Too Little, Too Late?

Quite Possibly. When I started this blog a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to talk about the things in my life that interest me the most. And so far, I've talked about the things that do. One of the things that I didn't expect to talk about was the Chicago Bears, because quite frankly, they have sucked. Bad. And they still aren't very good, but they got a win today to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. I don't think they will make the playoffs, but they still have a slight chance.

The 37-34 overtime win today against the Denver Broncos was something that the Bears desperately needed and the second half that QB Rex Grossman played was something he needed to keep his chances of starting the rest of this season. He had a poor first half and rebounded nicely, leading the Bears on a nice 2-minute drill to tie the game and a very good opening drive in overtime to set up the game winning field goal. Of course, Rex wouldn't have been in that position if it wasn't for the outstanding special teams play and especially WR/KR/PR/Superman Devin Hester.

Hester is really like a good girlfriend. Sure, there are bad times, like when he muffs a punt or has it bounce off his shin, but then he goes and returns 2 kicks for a TD and suddenly, you just can't stay mad at him. Of course former Bear mental midget Todd Sauerbrun had a lot to do with it.

After saying earlier in the week he wasn't afraid to kick to Hester, Todd did just that. And Hester burned him twice. On a punt return, Hester deked him so bad that all Todd could do was lay down and Hester jumped over him on the way to the endzone. On a kickoff return, Hester deked him again and Todd might have gotten a chance to see the brand of cleats Hester was
wearing on his way to laying on the ground, again. Todd finally got smart and decided to try kicking it towards the sidelines he turned to his right and decided to kick it into the arms of CB Charles Tillman. Unfortunately, Tillman was right in front of Todd and blocked the punt.

It wasn't all sunshine and daisies for the Bears as their poor run defense was exposed, again. The Bears have not been able to stop teams from running on them and a lot of that is because of the loss of Safety Mike Brown who was injured earlier this year, again. Brown has become the Mark Prior of the Bears. Much like Prior, when he's healthy, he might be one of the best
players on his team. But, like Prior, he hasn't been able to stay healthy. And because of that, the Bears don't have that dominating S to help with the running attack. The Bears were hoping that Adam Archuleta would be that safety to help on the run, but it seems that every week he gets caught out of position on running plays and misses a tackle.

The Bears running offense all year has been non-existent this year either and they lost RB Cedric Benson early in the game to an ankle injury. The extent of the injury is unknown right now, but if he's unavailable to play, RB Adrian Petersen would become the feature back and while he played well today, he's never been the feature back for longer than a couple of games
here and there. Let's hope he can play better than Benson has this season and give the Bears a better option out of the backfield.

Switching gears, nothing new this weekend when it comes to the Chicago Cubs. Along with the Houston Astros, they seem to be the front runners to landing 2B Kazuo Matsui and I would imagine a decision will come this week. Here's hoping he chooses the Astros. Another japanesse free agent the Cubs have been looking, P Hideki Kuroda might make a decision by this coming
friday and while the Cubs are contenders for him, I would place money that he lands with the Seattle Mariners for 4 years and 48 million dollars.