Chicago Bears Camp Confidential Aug. 3rd.

I made it up to Bourbanais Sunday for the Bears noon practice. While practice can be boring, training camp gives you access to players, coaches and management, like nothing else. The following lists my thoughts on what I saw and who we talked to.

1. Grossman can make every throw. On every throw the ball seems to launch as if released from catapult. His throws are tight and powerful. Of course, its a lot easier throwing the ball when there is no real pass rush. But for all those Grossman haters out there, you can't dispute that Grossman has the best tools out of this QB lot.

2. Orton actually surprised me. He wasn't too far behind Grossman in his strength, release and "tightness" of this throws. He actually looked like a legit NFL QB, something that I haven't seen from him. Orton is clearly the game manager out of the two. Grossman throws a better deep ball. If Bears go with Orton, you can expect a rather methodical, slow, game manager type offense. With Grossman, we'll see more risk taken, which should equal more rewards, but more picks (or dropped snaps).

3. Its just one practice, but Grossman gets the edge simply because he can stretch the defense better. But, Orton isn't too far behind.

4. Calib Hanie (our 3rd string QB) looks more like an intramural QB than an NFL QB. You could see a large discrepancy between his throws (often wobbly and slow) and those of Grossman and Orton. I don't see him making it too long in this league. But, you never know.

5. Mat Forte is a beast. People complain about his "vertical" running style. To me this seems idiotic as he is simply vertical. He's pretty tall for a RB. In fact, he looks more like a tight end or WR than a RB. He catches the ball beautifully out of the backfield and showed good burst. Whether he can run, I have no clue because it was just a practice. But he does look the part.

6. Charles Tillman got abused all night like a Guantanamo Bay inmate. Hester had him beat on what seemed like every play. Marty Booker even went by him and caught a great pass from Grossman for a large gain. Tillman is physical, but it seemed like the offense was picking on him all afternoon. The same couldn't be said about Vasher as the offense seemed to stay away from his side of the field.

7. Greg Olsen and Hester played pretty well. Olsen plays big and caught everything going his way. He seems like the rock this offense sorely needs. Hester, albeit very small, is amazingly quick. He routinely beat defenders and made every catch. If the Bears can get him space, watch out because he is going to do some great things.

8. The other WRs looked pretty good as well. The Bears may not have a great #1 WR, but they have a lot of good WRs. Bradley, Booker, Lloyd, Rideau and even Monk looked good yesterday.

9. The Defense didn't look good yesterday. Its like they all went out to Rhino bar last night and had a collective hang over. Of course, it probably didn't help that pass rushing is non-existent in these practices, but the defense seemed to take a day off.

10. Lovie Smith appears to do nothing during practices. This may be overly critical, but Lovie seemed to just walk around from drill to drill. I never saw him say a word other than when the players would gather for breaks or at the end. Does he do anything during practice? He certainly isn't a Bill Parcells or Belicheck type coach teaching players. This seems left to the position coaches.

Overall, it was a beautiful day in Bourbaneasy. It was great watching football again. You really can't gather much from training camp practices, but to give credit, the offense looked good.

The one main highlight during the evening came as we were playing football on the side after practice and Jerry Anghelo rode by with his bicycle. Ceasing on the opportunity, I-Truth yelled, "Jerry, 6'3- 215 pounds. I can play WR"! Anghelo responded, "I care about 40 times". To which I-Truth quickly replied, "4.4, 40!". Anghelo came back, "Wow thats unique".

Ahh, fun times.