the Bears swarm to the ball like no other team. It’s a really scary/impressive thing to watch. If you haven’t seen a bears game in the past couple years, check a couple out this season. If the first guy doesn’t take the ball-carrier down there are 2 or 3 or 4 more guys waiting to.

That’s how I want our defense to play.

And Curt, I think you’re absolutely right, one of the little looked at things that’ll happen this year is our offense, being better, (especially being able to run better) will eat away more clock. If our D isn’t on the field for 40 minutes of a game, then we for sure have a top 10 D in the league, IMO. The best D’s I’ve seen were ones that swarm to the ball, and are physical up front, and also able to tackle well. A few years ago I would’ve said we were 0/3 on those. We didn’t swarm, we had Ryan Sims up front, enough said on that, and we couldn’t tackle PeeWee players.. Last year we did good, but this year we will do better.

I think overall team speed on the offense (actually all thru the team) is the best we’ve seen in a looooong time. Mark my words, Will Franklin is going to impress, and may well develop into a star in this league. That man was MONEY everytime they needed him in big games at Mizzou. With Bowe garnering all the attention on the other side, Franklin could have a great rookie season.

As to your comments on the D… again, you’re right on the money. Even with the loss of Jared, across the board the line is younger, more talented, and I think more committed than Jared ever was to making the whole defense a top notch group. Jared’s 15 sack season was an abberation for one big reason: our secondary was so slow and ill suited to play the cover two, folks threw on us more than they will this year – and this gave Jared more chances than he will get in a more balanced defense. And I agree JA feasted on what Hali was serving up to him. Boone/Dorsey should be able to set the table for Tamba… and as he has better feet than JA, the sack total will be just fine.

Finally, if the offense can average 4 or 5 more first downs per game, the defense will get 12-15 minutes of rest per game… that just HAS to make a difference in how well the D performs. They will be fresher and opponents will get fewer downs to rack up yards/1st downs/points. Don’t be surprized if this years D can crack the Top Ten.

GO CHIEFS!!!

And TLH isn’t worth the time it takes to go over there, log in, and type something out. We’ve already handled them before, so let’s get someone new, Patriot’s fans anyone? Shouldn’t be too hard to topple a couple dozen bandwagon fans in a matter of moments. One word.. Eli.

Nice article, Steven! Enjoyed it and agreed with almost all of it. Although it would probably take divine intervention and the voice of God for me to believe in Brodie