Here's the problem - I have no idea what to expect going in to week five. I have a pretty strong feeling that Jay Cutler will bounce back, and if Brandon Marshall is able to recover at all, he'll have some touchdown catches. I'm also sure that Matt Forte will run a solid ground game and Martellus Bennett will make some tough catches in traffic.
On the defensive side, I can predict that we will not get a sack, our high-end draft pick might get an interception or he might not, and that's about it. Oh, the other team will score basically at will. I guess it was a little less humiliating when I could rest easy knowing that the defense would hold a team down; there weren't such lopsided scores, usually. But now, if the opposing team has a decent defense, the game can get out of control pretty quickly, as evidenced last Sunday.
I don't know what Mel Tucker has done that would warrant another year of questionable preparation and poor execution. His squad is inconsistent at best. Losing Tillman and Allen sucks, but they can't play forever. If there's no depth, that's hard to fathom considering all the movement in the off-season.
The common thought going into this season was that the defense didn't have to be great, just good. They have to be able to stop some drives cold. So far, we've only really seen that in one game. Willie Young and Kyle Fuller show flashes of great, but they remind me of the wide receivers we had before Marshall and Jeffery - good, but not great. Level two players.
Unfortunately, upgrading to great doesn't guarantee wins. My biggest concern in bringing in Marc Trestman was that we'd have an inverse Lovie. Even then, I thought it would be nice to be able to score touchdowns and possibly get into a shootout and win.
I was reminded that Trestman was an offensive coordinator candidate while Lovie was here, but we ended up with Mike Martz instead. Talk about a night and day difference in styles. The idea of Smith and Trestman together is interesting, but there was also the old GM in play, and he had been misfiring on draft picks and free agents for years. I think Trestman and Marinelli would have been even more intriguing, especially since that might have changed the negotiations with Brian Urlacher.
No sense crying over spilled milk, though. Can't let the ghost of Urlacher affect the present. The defense is still in flux - no identity and depleted. The offense has equal or better upside than any other team in the league, but no real rhythm yet, and so the outlook for the rest of the year remains the same - the defense needs to be serviceable, and the offense needs to become automatic.
The Panthers are a similar team with lots of upside but lots of obstacles. The Bears have plenty of tools to stop them, but if they let a broken QB (or his backup) walk all over them, then my hope for the remaining 11 games will be dashed. However, if they contain the Panthers and start scoring, I'm already on the bandwagon - just need to adjust my seat.
GO BEARS!
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