Mitch Tribisky, your table is waiting

(Chris Walker / Chicago Tribune)

Hello Mitch, or do you prefer Mitchell?  Either way, welcome to Chicago where the backup quarterback is the favorite, until he isn’t.  I know you got off to a rough start with the neurotic Bears fan base.  We want a starter under center that can be the franchise quarterback, but we don’t really want to pay the price overpay for one.  Kinda like wanting something from Santa without actually even pretending to be good for most of the year.

Don’t worry, we fans have the attention span of a concussed kitten and have already gone through the The Five stages of being a Bears Fan: Anger, Frustration, more anger, more frustration, WTF and rationalization.

Here’s the thing:  Even if the Bears drafted the next Tom Brady they were not going to go to the Superbowl this season.  Even if the Bears could get in a Delorean, kidnap and sign THE Tom Brady, they would not go to the Superbowl this season.  Now if they got Bill Belichick that’s a different story because his contract with the devil stipulates a SB appears every 2.5 years on average.

So I’m okay with the decision to trade up and get a young QB that they can develop.  Note: I forgot to officially state it anywhere to prove it, but I felt the Bears would draft you if you were available because your name is as close to Polish sounding as you can get without grabbing someone from University of Warsaw and that could help him in a town like Chicago.  Unless you become Tri-fumble-sky.

Now here’s the advice you didn’t ask for.  Use the time you have to research some of the less popular Bears Quarterbacks (see the last two three decades).  See also Quarterback Controversy.  Pace and Fox say that Mike Glennon is the starter, and he is, until he isn’t.  See 2nd quarter of the 3rd game of the season.

1. Don’t be a training camp holdout over money
2. Learn to embrace the Media
3. don’t commit any turnovers.  EVER.

Chicago is and will always be a football town and if you get us to a Superbowl you will be treated like royalty around these parts.  If you don’t, you will end up selling insurance in Ohio.  See former Bears first rounders.

_________
How do you think the Bears new quarterback will handle the pressure? Tell me about it here in the comments, then swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures. Don’t worry, your FB feed won’t get overwhelmed.

If you really like this post, please enter your email address below click the “subscribe by email” button. You can sign up to receive an email whenever I publish something new.

Happy Reading! Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Can the Bears rally like the Cubs?

Bears outside linebacker Pernell McPhee warms up before a game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Oct. 20, 2016. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago Bears have done fans two big favors this year.  First, they got their sucking out of the way early so any delusions of a post-season run were put to death early.  Second, thanks to their quirky schedule, they got their prime time games (SNF, MNF, TNF) and out of the way early as well so that blue collar Grabowskis like me could get their yard work and other fall projects done while there is still some warm weather and daylight left in the Autumn afternoon.

[A 3rd Favor was not being a distraction to the Cub’s amazing World Series run.]

Not So FAST…

I knew someone would notice what I noticed about there not being too many blowout teams and the Bears having a pulse.

In today’s’ NFL it is hard for even a good team to make the playoffs, let alone go deep.  How many 9-7, 10-6 and even the occasional 11-5 team stay home while some 8-8 team gets to go because they won their division.

We are at the mid-season of the football seasons and while there are a few teams with good win records (Patriots, Oakland, Dallas), this is the first time in a while I can recall that the majority of the teams seem to be within a game of .500.  That’s not to say that a 3-5 team is gonna make a Super Bowl run.  But if you are in a lousy division your chance of getting to the playoffs isn’t as hard as your record would indicate.

This year’s Bears were a 4-4 team disguised as a 2-6.  They really should have won at least one (if not both) of the game against the Colts and the Jaguars.   As a fan, especially a once idealistic fan, I would love nothing more than for my Bears to run the table and make the playoffs.  And some day some team will do just that.  Come back from a terrible first half and become the first NFC team to go to and win the Superbowl as a wild card in all road games (I think the AFC has done that, but I’m just too lazy to look it up).

But as a realistic, jaded fan, I know it won’t be this 2016 Bears team.  First, they would pretty much have to win all their remaining games and their division to control their destiny.  barring that, they would need to win 7 of the next 8 including all the division games and the Giants and Washington and hope that the Eagles fade to avoid wild card tie breakers.  Anything beyond that gets a little more muddier.

Reasons to be Optimistic

The Bears are coming off a Bye Week which means they are potentially rested and healed.  They even get some key players back from injuries.  And their remaining schedule, as much as it means anything, is against completely beatable teams, most of whom are struggling themselves around the .500 mark.

Jay Cutler is likely auditioning for his next team and probably has a chip on his shoulder to make John Fox look bad.  If he can play as well as he did last season and bring the extra playmaking ability that Brian Hoyer lacked, there could be a game 17 on the schedule.

Reasons to be Pessimistic

The Bears do the Controlling Their Own Destiny about as well as Donald Trump does Adulting.   They always find ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Twice in my lifetime I have witness them go 9-7 and miss the playoffs because of tie breaking rules (both times to Atlanta in fact).  But these are different players, right?

Okay fine.  How about this.  When they won that first game against the Detroit Lions, I was happy, but I also said on Facebook that I’ve seen this movie before.  They do well enough to look like a team making a playoff run, only to disappoint us in time for Christmas.  Note: this was before losing two very winnable games against the Colts and Jaguars.

”We are what we are and right now,” Fox said. ”We could (finish) 10-6 or 2-14. That’s the reality math-wise. I hope we’re moving more toward the first one I mentioned.

Since November is about Gratitude, I’m gonna try and be carefully optimistic.  Go Bears!

****************
Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Here’s the part where I beg for stuff because we get paid in likes, shares, re-tweets and feedback. Please also do any and all of the following:

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Early Christmas present from the Bears: We get our Sundays back

I know most Bears fans are still pissed off about the latest Bears loss. This one, a Thursday Night prime time game against Dallas gave us a glimmer of what could have been when the Bears rallied to within two scores.Unfortunately, even if Jay Cutler throw a touchdown pass instead of an interception into the end zone, there just wasn’t enough time for this Bears team to get the ball back and get another score.

The truth is the Bears did us a favor. Before that prime time game against Dallas, they were still mathematically in playoff contention.There was the slim hope that if they could win out and other teams had some December misfortune, they might have just pulled a 2007 Giants or a 2009 Packers and make it to the post season.Instead they were Who We Knew They Were and managed to take a close game at half time and put it out of reach fairly early in the 3rd quarter.

Update: Apparently the Bears still had a long shot if the Lions had managed to tank this season.However that pipe-dream was also killed when Detroit beat up on Lovie Smith’s Buccaneers.

What the Bears should do

Forget about trying to win any more games. If it happens, so be it. Treat the remaining games as preseason to evaluate the personnel you have. Practice those onside kicks, go for it on 4th and forever. Play the 3rd stringers and the practice squad.See who is capable of developing, who might have some hidden potential and who you need to get rid of.

Let Matt Forte run the ball and get a shot at some of the records and stats that he was cheated out of in Trestman’s Pass-Whacky season.

Brian Cassella -Chicago Tribune

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

What Bears Fans should do

Now everyone can relax and spend the holidays invested in other things. Don’t even bother watching the remaining games except maybe as background noise. If you have tickets to any of the remaining Bears games, don’t go. Why spend any more of your hard earned money on that franchise? Donate the tickets to a charity and take a tax deduction. If you cannot get a tax break from it, do it from the goodness of your now broken heart.

If you have season tickets, obviously you are not going to give up those seats. Maybe they have been in your family for generations or maybe you finally got off the waiting list. I’m not calling for a mass exodus of ticket holders because that will take time and we don’t want the Bears to end up like some franchises where the seats are empty at every game.  But an end of the season dip in revenue might just be enough to send a message that we are fed up with mediocrity.

Having been a Bears fan for the better part of two decades, I can tell you that I’ve seen this movie before.The Owners and upper management wear their Bad Decision Jeans all the time.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

“The GM chose Trestman over Bruce Arians, who has become a perennial Coach of the Year candidate in Arizona.” Source.  These are the same owners that choose Lovie Smith over Giants Coach Tom Coughlin who went to two super bowls.  [Is it the coach or is it the team, a discussion for another time. ]

So they are not going to get rid of Cutler, Trestman or Emery any time soon.  [It would be ironic if they traded him to Buffalo for Kyle Orton.]

Here’s what I think will happen in 2015. Tucker, along with a few assistant coaches, is fired.Some players do get cut but no big surprises (except maybe Jared Allen and only as a salary cap move).Trestman and Cutler are placed on Super Secret Double Probation and have one more season to get their act to gether. The team will rally for the coach and make it to the playoffs, only to miss the super bowl in typical Bears fashion by beating a stellar team to get to the NFC Championship only to lose to an underdog that they underestimated.

I recommend you employ the End of the Bears Season as a time to engage in activities that you have otherwise neglected or put off on Sundays. Chicagoans will have time to shovel all that snow that’s coming. Get your lawn furniture ready for the annual tradition of Dibs. Spend time with your family. I will use the energy not spent caring about the Bears to get healthy, draw up new tweets and seek crowd-sourced funding for my Great American Novel.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

One Bears loss does not end the season…yet

Wow judging from all the chatter around Chicago, you’d think the Bear’s season officially ended last Sunday, 15 games early. Relax people. see if your ObamaCare can spring for some Xanax or something. Yes there were turnovers and missed tackles and mental lapses. It certainly wasn’t as bad as last season, we have a lot of mediocrity to achieve before that happens.

In fact, let’s look at how last season ended.  ( Bears fans should watch this video every Sunday just before the game. The players and the coaches should have it running on auto-repeat throughout Halas Hall):

 

Some common rants across the Blogosphere:

We Were Supposed to Win This One

Uh there’s a reason these games are played instead of just letting Madden NFL decide who goes to the Super Bowl.  As the saying goes, on any given Sunday any team can win in the NFL.  Sure, last year’s Buffalo Bills team underachieved and they haven’t been much better in recent years.  Still, teams vary from year to year which brings up….

History was on our side

Any financial advisor worth her salt will tell you that Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results.  It doesn’t matter that the Bills have never won at Soldier Field or that the Bears almost always win their home opener. Never won at Soldier Field? That just makes it more and more inevitable that some day a Bills team would do it. Last year Drew Bees finally won at Solder Field. Even the crappy Bears teams of the late 90s and early 2000s managed to win a couple times in Green Bay.

Jay Isn’t An Elite Quarterback

Neither is Joe Flacco or Eli Manning really.  If you look at future Hall-of-Famer Tom Brady’s numbers to Jay Cutler:

T Brady 29/56 249 1 0
J Cutler 34/49 349 2 2
(Source:  ESPN).

I didn’t watch that game but Brady does well when his team is winning by more than two scores but in closer games he gets rattled and tries to force things just like any other QB who wants to win.   It’s just as likely Brady didn’t have any interceptions because of time of possession. You cannot throw an interception when your team is on defense (right?).  The New England Patriots were essentially out of the game by early 4th quarter. At least the Bears tied it up and took it to overtime.

Looking Ahead…Bearly

This can obviously go one of two ways. I’ve been a Bears fan long enough to know that this could be the 4-12 seasons of 199 and 1998 and 2002. Or the coaches make some adjustments and the team comes out stronger. The first two games of the NFL are considered pivotal because no one really knows what a team is like under the hood.  Most players are still healthy and performing at a high level and there isn’t enough film available to have seen everything a team does. Just as many 2-0 teams end up missing the playoffs as 0-2 teams win their divisions. A stat I totally made up.

San Fran looked elite against a bad Dallas team. The Jets are good but not great and Green Bay is vulnerable. Considering everyone would be glad to just be 2-2 In four weeks, if somehow the Bears are 3-1, no one will remember this Bills game. And if they are 1-3 or 0-4, you know that you have the rest of your Sundays free for yard work, winter maintenance and holiday shopping.

___

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Please also do any and all of the following — I know pushy right!

• “Like” and “Share” this post using those buttons under the headline.
• follow me on Twitter
• see some mildly amusing photos and posts on my Facebook Fan Page.
• Subscribe by email below.

The latest Facebook algorithm changes might cause you to miss some of my posts and you don’t want Facebook deciding what you can and cannot see do you? Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. !”

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Chicago Bears: Please Skip the Preseason Games

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.

__

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Here’s the part where I beg for stuff because we get paid in likes, shares, re-tweets and feedback. Please also do any and all of the following:

• “Like” and “Share” this post using those buttons under the headline.
• follow me on Twitter @Icarus2013
• see some mildly amusing photos and posts on my Facebook Fan Page.
• Subscribe by email below.

The latest Facebook algorithm changes might cause you to miss some of my posts and you don’t want Facebook deciding what you can and cannot see do you?

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

 

Super Bowl and some other things we need to move or eliminate

I know it will NEVER happen but there are some things in the world we live in today that we would be better off without or at least better off if we didn’t have to deal with them when some archaic tradition says they need to appear on the calendar. Some of these may have made sense back in the day, others just fell into place.

[placegallery]

Do you me a solid and swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures. Don’t worry, your feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

 

Jay Cutler Contract: Stop bitching about it already

By now everyone who cares knows the details for Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s seven-year, $126.7 million contract.  According to a league source, the deal didn’t include a signing bonus and has $54 million in total guaranteed money.  The deal averages $18.1 million per year.  source

Note:  I created this graphic based on numbers reported here.  If the info is wrong, don’t blame be, blame Yahoo Sports.

I don’t speak NFL salary cap but it looks to me like the Bears essentially signed Cutler to a three year deal when you consider that there is no guaranteed money owed to Cutler beyond Year Three.   After that, the Bears can keep or release him depending on how things look.   If he continues to improve and the Bears succeed, then they can keep him. If things go sour, they can part ways at a time when it is better to invest in a new franchise quarterback.  My definition of improve is:

• make the playoffs the next three years
• go deep in the playoffs with at least one NFC championship trip
• sweep the packers 2 of the next three years.

Okay perhaps that last one is asking too much, but we are overdue.

Why not re-sign Josh McCown and get a young QB in the draft to develop?  Cutler is four years younger than the 34-year-old McCown and has superior arm strength and consistency. Plus, who’s to say that McCown won’t be a one-year wonder? Cutler has proven throughout his career that he is capable of performing at a high level when the people are around him.   [I’m not saying that  you don’t still try to re-sign McCown and get a QB in the draft.  It just means it becomes less of a do or die imperative.]

Remember this is a Bears team that almost went to the playoffs in spite of their defense, which needs the most amount of work.    If their defense was just a shadow of the defense that started in September, Chicago would have had a reason to care about NFL football one more weekend (other than to see Green Bay lose).  I see this as a 3 year window to get to the Super Bowl or start over.

It’s all about flexibility and Bears GM Phil Emery did a remarkable job structuring Cutler’s contract,  front-loading the deal so all of the guaranteed money will be earned over the first three seasons. That provides Chicago with  enough flexibility to fix the defense now and when young players such as Alshon Jeffery, Kyle Long, Jordan Mills and many others are due for extensions, evaluate giving them lucrative deals.

Re-signing Jay Cutler was a smart decision and it’s time to move one and stop bitching about it.

___

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Please also do any and all of the following — I know pushy right!

• “Like” and “Share” this post using those buttons under the headline.
• see some mildly amusing photos and posts on my Facebook Fan Page.
• follow me on Twitter @Icarus2013
• subscribe by email below

The latest Facebook algorithm changes might cause you to miss some of my posts and you don’t want Facebook deciding what you can and cannot see do you? Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. !”

Chicago Bears Interesting Statistic for 2013 Season

When I was a young lad, I wanted every team that beat the Bears to miss the playoffs that year. Some years, that would have required canceling the post-season. With today’s Bear’s game against the Green Bay Packers putting it all on the line, let’s look back at the season so far.

Teams that beat the Bears

St Louis                    Washington
Lions                         Lions again
Philadelphia            New Orleans
Minnesota

The Rams and the Deadskins* slim playoff hopes were mercifully put to rest before December. Detroit beat the Bears twice and what did they get for their trouble? Eliminated from the playoffs via their own self destruction.

What to say about the Vikings. They split the series but any playoff shot they had got buried in their quarterback by committee controversy.

Philly em-Bear-assed the Bears on National TV and New Orleans did a good job too, especially when Drew Brees drew veteran Lance Briggs offsides on 4th and 1, extending a drive and essentially ending the Captain Comeback reputation Jay Cutler was starting to create. Both these teams could miss the playoffs if they don’t win today.

Teams that Bears beat

Bengals            Pittsburgh
Baltimore        Dallas
Giants              Cleveland
Minnesota

Cincinnati lost on opening day but then went on to have a stellar season, securing a playoff berth by winning their division. Don’t get me started on the Playoff System.

Pittsburgh and Baltimore, somehow, are surprisingly still in the playoff hunt. Although a lot of things — like the cure for cancer, production of cold fusion and co-operation of Congress — have to happen in order for one of them to make it.

The Giants lost to the Bears though it was one of their best loses up to that point. They then went on to start winning and even looked like they might do a playoff run like they did in 2008.  Alas, they just couldn’t overcome their own demons.

Even Cleveland was mathematically still in the playoff hunt until the refs decided that the Patriots needed a little extra help.

And Dallas has a shot to make the playoffs if they can knock off Philly, which would help prove my theory, which is that statistically speaking, it is better for your playoff hopes to lose to the Bears. Hear that Green Bay**?

* — I refuse to use the team name.
** — yeah I also know the season ends today.

___

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Please also do any and all of the following — I know pushy right!

• “Like” and “Share” this post using those buttons under the headline.
• see some mildly amusing photos and posts on my Facebook Fan Page.
• follow me on Twitter @Icarus2013
• subscribe by email below

The latest Facebook algorithm changes might cause you to miss some of my posts and you don’t want Facebook deciding what you can and cannot see do you? Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. !”

NFL Playoff System needs some tweaking

Update from the Future:  This post originally appeared at the now defunct Chicagonow.com on December 22,2013.  This was before the playoffs were extended to 7 teams per conference (2020) and increased the number of games per season to 17 (2021).

Before we can address the fix for this problem, we have to first agree that we do have a problem.  Namely, weaker teams are getting into the playoffs while arguably superior teams are sent home to watch the playoffs on TV.  If you truly believe that the current NFL playoff system is fine the way it is, please stop reading now.  Seriously, stop reading.  I’m not kidding, go look at Dilbert or Buzzfeed or play on Facebook.  If you don’t think there is a problem, I’m not gonna be able to convince you that there is and I don’t want to waste your time with a solution.

Okay now that that is settled, let me re-state the problem.  It’s really two problems but they are intricately related:

1)  Teams with better records can sit home while teams with fewer wins get to go to the playoffs
2)  Teams with better records play away games while a team with few wins gets to host the playoff.

By definition, the playoffs should be between the best of the best teams in the conference. Is a team that started out strong at the beginning of the season and then faded as good as a team that got better as the season wore on? It’s not an easy question to answer. First, there are all the usual issues – differences in the opposing defenses week to week, injuries to key players on either team week to week, etc.

Let’s look at an 8-8 team and a 10-6 team from an analytical standpoint. Generally speaking, all you can really know from this comparison is that the 10-6 team won two more games than the 8-8. I know, no kidding Sherlock, bare with me a moment. We don’t know if the 10-6 team had a “softer schedule” or if the 8-8 team had more injuries, or if the 10-6 team won every game by two scores while the 8-8 team lost their games by 3 points or less. When using statistics to draw assertions about sports, one needs to be careful to exclude as many variables as possible, and interpret the data in light of its limitations.

If there are more games played over a season, the one-off anomalies should cancel themselves out and the superior team will usually if not always prevail. However, football at the National League Level is a very violent, demanding game. A longer season would all but ensure that the teams that make it to the playoffs would injury-riddled.

At the end of the day, we have to take it at face value that the team with the better record is the better team. And our current playoff system often punishes the better team.

One feature that might be a bug is that winning your division automatically gets into the playoffs and home-field game.  Look at 2010 for instance.  How could either a 7-9 Seattle or an 8-8 St. Louis not only qualify for the playoffs but also host a game? Meanwhile, the 10-6 Tampa Bay Buccaneers stayed home.

Advocates of not changing the system will point to the need for having meaningful regular season division races. We need those divisional rivalries to stay strong, and why shouldn’t fans of a division winner be rewarded with a home playoff game? Well, because now that there are only 4 teams per division, it’s not as essential to consistently beat the teams in your division to make the playoffs as it once was.

On the other side of the issue are those who just can’t see why a 7-9 team or even an 8-8 team should make the playoffs when at least one 10-6 team won’t be invited to the dance.  Why cannot we have both?

Okay now for the solution.

The simplest solution could be a rule tweak.  Remove the entitlement reward of home field for winning your division.  Teams with the top two records will still earn byes, but after that, the division winner should not automatically get to host their wild-card opponent.  If a division team faces a wild card team with a better record, the WC team hosts.

Of course this is more of the exception to the rule like the one in baseball where teams from the same division cannot face each other in the first round.  I hate that rule.

A better rule — a more fair rule change — would be a seeded system.  The top 6 teams go to the postseason, with wild card rules existing for tiebreakers.  This changes things and a division winner could end up missing the playoffs, but it would be a division leader with a weaker record.

Another option would be to expand the number of playoff games.  In an interview with NFL.com’s Judy Battista, commissioner Roger Goodell said he would not be opposed to adding more contestants into the league’s annual postseason tournament.

I’m putting at the end of this post because the trolls who skim through this will sum up my solution as “expand the playoffs” without reading the nitty gritty above.  As I mentioned earlier in this post, football is a dangerous sport. While I’d love to see more football games per year, I know that it just isn’t realistic unless I want to see more of the second and third teams playing each other toward the end of the season.

Expanding the playoffs without making the suggestions above will only exasperate the problem. You could potentially have more 8-8 or even 7-9 teams hosting playoffs. And with an expanded playoff under the current system, you’d theoretically have a bunch of better teams playing lesser teams in the first couple rounds which amount to a bunch of boring blowouts. Certainly no one wants that.

Jay Cutler here to stay and that’s a good thing

Alright, I’ve finally got enough of the bad taste from Sunday’s Bears loss to vent my spleen about Jay Cutler. He’s not going anywhere Chicago and that’s probably a good thing. I know a lot of people here think they’ve seen enough of the Good Jay/Bad Jay show to think it’s time to look elsewhere. What everyone fails to remember is the quarterback by committee years of 2002-2004 and the decade of mediocrity before that.

Here’s the thing. His first couple years here, he was running for his life because the O-line was as weaker than a marinara sauce made from Ketchup. And all those interceptions? Yes some were poor judgment and forcing something to happen. But a good number were also receivers not running the correct route or coming back to the ball when a play broke up (see running for your life).

Now that he finally has a better O-line that is young and will hopefully only improve, and he has legitimate receivers in Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall. This hasn’t been seen in Chicago since the Conway Engram days. And let’s not forget we have a tight end that can block and catch…on the same play!

If there were any chance the Bears would let Jay go before, the current state of the Defense as seen the last two Sundays make the case for locking Jay up before he has the good sense to go anywhere else.

The way I see it the Bears can franchise tag Jay and keep Josh McCown around for insurance without blowing the budget. Then they take a QB in the draft and develop him the way Green bay use to develop qbs behind Fayre. Not give him the car keys like they did to Cade McNown.

The things Cutler can do well (throw deep and make the difficult passes) outweigh the things McCown can do well (be mistake-free). Sure, McCown made some tight throws and deep passes on Sunday but that was against a Vikings Defense that was DOA.

Josh McCown would work well in the type of team of old. A stingy defense. A no non-sense offense with a durable running back or two. And a consistent special teams that is the whole package. I’m not talking just a Highlight-tape Hester like returner. I’m talking about a special teams that consistently wins the field position battle by pinning opponents back while achieving enough yards of their own to spot the no-name quarterback a short field.

Oh come on, just one more week

In fact, I predict this type of team will make its way back into fashion within the next 3-4 years. There are 17 quarterbacks under contract to earn more than $13 million in 2014. And the 2014 draft is predicted to be extremely deep at the quarterback position. That means a lot of teams will be spending money on QBs. Which also means some teams will have to find other ways to make it work. For all we know, McCown will be the next Kerry Collins making a Super Bowl run on his way to retirement, but not for the Chicago Bears.
___

Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Please also do any and all of the following — I know pushy right!

• “Like” and “Share” this post using those buttons under the headline.
• see some mildly amusing photos and posts on my Facebook Fan Page.
• follow me on Twitter @Icarus2013
• subscribe by email below

if your inbox is lonely, type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free. By the way, do you have Gmail? If so, make sure you go into your “promotions” box and drag one of my emails over to your “primary” box. That way, you’ll never miss one of my posts!”