The league on notice, time to hit the Big Apple for the Bears

After Week 2 everyone said the Bears made a statement. Well, after Week 3 was put to rest, the statement got its punctuation. Yes, there were 18 penalties on the Packers, but the Bears took advantage and became the NFC's only 3-0 team.
They have areas they need to improve, but the positives do out number the negative which is promising heading forward this season.
Devin Hester shined and got that first return touchdown in two years and it helped Jay Cutler put it together. Yes, I'm not giving my full endorsement of his performance, but he did enough.
As usual, it was the defense that made the big statements ring true. The leader of all of that was the biggest acquisition made in the offseason, Julius Peppers. How amazing was he in the third quarter?
The stats might not show that the Bears did a lot of things right in terms of getting to the quarterback, but three big holding penalties and an intentional grounding speak for that.
Also, Brian Urlacher (So great to have him back) and Lance Briggs just continue to show how great they are together. Yes the Bears are 3-0 by way of a bit of some help, but you have to win those games if you're going to be a successful team and you have to give them credit for that.
This week, the New York Giants are on the docket, as the Bears get to check out the new Meadowlands. For once this season, the Bears are favored in a game and they'd rather be the underdogs. I think they have reveled in being the underdog and want us to not give them a shot so they can prove us wrong.
The Giants have shown they are not disciplined at all the last two weeks, and I'm not so sure that can go away after a week. It could be the key, again, for the Bears to win. I have not been impressed by Eli Manning all season and this could be another chance for the Bears to take a step forward.
Prediction: Bears 24, Giants 14


Before I get into my picks, I got an E-mail from a big Giants fan this week, that I have agreed to not talk about the game with this week so we wouldn't say anything lame to upset each other. Yes, On The Line Sports' own Vaughan Gartrelle wanted to chime in as things led into the game. These are his thoughts on the week:
"This is the week where it sucks to have two of your closest friends be bears fans. I will tell you this much my New York Giants will come out swinging. We have many problems but we are a team that plays extremely well under the owners pressure i.e. 2007. If I was in thee Giants locker room my pregame speech would sound something like this :

We played a damn good week one, instead of taking that momentum into week two for our game against big brother we let the media convince us we had no chance. And then in week three we did exactly what we should have done for week two and took that terrible momentum into a game that we should have won. No look at where it has us behind the eight ball let's just be glad we have many other shots before that's our concern. Now we must go out today and be the reverse of ourselves and be GIANT KILLERS. Let's go win on the big stage.

If this is the speech 20-13 giants if not 31-6 bears."



That was pretty good from V. But it's now time for my NFL Picks. Last week I delivered a great week and went 10-6 to push my record on the year to 28-20 for the season. Here is Week 4 with the winners in bold.
49ers at Falcons
Jets at Bills
Bengals at Browns
Lions at Packers
Broncos at Titans
Seahawks at Rams
Panthers at Saints
Ravens at Steelers
Colts at Jaguars
Cardinals at Chargers
Redskins at Eagles
Bears at Giants
Patriots (17) at Dolphins (14)

It should be a big week and the Nussie Hunter wanted to give you a girl that is a fan of sports to close things out. Is there one hotter than Kelly Brook right now? Yes she's made the blog twice in recent months, but that's because she's at the top of her game. Just check out the photo below. Then head over to Guyism.com to see her in a red dress. ALL HOT!

Lovie Smith: "Trust me." Umm, my patience is running thin!

Bears CEO Ted Phillips


Bears General Manager Jerry Angelo


Bears Head Coach Lovie Smith

First off, Welcome to 2010. As this is the first post of the New Year, I promise to bring it and start the year off with a bang. Lots of goodness and a big announcement coming, too!

I couldn't pick just one of what the Chicago media is calling the "Three Stooges" who stood before that media and Bears fans at Halas Hall in Lake Forest yesterday and contradicted one another and themselves for an hour, so I picked all three.
They promised change, so they fired Ron Turner and six offensive assistants along with opening up the defensive coordinator position.
But sitting through it and reading some take on the press conference, two things were made clear. First, the defensive coordinator will be a "Butt puppet" and second, all the talk on the status quo not being acceptable means nothing if you keep the head coach.
I know the offensive coordinator will likely be allowed to do what he wants to do next season - He'll also be Jay Cutler's fourth offensive coordinator in as many years - the reason Lovie was not fired as coach was not cited during the wreck of a press conference.
The real reason is the looming possibility of a lockout in 2011 that would mean Lovie and likely Jerry Angelo and Ted Phillips, if let go, would collect a check for doing nothing and their successors would do the same. And the McKaskey's can't afford that.
On the football front, this team needs a bit of help on defense, mainly at defensive back, and the offensive line needs to be retooled, AGAIN. And that's after the Bears address the need of a No. 1 wide receiver. And all of this without a No. 1 or No. 2 draft pick this year unless they get creative and start making trades to get picks.
Yeah, they had better get to work because I'm a little apprehensive about the whole thing.


Click here for Part 2.

I know I missed this yesterday, but I cannot pass up a chance to talk about one of my favorite things as a kid. Yes I was a big WWF follower and like the first words out of Bret Hart's mouth "Hell must have frozen over."
"The Hitman" was one of my favorites as a kid and even watching this I felt like it was 1997 again. The Shawn Michaels bit was pretty good, but I HATED with Vince McMahon finish to this segment. What does kicking Bret in the balls say about anything? It says Vince needed to have the last laugh and didn't want Bret to have the moment for himself which was pretty fucking (sorry!) lame.
I'm at least glad Bret finally got back to WWE TV and could pave the way for him to make some sort of Wrestlemania appearance and at least help present his father, Stu Hart.
On top of it all, it made pro wrestling relevant again for the first time time Stone Cold and The Rock quit wrestling about five or six years ago.



Back in July Chad Ochocinco hinted that he'd start his own line of condoms. Well, over the weekend he released the prototype box. I'm not sure what the NFL thinks of this idea, but it's pretty funny if you ask me!

I have a couple videos for you now before I get into what is a pretty big announcement.



I'm all about the military, but these guys aren't that bright!



Scoops Jackson is taking the Interweb by storm. This is one of his best. Look for him at a press conference near you! If you like this, be sure to check this one with Tom Brady... CLASSIC!

Alright, now for this big announcement I've been pushing you to read more and more for. You probably remember Vaughan, who wrote for me a couple months back. Well, he and I, among others, are joining forces to push his sports consulting firm, On The Line Sports, to the next level this year. He's partnering with me here at Wilber's Way to reach out to basketball coaches and players. Be sure to check out the link and head over to his blog. It should be going full strength shortly and we'll have some great content for those looking to get into coaching and play the game of basketball at the highest level.



We can't have the first blog post of the new year without the Nussie Hunter chiming in. He's been following the Howard Stern Show for a bit and over the weekend when it was revealed that Artie Lange was rushed to the hospital. Everyone thought we were going to get updates Monday morning when the show came back from vacation, but that was not the case as Howard was pretty quiet.
Speaking of the Stern Show one Lisa Michelle was name Miss Howard TV for the month of February. I'd say she's well deserving of the title. Take a look for yourself below. Here's more of those...