Countdown to Kickoff… Jim McMahon Days Until Chicago Bears Season Opener

We decided to do a countdown to the Chicago Bears season opener on September 8th versus the Cincinnati Bengals. Thanks to one of our Twitter followers, we decided to combine the countdown with a roster preview of sorts.

We’re finally down to single digits!  We’re just 9 days away from the start of the regular season.  It seems to a lifetime ago that we wrote up Shea McClellin.

I was going to have Robbie Gould as the spotlight guy and of course we’ll get to him in a bit, but it’s appropriate to have Jim McMahon featured in today’s Countdown since the punky QB has been in the headlines today.

The NFL reached agreement with more than 4500 former players who were suing the league as a part of a large concussion lawsuit.  There are about 245 former Chicago Bears as a part of the suit.  Count the punky QB among them.  He appeared on the Dan Patrick show earlier today and made some headlines with this quote:

"“I still have the dementia,” McMahon said. “I don’t have the sharp pains. I don’t have the thoughts of killing myself.”"

To hear the whole interview, head over here.  Let’s hope for continued improvement for McMahon, who led the ’85 Bears to the Bears’ lone Super Bowl championship.

Looking at our current Bears, Robbie Gould is no slouch holding down the #9.  He’s among the Top 5 most accurate kickers of all time.  Not bad for a guy who was framing houses when his phone rang back in October of 2005 after Bears kicker Doug Brien went down with an injury.

Gould made 26 consecutive FG’s in 2006, setting a Bears record.  Gould is the second all-time scorer in Bears history, accounting for 902 points on 208 FG’s and 278 extra points.  Gould has appeared to get stronger with age, disproving the notion that he couldn’t kick past 50 yards with 8 for 8 from 50+ over the last couple of seasons.  With an offensive minded head coach like Marc Trestman, he could get more opportunities from deep.

We’re just 9 days away.  Are you ready???

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