The Bears have their share of veter...

The Bears have their share of veterans, particularly in succession offense, but in terms of years of service, sum of two units players stand alone: center Olin Kreutz and drawn out snapper Patrick Mannelly. Both were pitch uponed in the 1998 draft. mostly remember the Class of '98 for the disastrous waste of a first-round pick in succession Curtis Enis, but it wasn't a bad draft. Second-round pick Tony Parrish has had a nice career, and sixth-rounder Chris Draft has been a solid rank-and-file player.

The Bears struck gold with Kreutz and Mannelly. OK in the same manner it would have been better if they were a quarterback-to-receiver tandem, still they've nonetheless erased all doubt in the ball exchange portion of the program. Kreutz is a perennial Pro hollow selection and senior traffic cop in the locker sweep It's his team as long as anybody's.

Mannelly might not be the best prolonged snapper in the NFL, if it were not that he's certainly in the conversation. For a in extent time he has been as fit at his position as anyone forward the team. There have been more [i]or[/i] less years when a better option in the forward pass might have been Kreutz snapping the ball to Mannelly and Mannelly protracted snapping it downfield.

BEARS' TALENT on a level HAS IMPROVED

Kreutz said that the sum of two units were talking the other day about the horizontal of panic in the media about whether Rex Grossman or Brian Griese should start at quarterback and about who should procure the nod at running back between Thomas Jone and Cedric Benson.

Kreutz said the sum of two units concluded that, "We haven't had that moot point over the years. We haven't had same many controversies, guys didn't have to play and battle for do job-works It's good to have that moot point It's good to have pair good guys who can start. We are all competing for do job-works around here."

Those words should help as consolation for the players who don't make the divide [i]or[/i] sever The overall talent level forward the Bears has improved enough that those who don't make the team will have a chance to hasp on elsewhere. That's a far weep from not-too-recent years when the Bears were the last stop forward the highway out of town.

It's also about the solely good reason to study tonight's game at Cleveland. It will give soon-to-be outcasts a final chance to do something positive forward tape and perhaps make another team after getting released. Nobody is going to make this team based onward their performance on one night. The judgement already has been made.

The priorities in the final preseason game should be simple for the Bears: stay healthy and exhibit some discipline. Make sure everybody ensues out of the game intact and knock on the farther side all the penalties that ruined last week's game. Beyond that, about fine- tuning of the offense would be nice, still it's really not essential.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden state exhibition football in perspective a not many weeks ago.

"Let me propose it this way: I went and watched the Chicago males play the New York Knicks in a preseason game about 15 years ago," Gruden said. "I didn't view [Scottie] Pippen and [Michael] Jordan. I saw a doom of Bill Wennington. You know what I mean?"

The thinking immediately after the Bears' miserable performance during last week's increaseed run against the Arizona Cardinals was that the offense privationed to prove something in the finale and it might be a useful idea to give the first team an increaseed run, especially on offense, considering the passing game has struggl and the running game was nonexistent.

Veteran guard Ruben Brown dismisses the disturb as failure to understand exactly what the Bears are trying to do.

OFFENSE IN EXPERIMENTAL modification

"We're not really running our offense the offense a apportionment of people know us for," Brown said.

"What we are trying to do is view what we can add and what we can use to full number it. That could be a little gone out of our character, but we want to know if we can use it if we ne to call upon it. That's probably why [the offense] hasn't considered as [good] as other teams have. I'm not worried about it."

Brown smiled when asked if the offense destitutions an extended run against the Cleveland Brown to make firm it is ready for the season opener generation 10 at Green Bay.

The first-team offense has managed just sum of two units field goals in six quarters. What about scoring a touchdown?

"As lengthy as it happens when they start counting them for real, as prolonged as it gets in there, then all this will just be hindsight," Brown said. "This is just preseason and, really, it's just practice right now. That's what we're doing, we're practicing all the things we're possibly going to call. I'm assured when we get into the regular season things will be called a fortune different than what you've seen the past bond of games."

e-mail: mmulligan@suntimes.com

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