I suspect much will depend on the health/effectiveness of Tillman and Urlacher. Urlacher has been particularly effective against Rogers in the past.

well that was a bag of ####

I think if you asked Bears fans if they'd be happy holding Rodgers to 22 of 32 for 219 yards and a TD before the game they'd have said yes. Yeesh.

I only watched the first half... but that was not at all the game I was expecting.

Sooo.... I guess the Niners offense is really good, and the Bears defense is as good as the Niners?
(Week 1 is national jump to conclusions week, Week 2 is national extrapolate from limited data week)

i remain suspicious of the packers defense as the bears game plan was just weird. though i do give the packers credit for tremendous effort and run defense starts with great effort.

it was also tremendous of the packers getting a special teams trick play on the team famous for good special teams play.

worthy was a cipher last week and this week mixed it up. is that the bears stinking on the o-line or the young man adjusting his game?

i am not here to tell the bears how to line up but gabe carimi would be a better option than the guy they currently have at left tackle. has to be.

So the bears suck. That was a terrible game.

Harvey, I also have no idea why they don't try Carimi at LT. Webb is just awful, and last night it looked as though he couldn't block a determined mouse.

chris

asking any lineman to block mathews by himself is a tall order. one of mathews distinctive traits is that he never stops coming. you have to defeat his first, second and third move and if your qb moves cm will break free and track him down.

i am not upset with the officials but merely pointing out that another crew might have called at least 3 holding calls against mathews by bears linemen.

if worthy or perry can provide anything in terms of a rush keeping teams honest mathews could have a huge year.

If we lived in an alternate universe where no one knew who the referees told and we were never told these were replacement officials, would we even have noticed yet?

I think yes--but only because of a couple of really amateurish mistakes like not knowing how many timeouts Seattle had. I think based only on bogus/missed penalties, absolutely not. Football fans have been ######## about unfairly called or uncalled holding and pass interference since the dawn of time.

zeth

first,i specifically wrote that i was not upset and therefore was not complaining.

but last night there were several what i would term obvious. i have played the game, i have reffed the game so i feel pretty comfortable stating that when mathews was grabbed by the shoulder pads and pulled to the ground on top of the lineman who was falling to the ground that is a hold.

i clarify up front that i am not complaining but observing and then the post gets lumped in with fans complaining about penalties all the time

c'mon. give me a break

Yeah, either the Bears OL is really bad, or the Niners' is really good. I might actually be coming around to the latter.

Or the Green Bay DL is schizoid. I didn't see the Colts/Bears game but apparently the Bears had big troubles until Freeney went out.

The OL wasn't good, but it looked to me like Cutler generally had time to get a throw off. But if his first option wasn't open, and it usually wasn't, he went down.

tom

the only knock i would put on cutler from last night was that he seemed to be throwing at times as he was falling back causing the ball to sail

I didn't see the Colts/Bears game but apparently the Bears had big troubles until Freeney went out.

I've read this several places too. If it is an issue for the Bears to deal with impressive individual defensive playmakers, that might be something they can scheme around. If I'm the Bears I'm not worried yet, they don't have too hellacious a schedule and the season is very young. I still think they end up 10-6 and make the playoffs.

I also think the Packers have to be concerned after the past two weeks about their offense. Any team using Cedric Benson as their number 1 RB isn't going to be great on the ground and their O-line hasn't looked nearly as good as last year in the limited time I've seen them. Of course, it would be hard for that offense to be as good as last year and at the same time it's not unlikely that their defense has improved from ranking 25th in DVOA.

Harveys: actually this is my first post in the thread and was a generalized point, I wasn't thinking of any one person or post in particular. There's a lot of ######## about officiating going on, but then, last year there was a lot of ######## about officiating going on. There were some blown calls. I'm actually of the opinion that, compared even to high-level (SEC) college football the NFL moves at warp speed, and compared to anything below high-level college the NFL is so much faster it strains the language to come up with the words to compare. As such, NFL officials deserve a lot more than what the NFL's been paying them.

scott

running the ball in green bay is far more dependent on the line than who carries the ball since ted thompson refuses to invest any money in running backs and mike mccarthy is a pass first coach

as to the offensive line newhouse isn't chad clifton and jeff saturday is not scott wells.

zeth

i work to not gripe about officiating barring an obvious misunderstanding of the rules or a truly egregious infraction. and even then i will mostly sigh as opposed to a hissy fit only because i know it is pointless to fume

If we lived in an alternate universe where no one knew who the referees told and we were never told these were replacement officials, would we even have noticed yet?

Yes, but not because of the bad judgement calls. We'd know because these refs don't know the rules. They are screwing up things like keeping track of time outs (it happened in two games on Sunday, not just Arizona-Seattle), placement of the ball, what down it is, etc. at an alarming rate. PI, holding... we're going to get bad calls on those with any refs. Not having the right down as happened last night, that's just inexcusable at the highest level.

Also -- and this isn't remotely significant, just something that bugs me -- how do they decide which ref is the one to announce the penalty? Because the guy last night could barely form coherent sentences.

Really made me miss Ed Hoculi and his 12-minute explanations.

if the numbers on vegasinsider.com are correct, over 90% of the money being bet on the eagles-ravens game is behind the ravens. 98% of the money being waged on the money-line is on the ravens.


that's kind of insane.

More fun with refs. Ryans goes down on Philadelphia 43. 15 yard dead ball penalty. And they put the ball on BLT 32, then BLT 37 before getting it right.

Well, Miami's not going 0-16.

CJ Spiller is the man!

Schiano D looked to be really confusing the Giants in the first half, but it is falling apart spectacularly at the moment.

And then Josh Freeman threw a bomb down half the field for a TD

And now they just called OPI as a 15-yard penalty.

Incredible air-show in New Jersey today.

Schiano's Bucs seem decent enough. If we wins 9 he could get some coach of the year mentions.

I know there's no guarantees on a FG from the 1 yard line, blah blah, but I think the Giants messed this up.

The Cardinals offered, but the Patriots refused.

Holy crap! Coughlin screwd this up bad.

agh, he dropped it. Coughlin is going to get saved.

You know, I think that's a fumble out of bounds, not an incompletion.

Pats loss takes out about half of all survivor pools. Good thing I had the Chargers. /jinxed myself there

it is my old eyes failing or does ben of the steelers look in shape?

last year he looked pretty tubby.

I think the Rams have "dominated in time of possesion" because the Redskins have scored quickly, including off turnovers.

Anyone have any thoughts about the coaches' quarrel at the end of Bucs/Giants game. Why not try to force a fumble on the ending kneeldown? Doesn't seem bush league to me.

the afc east is not having a good weekend save for the bills who got to play a romeo coached team which is like playing the jv

is there traffic in pittsburgh after a game? looks like a lotofpeople have left already.

the afc east is not having a good weekend save for the bills who got to play a romeo coached team which is like playing the jv

Have Miami and Oakland been relegated? That would explain a lot...

Also, I expect JV coaches everywhere will be demanding an apology.

Upset about the Skins loss, Morgan's an idiot and Rocca (useless fuxking Aussie) was charged down again. Looked like he hesitated a step.

Bardford played well though - good for him.

Upset about the Skins loss, Morgan's an idiot and Rocca (useless fuxking Aussie) was charged down again. Looked like he hesitated a step.

just wait until november. savarino is ####### terrible in cold weather. he can really boom it 70 yards in good weather, but he'll be lucky to crack 40 when the temperature gets under that.


a few quick thoughts on the eagles game:

the eagles have now won their first two games of the season by 1 point each. they are the first team in NFL history to do that. in fact, in their entire history, the eagles have only won 25 games by a single point.

also, the last 3 teams to win the home opener at lincoln financial field were the saints, packers, and giants. somewhat related to that, the last three NFL champions were the saints, packers, and giants.

and i'm not sure how he finished, but there was a point in the 2nd half where joe flacco was 4/16 as a passer. for the eagles defense, that's on top of last week where they held brandon weeden to 12/35 as a passer. it's very early in the season, but you've gotta be pretty ecstatic for that kind of performance from the defense. and, believe it or not, there's more upside there. the passrush hasn't really gotten untracked yet, and with the way the back end of the defense has stiffened up so far, if babin, cole, jenkins, cox, landri, thornton, tapp, graham, and hunt can start to get sacks, this defense could be scary good.

brent celek is a ####### god. 8 catches for 157 yards, plus 2 jaw-dropping moments, 1-where he hurdled over an attempted tackle by ed reed, and 2-where he was demolished by bernard pollard, and then after laying on the ground for about a 2 count, he sprung to feet, gave a little strut, and then signaled first down. the crowd went wild and it kind of set the tone for his performance--at least for this game, but hopefully for the season. with all the attention that needs to be paid to jackson, to vick, to mccoy, to maclin, celek should be able to put up this kind of performance week in, week out.



and that kicker the ravens had, he hit 56, 52, and 48 yard field goals with tons of room to spare. i'm not a huge physics guy, but hte 56 yarder he hit in the 2nd quarter looked like it could have cleared the post from 70. the kid had a hell of a leg.


oh, and 9 turnovers through 2 games. i cannot imagine that winning will be sustainable for very long if that doesn't get ironed out.

also, in their last 10 games, the eagles are 10-0. they finished on a 4 game winning streak last year, they swept the preseason this year, and now they're 2-0 going into week 3. it's probably the least impressive 10-0 streak imaginable, but #### it, it's still 10 straight wins in the NFL. that ####'s kind of rare.

NFC is 7-1 vs. AFC, NFCs one loss was Vikings to Colts.

If Philly can go 4-2 in the NFCE they should win the division.

Panthers defense looks crappy as ever, but Kuechly is really good.

Cowboys outlasted Tampa Bay today. Sorry I didn't get to see any of the game, I love field goals :)

the vickiest play in the history of vick.

So, who was holding the Falcons back more, Mike Mularkey or Brian VanGorder?

steeler db laid out heywood-bay of oakland. that was a serious head shot. setting aside there was no flag bey is not moving.

while in the cart he raised his right hand to the crowd.

that was a vicious shot. not picking on the steelers but the who made the hit has to be looking at a suspension

A Steelers player took a cheap, dirty hit on an offensive player? I'm shocked.

It's pretty chippy in Baltimore. Refs let a lot of skirmishes pass without a flag, until they finally threw one.

8 sacks in a half?