Good as Gould!

Gould is Money!

Gould Payday!

Etc.

We don’t know for how much Gould, but today the Bears used some of their salary cap space to re-sign Robbie, the most accurate kicker in their history. It’s a five-year deal running through 2013.

What a find by Jerry Angelo. Gould was signed in 2005 from a construction job, and I just hoped he’d be good enough to make it through the year until the Bears could sign a real kicker. Then he made all-pro in 2006.

Some good news today.

Whew. Aside from the NFL’s latest boating scandal, there isn’t much going on with the Bears at the present juncture. I had nothing, but thankfully Brad Biggs of the Chicago Sun-Times has bailed me out. Saw him on television at the Bears Care Gala, and he probably got a few tidbits to use for his blog while the getting is tough in May.

Yesterday, Biggs posted that Kyle Orton believes the Bears have upgraded at the receiver position, despite losing Muhsin Muhammad and Bernard Berrian. Hm.

He also states he’s never been more excited to go into a season. Of course he hasn’t, given he’s going into this season with the best chance to be the bona fide starter in his career. If he plays the way he did in 2007’s final two games, I’m all for it.

Cedric Benson is innocent until proven guilty, of course. And the friends lucky enough to be invited onto his luxury yacht are coming to his defense, stating he did nothing wrong and was manhandled. How that situation will play itself out, only time will tell.

Regardless of how that situation plays itself out, in my opinion, Benson is an aloof, overpaid, underachieving bust.

I still find it interesting how Benson even became a Bear. Let’s all remember that following the 2002 season, Jerry Angelo announced that Anthony Thomas was not an elite running back So prior to the 2004 season, Angelo signed Thomas Jones to a very reasonable contract before the sun rose on the first day of free agency. Jones was a perfect fit for Terry Shea’s hybrid Kansas City/St. Louis offense, we were told.

Following a miserable offensive season in 2004, Shea was fired and Ron Turner hired. Despite Jones turning in decent rushing numbers, and catching more passes in a season than any other Bears running back in history, Smith, Turner and Angelo decided the Bears needed a stronger inside runner at the position.

That’s all fine and good. But as soon as the pre-draft scouting publications started calling Benson soft, a character risk and “like Rickey Williams but not as good,” my thought was “how is Benson different than Thomas?” Thomas was a free agent and attracted very little interest from other teams. I thought instead of drafting Benson with the fourth overall pick and sinking millions upon millions guaranteed into a potential head case, why not just re-sign Thomas to a reasonable deal, since Thomas had at least proven something?

But alas, that’s not how it worked out, and Bear fans sit in the offensive morass year after year. Indeed, the Benson saga prompted Pro Football Talk to release their bust list from the 2005 first round, and Benson sits squarely on that list.

Let’s just hope that Angelo thinks Matt Forte is an elite back, after investing a high second-round choice in him.

The mad, awful science experiment is over. The Bears released safety Adam Archuleta today. Whew. Thank God. Hey, I’m as guilty as anyone else. One can probably search on this blog and read me raving about the 2007 trade that brought him to Chicago. How wrong I was, as well as the guys who get paid to scout and should have known better.

No offense to Adam, but the Bears just became a better football team for 2008 by subtraction.

Lost in the Cedric Benson he said, she said is the fact that there was a rookie minicamp at Halas Hall last weekend. Here’s how it wrapped up.

Benson’s camp still insists, of course, that he did nothing wrong and was mistreated by police.

But the police have their side of the story, despite what Benson’s attorney would like us to believe.

And they have their arrest report.

In the interest of fairness, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Cedric Benson says he didn’t do it.

Time will tell to what conclusion the law will come.

…to be disgusted when the Bears selected Cedric Benson with the fourth overall pick in the 2005 draft.

Jump back to 1998. When the Bears selected Curtis Enis, I grabbed the heaviest item within reach that wouldn’t break my vintage 1985 console screen and threw it. Enis, of course, turned out to be a flop, despite the fact that some in the “real” media estimate he was headed to a Rookie of the Year season. He wasn’t.

In 2005, many had predicted that the Bears would select Benson. I hated the idea. Benson’s stock dropped precipitously as draft day neared. The book on him was that Benson was “like Rickey Williams but not as good.” That turned me on him right there, and reports that he lacked NFL speed and elusiveness didn’t endear him to me any further. After the Bears selected him and he began to cry because he was treated so unfairly by everyone prior to the draft, I was done with him. Then came the longest holdout in the NFL, threats to never play for the Bears, then consistent injuries to a player that never missed a game in college.

Now Benson has been arrested and pepper-sprayed. How much longer do we have to live with the farce that the Bears still have confidence in this NFL washout? One of many NFL washouts the Bears have selected highly in the first round.

Slow news week but should pick up with the rookie minicamp at Halas Hall starting today.

This Chicago Bears Fan ran a marathon in Boston in Packers gear to raise money for veterans. What a class guy. I don’t know if I could bring myself to do it, but good for him. The best part to me is that even in Boston, onlookers were yelling GO BEARS! at him. Nice.

I’m always interested in knowing the new rookies’ uniform numbers. Here they are.

Courtesy of my friends at www.cbfans.info, Peter King of SI ranks the Chicago Bears 2008 draft as #1. As in the #1 draft he didn’t like.

Look, we have to deal with the fact that the Bears didn’t take a quarterback in the 2008 draft. Right or wrong, Jerry Angelo has much more at stake than we do. If Chad Henne or Brian Brohm turn out to be studs and Matt Forte is a flop like his predecessor, Curtis Enis I mean Cedric Benson, then Angelo should be gone. But at this point all I can assume is that Angelo and his staff did their homework, and they rightly decided that Forte had a better shot at becoming a stud than either Brohm or Henne. It can’t just be that Angelo thinks Rex Grossman and/or Kyle Orton are the certain answers at the position, as some in the national media indicate.

I fully understand now why Angelo took the defensive tackle, safety and cornerback in rounds three through five. Those guys all reportedly have starter talent and could be real mid-round gems like Nathan Vasher, Dusty Dvoracek and Chris Harris were. I don’t really understand, though, taking the tight end (fifth) and the defensive end (seventh) over Erik Ainge, Andre Woodson and Matt Flynn. Again, all that can be surmised is that Angelo really felt those QB’s aren’t going to amount to anything. He better be right.

Besides, if you believe the papers, the Bears may have just signed the next Tony Romo as an undrafted free agent in Nick Hill from Southern Illinois. I’m excited about this pickup, but would have preferred the real Tony Romo in 2003.

Not going to have a chance to update the site tomorrow, so this review of the Chicago Bears 2008 draft is written before they make their final three seventh round picks.

Here’s a summary:

Round 1, Pick 14: T Chris Williams, Vanderbilt

Round 2, Pick 44: RB Matt Forte, Tulane

Round 3, Pick 70: WR Earl Bennett, Vanderbilt

Round 3, Pick 90: DT Marcus Harrison, Arkansas

Round 4, Pick 120: S Craig Steltz, LSU

Round 5, Pick 142: CB Zack Bowman, Nebraska

Round 5, Pick 158: TE Kellen Davis, Michigan State

Round 7, Pick 208: DE Ervin Baldwin, Michigan State

Round 7, Pick 222: G Chester Adams, Georgia

With three more picks to go, these are my thoughts.  What are yours?  Post your comments!

• Similar to 2004, when Tommie Harris fell right into the Bears’ laps, which made me happy, things just lined up for the Bears in the first round.  It had been predicted that as many as five teams might take tackles before the Bears’ first pick came up, but surprisingly only 2 had been taken (Jake Long, Ryan Clady) before Chicago’s pick.  Williams was the consensus third best tackle in the draft and the Bears were able to take the guy they probably wanted all along.  Fantastic.
• I like the next two picks in Matt Forte and Earl Bennett, guys the Bears had worked out and liked.  The defensive tackle, Bennett, must have been the best player on the board when they took him.  Fine with me, as there is a need at tackle.
• The fourth-round safety was OK by me too, as the position is thin.
• Some of the other picks confuse me.  A corner, when we took 2 corners last year and the starters locked up for six years?  The tight end was OK by me as well, with the loss of John Gilmore.  But another defensive end?  Why?
• Green Bay and Minnesota loaded themselves with quarterbacks I would have liked to see on the Bears: Brian Brohm, Matt Flynn and John David Booty.  Are we going to go into 2008 with just Grossman and Orton?  Seriously?
• Angelo and company seem to have forgotten that we’re still missing a guard.  Don’t know if the seventh-rounder can really compete.  Looks like it will be John St. Clair there, and I don’t know how good I feel about that.

Your thoughts?