Rest assured, I do not believe I, or anyone, can give an adequate answer to the question the title of this article asks. What the question is meant to bring to light is the fact that our beloved Chicago teams have had a pretty rough year on the injury front. We aren’t talking about bench warmers going down either. While all of us superstitious sports fans have been wondering if Calvin Johnson will break the semi-creepy, though semi-explainable, “Madden Curse,” we in Chicago have to wonder when one of our teams will break this injury “curse” that has happened to befall our teams in the last year.

It all started innocently enough during the Chicago Bears November 20th game against the San Diego Chargers –which culminated in a 31-20 Bears victory. It also culminated with Jay Cutler fracturing his thumb and losing the remainder of the season because of it. “Don’t worry!” many of us said. “Remember how Caleb Hanie performed in the NFC Championship?” Well, good old Caleb didn’t win a single game. Shortly after Cutler, Matt Forte went down for the season. Despite the promising 7-3 start (and the best looking Bears team in a while), they finished 8-8 with no playoff appearance.

Well, that is unfortunate, but hey, it happens. Enter the NHL season.

The Chicago Blackhawks were a good team. I would not say they were a great team. However, they battled the Phoenix Coyotes hard for six games. In Game 3, Marian Hossa was leveled on a cheap shot from Raffi Torres. Hossa did not return in the series. For the second consecutive year, the Blackhawks were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. I’m not saying Hossa’s presence would have altered the outcome necessarily, but it was still a significant loss.

Two teams with significant injuries? Well, that’s unlikely, but it happens. Right? Enter the NBA season.

I would say this was the hardest development for Chicago sports fans. The Chicago Bulls enjoyed an entirely successful regular season (50-16), and were even able to do it without Derrick Rose for 27 of those games –going 18-9. As the playoffs approached, the Bulls were finally healthy and ready for a run. “Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls: Round 2,” they said. “The Bulls might have enough to beat the Heat this year,” they said. Well, Rose went down in Game 1 (and Joakim Noah in Game 3) against the Philadelphia 76ers and the Bulls never got the chance to take on the big, bad Heat –losing to the 76ers in six games.

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

That leaves our beloved Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox. While the Cubs have dealt with some injuries, the good news is that I don’t think there is any season-altering injury on the horizon. It’s not because I think it won’t happen, it’s because the Cubs are in last place (15-22) and most likely won’t be in contention long enough to have a injury cut down their playoff hopes. The White Sox, while just 17-21, might be a little better, but I’m not holding my breath there either.

Forget the “Madden Curse,” the Chicago teams have their own series of unfortunate events to deal with.

Brian is a lifelong Chicago sports fan, having lived in Illinois his entire life and having followed most of the major sports throughout.

Sources

Chicago Injuries

MLB Standings

Injury Report -MLB

Over the last few years, countless people –fans, players, commentators, analysts– have expressed displeasure over the Chicago Bears’ offensive line. Most of those “countless people” are like me –fans that watch the sport, love the sport, learn about the sport, and, by design, only think we understand the intricate workings of the sport. I will readily admit to not being the most insightful individual you will come across when it comes to most anything, much less football.

Of all the voices swirling around the airwaves like flies at a picnic, the one person that has the right to express that concern is Jay Cutler. And well, he recently did. In the same breath that he expressed excitement over the Bears new offensive direction, he said; “The offensive line is definitely going to be a concern, and seeing where those guys fit in and seeing what five we go with. You know, if Gabe (Carimi) comes back, if J’Marcus (Webb) pans out (and) Chris Williams, where we’re going to put him … there are some question marks there. Until we really get that resolved, get our front five settled, we’ve got some work to do on the offense.”

He can’t say that can he? He can’t hang his teammates out to dry like that. I’ve confusingly, but not surprisingly, heard many people expressing disgust over Cutler’s comments. I have no idea as to why. Mostly, outlets that are reporting on this are attempting to make these comments look like a “Look what Jay Cutler said!” type story. In reality, when you watch the interview, you see just how different statements are when you hear the whole interview. Cutler was not “rocking the boat” in the least. He has spent the better part of the last few seasons running for his life. Not only are his comments calm, they are logical. He doesn’t say anything about these players not being good enough, he just says that the quality of the players coming back from injury is yet to be seen. Again, that statement is true. No low-blows, no insults, no disrespect to his teammates, simply a statement of how things are.

While I think the Bears’ offensive line is most definitely a work-in-progress, I think the bad taste of the 2010 season is still in the minds of all of us that follow the Bears. The Bears give up too many sacks, that is true. However, they gave up 56 in 2010, to 49 in 2011. In 2010, the Bears rushed for 1,616 yards. In 2011, they rushed for 2,015 yards. I’ll admit these aren’t the kind of numbers that you strive for as a team, but to say the line isn’t improving is wrong too. Remember, Jay Cutler was sacked five times in his final five games prior to his injury last season. That looks like improvement to me.

I expect that improvement to continue in 2012.

Brian is a lifelong Chicago Bears fan, having lived in Illinois his entire life and having followed the NFL throughout.

Sources

Cutler Worried About Offensive Line

Offensive Line Stats -2011

Offensive Line Stats 2010

When Brandon Venson broke his leg as a senior at Glenbard West, his college football scholarship potential quickly evaporated.

Venson’s answer was hard work. His reward is a three-year contract with the Chicago Bears.

The 6-foot-3, 245-pound tight end signed with the Bears on Sunday night after being one of 33 tryout players who participated in the Bears’ three-day rookie mini-camp. Six others also inked contracts.

Current Glenbard West football head coach Chad Hetlet became the Hilltoppers’ skipper the year after Venson graduated. Hetlet has since gotten to know him and also coached his younger brother, Bryant, for two years.

“I know Brandon real well,” said Hetlet, who had previously coached against Venson while at Hinsdale Central. “It’s very exciting. He’s a good kid and he has worked his tail off. He broke his leg his senior year. He had a lot of Division I schools looking at him and they backed out after he broke his leg. He went to COD and then earned a scholarship to ISU. He worked his way back up the ranks.”

Venson, a Glendale Heights resident, began his college career as a recruited walk-on at Northern Illinois in 2007 before going to the College of DuPage the next year. He then landed at Illinois State, where he started for three years at tight end, finishing his Redbird career with 17 catches for 238 yards and one touchdown.

“He’s a great representation of our program, he always has been,” Hetlet said.
Helping Venson reach his goals has been Mike Niklos, head strength and performance coach at Acceleration in Naperville. Since the two began working together four times a week beginning on Dec. 27, his 40-yard dash has dropped to 4.62 seconds and his vertical has increased to 31 inches, all while adding 25 pounds of muscle.

Niklos said Venson was first in contact with the Bears at his pro day at ISU in mid-March and was called in for a personal workout two weeks later. Then, right after the NFL Draft concluded, the Bears invited him to the rookie camp.

“He’s been far and away one of the hardest workers we’ve come across,” said Niklos, a former football player himself who was in the Pittsburgh Steelers camp back in 2007 before also playing with the Chicago Rush. “From Day 1, he knew what his goals were. He was very vocal about where he wanted to go and how to get there.

“It was awesome (when I heard he had been signed). Just knowing him and also having a chance to talk to his mom, she is a very nice lady. It is great, just seeing where he has come from and the hard work it has taken.”

Even before bulking up the past few months, Venson was an impressive physical specimen. Mike Hofland, now the girls basketball coach at Glenbard West, was an assistant for the historic 2006-07 boys varsity squad that won the program’s first sectional title in nearly 70 years. Venson was a star guard on that team.

“I saw him last year and he looked like a beast,” said Hofland, also now an assistant with the football team. “He came to a couple of his sister’s games and I joked with them that he looked like his mom’s bodyguard. It’s a great family.”

Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler is concerned about his team’s offensive line, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“You know, the offensive line is definitely going to be a concern and seeing where those guys are going to fit in and seeing what five we go with,” Cutler told the paper. “If Gabe [Carimi] comes back, if J’Marcus [Webb] pans out. Where are we going to put Chris Williams? There are some question marks there. Until we really get that resolved and get our front five settled in, we’ve got some work to do on offense.”

Cutler, 29, missed the final six games of the season last year after suffering a hand injury. Prior to his injury, the Bears had posted a 7-3 record, but the squad went just 1-5 in his absence.

In 10 games in 2011 he posted a 85.7 quarterback rating while throwing for 2319 yards and 13 touchdowns.

Winston Venable, the 25-year-old safety and special teams player who had 10 tackles in 12 games for the Chicago Bears in 2011, was cut by the team on Thursday. The former Boise State standout was put on the waiver wire on Wednesday by Chicago, but went unclaimed by the rest of the league.

“This is what I was worried about,” said Venable’s agent Michael Bernstein. “The Bears have a new general manager, so Winston isn’t his guy. They went out and signed some people to play special teams. Then they used a third-round draft pick to take a safety. “… It was a perfect storm of factors.”

Venable, who grew up in San Rafael and was a standout at San Rafael High before finishing his prep career on the East Coast, participated in three weeks of offseason training activities with the Bears. The new free agent spent Wednesday traveling back to the Bay Area to regroup and continuing training.

“I’m working the phones and contacting every team in hopes of making sure teams know what Winston has to offer,” Bernstein said. “I think Winston wants to see if he can get another opportunity in the NFL. That could definitely happen. Someone could have an opening. Someone could have an injury.”

Bernstein mentioned that a team like the 49ers — which lacks depth at safety — could have a need for someone like Venable. Bernstein believes Venable would be a prize for any franchise in the Canadian Football League.

“He played a linebacker-safety

hybrid position in college,” Benstein said. “Nobody in the NFL has that position. Everyone in the CFL has that position.”

The Bears’ Marin connection is down to one following the transaction. Former Marin Catholic standout running back Kahlil Bell signed a one-year contract for the 2012 season with the team. Venable’s brother, Will, continues to play Major League Baseball as an outfielder for the San Diego Padres. His father, Max, played in the major leagues and is now a coach.

Contact Dave Allen via email at dallen@marinij.com

The death of Junior Seau has hit the NFL community hard, but for Chicago Bears fans it is a painful reminder of the loss of Dave Duerson just last year. There are many striking similarities between the two deaths. Seau, like Duerson, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Though Duerson left a suicide note, Seau did not, leaving many to wonder if the decision behind the suicide was the same for him as it was for the former Chicago Bear.

Duerson and Seau were both extremely physical players. They each took plenty of abuse on the field in the time that they were in the NFL, and both were very good at what they did. Duerson’s struggles with depression were well-documented, and he had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease from concussions received on the playing field. Seau did not seem to have the same struggle with depression, though it is clear now that he was struggling with something.

The actual manner of Seau’s death may be cause for speculation about any long-term effects from hits taken on the football field. He, like Duerson, shot himself in the chest. It is not the most typical way to commit suicide. In Duerson’s case, he specifically chose his manner of death to preserve his brain. He wanted his brain to be donated to science in order to get more answers about the long-term effects of concussions. Is that possible in Seau’s case?

Seau and Duerson are not the only NFL players to commit suicide recently. Ray Easterling, who was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against the NFL last year, also killed himself this year. It may be too early to tell if Seau’s death was a result of brain trauma, but if that turns out to be the case, it may have a serious impact on player lawsuits.

For Bears fans, losing a member of the 1985 Super Bowl team was especially painful. San Diego Chargers fans must feel the same way about Seau, who helped bring the team to their only Super Bowl appearance. Tragically, he is also the eighth member of that team to pass away.

Junior Seau was an amazing player, and his death is tragic. Chicago Bears fans understand all too well the sorrow that Chargers fans are feeling today. Hopefully the NFL will begin to take greater care to look after its star players even after they have stopped playing the game.

Whitney Levon is a Chicago native whose dedication to the Bears goes back to her first football memory; the Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl victory. She has been covering the Chicago Bears and other Chicago teams since 2010. You can follow her on Twitter @wlevon1.

LAKE FOREST — The Chicago Bears made a statement by not doing anything.

First-year general manager Phil Emery and his head coach Lovie Smith made it clear that the Bears really do like the offensive linemen they have on the roster by drafting a tight end and two cornerbacks with their last three picks of the 2012 NFL Draft on Saturday.

“Like I’ve said, we like the offensive line we have. With Chris Williams getting back on the football field and Gabe Carimi, we like that unit,” Smith said just minutes after the Bears wrapped up the first draft of the Emery era. “We want to do everything we can to open holes for our running backs and to protect Jay Cutler. But let’s not forget, there was a period of time there during the season where we played pretty well on the offensive line.”

So even with a couple of highly regarded offensive linemen still on the board, the Bears grabbed former Temple tight end Evan Rodriguez with their fourth-round pick (111th overall), and then selected cornerbacks Isaiah Frey of Nevada in the sixth and Greg McCoy out of TCU in the seventh.

Rodriguez, who played quarterback and safety in high school, led the Owls with 35 catches for 479 yards and two touchdowns last season. The 6-foot-2, 239-pounder is versatile, and played tight end, H-back, fullback and even lined up at wide receiver on while at Temple.

And it was that versatility that really zoned Emery in on Rodriguez.

“We feel like he’s really going to bring Jay (Cutler) and our quarterbacks an element inside, along with Kellen (Davis) and the two guys outside,” Emery said of Rodriguez. “He was the guy out of all the tight ends we looked at, that fit that versatility; that fit that need more than any of them. In terms of the blocking, to lead up on the linebacker, and the receiving.”

Emery insisted the Bears intend to use Rodriguez in the team’s base offensive package, as well as on multiple special-teams’ units. If he pans out, and Emery is correct, then Rodriguez would be a good find in the fourth round.

The Bears traded away their fifth-round pick to move up five spots and get wide receiver Alshon Jeffery in the second round, so when they came back around in the sixth round, they went after a defensive back. Frey played man-to-man at Nevada and led the team with five interceptions and 21 pass breakups last season.

“I played a lot of man, all four years I was there. I think that’s one of the things that I bring to the table,” Frey said. “I didn’t play special teams the last few years in college, but I’m willing to do anything.”

With their final pick in the draft, they selected another corner, McCoy, as the 220th overall player taken. McCoy had 30 tackles and two picks last season, and also returned 37 kickoffs, two for touchdowns, one that went 99 yards all the way back.

“He’s a blue-level special-teamer,” Emery added, “and those kind of things are exciting.”

All the team’s rookies will head to Lake Forest to begin taking part in voluntary team workouts, and they will suit up and hit the field for the two-day rookie minicamp at Halas Hall on May 11-12.

Bears reporter Jay Taft can be reached at 815-987-1384 or jtaft@rrstar.com.

Bears’ Round 4 pick

Who: Evan Rodriguez

Birthdate: Sept. 21, 1988

Hometown: North Bergen, N.J.

Ht./Wt., position: 6-foot-1½, 239-pound tight end/H-back
College stats: Led Temple with 35 catches for 479 yards and two touchdowns last season; transferred in 2008, and played in all 13 games, starting seven, in 2009.

What Emery had to say: “I know he has some past issues. …But he’s a very tough, physical football player.”

What Rodriguez had to say: “I’m a mismatch for any team. You can put me in any situation, and I’ll handle it.”

Bears’ Round 6 pick

Who: Isaiah Frey

Birthdate: Sept. 21, 1988

Hometown: Olivehurst, Calif.

Ht./Wt., position: 5-foot-10½, 190-pound cornerback
College stats: Had 37 tackles, five interceptions and 21 passes defended last season at Nevada. Had 141 tackles and seven interceptions in his four-year college career.

What Emery had to say: “We had him as the most skilled cornerback on the back end of the draft, and we were happy to see he was still there.”

What Frey had to say: “I played a lot of man — basically all four years I was (at Nevada) we were in man. That’s one of the things I bring.”

Bears’ Round 7 pick

Who: Greg McCoy

Hometown: Dallas, Texas

Ht./Wt., position: 5-foot-10, 181-pound cornerback

College stats: Had 92 tackles, seven interceptions and 18 pass breakups in his four-year career at TCU, three as a starter; had 37 kickoff returns for 979 yards with two touchdowns, including a 99-yarder, last season.

What Emery had to say: “He’s a blue-level special teams player, too, and those kind of things are exciting.”
What head coach Lovie Smith had to say: “Those last two picks really addressed a need for us. This entire class brings an awful lot to this team.”

–Compiled by Jay Taft

“He showed us some natural pass-rushing ability the other defensive ends [still left on the board] did not,” Bears general manager Phil Emery said on a conference call. “Shea is a high-level player. He’s relentless with his motor.

“He’s got really quick feet and hands as a pass-rusher,” Emery said. “He has natural hips as a pass-rusher. In his normal starting role at Boise was as a middle linebacker, and he would come down and rush on third downs or in sub-package situations. There is a lot of versatility with this player.

McClellin said that he is excited to play next to Peppers and Urlacher during his first conference call with the Chicago media on Thursday night, according to ESPN Chicago. During his career at Boise State, McClellin had 130 tackles and 20.5 sacks.

The Bears became very interested in him after watching him perform in the Senior Bowl. The 6-foot-3, 260-pounder has been viewed as a 3-4, 4-3 tweener by some, but Emery likes his versatility.

“At the Senior Bowl, he played more linebacker than rushing, so that was kinda good for us because not as many people saw him as a rusher,” he said. “He played SAM backer in that game and all we could find on tape out of all the one on one Senior Bowl rushes was one rush. So people got into him late.”

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