As the Bears continue their Kamikaze death spiral into oblivion and Brian Urlacher has finally found a subject he can warm up to (LOOK! IT’S ALL ABOUT MEEEEEE!) and so on, I thought I would take a minute to ignore failure. I hope you don’t mind.
Our favorite reporter, a man who boldly goes to places when others merely dream, the man - the myth - the legend, ELLIOTT HARRIS takes a long look at The Bliss and likes what he sees.
LINGERIE LEAGUE: Unbeaten Bliss ready to go again
Looking for an undefeated pro football team that has local appeal?There’s always the Bliss of the Lingerie Football League.
Since winning the league debut in September, the Bliss hasn’t lost a game.
Never mind that it hasn’t played one.
The Bliss was to have played its first road game last month against the New York Majesty. But that game was postponed and ultimately canceled.
‘’They changed the venues,’’ Bliss coach Keith Hac told Quick Hits. ‘’They actually moved the game to Reading, Pa., and had extremely poor interest in the game. So the league just decided it’s probably best not to play it.
‘’They were going to call it a tie. Then I told them, ‘Listen, that’s like half a loss. If anything, you should consider it a no contest.’’’
So the Bliss is 1-0 heading into its game Friday in Florida against the Tampa Breeze. After that, it’s a Dec. 18 home game at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates against the Philadelphia Passion to complete the regular season.
‘’They [Philadelphia] got beat at home by Miami,’’ Hac said.
You might remember the Miami Caliente, the team that the Bliss beat in the league opener.
‘’We were real excited when we heard that,’’ Hac said.
Meaning an undefeated season isn’t that far off.
‘’It’s hard to say,’’ Hac said. ‘’From week to week, they can change overnight.
‘’The team is much improved over the previous game. We have a couple of girls that will be new to the roster. The offense has expanded considerably from where we were back in September.’’
As always, Quick Hits will try to provide complete coverage. Well, more complete than the uniforms the players wear.
It is always a pleasure to see people who not only enjoy their work but excel at it. Team captain, Danielle Moinet, has only lived in Chicago for 2 years (today is the anniversary of her move) and has already made a name for herself. More importantly, to me, The Bliss’ primary photographer Alex Goykham has been a friend of mine for years. So I get to see the out takes. Yeah, I love Alex.
I will grant that The Bliss tend more toward the entertainment side of Sports-Entertainment than more traditional sports. But, who cares? It is a fun way to kill a Friday night and is a better shot to see a winner on the field. Who could ask for anything more?
CLICK HERE TO TALK ABOUT A WINNER! (for a change)
Brian Urlacher is to sensible discussions what locust invasions are to tea parties. He is a great middle linebacker but public speaking has never been his forte. He has spent the last year or so avoiding the media. For him, this was a great public relations move. People could focus on his play and then leave. All was well until 2 days ago when he decided to opine on the status of Jay Cutler. Even though he claims he really wasn’t talking about Cutler while he was dropping Cutler’s name like F-bombs in an Ozzie interview. CAROL SLEZAK tries to make some sense of it all.
Brian, Brian, Brian. What possessed you to say those things about Jay Cutler? Don’t tell me that we’re going to have to add ‘’bad teammate’’ to your resume. As if the Bears didn’t have enough problems already, the last thing they needed was for their injured middle linebacker and supposed team leader to go on record with his negative feelings about their quarterback.
‘’Look, I love [Cutler], and I understand he’s a great player who can take us a long way, and I still have faith in him,’’ Urlacher told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports. ‘’But I hate the way our identity has changed. We used to establish the run and wear teams down and try not to make mistakes, and we’d rely on our defense to keep us in the game and make big plays to put us in position to win. Kyle Orton might not be the flashiest quarterback, but the guy is a winner, and that formula worked for us. I hate to say it, but that’s the truth.’’
The truth as he wants to believe it. Clearly, Urlacher has a skewed sense of history. The Bears’ running game and defense have been in decline for a few years, and they did not win anything with Orton. So what exactly was the point of Urlacher’s comments? Other than to take a shot at Cutler, that is.
If Orton is not ‘’the flashiest quarterback,’’ then by implication Cutler is all style, no substance. If Orton is ‘’a winner,’’ then by implication Cutler is a loser. That’s Urlacher’s message. Score one for team harmony.
Urlacher is right that the team mantra seems to have changed. No longer do they get off the bus running. In fact, given what we have seen in their last few games, they don’t even bother jogging. But, none of that is Cutler’s fault. He was brought in to be a modern QB in an ancient system.
He has no O-line to speak of, receivers who seem to run routes they ran on the playground and not in practice and a running game that is so far in the rear view mirror that one has to open a history book to find clues that it really was once here. Add in a defense that is ranking near the bottom in every category and you do not have a recipe for success.
Rutabaga borscht with buttermilk, maybe. But not success.
As ELLIOTT HARRIS pointed out, Cutler has been put in a lose/lose situation.
Speaking on the ‘’Mully and Hanley’’ show Monday on WSCR-AM (670), former Dallas Cowboys quarterback (Troy) Aikman said of Jay Cutler: ‘’He’s a quarterback that doesn’t trust he’s gonna have protection, to have the time to make the throws he wants to make, and then he doesn’t have the confidence that the receivers are going to be where they’re supposed to be when he’s ready to throw the ball with the exception of Greg Olsen. ... When you have those kind of doubts that I just said, it’s almost impossible to play well.’’
Meanwhile on the ‘’Waddle and Silvy’’ show Monday on WMVP-AM (1000), Buck was asked whether the Bears still are buying what coach Lovie Smith is selling:
‘’I just think they’re undermanned,’’ Buck said. ‘’I don’t think the Bears have quit on Lovie. ... I just think personnel-wise they have made a lot of false moves and they’ve made a lot of mistakes, and while Jay Cutler is an easy target and sometimes rightly so, there’s some other issues with that team with the offensive line, with the wide receivers, the defense is getting older, and I don’t know about that defensive scheme.’’
Memo to Bears: When Joe Buck can make fun of your schemes and be right, your schemes suck.
Add in the fact that rumors are beginning to surface that Cutler absolutely loathes Ron Turner and things are not going to get any better. In fact, upon finding this out I began to wonder if Turner was calling plays specifically designed to get Cutler killed. It sure seems that way. How else to explain leaving Jared Allen one on one the whole game? It isn’t like he’s new. There is plenty of film on the guy. Most of it is being copied by the Hall of Fame as I type.
Let’s be blunt here. This team is not that good. They are not a piece or two away from greatness. They are 3 years of, well planned, rebuilding away from decent. That is a very hard thing for me to to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true. They got in this position due to the General Manager and the coaching staff. Until they are all removed from the equation, we will never know which players are worth keeping and which ones are busts.