What has changed in 2 years: '06 to '08?

A good friend of mine asked me and a few other how far would we say that the 2008 Bears declined since their 2006 Superbowl appearance.  Before I could go much further he said this (apologize for the different colors in the later part of the quote):

I don't necessarily disagree with his assessment, but I do think that there are still some brigh spots within our veterans on offense.

Thoughts?

I replied on ONE-4s thread and all i said was that i think the biggest differences were.....

1) Health on the D.  For a team tha needs a good D we didnt.  Brian Urlacher Mike Brown Lance Briggs Adam Archuleta Nathan Vasher Charles Tillman Tommie Harris Dusty Dvoracek Mark Anderson Kevin Payne Brandon McGowan etc. etc. etc.  That is a LOT of players that are good to great that were injured or out entirely.

2) Age on the OL.  It caught up to us quick and i hope that John Tait is not this years Fred Miller.

AND 3)  Thomas Jones leaving.  I am not a TJ fan as i think he was only an average back, but we need two average to good backs to do well.  Cedric Benson was at least average when TJ was here because he had pressure to not be outdone.  The good rushing attack led to a good passing game.  But then again, at the beginning of the season our running game was nonexistant and it was Rex Grossman and the D that carried us.  Anyways, that is what i think, those three things.

I think it is much simpler than that.

The deterioration of the O-line was a chain reaction.  It effected the running game, which caused the QB's to step up when they were not talented enough to do so, which killed the time of posession, which wore down the defense. 

I honestly think it is that simple.  The lost players, in some cases, were barely contributors or, had enough negative plays that you really felt they were not important.  The Thomas Jones thing was way more complicated than people make it and, it still goes back to the age of Fred Miller and injury and age to Ruben Brown.  TJ liked to skip and stutter before popping the hole.  He would have been just as ineffective behind a bad line.  I admit, his intangibles cannot be measured.   Maybe his indomitable spirit and magic biceps would have inspired Fred Miller to not false start and make a block or two.  Or, For Grossman/Griese/Orton to make plays.  But, maybe not. 

At this point, I look ahead.  Not necessarily with blind optimism but, with the realization that each NFL season is a book unto itself.  The coaching staff and the players get the opportunity to start with a blank page.  If any given Sunday is a chapter, then any given season is a collection of those chapters.

GO Bears.

I too feel that the biggest difference from 2006 to the 2007 was the downgrading of the O-line for the Offense and the injury plague that raveged the Defense..

The Oline was inept at best in 2007, Rueben Brown was not healthy, Garza was average at best, Miller was brutal in pass protection and Tait had suffered through ankle injuries all year long. I'll even toss in Olin Kruetz having issues getting the ball snapped properly to all (3) QB's, they all had botched snaps last year which made me change my stance from it being ALL REX's fault in 2006 to about a 50/50 fault of Kruetz's......

I'll credit where credit is due, Tait and Ruben were MEN, they played through some painful injuries and manned up to try and help the team, unfortuantely, it wasn't good enpugh to plug the holes that sank our Offensive ship...

The loss of TJ did't help matters much but it wasn't the REAL reason our ground game's tires went flat....  TJ went to the Jets and had a statisticaly WORSE season in 2007 then Benson did and we all know how bad benson was...  the common denominator here is that the Jets O-line was B.A.D. as was ours so I'll say the O-line was the reason our running game was stuck in the mud....   In 2006 the O-line was strong and TJ had a great year, Benson did well too averaging 4.4 YPC in split duty and our AP averaged a whopping 5.5 YPC in third down / spot starts in 2006..   Flash forward to 2007 and both our RB's averaged 3.4 YPC and Garrett Wolfe was even worse at 2.7 so agaon, the O-line breakdown affected our ground game more so then the RB's....

Other notable injuries on Offense included Benson, Grossman and Greise all going down as well as Bradley starting off the season hurt, Berrian missed a start, Moose went three weeks with limited practice due to injury  but still managed to play on Sunday's........

On Defense, we lost our starting SS in Brown and a starting DT in Dusty in the first game....  after that it just got worse lossing Vasher for basicly the rest of the season in week (5), Adams who replaced Dusty was lost to IR, Darwin Walker who essentially replaced Tank Johnson never played a game Healthy and was a complete failure, we lost Tilman, Briggs, McGowan for a handful of starts each. Even perpetual failure Adam Archuletta broke his hand agianst Dallas.......... Urlacher hand some injuries issues but refused to use them as an excuse which shows the type of player he is.... Tommie Harris manned up and played HURT all year and never complained ONCE !!    Kevin Payne one start then to IR, another back up DT in Antonio Garray went down against Washington and was shelved to IR

It got so bad for us that we were forced to move ous starting safety to CB for a while, Ricky Manning degraded so bad that he couldn't even beat out a rookie, 7'th round draft pick to replace Vasher !!!!  we even were forced to sign Jimmy Kennedy off the street and started another rookie PS player plucked off of the Bengals PS in Matt Toeinia to start at DT. To their credit the played well at times and we may have found a diamond in the rough in Toeinia....  Oh, I forgot that we elevated a PS DT of our own , Bubbatunde something and he played some too !!

Bottom line here is we were killed at DT and in the secondary yet we still finished up strong and salvaged a BAD year to finish 7-9, a remarkable feat in my eyes with so many injuries !!!!

Jazzman summed it up perfectly, I think.  If you don't have an O line, you have nothing.  It really did tick me off last year when I heard fans bemoaning the loss of the great Thomas Jones, who would have fared no better behind that pile of puke they called a line last year. 

Although I have been an outspoken critic of Grossman, even he can look good when he actually has time to throw it.  A bad line makes good QB's look bad and a good line can make average QB's look like superstars.