Johnson Israel Idonije can return to their Super Bowl season form.

Bears fans, let everyone else underestimate what Cutler will do with Matt Forte, Devin Hester, and Greg Olsen. Don’t worry. They’ll be fine.

NEXT UP: MINNESOTA VIKINGS