Dear Chicago Bears,
Please do us all a favor and skip the pre-season. Seriously, the injury risks are too great to have our offense playing much, if at all, in what amount to glorified exhibition games. Just this week in training camp you lost potential #3 receiver Marquess Wilson with a broken collarbone. In Practice. Diving for a pass in the end zone on a deep route in a meaningless scrimmage play. And now you have Martellus Bennett suspended indefinitely and fined for conduct detrimental to the team.
Pre-season football is not what it use to be, if it was ever anything worth watching at all. NFL preseason games are rehearsal sessions before captive customers drinking overpriced beers. Worse, in preseason games the NFL is not even rehearsing the real plays, it’s all bland safe stuff that no one wants to watch, executed by fighting for a roster spot players, most of whom will be watching from home on opening day. I use to think that if some crazy set of circumstances made me an NFL coach, I would experiment with unusual plays, unorthodox formations and going for it on fourth and forever since it’s pre-season and it doesn’t count. Now I think that I would simply give the competition confusing film by not starting any starters and seeing what my 5th stringers could really do.
Chicago Bears running back Kevin Jones is taken off the field on a cart after an injury against the Cleveland Browns at Soldier Field September 3, 2009.
Let me walk you down memory lane. Back in 1997, your best receiver Curtis Conway broke his collarbone diving for a ball in the Bears’ exhibition victory over the Arizona Cardinals. All that got you was a 4-12 season. More recently, in 2009 you were trying to find someone to back up Matt Forte and almost had a guy in Kevin Jones…until a meaningless pre-season game against a team you would later beat resoundingly two months later only to still miss the post-season because, 7-9!
Put the Defense out on offense, not only can they use the extra reps but it will help them get use to long drives they’ll likely face against Rogers and Tom Brady.
Lock Jay Cutler in the house with his new kid. A few more weeks of changing diapers will be good for him. Put Marshall Brandon in bubble wrap and tell Alshon Jeffery and Matt Forte to simple run out of bounds as quickly as possible. Take a page from Tony Romo and Adrian Peterson play book. Apparently they are skipping the first game and probably the entire four series set. And who can blame them? Their respective teams usually skip the last four weeks of the regular season.
And when it is your turn on offense? Put the Defense out on offense, not only can they use the extra reps but it will help them get use to long drives they’ll likely face against Rogers and Tom Brady.
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therunninggod 