Chicago - A message from the station manager

Gigantic Meh

By Carl Mohrbacher

Nice to see Brandon Jacobs rack up a heady stat line for my 2008 fantasy football starting lineup.
So it was a bit of a ho-hum victory, but in some parts of town a Ho Hum can go for as much $300. Thank your lucky stars that you got to watch one for the price of local programming.
Even without the ability to wrestle middle-aged running backs to the turf, the Bears managed to tack on a win against a team whose quarterback is on pace to throw approximately 40 interceptions. Yet you have national sports outlets talking about how this team is only three games out of first.
This is what a ring buys you.


Speaking of taking horribly flawed, but competitive teams to the Super Bowl, think about the last several Super Bowl teams. If the trend continues, the formula for championship football is essentially “be around .500 in week 15, get hot, and stay that way for a month.”
I can definitely see Jay Cutler getting on a hot streak, but more than that, I like to imagine him with a ring. Press conference apathy could be ratcheted up to previously unheard of, mega-Belichick-ian levels.
Brad Biggs: Jay, you threw four picks out there today. Are you and your receivers on the same page?
In a very deliberate manner, Cutler his raises middle finger above podium level so that everyone can see the 2013 championship ring he is wearing on it, while ashing his cigarette on the carpet.
Jeff Dickerson: Um, Jay. I don’t think you answered Brad’s question . . .
Cutler takes a monster drag off a smoke and noisily blows it out, cutting off Dickerson. Alright, thanks for coming guys. See you next week. Leaves building.

Catch Phrase
With the middle of the defense injury depleted, it’s become clear that the Bears are going to have to come up with some clever strategies to compensate. We’ve covered some of this ground before (sadly my prediction that the Bears would be allowed to play Brian Urlacher and Emery Moorehead did not come to pass), but just as starters return from injury, it seems as though others are fated to go down.
Now linebacker D.J. Williams is out for the year and the Bears are officially running low on defensive tackles*. What’s Phil Emery to do?

  • Sometimes the right man for the job is . . . a woman. I’m thinking Mel Tucker can get the “Listen To Terry” lady contributing to the defensive tackle rotation by week 8 and I bet she’ll be a better run stopper than Shea McClellin. Now I don’t have an exact count, but I would go so far as to say that there are “several” other female defensive tackles unsigned by other NFL squads. Somebody get the agents of The Black Widow, Miesha Tate and Lara Croft on the horn.
  • The best defense is a good offense. Let’s get the offense thinking outside the box. I mean like so far outside that they’ll need to put on a sweater so they don’t catch cold. I’m talking no punts, several onside kicks a game and countless delay of game penalties leading to 35-yard bombs to Brandon Marshall. You can’t torch a defense that doesn’t see the field.
  • We are cancelling the apocalypse. Would forcing Blake Costanzo and Craig Steltz to perform a “neural handshake” in order to pilot a mini Pacific Rim robot count as a “Performance Enhancing Drug?”

“RG III: Eat Fresh” or “Subway: Fight The Power”
It’s unclear whether second year signal-caller Robert Griffin III poses a threat to perform wonders as an NFL quarterback or if I’ve simply been lead to believe that he is a successful athlete because of all the media exposure.
If TV has taught me anything, it’s that drinking Gatorade allows me to flip tractor tires end over end on empty high school football fields and that smokehouse barbecue is the new clay.
Maybe Adidas banner ads lead to more first downs, I do not know.
What I do know is that the man represented the franchise so well that in 2012 the public had almost completely forgotten about the semi-racist nickname of the NFL franchise from our nation’s capital.
Recently, it’s become en vogue to call on the club to update their name to something less offensive to our Native American friends. Names like the Washington Slanteyes or the Washington Tacobenders are under consideration, but you know how it goes on Capital Hill; nothing will get done anytime soon.
Based on his inability to effectively mask institutional racism, I assume that RG III’s performance as a football player has experienced a bit of a drop off.
Kool-Aid (3 Out Of 5 Bottles Of Yuengling Beer)
Coming up next, another struggling football team. This is a perfect week to test out that “never punt, never surrender” strategy you’ve been dying to see implemented at the NFL level since you read about it 25 sentences ago.
I think the Bears would go 8-11 on fourth down against this bad defense.
Washington can’t stop the run, can’t stop the pass, and can’t stop the music; but they can cut a seemingly insurmountable deficit into a modest loss.
It is this last skill that worries me most about the Washington .
I like the Bears chances to build up a lead, but I worry that they’ll blow it badly in the fourth when a defense that wasn’t apt to stop anybody in the first place takes it in the teeth by going into a prevent shell.
I’m giving the home team the edge.
Washington 28
Bears 24


* I know that pallet of Costco-brand Defensive Tackles seems like a lot at $780,000, but you’re getting them at $32,400 apiece. You can’t beat that price! Should have made a run last week.

Carl Mohrbacher is our man on the Kool-Aid. He welcomes your comments.

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Posted on October 17, 2013