Written by Brett Solesky | 09 August 2010

I haven't had as much time as I like to in listening to various reports on Bears training camp this year.  Thank goodness for podcasts though as you tend to get 100-times more information and the updates tend to be more thorough when people have the liberty to talk.  The thing about newspapers and blogs is you can only cram so much information to a reading area before people get bored and click away.  I'm only now learning about this myself....

Anyway so I was listening to the ESPN 1000 podcast from Waddle and Silvy and Jeff Dickerson's Bears camp updates.  They were talking about the cornerbacks specifically Charles Tillman and his long term future with the Bears.  Most agree that Tillman may not have a long term future of high level play and production because he's been so banged up year after year.  Even if he's played a lot he's always played hurt and had off-season surgery last year before the start of camp.  Tillman's long term prognosis isn't good, so the question is who is there on the team that is likely to step up. 

The name that jumped to the forefront of the conversation from Jeff Dickerson's analysis was rookie Joshua Moore the notorious rookie who threw up 225-pounds on the bench press, one time.  Here's the deal though to anyone that knows football, it's not the bench press that CBs need to be good at, they need to have instincts hips and good feet.  Dickerson essentially analyzed this, Moore is very good and very talented and will be a future starter on this Chicago Bears football team. 

He's a rookie this year, he takes too many chances and doesn't have the feel for the game like he should, but another year or two down the line and Moore should be a starter on this team.  Moore has good footwork and is just an all around good play maker.  He makes plays on the ball, and did so throughout mini-camp and OTAs. 

Now one could easily dismiss this as running around in shorts making plays, but here's the thing that I like about Jeff Dickerson's analysis, he's always been fair and very accurate.  Last year for example Dickerson was the first one to pick up on just how good Johnny Knox was going to be as a rookie.  He picked up on it early, he reported on it and in turn I reported on it on this blog.  From there he picked up on how good Al Afalava was, and in turn Afalava wound up being the starter for the Bears. 

On the negative side of things Dickerson also was able to pick up on how BAD Frank Omiyale was as a guard.  He stated that Beekman clearly and consistently beat him out for the left guard spot during the 2009 camp and he was right on. 

So I think this is one of the nicest pieces of news to come out of Bears camp this year.  A fifth round CB pick in Joshua Moore has the type of potential that you hope for and with the continued development of Zack Bowman and no guaranteed long term future for Tillman, the Bears have hope for the future.  Moore has the ability to be an NFL starter one day and he will be one to watch during the pre-season games. 

People talk about the pre-season not mattering?  Well as we learned from the past few pre-seasons with the emergence of Caleb Hanie in 2008, Lance Louis in 2009 pre-season games matter.  Joshua Moore will be one to watch this pre-season to see if Dickerson's analysis is correct.  Does Moore have the potential and can he make the cut to the 53 man roster in 2010?  We'll have that answer in the next month as the Bears grind through a very important slate of pre-season games.

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