Season Two, Episode Ten: FOOTBALL IS (kind of) BACK

There's a piping hot SKOdcast cooling on the windowsill; and I know you're going to steal it so I went ahead and baked two and I put one up there because you ragamuffins just look so cute all dirty from playing all day. In it, we discuss preseason game one with Travis, who did not watch it because his life is now ruled by a tiny woman who communicates primarily by shrieking and/or urinating. We also briefly touch on predictions for tomorrow night's contest against the mighty Jaguars, fresh off their rousing victory over Lovie Smith's Bucs.

As usual, join us in the shoutbox for tomorrow night's game (or at least the first-team snaps).




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Bears 34, Eagles 28- Fly Bears Fly?

The Bears won their preseason opener tonight 34-28, racking up 491 yards of total offense. 399 of those yards came through the air, as Bears quarterbacks completed 29 of 44 passes (65.9%) for 407 yards, 4 TDs, 2 INTs, and just 2 sacks. Unfortunately for Jordan Palmer, both sacks and the first interception came while he was under center, and that should have some impact on things going forward.

Most importantly for the Bears, besides no starters suffering injuries during the game (although Jared Allen, Kyle Long, Jordan Mills, Tim Jennings, and Martellus Bennett all missed the game for various reasons), was the fact that the starters all seemed to play well. The first string offense looked very effective in brief duty, with Cutler leading a long scoring drive that culminated in a rocket strike to Zach Miller for a touchdown. The first string defensive line made it's presence known early on, with Jay Ratliff pressuring Nick Foles into one interception and Willie Young pressuring him into another. Preseason or no, the Eagles have a very good offensive line and  those kinds of results are encouraging to see.

Most of the game was dominated by the backups, of course, and so we'll discuss the notables below.

A SKOdcast Double Duper in Honor of the Return of BAER FOOBAW

It's SKOdcast day, loyal readers and/or listeners, as well as PRESEASON GAME ONE DAAAAAAAAAAAY. Get ready for six to twelve snaps of not-that-hard-hitting Bears football followed by a scrimmage between 44 people who will hopefully never see this much playtime again.

Thanks in part to the birth of his spawn, Travis is to blame for the delay on posting episode eight as well as his absence from episode nine. HOWEVER, this allows us to present you with a delicious double scoop of pods and/or casts (please tell your server beforehand if you have any allergies) pertaining to training camp and the looming preseason.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. We (or at least I) will be in the SKOsbox for at least the interesting parts of tonight's game, feel free to join us if you want to discuss the incontrovertible evidence we will see that the Bears are going 4-12 or 15-1.

*editor's note: I uploaded the wrong file, so if you had to listen to Travis eat French toast and discuss whether or not my dad had diarrhea, you're welcome.


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Jay Cutler, Andy Dalton, Alex Smith and Quarterback Inflation in the Modern NFL

Anyone remember the 90s? Outside of the awesome zubaz and Clinton's extra-marital stuff? Me neither. But what I do remember is that teams really, really sucked at drafting quarterbacks back then. Between 1990 and 1999 there were twenty quarterbacks taken in the first round. Of those twenty quarterbacks, four were Peyton Manning (greatest ever), Donovan McNabb (actually underrated, really good), Steve McNair (probably overrated, still pretty good), and Drew Bledsoe (he...did some things, right? I remember him doing a thing once. You might remember it, too. No, not that thing. The other thing). That's an OK group, although Peyton is the only truly great player to come out of the entire decade.

Of the other 16 quarterbacks, the best of the group is probably Kerry Collins. You never want Kerry Collins to be the best of anything, unless for some reason you are ranking "best 1990s quarterbacks who were also drunken racists," and even then we all know we're just waiting for someone to crack and tell Brett Favre's darkest secrets.

Your 2014 Bears Training Camp/Roster Breakdown: Special Teams and Coaches

So now we reach the end. The special teams. The other third. Those guys that you usually ignore until they fuck up, at which point you're incensed because even though you get winded carrying groceries up the stairs you wonder aloud how hard it can be to cover a goddamn kick returner running a 4.3 forty. This year the Bears have actually had some unusual turnover on what has typically been a solid unit for them, with Devin Hester moving on, Adam Podlesh getting his walking papers, and, sigh, Patrick Mannelly retiring.

I haven't really addressed it yet so I'm just going to take a sidebar here to say goodbye to Mannelly. He was awesome, he was always great to fans on Twitter and in any other interaction (from what I've heard), he had great hair, and, most importantly, he was ruthlessly efficient at his job. The Bears may have more bad snaps this season than they've had since I was nine years old, and that would be true even if they had all of three of them all year. Pat never got it wrong. It was a joke of mine during the Jauron Era that the best player on the Bears was the long snapper, and while that's nothing for an organization to hang their hat on, at least in Pat's case it meant that he was one of the best in the league at what he did. I will miss him.

THE KICKERS:

#9 Robbie Gould

Yeah, there's just one. It's Robbie. He's great. If you don't think so, regardless of whether he missed that kick in Minnesota or not, you can rot. Robbie was actually accurate on a career high 89.7% of his kicks last year despite having his most attempts since 2006. That happens when your offense actually moves the ball, apparently. You get more kicks and stuff. It's great. He did miss an extra point though, so you know the end is nigh.

THE PUNTERS:

#16 Pat O'Donnell, #1 Tress Way

O'Donnell apparently launched a couple of punts the other day that were so impressive the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Bears fans know good punting, that's for sure. Still, the question will be which of Way and O'Donnell looks more impressive as a directional punter, regardless of how strong O'Donnell's leg is. I still assume Pat wins the job, though.

Your 2014 Bears Training Camp/Roster Breakdown: The Defense

The Monsters of the Midway. The fearsome guardians of the line of scrimmage. The bringers of the black and blue to the black and blue division. The defense! The pride of the Chicag-

What  the hell that's not BEAR FOOTB---

                             
                                                               Oh goddammit.

NOW I remember. This defense was ass last year. It was worse than ass. It was boils on ass.   It was the worst defense in franchise history, and it ruined all of the unreserved joy we should have had over the offense's progress. Such is life.

So here we are now, with a defense that will, at the very least, look very different this year. Will it play better? Well, yeah. That's not that hard to do. Will it be good enough to make the playoffs? I say yes. What did you really expect?

Your 2014 Bears Training Camp/Roster Breakdown: The Offense

FOOTBALL IS BACK. Sure, we're a few weeks away still from a meaningless exhibition game that will serve the purpose of angering all of the wrong people in all of the wrong ways, but people are out there, RIGHT NOW (depending on when I post this) hitting each other in football pads. We have almost made it through the tyranny and oppression of that terrible no man's land where no sports are played except for something called baseball, which I'm told is a pastoral game not unlike cricket. Football has come to save us all, as it always does, until the terrifying, heart-attack inducing reality that is football season actually sets in and my wife spends every Sunday trying to cool me down as I sweat like an Illinois governor at an ethics hearing and my skin turns redder than than Krypton's sun. 

So now it's time to do the breakdown of what is, honest to God, the strongest unit on the Bears this year: the offense. There's going to be some breathless, erotic analysis coming here so I warn you, you may want to loosen the pants. I certainly did.

QUARTERBACKS:

#6 Jay Cutler, #8 Jimmy Clausen, #2 Jordan Palmer, #12 David Fales

There's a lot of talk this year about Cutler maturing, finally being at peace with himself and his surroundings, taking on the true responsibilities of leadership and well, OK. Here's the thing: all of that may be true. Hell it probably is true. He's got a lot to feel comfortable about as he's finally entering year two of a system he likes (and that he knows actually fucking works), he's got everyone back on offense around him, and in a nice change of pace that's actually a really awesome thing. But there's probably not much of a difference personality-wise in this year's Cutler than in last years. The people writing those stories just know that Jay was doing damn well last year before he got hurt, and there's nothing but injury that's going to stop him from having the best year a Bears quarterback has ever had at the minimum (and probably a hell of a lot more than that). They just don't want to be caught hanging onto their manufactured Jay Cutler bullshit from years past when it happens.

Season Two, Episode Seven: You asked, we (kind of) answered!

There is a freshly decanted episode of Start Kyle Orton in the study if sir or madam is so inclined, and I've taken the liberty of drawing you a bath.

You gave us questions, we picked some of them, we further modified some of those ones that we picked, and then we answered them! And it only took me like two weeks to post, which is very nearly a record.

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A very special non-football shoutout to Rated M for Marathon

ATTENTION READERS AND/OR LISTENERS. This weekend, I am participating in Rated M for Marathon, a 72-hour marathon of superhero video games to benefit Child's Play. Child's Play provides books, toys and games to children in long-term hospital care and domestic abuse shelters. Join as at twitch.TV/ratedMFormarathon, where our dignity is for sale! Currently, we are doing shots for dollars. Every ten dollars allows you to force me to do a double shot. We are also singing, reading fan fiction, and being tazed. Our dignity is for sale!

Now back to your regularly scheduled HOT SPORTS TAKES.

Engage Subliminal Programming Alpha

Attention SKOdcast listeners: The moment is upon us. The first official test of the Start Kyle Orton Football Pedantry Hypnotism Initiative™begins now. Fortunately for you, we just want you to request topics or questions for discussion in this week's episode instead of, say TOPPLE THE GOVERNMENT.

So if you would all kindly post your requests to this article, leave one in the SKOsbox to the right, or else get at Kyle on the Twitter that graces the top of our page, or else e-mail us at startkyleorton@gmail.com (full disclosure: I don't actually know if Travis ever checks that e-mail), we'll endeavor to hit as many as we can.

And now I'm hearing sirens. Did you guys... the government thing was a joke. No, stop! Stop! ENGAGE COMMAND OVERRIDE NECKBEARD-THREE-SEVEN. Oh, of course that's the part that didn't work.

Ex-Bears Quarterback of the Day: Rick Mirer

Twelve years before Jay Cutler, the Bears traded a different first round pick to a different AFC West team to acquire a strong-armed mobile quarterback. The man was to be the 9,787th attempt at finding a savior at the most important position, and he was also supposed to the person who saved Dave Wannstedt's ass. He failed epically at both.

This man, of course, was Rick Mirer.

The Skodcast Season Two, Episode Six: In Which Kyle Dies

 There is a new episode of the Skodcast with which to massage your cochlea, if that's the sort of thing you're into. And you read it right, Kyle does indeed die at the end of this episode. From now on it's just Travis and I, and we're mostly going to grunt at each other over Skype while playing video games.

But for now, feast your offseason-addled brains on our riveting discussion of Jimmy Clausen, the tandem evolution of the nickel corner and slot receiver roles, and probably a bunch of other shit I dunno. These things are like an hour long, I'm not going to listen to the entire thing before I do the write-up.


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Ex-Bears Quarterback of the Day: Shane Matthews

The offseason is long, and dreary, and hell, I even watched soccer this week. To liven things up it's time for another sure-to-be-quickly-abandoned Start Kyle Orton Recurring Feature. This one focusing on the principle this entire site was founded on: discussing mediocre Bears quarterbacks.

Today, it's time to re-visit the man whose arm strength made Christian Ponder look like Brett Favre (if Brett Favre's throwing arm had actually been replaced with a cybernetic throwing arm that was even stronger): Shane Matthews.

How He Came to Be a Bear:
After a record-breaking career at the University of Florida (where all of his records were like, immediately broken by Danny Wuerffel), Matthews went undrafted because, well, dat arm. The Bears signed him as a UFA and he spent 1993-1996 as the third string quarterback, starting zero games and throwing just 17 passes, all in his final year. He then spent 1997 and 1998 with the Panthers before the Bears brought him back for the 1999 season.

Matthews was expected to compete for the third string job with Jim Miller and Moses Moreno, as longtime Bears starting QB Erik Kramer was expected to start until first round pick Cade McNown was ready. Everything about that sentence depresses the living shit out of me. The Bears unexpectedly released Kramer in June, however, and entered training camp with Matthews competing directly with McNown for the starting spot, which Matthews won, because the opponent was Cade McNown.

Back from the Depths: Phil Emery, Marc Trestman and the Re-Building of Jay Cutler

I keep going back to the game between the Bears and Cardinals in December of 2012. Following two disheartening losses to the Vikings and Packers (where Jay had been underwhelming at best) that dropped the team out of the playoff hunt, the Bears desperately needed a win against the Cardinals and some help in order to stay alive. During the game against the lifeless 5-9 Cardinals, Jay completed less than half of his passes for a measly 146 yards and looked lost. This wasn't a young, reckless, frustrated QB responding to breakdowns in protection by firing fastballs into double coverage. It wasn't even Jay forcing deep balls downfield in a futile attempt to make a play. It was just a quarterback who looked erratic, inaccurate, and lost.

Phil Emery saw the same thing. Jay Cutler was lost, and Phil had a choice to make. Keep the head coach and coordinator who was supposedly so estranged from his own quarterback that the two barely spoke and lose the quarterback forever, or replace them and dedicate one more year to trying to reclaim the talented young passer who threw for over 4500 yards and made the Pro Bowl in his last year in Denver.

As we know, Emery made the choice to roll with Cutler, and the result was a 2013 season that was, despite being cut short by injury, Cutler's best in many ways. He set career highs in passer rating, had the highest completion % of his Bears career, the second highest yards per game average of his career, and the highest TD%. Emery saw enough in Cutler's progress in 2013 to reward him with a long term contract extension. With Cutler the Bears starter at quarterback for the foreseeable future, it's worth looking back at Emery's plan and seeing how he and Marc Trestman turned Jay back into a viable starter.

1) Find the Coach: There were different reasons why the previous offensive coordinators that handled Jay in Chicago had all failed. Ron Turner's scheme was vanilla and outdated, and incapable of producing without a dominant run game.

SEASON TWO EPISODE FIVE THE ONE WHERE WE KIND OF RAMBLE

There is a new episode of the SKOdcast available for your auditory stimulation, if you are inclined to hear it. We talk a little bit about wider NFL draft news, and some about the success of college athletes in the NFL, and probably some other stuff. Why would I know? I was only there. You listen to it and tell me, Mr. Smartypants.

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Also, let the record show I promised TEC I would come in and upload it Saturday just for him, and then I played Watch_Dogs in my underwear all day instead. WE'LL MAKE IT UP TO YOU BUDDY.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

They often say the NFL is a copycat league. Sometimes this is an infuriating development, like when Mike Martz inexplicably tries to run the wildcat with Devin Hester because the Dolphins manage to beat the Patriots with it one time.

Other times, it just makes sense, like the proliferation of the West Coast Offense or the number of teams that have started to use the spread or run most of their offense out of the shotgun because it suits the abilities of their quarterbacks.

In the Bears case, Phil Emery has very clearly had two franchises that he's focused on emulating the last two seasons. The Bears offense, while original any many ways thanks to Trestman's sometimes unorthodox approach, shares many broad similarities and an over-arching philosophy with the vastly successful Saints attack, thanks to Trestman's close relationship with Sean Payton and his hire of Aaron Kromer as offensive coordinator. Obviously this approach has been successful, with the Bears actually out-scoring their de facto mentors this past year. Thanks to the recent moves to lock up Jay Cutler, Matt Slauson, and now Brandon Marshall, they should be able to compete at that level for at least a few more years.

This year Phil Emery has very obviously decided to model the defense after the Seahawks. This only makes sense, since the Seahawks are clearly the best defense in the NFL, but it's not exactly surprising that any number of teams are hoping to emulate what Pete Carroll and John Schneider built in the northwest.

Unlike many failed imitations in NFL history, however, the Bears may be able to make this defensive conversion work. While it's unlikely the defensive makeover will result in the Bears defense outpacing their role models like the Bears offense did, it's worth examining how Emery has attempted to copy the Seahawks approach.

1) Big corners: Charles Tillman, Kyle Fuller, and Tim Jennings are not quite the size of Richard Sherman or Brandon Browner, but Tillman and Fuller are both bigger corners, and all three are sure tacklers capable of squaring up offensive players and securing the edge without help. It's worth remembering that just a year before the disaster of 2013, Tillman and Jennings were the starting corners in the Pro Bowl. While they're undoubtedly unlikely to repeat that performance this year, there's no reason to think a healthy Tillman and Jennings can't give the Bears the flexibility they need to play the Cover 1 and Cover 3 coverages that Seattle likes to use most and allow the defense to be successful.

2)A defensive line of interchangeable parts: last year the Seahawks had one pure edge rusher in Cliff Avril. Avril was a liability against the run and pretty much always has been, but the Seahawks had enough versatile pieces around him to allow him to do what he does best.

Enter Jared Allen for the Bears. Allen was never even close to being as good of a run defender as he was a pass-rusher, and to expect him to improve in that department as a Bear would be fool-hardy, but he can still be a pass-rush specialist for a team that won't ask him to do much more than that.

Outside of Avril, the Seahawks featured twolarger than average defensive ends who often rotated to DT in  Michael Bennett, and Red Bryant. The versatility of these three players allowed them to hide the fact that Seattle didn't have the truly dominant 3 technique associated with many great 4-3 defenses.

This year the Bears have a very versatile DE in Lamarr Houston who is very similar physically to Bennett. While Houston lacks the pass-rush ability of Bennett, he's still productive in that department and is as capable of playing the 3 technique as Bennett. While Willie Young probably won't slide inside very often, he proved last year that he can set the edge against the run and will likely be moved around from left and right end, and maybe even to OLB in some packages, much as the Seahawks rotated the similarly-sized Chris Clemons.

The Bears also have two different defensive tackles in Jay Ratliff and Stephen Paea who have experience both in primarily run-stopping roles (Ratliff a 3-4 nose guard, Paea as a 4-3 nose), but have the speed and flexibility to contribute at 3 technique. Behind them are the newly drafted Will Sutton (a natural 3 technique when he's at his peak weight, but who bulked up and got experience playing the nose as well last year) and Ego Ferguson. Ego is clearly the person meant to be the Bears eventual answer to Brandon Mebane, a big, hulking man-monster who controls two gaps and frees up the rest of the line to attack the backfield.

While they have to prove it on the field, I believe there's a enough talent on that Bears defensive line to match the production Seattle got from its front four last year.

3) Move your pass-rush specialist to SLB: Bruce Irvin was a surprise pick at #13 in 2012, and after a fairly successful first season and 8 sacks as a rookie, the Seahawks made the curious decision to move Irvin to SLB in order to create more opportunities for Avril, Bennett and Clemons at DE. The move actually worked pretty well as Irvin's athleticism made him a great fit at OLB, and he was able to utilize his pass rush skills in blitz packages. Avril finished the season with 45 tackles, an INT, 2 sacks, and 15 hurries despite getting off to a slow start thanks to a 4 game suspension. The Bears are hoping Shea McClellin, a similar athlete, can enjoy a similar result.

Unfortunately there's two major pieces missing from this puzzle, one of whom is arguably the single most important player on the Seahawks defense. Ryan Mundy may be a perfectly capable strong safety, but I don't think he's Kam Chancellor, and while there's reason to like the talent of Brock Vereen, I don't know if I could drink enough to make him look like Earl Thomas.

Without that athleticism and talent at safety it's unlikely the Bears can come close to duplicating the defensive success the Seahawks enjoyed last year, but with the comparable talent in the front seven and corner, there's certainly enough pieces in place, combined with that already elite offense, to get this team into the postseason, where they'll maybe have the chance to surpass one or both of their heroes.

The Skodcast! Season Two, Episode Four.

A new Skodcast, in which we discuss the draft! Really, that's pretty much it. It's pretty novel to have a full hour's worth of honest-to-God football stuff to talk about again.
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The Skodcast Pre-draft Extravaganza

There is a new episode, in which I am not present because these elderly gentlemen can't start an hour-long recording at 7 o'clock. It contains the phrase "Ha Ha Clinton-Dix," so there's that.


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As Yoda Would Say, There is Another

Travis isn't in this one either, because Kyle actually murdered him in a drug deal gone sour. We didn't want to tell you like this.


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The Skodcast returns!

FEAST YOUR EARS. On this old episode Travis didn't bother to show up for. Now complete with links to the site as hosted, and a download link for your convenience! Are we not generous masters?

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