By Dan O’Shea

If you play in a fantasy football league that uses team defenses, picking up a good defense is usually the last thing on your mind during your preseason draft. Most team owners probably don’t even bother to study defense ranking, and simply go on reputations of defenses from the previous year.
However, as the Bears defense demonstrated in Week 4, your fantasy defense can contribute significant points. Five INTs, two TDs and a sack may be a once-a-season type of performance, but a huge number of fantasy league match-ups probably were won and lost late Monday night because of it.

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Posted on October 3, 2012

By Jim Coffman

The Bears’ pick-sixes won the game, and were great sequences for Charles Tillman and Lance Briggs, who have entertained with extreme competence around here for a long, long time.
The Cowboys’ pick-sixes lost the game, and were horrible sequences for Tony Romo and Dez Bryant.
And Tillman’s touchdown return when Bryant failed to make a simple sight adjustment was just one of several instances last night when ESPN’s Mike Tirico and especially Jon Gruden rightly focused on what the Cowboys did wrong rather than what the Bears did right in their comprehensive 34-18 victory.

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Posted on October 2, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

Last weekend was my 50th high school reunion. If little else, it served as a plausible excuse to escape the sinking of the White Sox, 2012.
As with most of these celebrations, there is the common drill: gas cost 28 cents a gallon when we graduated; Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis; Marilyn Monroe was found dead; and James Meredith needed federal troops to protect him as he reported to English 101 at the University of Mississippi.
The White Sox opened the season six months ago, and the analogy goes like this: Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum still had White House aspirations, not too many folks had ever heard of Gabby Douglas, nor had Michael Phelps established himself as the most successful Olympian ever. Gas wasn’t cheap, but who could have anticipated a Chicago summer of five days breaking 100 degrees and another six weeks over 90.
Meanwhile, predictions dictated that the White Sox would lose 95 games.

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Posted on October 1, 2012