First and the Worst

I swear I was getting ready to be done poking fun at Todd Collins and his arthritic back. I wasn't going to ridicule him for his loose-sleeved jersey from the Jeff Hostetler era that only Brett Favre can wear nowadays, and even then you have to be a grandfather who sends illicit PIX messages of his flaccid penis and stumbling, inelegant voicemails to team media personnel in order to make it look presentable. Collins admitted to having one of "the worst games of his career on Sunday afternoon" and he was probably right. Unless he previously registered a QB rating lower than the Cook County sales tax percentage and completed 2/3 as many passes to the wrong team as he did his own, I'd say that Todd's 'self analysis' was pretty on point.

But the bears prevailed based on the fact that they played a team in Carolina that couldn't beat the Jeff Garcia and Maurice Clarrett led Omaha Nighthawks of the UFL the way they played yesterday. Matt Forte chewed up the putrid Panthers D by gaining 188 yards of total offense, and tying the Panthers scoring output for the entire game with one run from scrimmage in the 1st quarter. Granted, the Panthers are a bad team, maybe the worst of teams, but that doesn't change the fact that the Bears are standing alone on top of the NFC North like a stag date at their senior prom. At 4-1 with another abject of a football team awaiting them next on their schedule (Seahawks), the Bears are where nobody they thought they would never be moving forward in the 2nd quarter of the NFL season. Not even a gypsy with a set of tarot cards could have predicted the Packers to be in the shape their in, looking like the Emergency Care Unit at the local infirmary, and the Vikings All-American Boy QB un-zippering the fly of his Wranglers to take cell phone pictures for a girl only 4 years older than his own daughter.

Whatever happens during the rest of the NFL season, nothing can outdo the overall misfortune that has occurred to our rivals and Green Bay, and there is no way that anything can outrival the bizarre circumstances that are occurring in the Twin Cities. From here on out, if the Bears take care of business in the next few weeks against Seattle and Buffalo (blaming Canada is not an excuse to losing to the Bills), it is feasible that they only need to win 3 more games the rest of the year to get them into the playoffs with 9 wins. With the NFC West collectively being as pathetic as pop-singer La Roux's haircut, and the NFC East boasting only a couple of legitimate threats (one of which starts a volatile running back who threw his helmet in the stands and a coach who turns into a human tomato when the temp drops below 50),the Bears can sneak in the backdoor of the playoffs earning one of the two Wild Card positions if they do come apart at the seams like a pair of old Keds in the season's second half. I guess we'll all just hope and play (or hope and pray), the rest of the season.

As for Pick of the Day, the 'Saturday 6 Pack' was again a relative success in the fact that we haven't been shutout completely from covering one of the bets in all of the weeks so far this season. For tonight, the Jets/Vikings game has more subplots than the movie The Social Network and should be an interesting game to watch. Favre has made a career out of overcoming adversity, first with the pain pills, and now with the sex addiction, he is getting more in common with Brett Michaels every day. Add a VH1 miniseries in which he courts a coup of trailer-park prostitutes around Kiln, Mississippi (best pic I've ever found online)bailing hay as he eliminates each girl when they cant run a skinny-post to perfection, they're pretty much the same guy. With that being said, the Pulse Man likes Favre and the Vikes to cover the (4.5) spread in New Jersey tonight.

Pick of the Day: Vikings (+4.5) @ Jets- VIKINGS (-105)

Record:(23-17-0)

Now I'm done. Rack me

Frost

A True 'Collins Mix'

Well, what we all were afraid of is inching closer and closer to actualization. At the end of the preseason when the Bears sent Dan LeFevour off into the most Twiiter friendly locker room in professional sports with the Cincinatti Bengals, and consequently signed the aging fossil that is Tom Collins, who weirdly enough sports a Fossil Textured Blue-to-Mirror Dial Watch, I knew the Bears were flirting with disaster. One big hit, one freak injury, one diabetic flare-up and Jay Cutler would be sent to the sidelines and in would jog Todd Collins and every clueless, female Bears fan would ask "Is that the detective from CSI: Miami?" and every male would respond, "Nope, that's Todd "f*%@-ing Collins, our new quarterback!" weeping with his head in his hands. The Bears knew what they were getting with Todd, a perennial backup quarterback who they wouldn't have to mature into the NFL lifestyle, because he did that himself as a rookie in 1995 when "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was being recorded onto cassette tapes all over the United States. But, through all of this, he is now our starting quarterback in possibly the most vulnerable position of the season for the Bears. They play a desperate 0-4 team with a rookie QB and nothing to lose. The same team that came within 3 minutes of beating the defending Super Bowl Champs and "Brees-us" (as in Jesus) just a week ago.

There are 3 possible scenarios for how this game could turn out, and with the spirit of the Collins surname in mind, I decided to correlate each of the 3 possible ways this game could unfold with one of Phil Collins' 3 most popular singles. The vexing, ominous tale of a man who witnesses a murder in "In the Air Tonight", the how am I possibly enjoying this but I can't stop dancing "Sussudio", and the remake of the classic Supreme's hit single "You Can't Hurry Love" which has a joyful rhythm and chorus, but the lyrics impart that we should practice elementary virtues like patience and compromise (who does that?).

First, and what is likely to be the most realistic, Collins' performance in Carolina Sunday could give us the feel of a graveyard undertaker like "In the Air Tonight". His eerie lyrics and constant repetition of the phrase "oh lorrrrrrd" could represent the feelings of Bear fans everywhere whenever Collins drops back to pass on both of his surgically repaired legs Sunday afternoon. There has always been a certain ambiguity about this Phil Collins hit. In fact, its popularity possibly stemmed from the ambiguity of the lyrics and is likely a representation of a murder. If Collins' appearance last week could be described as anything, I would venture to say it represents a murder. And for those 10 seconds in which he lied there motionless on the turf after the Giants D end nearly ended his playing career last week are any indication of things to come, let's all prepare for...(gulp) a murder.

Telling Lyric: "So you can wipe of that grin, I know where you've been, it's all a pack of lies" Phil Collins 'In the Air Tonight'

But, you never know. The Panthers are 0-4 for a reason--they suck. No doubt about it. The 'Matt Moore Experiment' which sounds like a pilot for ABC family coming up next fall in which a veteran coach and a new girlfriend try to jump-start a terrible QB's career was a calamity in every sense of the word. The Jimmy Clausen era has gotten an early start in Charlotte but still hasn't yielded a win for the desperate Panthers. So, in facing an average defense and winless group in Carolina, Todd Collins can go out there and sling the ball around and have some fun without the thought of breaking his neck, or his ex-wife being in the lower section giving secrets of his lack of sexual endowment to die-hard Panther fans (if they even exist). Todd Collins' performance can somehow resemble the playful Phil Collins hit, "Sussudio", a song about chasing around a young woman and catching that 'lightning in a bottle' that has eluded Todd Collins for his entire career. Maybe Sunday's game will inject the youth back into the geezer that Todd Collins has become. Maybe.

Telling Lyric: "I've just got to have her, have her now, I've got to get close but I don't know how" Phil Collins, "Sussudio"

And lastly, it is also entirely possible that Collins has a modest performance in which he neither wins, nor loses the game for the Bears, but the Bears come up on the short of the proverbial stick. Maybe Collins puts up Cutler-esque numbers, but also makes some Cutler-like mistakes in the process leaving us feeling like we just ordered a Coke that tastes an awful lot like RC Cola. Sometimes remakes are good, but rarely if ever are they as good as the original (except in the case of Joni Mitchell's 'Big Yellow Taxi'--that song is pure noise and the remake is well, good). But, in this case I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the Supremes, Phil. Your remake was decent, but in the end nobody wants to hear a guy say "You just have to wait, love don't come easy, it's a game of give and take". Those are girls lyrics plain and simple, and in the end, Todd Collins belongs on the Chicago Bliss of the Lingerie Football league, not the Chicago Bears.

I hope I don't have to see the clock wind down on Sunday and see an indifferent Lovie Smith as Clausen parades around the sidelines with a game ball, receiving hugs and pounds from his teammates while he pre-orders rounds of shots for his O-line at the bar down the street from the stadium. I really hope I don't have to see that, but it's a very distinct possibility.

As for Pick of the Day, the jury is still out on the Rays/Rangers game 2 but at the time of this post, the Rangers are up 6-0. So, trying to get a win for the day, the Pulse Man will ride with the Sox's division rival Twins getting a win at home against the Yanks tonight. The Twins are home dogs at (+107) but I know some friends from college at the game so I'll give the Twinks the benefit of the doubt.

Pick of the Day: Yankees @ Twins- Twins, moneyline (+107)

Record: (23-16-0)

Now I'm done. Rack me

Frost

Ran-sacked

If you had something better to do Sunday night around 8 o'clock, good for you. If you chose to view an abridged version of Happy Gilmore on ABC family instead of tuning into NBC for Sunday Night Football, wise choice. Even if you DVR'd a few eps of The Good Wife and spent Sunday evening getting your weekly Julianna Margulies fix, for once in your life, keeping tabs on the effects that menopausal crisis can have on middle aged women was far more exciting than anything that happened in the New Meadowlands Stadium on Sunday. Looking back, I'd rather have gone halfsies on a pack of menthols and watch the deleted scenes of Lonesome Jim with Casey Affleck. Everyone was sort of expecting some kind of fall from grace in the coming weeks but still, no one expected Cutler to feel more sacks than a public physician administering physicals in a strip-mall doctors office.

Needless to say, the Bears O-line Sunday night never really showed up. They embarrassingly allowed 10 sacks, countless hurries, and had the triumvirate of Cutler, Todd Collins and Caleb Hanie encounter more hits than funnyordie.com in a high school computer lab. After about 7 sacks, Cutler became easily frustrated and handed over the reigns to Todd Collins for the second half as the image of Kristin Cavallari fondling a bag of frozen peas over his concussed forehead became affixed in his mind. In the 2 hr. heap of inept offense and what appeared to be effectiveness on defense by default, I was curious as to who was to blame for the Bears inadequacies on the offensive side of the football. Was it the offensive line that looked quite possibly like the most easily movable 300 lb. objects in the world? Was it Cutler doing the 'stop, drop, and roll' every time he faced pressure in the pocket? Or was it Mike Martz, whose scheme against the Giants seemingly lacked any trace of a route Cutler could check down to? It had to be a mixture of the 3. Coming off a week in which the Bears had arguably their biggest win since the 2006 NFC Championship and had a lot to be proud of, they sludged through a historically dreadful output of 110 yards on national TV while looking completely unprepared in the process.

I understood to an extent that the Giants were looking to prove a point against the Bears after a disappointing 2 game losing streak that had NYC disgruntled and disheartened going into Sunday night. But, to think that at the end of the game we would have played all 3 quarterbacks on our roster, gained under 120 yards, averaged 1.4 yds. per pass, punted 9 times, went 0-13 on 3rd down and scored 3 total points was unfathomable until suffering through the hysterectomy that was Sunday Night Football.

On a brighter note, hopefully that blindside barrage of Todd Collins has spurred him toward retirement. What a garbage eater that guy is. There's a reason he's been a backup since the Cuban Missle Crisis. He is simply just awful. Always hanging around in the hotel lobby on team road trips reading The Bridges of Madison County in paperback, constantly sitting in the whirlpool to relieve his ailing back, and eternally preaching his investment strategy to Caleb Hanie when Caleb either A) only cares about the young female in the lower bowl with the low cut top and the loose curls, or B) is attentively transfixed on the trainers refilling the Gatorade cooler to see if they're funneling in his favorite flavor (presumably glacier freeze) into that giant orange jug. I refuse to give Todd Collins a chance. I pray to God Cutler's concussion symptoms subside before next week game against Carolina.

In looking forward to the Panthers matchup, if Cutler starts, we could have a faceoff between the two punkiest QB's since Ryan Leaf disappeared from the NFL. Seriously, Cutler and Clausen could be featured on a track on the next AFI CD. All I know is, the Panthers won't be a walk through win, and if the Bears drop a game in the Bible Belt next weekend and spoil Julius Peppers' homecoming, there could be a very pessimistic turn in the Bears season predictions.

As for Pick of the Day, with the ability to bet on meaningless baseball games gone, the Pulse Man has shifted into playoff baseball/football mode for the rest of the fall until the NBA picks up around Halloween. After a solid weekend in which he covered two of his 3 bets on Saturday including a 3-team parlay at (+438), The Pulse Man faces a pick-em spread in tonight's jargon laden Monday Night Football broadcast. He likes Tom Brady, his haircut, and the rest of the Pats to get a win on MNF.

Pick of the Day: Patriots @ Dolphins- Patriots (-105)

Record: (22-15-0)

Now I'm done. Rack me

Frost