I'm Sorry Everyone, but Jay Wants Attention Again

I know, it's stupid. But like the 2-year old who doesn't get to play on the big boy slide, he won't stop crying for attention until someone gives it to him.

I guess we might as well do the honors for him. Jay?

The End: Bears better off losing

You are a Chicago-based columnist saying that your sports teams are better off losing. This is not the first instance of something like this happening. No team in contention for anything is ever better off losing, Jay. Ever.

A victory over the Vikings would have brought some false hope. At least now it’s clear that the once-proud Bears are in dismal shape

I wonder what Mariotti would be like as a Denver columnist.

Sept. 25, 2007: "Rockies tease city by arousing playoff hopes with another meaningless win."

Oct 4, 2007: "Rockies off to good start in playoffs, but better they lose now than later before they realize they aren't more than just an NLDS team."

Oct 11, 2007: "Webb an embarrassment as Colorado sneaks away with a win. World Series remains a pipe dream, however."

Oct 23, 2007: "Wake up and smell the reality. These Rockies are no match for the Boston juggernauts."

Oct 28, 2007: "Told ya."

MINNEAPOLIS -- Now America understands why the Bears are the NFL's newest crash dummies -- or, I should say, the segments of America that wasted their lives watching Monday night.

Note: Watching a football game that comes down to the final 2-minute drill is a waste of life. These games are totally uninteresting. Also, sports suck.

After the latest collapse, three men gathered on the ESPN set. One was Emmitt Smith. Another was Adrian Peterson, who might break Smith's all-time rushing record, smiling as he was serenaded by lingering fans with the obvious, "Yo, Adrian!"

But I was more interested in the guy sitting with them. Hey, Steve Young, can we talk you into quarterbacking the Bears? Yes, at your age?

Oh yeah, that's totally a professional joke. Every fucking idiot Chicago fan has been saying this type of thing for 2 years now. "Hey, my son should be the new Bears QB, am I right guys?" Haw. Haw. Haw. How do you have a job?

False security doesn't stop the bleeding. It only creates a pseudo comfort zone that shouldn't exist at Halas Hall, where the Bears officially are stuck in the NFL past tense and need a significant offseason overhaul. Much as a victory might have warmed the civic bones on a cold December night, really now, what would it have accomplished?

Excitement. Satisfaction for every guy on the team. Derailing a division rival. Keeping the playoffs as an outside possibility. Achieving the goal of winning, the only reason that the team went onto the field instead of just forfeiting beforehand. Gee, I don't know, Jay? Why do sports teams try to win?

What did loss No. 9 teach us?

That Kyle Orton is not a legitimate starting quarterback and has a bigger neckbeard than a future, which I already knew before he made a horrendous throw to downtown Duluth on 4th-and-1 to end a late threat.

Jay, you're brilliant! What foresight! You knew that a guy who has a career 59.5 passer rating that plays as a THIRD STRINGER for a team stereotyped by not having a good quarterback is not, let me emphasize this ladies and gentlemen, not, a legitamate starting quarterback!

That the defense played well against the explosive Peterson but is finished as a dominant force, which I already knew before Brian Urlacher stopped writing his blog and woke up for the ESPN cameras he so adores.

And....get this guys. Jay knew that the football team that has let up the fourth most yards per game in the NFL is not a dominant defensive force! Maybe he isn't so stupid after all! Let's get rid of this blog, or at least retitle it.

That Devin Hester is the most exciting athlete in sports but also the most perilous to his team when he grips the football like a lunchbox, which I already knew.

A kick returner that has trouble catching/hanging onto the ball puts his team in a perilous situation? ESPN should really consider getting you onto that "Around the Horn" show.....

That this team makes stupid mistakes, which I already knew before Peanut Tillman's unforgivably unnecessary roughness penalty (which led to a Minnesota field goal), Fred Miller's roundhouse swing at Jayme Mitchell (which killed a drive) and a Garrett Wolfe holding penalty (which shortened a good return in the final minutes).

Pompous, insightful Mariotti continues to hammer home that he KNOWS the things that casual fans observe every fucking game. This better not keep going on much longer....my sarcasm is waning.

Oh, I can hear the giddy amnesiacs now. The Bears made the Vikings sweat, which can serve as a confidence builder for 2008.

What giddy amnesiacs think the team will say to itself next year, "Hey guys, we can do it! Remmeber last year when we were 5-8 and almost beat the 7-6 Vikings? If we can do that, we can do anything!"

Apparently Jay thinks that there are dumbass blowhards out there stupider than he is.

Bad news about that, Jay.....

So It was for the best that they lost, if only to subdue the would-be nonsense that their future isn't so shaky after all.

Again...if the Bears win, they become 6-8. The difference between 6-8 and 5-9 is not enough to change anyone's opinion about how "shaky" the Bears future will be.

The Bears, of course, need a quarterback, as they have for most of their existence, with the Donovan McNabb dream still flickering for serious fans after Orton stumbled in his first start in two years. The Bears also need a running back, a revamped offensive line and probably a receiver assuming Bernard Berrian signs elsewhere, which makes sense with his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, prowling in the hallway near midnight. The Bears will need to address the likely departure of Lance Briggs (another Rosenhaus client), problems in the secondary and whether Urlacher -- who was great -- still can be a consistent, healthy season-long monster.

All of which, you understand, is pretty easy, given Jay's excellent advice in "Offseason Sports Team Management For Dummies". Here are the main principles.

1) Sign every free agent. It don't matter what he costs, kids.
2) Trade for everybody good. You don't need to consider contracts or what you're giving up. Just beat the other teams to your guy!
3) In baseball, you have to make "bigger" moves than the team on the other side of town to be considered a success, NOT (and this is a common misconception) the moves that maximize the use of your resources.

When Peterson slipped past a blocked Briggs and scored to give Minnesota a seven-point lead with 10:50 left, tell me: Did anyone think Orton could win the game? He had a couple of impressive moments in the first half, but he was seen flipping his helmet on the sideline when the offense turned sickly in the second half.

Yes. I thought Orton could win the game. It was a possibility. There was a chance that he would repeat the impressive first half moments. And let's not forget that the ball was being moved pretty well before that fatal interception on Kyle's final 40-something yard bomb.

How many times do I have to say it?

1273. I don't even care what you're about to say. I bet you'll repeat it 1273 times.

Rex Grossman can't play. Brian Griese can't play. Kyle Orton can't play.

You were singing a different tune about Griese earlier this season, but more to the point....

What is your goal in saying this? What should the Bears be doing? Do you think there's some other quarterback they could be playing right now? What kind of insight can you offer that the loud, fat 45-year-old at the game sitting behind behind me can't? This isn't a sports column. This is just a bitchfest.

I'll end with a legitimately funny quote that Jay the Entertainer put in this column about Lance Briggs.

Briggs is accused by the mother of his 3-month-old baby of not paying sufficient child support and getting at least two other women pregnant.

"I have had an open-door policy toward parenting," Brittini Tribbett, 21, told the Sun-Times. "Lance has apparently had an open-pants policy toward paternity."

Nevermind. I'm not ending with that. I just read the last line of the column.

This season was dead before it started.

Shut the fuck up. Seriously. Shut the fuck up. This is a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and only had one major loss in the offsesason, middle-of-the-road running back Thomas Jones (who, by the way, has been worth a whopping 7.5 more yards per game and an astronomical 0.2 more yards per carry this year than perpetual scapegoat Cedric Benson was before his injury). How can you POSSIBLY, in a million bajillion years, say that this was a season that was dead before it started??? Are you fucking claiming that before Sunday, September 9, 2007, that this Bears team had ZERO chance of going anywhere???

It's a fucking disgrace that words you type hit the presses in any newspaper, let alone the second biggest newspaper in one of the biggest cities in the United States of America.

cbssportsline forces its writers into awkward arguments

(preamble: given my relative lack of knowledge about the bears compared to pnoles and chris w, this post could easily blow up in my face. we'll see what happens. mostly i had the idea of making it based on the ridiculous premise of the position pete prisco had to defend. my analysis might suck, but it's still a funny situation. alright, roll the tape.)

in today's flashy, loud, "who's now", in-your-face, people-screaming-at-each-other-all-the-time, "no spin zone"-emulating sports media, there are few things more annoying than the awkward "head to head" segment. everyone knows what i'm talking about: two analysts are asked the same question, almost invariably take opposing viewpoints, and simplistically duke it out with each other for about 30 seconds. then they move on to the next subject. sometimes, like on "pardon the interruption," it works pretty well. but when this happens, usually it's a function of a genuine (or at least genuine looking) rapport between the two combatants. i wholeheartedly feel like mike wilbon and tony kornheiser are good buddies who love talking about sports and just happen to disagree a lot. most of the time, though, these kind of segments seem forced and obnoxious. PTI is the exception rather than the rule.

sadly, it would seem that some media firm has done market research saying viewers love people shouting at each other in split screen, so this is the way things are going to be. we have to live with it. so, given that that's the case, let's try to look on the bright side of things! sometimes it can create some pretty hilarious situations, such as during this printed exchange between cbssportsline.com's pete prisco and clark judge.

Should the Bears have benched Rex Grossman?

this is where the comedy comes in- some jackass editor came up with this question, and as a result, someone's got to defend grossman. pete, this is pretty much the journalistic equivalent of being o.j. simpson's legal team. how are you going to work your way out of this one?

No. That might sound crazy considering how he has struggled, but three games does not make a season.

right. but it does make almost 20% of a season, and when you lose two of those three games and one of your division rivals goes 3-0, it makes for a 2 game deficit. furthermore, grossman does have a very recent (hint: it was last year) full season of absolutely maddening inconsistency and overall slightly subpar performance on his resume. in 2006 he completed only 54.6% of his passes, had a TD/INT ratio just slightly over 1, and sported a very "meh" 73.9 QB rating. in fact, those stats can be broken down further when you separate his starts in weeks 1-5 (completed 61% of his passes, 10 TDs against 3 INTS) to the rest of the regular season (51% completions, 13 TDs and 17 INTS). in three playoff games he was very pedestrian (56% completions, 3 TDs and 3 INTs, 197 yards a game). so, grossman has sucked this year. aaaaaand, since right around last halloween, he's also sucked. i'm aware that the bears as a team aren't built in such a way that they require a 350 yard/3 TD performance out of their QB game in and game out. and i'm not saying brian griese is going to be much better. but can you really defend grossman from a "he just needs more time... let's not do anything drastic after 3 measly games" perspective?

Plus, I blame the coaching staff.

please elaborate.

Grossman hit Bernard Berrian in the hands in the second quarter for what should have been a long touchdown pass. Berrian dropped it.

i wasn't aware berrian was part of the staff. also, let it be known that grossman is the only QB ever to have one of his WRs drop a potential touchdown pass. this fact should be acknowledged by any grossman detractors.

Then with his team down 10-3, he passed them to the tying touchdown.

this is pretty much true.

After the Cowboys made it 17-10, Cedric Benson fumbled and Dallas turned that into a field goal.

ok...

Then it went bad. Grossman's first pass on the next series was picked by Anthony Henry and returned for a touchdown. Game over.

you're not helping grossman's case.

The rest really went downhill, but it didn't matter.

true. the bears probably were out of the game, down three scores with less than 12 minutes to play.

It doesn't matter if it's Grossman or Brian Griese. You can't succeed as a quarterback in a system designed to make the quarterback play it safe.

trent dilfer (during a half season in which he never cleared 300 yards) and brad johnson (during a season in which he cleared 300 yards once) have super bowl rings. now, i realize 300 yards is an arbitrary point to choose whether or not a QB is "playing it safe" or not. but i think it's pretty generally established that those two guys were "game managers," not "gunslingers," and each made few enough mistakes to take their teams to titles. obviously the 2000 ravens and the 2002 bucs had amazing defenses. it's not like dilfer and johnson carried the teams to titles all by themselves. i'm just saying... this sentence, about how QBs can't succeed while playing it safe, is a crock of crap. in fact, it's patently false, as long as "leading your team to a super bowl title without putting up manningesque numbers" qualifies as being a successful quarterback.

The Bears think they can just win by playing good defense, running the football and mixing in a special-teams return or two by Devin Hester.

i'm not sure they could win it all by doing that, but they could definitely win a lot of games. the injuries their defense has sustained hurt that prospect, as has cedric benson's spotty play. but stranger things have happened than a team with an awesome defense and a home run threat like hester winning a lot of games by playing conservative offense.

At some point, the coach has to let the quarterback do more than just manage the game. Grossman never got that chance. It's unlikely Griese will get it either.

again, not sure i agree with that. maybe with the bears' d hurting, and benson struggling, the playbook needs to be opened up a little bit. but not a ton. especially with griese or grossman or kyle orton in charge.

meanwhile, clark judge, you have the oh-so-enviable position of taking the counterpoint and explaining why it's good grossman was benched. your thoughts?

Are you kidding me? The Bears were getting nothing from the position.

[middle of column omitted]

I don't know if Brian Griese will be better, but I do know he won't be worse.

good enough for me. i'm sold.