I would agree with you that all the starters played, just seemed pretty
pedestrian offensive moves. Maybe that is what they have won with all
year... or maybe not..

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Considering they dont know who they are playing in 2 weeks and that there is 16 weeks worth of tape for opposing teams to look at , I highly doubt they were worried about showing any new wrinkles to anyone, if they even have any to show. Really,how many teams start changing their playbooks just because its the playoffs. If they are so inclined to change something, may I suggest to the bears to change their blocking scheme to you know, maybe start pass blocking at some point.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Almost a carbon copy of what is/was going on here, minus having some athletic receivers who knew the system. I say was because Lovie has undoubtedly crushed some of the front office turmoil about the immediate future of the team. But you can bet that this is a team that has suffered from some battle lines being drawn behind closed doors, and everything that goes along with that. And it was the same in Denver.

In Denver he was drafted to a team that has serious issues in the front office, a line that could pass block well at times, but was not anywhere as good as they are now. The lack of sacks during his time there does not represent the story. As we have all heard, and some of us saw, Shanahan played to Cutler's strengths, and that led to acceptable sack numbers, but he was still pressured a lot. They had an anemic at best, running game, and a Defense that was flat out terrible.

Despite all of that, he put up serious numbers, and almost took a bad team into the playoffs. That team was winning on the backs of 1 freak WR, a good #2, a good possession WR, and Cutler. They scored points through the air. But he has never been on a competent team, that has not been in a state of drastic change, possible change, or flat out turmoil.

So really, what you had in Denver was Aaron Rogers. And people were plenty willing to crown Cutler the next big thing. He comes here, minus the WR corps in Denver (but all of the other negatives he had in Denver, including the worst o-line in football in Chicago) and people apparently do not have the brain power to understand what that might look like, and how you probably should reserve judgment on this kid.

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016

I have no idea where the OL stuff is coming from. Denver was #9 in total rushing yards and #3 in rushing YPA in 2007; they were a mediocre pass-pro unit (14th in Adjusted Sack Rate) but QBs have at least as much to do with sacks as offensive lines so you probably chalk that up to Cutler's inexperience. In 2008 the running game suffered a bit (12th in total rushing yards, T - 7th in rushing YPA, though they were 1st in Adjusted Line Yards), but that line was irrefutably an elite pass-blocking group: they allowed only 12 sacks all season, good for 4th in the NFL in Adjusted Sack Rate at 3.3%. Posting similarity scores for recent-vintage Bears OLs would belabor the self-evident to the point of insulting both of us, so I'll instead extend an olive branch by acknowledging that his defenses were always terrible, and that I probably buy the skill-position stuff even more than you only because I find Marshall the most laughably overrated player in football. That said, I get that Cutler takes way too much abuse from the fire-and-passion crowd, but bending over backward to argue that Denver's offense had him swimming upstream the way the Bears' does is just completely untrue.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

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