Apparently there is another football game tomorrow night, so let's continue my quixotic attempt at catching up to Lucas.

CHI at WAS: Ugh, two incredibly boring offenses square off. A few weeks ago Tim Keown wrote a great article about how NFL coaches often try to shoehorn players into their own systems rather than designing a system around the players they have. This seems incredibly foolish and is another reason why the Patriots do so well while other teams do not. Last year, when the Patriots' receiving corps consisted of a bunch of has beens and nobodies, many of whom couldn't run reliable patterns, the offense relied on short pass after short pass. This year with better, more experienced receivers, the Patriots only use the short pass to get Donte Stallworth the ball and go deep much more often. The Bears are the perfect example of using the same system regardless of players, as they attempt to be a ball-control running team when their running back is Cedric Benson (or at least until he got hurt). Not that Rex Grossman is a great quarterback, but Devin Hester is an exciting player. How about occasionally letting Hester run draw plays as a running back or catching screen passes? Later in the season you often see the worse teams start doing well as they enter "nothing to lose" mode because they start playing more aggressively and using more gadget plays and going for it on 4th down. Wouldn't they be better off using the gadget plays, which only work once or twice anyway before other coaches have them on film, earlier in the season when they still have a shot at winning something? Where was the Jets' Brad Smith in week 3 or 4 when the games meant something? WAS