Thread: Receiver Golden making himself noticed

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Tice wants 'clean' first game from offense

August, 7, 2012 Aug 7
11:46
AM CT

By Jeff Dickerson | ESPNChicago.com

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AP Photo/Nam Y. HuhMike Tice wants to see "a little rhythm" in his Bears offense in their preseason opener on Thursday.

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. -- As is standard preseason protocol, Chicago Bears starters are expected to be on the field for a limited amount of time Thursday when the club hosts the Denver Broncos in their preseason opener. But with a new offense on display for the first time in an actual game, Bears offensive coordinator Mike Tice has a checklist of what he wants to see from the No. 1s during their handful of plays.

"I like to be clean," Tice said. "I like to minimize the offsides. We'll probably get some holding calls in there or something but that happens. No turnovers, minimize the offsides, no delay of games ... and see if we can run the ball efficiently and finish some drives. [I'm looking for] a little rhythm."

The first and last preseason affairs are generally meant to showcase players fighting for a starting job or fighting for a spot on the final 53-man roster. That means the stakes are naturally higher for the lower half of the Bears' depth chart.

"Second-teamers, we're looking for guys who want to show us they deserve a shot to push somebody out," Tice said. "They're going to get plenty of plays, so we'll see how they do, grade it like a regular season game and go from there."

From a roster standpoint, a few players who have stood out in practice and are worth monitoring on Thursday include: offensive tackle James Brown, offensive tackle Cory Brandon, tailback Armando Allen, tailback Lorenzo Booker, wide receiver Dane Sanzenbacher, tight end Kyle Adams, defensive end Cheta Ozougwu, defensive end Thaddeus Gibson, cornerback Isaiah Frey, cornerback Greg McCoy, wideout Brittan Golden and defensive tackles Nate Collins and Jordan Miller.

"The preseason is important," Bears coach Lovie Smith said. "You can't do an awful lot in the offseason, [so] this is the time you start getting ready for the regular season. Whether it's a new offense or defense, you start from scratch each year. These days are all valuable."

I'll add something else. I was at camp yesterday and as my son and I moved from spot to spot there was one question that kept being asked, "Who is number 10?". It was the guy who WAS 81 until Rahied Davis joined again and took his number. Number 10 is now Terrian Crump and he was making a lot of plays. Honestly, I don't know who is going to make this team, but it's a nice problem to have.

4DB, I'm really suprised at how hard we went at WR after we got Marshal. We had some talent on the team already that needed to develop, and the draft was deep at servicable WR's. We now have a glutton of WR's and RB's. It's gonna be a shame to let them go; and they would have been cheaper then the guys we signed.

I agree ric. Ya know, camp is much more crowded than it used to be. It's hard to guess from a laymans perspective, but I'll bet there was close to 20,000 there yesterday. Pretty hard to get a good view consistently. That said, of the WR group, those that stood out to me were Marshall, Sanz, and crump. I thought Clutts looked pretty good out of the backfield. Didn't see much from Bush, Wooten looked pretty scrappy, I could never get a good angle to watch McClelland outside of drills, but in drills, he was paired up with Pep and Woot and they all looked pretty good, but not much to see.

Most concerning:
Jay was really off yesterday.
Jay had d-linemen around him all day...Oline, where are you?

If our OL cannot defend against our DL that's an issue unless our DL by some miracle developed a consistant pass rush over night.

That's what has me a little concerned, but please remember,much as I tried to improve it, my views were not good for evaluating Oline.

I tried to take pics to share, but all they do is show I was there. Couldn't get very good shots