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The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report: The Green & Yellow Will Prevail

Blue: What the Bears’ offense showed us from last week: A strong-armed quarterback, fast receivers who have learned how to run routes and catch the ball, and a power running back who can catch the ball and move the chains with outside or inside runs. Mix in a revamped offensive line that is playing somewhere between okay and passable and combine this with a special teams group that consistently provides great field position along with a defense that can fluctuate between stellar and passable and you have the story of the 2010 Chicago Bears. Somehow this combination has been good enough to win the close defensive struggles as well as last week’s 38-34 shootout over the New York Jets.
Problems from the Jets’ game were many: Allowing a weak-armed over-hyped quarterback to carve up the secondary, a basic lack of pass rush, and an inability to lock down on run-defense at critical moments. Reading that, one would think this had to be a Bears loss – another case of the defense letting up too many points and the offense either not moving the ball to put points on the board or squandering opportunities with ridiculous turnovers. But that’s last years’ team, or the year before, and come to think about it, all years post the 2006 Super Bowl team.

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Posted on December 31, 2010

Fantasy Fix: Carlos Pena Will Hit More HRs Than Adam Dunn And Other Predictions For 2011

By Dan O’Shea

The time has come to rehash 2010’s fantasy highs and lows, and look forward to 2011.
But rather than brag about picking up Matt Cassel from the waiver wire just in time for him to become a top fantasy QB, or lament that I traded Jose Bautista when he had only 17 of his eventual 54 home runs, I just want to move on and try to get head start on 2011.
With that in mind, here are 11 fantasy predictions for 2011:

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Posted on December 29, 2010

SportsMonday: Lovie’s Secret Sauce

By Jim Coffman

Count me among the millions of Bear watchers still mystified by this team’s success. Nothing this team does will convince some of us that they are actually, um, good. I’m sure I’ll hear all week long – as I did last week on virtually every show ESPN has to offer, including two-handed bowling – that we’ve been living in a dream-world that will dissolve in a national embarrassment at Soldier Field in the first playoff game. In fact, that would be sort of satisfying.
But I think I’ve figured out the secret sauce. Maybe it hasn’t been so secret to legions of Bears fans out there, but I’ve finally satisfied myself that I can explain how this team is 11-4.

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Posted on December 27, 2010

The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report: Brett Favre’s Old Team Will Face Bears Without Him

Blue: BrettFavreBrettFavreBrettFavreBrettFavre. That about covers the Monday Night Football crew’s take on all that was to be of value on the frozen field of TCF Bank Stadium in Minnesota last Monday night.
Corey Wooten thankfully put a stop to the Brett Favre AssMunch Fest by dropping the NFL’s all-time leader in interceptions like an immobile 41-year-old quarterback protected by an utterly uninterested offensive line.
From there the Bears basically dominated the team that the experts thought would be facing the barely better Dallas Cowboys in the 2010 NFC Championship.
Then again, those same experts thought the Bears would take up the rear in the NFC North, leading to a housecleaning in management, coaching and possibly the cleaning crew.

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Posted on December 24, 2010

Fantasy Fix: Sexy Rexy?

By Dan O’Shea

A handful of second-string and third-string QBs got that chance to start in Week 15, and three of them – Tim Tebow, Rex Grossman and Matt Flynn – made strong impressions.
Grossman, the former Bears QB, had the biggest day: 322 yard passing, 4 TDs against 2 INTs, and even a two-point conversion (The Redskins lost the game, but who cares about that in fantasy football?)
Grossman was handed the starting job in Washington with the benching of Donovan McNabb and will keep it for the rest of the season.
As fantasy football managers advancing in the playoffs look for a little edge, could Grossman deliver in Week 16? Picking him up from the waiver wire should be a cinch because he’s owned only in 3% of Yahoo! leagues, and he’s facing a very beatable Jacksonville pass defense.

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Posted on December 22, 2010

The College Football Report: Beef ‘O’Brady’s Smokin’ Jack Slider Basket And The Rest Of This Week’s Bowl Games Preview As Well As Part 1 Of Our Season Recap

By Mike Luce

That was a quite the regular season, true believers. In keeping with our two-part approach to the season preview, we present for your consideration Part One of the Beachwood College Football Report Postseason Recap.
Below, you can find us returning to some of the macro issues we pointed out in the preview: the Black Coaches Association and minority football coaches, conference realignment and last but hardly least, Kim Kardashian.
In Part Two, you can expect some further discussion of Layoff Season and the coaching caro . . . merry-go-round. And in the interest of full disclosure, we will go on to compare our (decidedly amateurish) predictions against the results from the 2010 season.

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Posted on December 21, 2010

The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report: Bears Actually Have Momentum

Blue: Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail. But if you’re going to get nailed, isn’t it better that this happens at the hand of the best team in the NFL instead of one of the perennial cellar dwellers – as happened to the Green Bay Packers against the Lions?
Additionally, though the Bears were embarrassed on national TV, at least the stadium didn’t collapse as happened up in Minneapolis. The Patriots ‘shocked and awed’ the Bears into total disarray by the end of the first half of Sunday’s 36-7 shaming, but there is much to find in the way of positives going into the final three games of the season:

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Posted on December 15, 2010

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