Lets play a game called Cassandra.
The Bears come into this game with a massive advantage. The Packers showed last year a commitment to run the ball with a fat back for the purpose of protecting Aaron Rodgers to the best of their ability. This new strategy came after 2013, and despite early failure McCarthy showed he was absolutely committed to this plan. It ended up making Rodgers even more lethal as teams could no longer guess correctly pass pass pass as they would be punished for doing so. They could no longer clear the box and drop 7 or 8.
The Bears have been terrible agains the run, and the Packers will seek to test how soft a team switching to a 3-4 who were unable to stop the run in a 4-3 will fair. The results should favor the Bears, given that they have more beef up front with Fangio likely to fall in love with something like...
Ferguson-Goldman-Ratliff
Allan Bostic Jones McPhee
It will be a poor plan to run against this front. With Fox rallying the troops and inspiring them that they have the talent, and its a new season. In front of a zealous home crowd in some nice soft grass, we have an overwhelming and beefy team. Its the type of team you don't want to have to expend energy against in week 1, cuz your gonna feel it for a few weeks.
We are deep in front 7 and will surely rotate big fresh bodies whenever possible. Rodgers will seek to keep us on the field, and test the conditioning of a nose like Goldman in his first game. This could be an issue later in the game.
Cutler will strike early however. We have the desperation, we have the revenge, we have the NEEEEED to start fresh and get this city off our backs. The Packers are a perfect target to quell the bad noise and get things going the other way.
Testing a new scheme on Rodgers could doom us, but I feel on this day the Bears surprise and are able to stymy Rodgers dwindling weapons enough to give a determined Cutler an opportunity to make some noise. He needs this specific win, Allen needs a sack in this specific game, Goldman wants to prove himself, Ferguson is a hungry man, and Ratliff is always passion. This front is going to shock the line of scrimmage with hate and power.
On the other side we made the right hire to take a slowly developing power line and push it in the right direction to total power. We should really be able to start road grading with some of our potential selections excelling in this area.
Cassandra prefers to come out of camp desperate to have Grasu on the field for his pulling and tenacity, reading defenses, and Long will surely reach out to him and accelerate his growing curve.
I predict this will start and finish the season.
Bushrod-Slauson-Grasu-Montgomery-Long
Thats a scrappy line. Its gonna fight for inches, to make plays, to perfect technique. I hope Fox has the vision to choose this, but if Mills wants to prove me wrong...I'm down. He did come from that Louisiana Tech 90 snap a game offense, and I'd like to see the Bears going no huddle as soon as possible.