My Best (And Worst) Sports Predictions

I've really got nothing important to write about today, so I decided to take a trip down memory lane and figure out my hits and misses for sports predictions over the last year.

The Good:
When having my fantasy baseball draft, I predicted the following people were terrible picks:  Jacoby Ellsbury, Aramis Ramirez, Brian Roberts, Ben Zobrist, Michael Young, Derrek Lee, and Nolan Reimold.

When Baseball America ranked Alcides Escobar the #12 prospect in baseball, I called him the most overrated prospect on their list.  I don't care if some say that you shouldn't judge a prospect by his first year in the pros.  I'm like the immature cheese in that commercial (Cheese-It, I believe), la la la can't hear you.  LA LA LA, CAN'T HEAR YOU.

I liked Mike Trout more than Baseball America.  This is one I feel very good about since he's probably one of the top 3 prospects in all of baseball now.  Suck on that, BA.

I knew that Andrew Luck was really good, and Jake Locker was really bad.  Does that count?  It doesn't?  Fair enough, but I'm still keeping it up there.  By the way, although I never blogged it, I told everyone I talked to that Andrew Luck would come back for another year of school.

I predicted that if Jay Cutler could succeed under any coach, that coach would be Mike Martz.

I told anyone who would listen that Chester Taylor sucks.  Recently, Football Outsiders released their list of worst running backs according to advanced metrics, and Chester Taylor was the second worst running back in the NFL, right behind Lawrence Maroney.  Nice job, Chester.

The Bad:
When having my fantasy baseball draft, I predicted the following people were great picks:   Justin Upton, Grady Sizemore, BJ Upton (I LOVE me some Uptons), and Gordon Beckham.
I also said that drafting Ubaldo Jimenez in the 7th round was inexcusable (to be fair, I said it was inexcusable because Tommy Hanson and Clayton Kershaw were still on the board, so I'm still a jackass, just not a total jackass).  

When Starlin Castro was rated the #16 prospect in all of baseball, I called him the second most overrated prospect in baseball.  Now the real question is whether I will root for his success since he plays for the Cubs, or root for his downfall so I can look smart.  Cubs will suck either way, so probably the latter.

Proving that I have no business judging Cubs prospects, I thought Vitters should be ranked in the Top 40 when he was ranked at 70.  He proceeded to shit himself for an entire season.  How can he be bad?  His swing is so pretty, but he does like to show it off by swinging at every pitch imaginable.

I wrote an entire post on whether Jordan's Bulls could beat LeBron's Bulls, since, you know, LeBron was definitely going to Chicago.  Whoops.  The good news is that I picked Jordan's Bulls to win.

I advocated for the Bears signing John David Booty multiple times.  The worst part about predicting his greatness is that I still stand by it.   With his lineage, there is nothing that should hold him back:

I predicted a team to win the national championship.  That team lost five games.  We do not need to go into what team I am referring to.

-Joe

P.S.  This is the most dedicated tribute band in the world:  Of course it's a Def Leppard tribute band:

Why Do My Favorite Teams Hate Me?

I honestly don't know why my favorite teams hate me, but they do.

The Bulls got rid of Tyrus Thomas. Also, the Bulls game I went to in Seattle, both Thomas and Deng sat out. They hate me the least.

The Cubs got rid of Glenallen Hill, Juan Cruz, Jason Dubois, and Michael Wuertz. They also shredded Mark Prior's arm. They hate me the most.

And now we have the Bears. After today, they clearly hate me somewhere in the middle.

Although I did advocate going on a spending spree this offseason (since I knew they wouldn't go for my original plan of releasing everyone but Lance Briggs), they aren't spending wisely.

Each year, I pick a player that may be traded or is a free agent who I don't want the Bears to get. Last year, that player was Jay Cutler. After that debacle, nothing this offseason could top it, but I'm still bitter about it.
(Begin Rant)I think that if a person thought Jay Cutler was good before this season, they should not be able to have opinions on any NFL player for the rest of their life. I'm hoping that nobody actually watched him play and thought he was good, because that's damn near impossible. I hope it was just the ESPN hype machine that confused people, because Cutler sucks. For those that say he just needs a better offensive line, Ron Jaworski looked at all 26 of Cutler's interceptions to see how many were caused by poor offensive line play. You know how many were? Zero. Yep, he just makes bad decisions. (End Rant)

This year I picked another player that I know will suck, and some team will greatly overpay him. No, I'm not talking about Julius Peppers, I'm talking about Chester Taylor.

Julius Peppers was a necessary commitment, because the Cover-2 depends on pass rush from the front four defensive linemen to succeed. Although it's a six year deal, I glanced through it quickly and it looks like it's more of a three year deal where the Bears can get out of it pretty easily after that (Note, this may be incorrect, but always remember, very few multi year NFL deals actually last as long as the contract says).

But Chester Taylor? Are you kidding me? If they wanted a 30 year old without much wear on his body, why not go for Aaron Greving? He hasn't played for eight years, he should be fresh as a daisy.

The Guy The Bears Should Have Signed

The crazy thing is that Chester Taylor's last (and only) year that he was the primary back was 2006. He had 1200 yards, and barely averaged four yards per carry. I say barely, because his average (and total) was greatly helped by a 95 yard touchdown run that year.

At this point, you should probably be thinking, hey, he sounds like an average running back. But let me bring this point up, he was running behind three Pro-Bowl caliber linemen in Bryant McKinnie, Steve Hutchison, and Matt Birk. The Bears don't have any Pro-Bowl caliber linemen (Olin Kreutz sucks these days), and it's debatable whether they should be pros at all.

The Bears decided to pay $7 million guaranteed to, at best, an average backup. Oh yeah, and since the Bears were so speedy to do it, the Vikings can now sign a free agent which they would have been unable to do until somebody signed away one of their players.

I know, somewhere, deep down, the Bears still care about me. Jerry Angelo, you know what you have to do. It's so simple, just three simple letters...

JDB

-Joe

P.S. With John David Booty comes scenery like this, just replace Heisman with MVP:

Improving the Bears

For all but Saints and Colts fans, football season is over. This is a great time to look back on the positives and negatives of your favorite team. Looking back on the Bears season, the positives were that they beat Brett Favre and the Vikings and…um, shit, not much else.

The negatives were:

Trading For Jay Cutler and Giving Away a Bunch of High Picks

Brian Urlacher’s Injury

Giving Jay Cutler a Big Guaranteed Contract Through 2013

Our Offensive Line Being Swiss Cheese

Jay Cutler’s Interceptions

Matt Forte Taking a Major Step Backwards

Jay Cutler’s Stupid Look On His Face

Tommie Harris Having an IQ Lower Than 70

Jay Cutler Missing Wide Open Receivers

The Gaines Adams Trade

Not Getting the Real Jay Cutler

Lovie Smith Showing He Knows Nothing About Defense

Jay Cutler’s Leadership

Also, the off-season has gotten off to a stellar start with nobody wanting to be a coordinator for the Bears. On offense, they are going after a bunch of people with no proven track record, and none of them will even consider the position. Meanwhile, the one person with a proven track record of always having great offenses, Mike Martz, is practically begging for the job, and the Bears refuse to give him an interview.

But back to Jay Cutler. He sucks. The guy has never won. He didn’t win in college; he didn’t win for the Broncos. He is a loser. He has a very strong arm, and people really get excited about that, but he can’t read a defense to save his life (I’m not sure if he could read a book to save his life either).

Most people have jumped on board with the Jay Cutler Sucks Bandwagon, but there are still those people that feel he just needs a #1 Receiver to be great. I have great news for those people, the Bears first round pick this year is currently projected to select: Dez Bryant, WR, Oklahoma State. Dez Bryant is arguably the best receiver to come out of college since Calvin Johnson, as most scouts prefer him over last year’s top wide receiver, Michael Crabtree. Holy shit, that’s awesome news for the Bears, but, what? Wait a minute. Oh, that’s right; they gave that pick to the Broncos.

My personal plan would be for the Bears to blow everything up and get rid of everyone. Trade every valuable player they have for future draft picks, and I would prefer to not even get 2010 or 2011 draft picks, I want them to look into 2012 and 2013, because this team is going to suck for a while, so the key is to focus on 2014 and beyond. What many people don’t realize about the salary cap is that it also creates a salary floor, and since there will be no cap this year, the Bears could technically go down to a $60 million dollar payroll if they wanted (This year’s salary floor was 112.1 million). This would be awesome, but there is no way that Jerry Angelo would do this, because even as cheap as Bears’ ownership is, they won’t stand for the team to be Detroit Lions bad.

My realistic plan would be to first try to sign Brandon Marshall as a restricted free agent. He is clashing with McDaniels, so there’s a chance the Bears could get him for just a first rounder or just a second rounder, but even if they gave up a first and a third, the plan still works. Get Marshall at all costs. Put a clause in there that if he plays 6 or more of his games at above 5,000 feet above sea level, then his contract becomes guaranteed which means the Broncos won’t even have the choice of matching it.

Next, trade for a bunch of 6^th and 7^th round picks for these next two drafts. Preferably, I would like the Bears drafting somewhere between 8-10 times in the final two rounds. The NFL could easily go to a 12 round draft and teams would happily be selecting quality players with those picks. I want the Bears to strictly draft offensive linemen with these picks. People are really piss poor at scouting linemen, so there are always quality guys in later rounds that end up making multiple pro bowls. If the Bears find two starters, then they’ve done well with their picks as far as I’m concerned (Also, depending on the level of tender, Jammal Brown of New Orleans might be a good restricted free agent to get as he has been out for the year and replaced by Jermon Bushrod who is cheap and has been very solid this year. If it’s a second round tender, then they should definitely go for it).

I don’t think the defense is nearly as bad as they played this year, but they aren’t too good either. As long as Hunter Hillenmeyer doesn’t play, they are guaranteed to look better. If they can stay healthy and get a run stopping defensive tackle. This class is extremely deep in defensive tackles, and some good ones should fall to the second round, oh wait, the Bears traded their second round pick for Gaines Adams. Nice job, Bears. Nobody great is going to be there in the third, but the Bears do a good job of finding quality cornerbacks late, so maybe they can snag a quality guy there. The Bears should also abandon the Cover-2, and hire somebody from Baltimore, Philly, New Orleans, or the Jets and go blitz crazy on people. They don’t have the talent to get pressure with a straight up defense anymore, so they need to start to scheme any way that they can.

They would not have a dynasty with these changes. Nowhere near it. But they would have a rich man’s Jake Delhomme in Jay Cutler, and the Panthers managed to make a Super Bowl by having Delhomme strictly throw to Steve Smith, maybe the Bears can do the same when reuniting Marshall and Cutler.

Will the Bears do any of these things? Probably not. Will they suck for the next four years? Probably. Don’t worry Bears fans, 2014 is just around the corner.

-Joe

P.S. If they decide to sign John David Booty, they could definitely have themselves a dynasty. For anyone not familiar, JDB played varsity football in SEVENTH GRADE. I think the only other people to do that were Shane Falco and Willie Beamon. Hence, a recipe for success.

P.P.S. Draft Edds and Angerer too.

P.P.P.S. I almost titled this EmBEARassing.