April 3, 2009
I got a text message from a radio station in California yesterday. The producer wanted to know if I would come on the air to talk about Jay Cutler. I texted him back, saying that no, I didn’t want to talk about all the speculation as to where he would end up.
He said it’s not speculation anymore, Greg. The deal just went through and Jay’s on the Bears.
From that point my phone just went crazy. I was getting calls from my family, friends, guys on the team non-stop for the rest of the night. Radio people were asking me to come on the air and talk about the trade. It was a crazy night.
It was even more crazy because I had just thrown with Kyle that afternoon. I was always a big fan of his. But trades are just part of the game.
Now that things have calmed down a bit, I’m actually pretty happy. It’s exciting to get to work with a young guy who has done so much already, like throw for 4,000 yards and make the Pro Bowl. What it comes down to is he makes our team better and I’m looking forward to working with him.
I think he was in a tough situation with Denver, and it’s hard to comment about it unless you’ve been in that situation. I guess he just didn’t think he was being treated fairly out there. In the end Denver got a great quarterback in Kyle Orton, a guy who can play for a long time, plus 1st round picks, and we got a great player too, so both sides came out pretty good.
I’m excited to start up again on Monday. I just got married in Florida, it was amazing, the honeymoon was great, now we’re getting settled back in Chicago, where we’ll stay through the end of the year. Tonight I’m going to go to the press conference and enjoy that, then get ready to go back to work on Monday.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com.
May 12, 2009
I’ve been having a great time in Chicago lately.
I went to the Bulls playoff games against the Celtics. The last one here went into triple overtime, that was awesome.
I also went to a BlackHawks game against Vancouver in the playoffs and shot the puck during the second intermission. They put a big board with a small hole in the middle in front of the goal and give you three shots from center ice. It was hard, I hit the board all three times but didn’t score.
They gave me an authentic BlackHawks jersey with my name and No. 82 on the back and that was pretty cool.
So I thought I would make a list of five of my favorite places to hang out in Chicago:
1) Joe’s Bar. They have a lot of live country acts.
2) Japonais. One of my favorite restaurants.
3) Sunza. Might be my new favorite spot. All different types of Asian food.
4) Hub 51. A restaurant with a club downstairs.
5) Bob Chinn’s. A well-known place to get great food, out near where I live.
As you can tell, eating is something I’m pretty good at.
Meanwhile we’ve been going through our off-season conditioning program. Everything’s been good.
In the draft I think we brought in a couple of young receivers who can help and some guys that will really provide some depth. Hopefully they can come in and help right away.
We gave up some of our draft in the Jay Cutler trade so you have to consider that when you look over our draft picks. I’ve been able to throw the ball around with Jay twice a week for the last five weeks now and everything is going well.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter as gregolsen82.
March 19, 2009
It’s been a busy week for me. I’m getting married on Saturday, and the Bears had their three-day mini camp this week. Right now I’m heading to the airport here in Chicago to fly down to Florida for the wedding.
The wedding will be in Palm Coast, Florida, about an hour north of Orlando.
I’m fired up, we’ve put a lot of time into it to make sure people have a good time and to give each other what we wanted this weekend. Just having all of our friends and family there in the same place at the same time for the whole weekend will be really nice.
From the Bears, Brian Urlacher, Dusty Dvoracek, Devin Hester and Desmond Clark will be there. Also, Jon Beason of the Panthers, Eric Winston of the Texans and Drew Stanton of the Lions. I’m probably leaving someone out.
Tomorrow night there will be a rehearsal dinner, a beach type BBQ with a reggae band for everyone coming. That’ll be a great way to start off the weekend. Saturday will be the ceremony and reception, the actual wedding, then Monday we leave for our honeymoon in St. Thomas. We’re going from Monday to the next Monday.
My fiancée, Kara, kind of put the whole thing together, so she deserves all the credit for how it turns out.
So while we were getting ready for that we had mandatory 3-day mini-camp this week. Monday we had physicals and the other days followed our in-season schedule. Meetings all day, walkthroughs, a full two-hour practice.
We focused on individual work more than teamwork, just getting better and getting back in the swing of things. It seems like the season just ended and we’re back here already. We didn’t do too much, just make sure everyone is present and accounted for and set the tone for the upcoming year. We’re off now until April 6, then we start off-season workouts.
It felt good to get everyone back together in one spot. I think everyone is really looking forward to this season and hopefully the draft will go well and we’ll get some help there. I think we have a good, young nucleus on offense, and that’s really my only concern because our defense has been good for years and has the same guys coming back. Our offense has a lot of good young players that just need to continue to grow.
Fans ask me about the quarterback position and I tell them all the same thing: Kyle is our guy. We all have a lot of confidence in him, and I feel we all can do a little more to take some of the pressure off of him.
For the most part, mini-camp is the signal to start getting back into shape. It’s only March, and I’m in good enough shape to get through camp but there’s a lot of room to continue to work out and get into better shape. I’m not where I would want to be at the start of the season but you can’t max out now and try to sustain that through camp. You want to be peaking just at the start of the season.
That’s it for now. I’ll be in touch after the honeymoon.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com.
June 11, 2009
OTAs are going really well, things look good and our offense is coming together pretty good. We have one more week of OTAs to go.
Tonight I’m going to do something we like to do to blow off steam. Whirly Ball in Vernon Hills. It’s about the most fun you can have. You cruise around in these bumper cars trying to throw a ball with a jai alai basket through a hole while the other team tries to stop you. Cutler’s pretty good at it. So is Caleb Hanie. I’m not sure who else is coming tonight but it’s going to be fun.
Then this weekend we’re going to see Kenny Chesney at Soldier Field, so that will be great, too.
All this and I just got back from BamaJam. Last weekend we went to Enterprise, Alabama for the three-day country music fest. We had a blast, slept in RVs Thursday through Sunday, there was live music. I went with my wife, Eric Winston of the Texans and his wife and a bunch of other guys I went to college with.
The RVs were pretty nice but the water didn’t work in one of them for a whole day. And one of the guys flipped a golf cart and it was smoking upside down and everything. Plus, for three days we pretty much lived on funnel cake and carnival food. I felt great afterwards, but Monday I had to go back and have my body fat checked so I was a little nervous. It worked out alright though.
On the field things are going real well. Jay has definitely made our offense better. He’s really good at seeing what you see. What I mean by that is, sometimes you’re not running the route exactly how it’s supposed to be run, maybe you got thrown off or had to adjust on the fly and improvise a bit, and he’s very good at seeing what you’re doing and being able to throw to a slightly different spot.
He has a real good feel for what’s going on and his arm is as good if not better than advertised.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter as gregolsen82.
I’m looking forward to having the chance to talk directly to you, the fans who are interested in what we do in our daily lives—the stuff you don’t see during games or on SportsCenter. Hopefully, by writing this blog I’ll have a chance to show what we do as people, not just as players.
I’m going to split my off-season between Chicago and South Florida. I’ll be in Florida a lot for awhile right before my wedding. I’m marrying Kara Dooley on March 21. We’ll have about 150 people there.
Other than that, I’m going to try to play some golf. My fiancée likes to play, too. Sometimes we mess around and play tennis, but mostly it’s golf for us. We also like to work out, and one of our favorite things to do is go out for dinner at different restaurants. Our favorite place in Chicago is Japonais. I really like the sushi there.
I’ll also be working out hard in the off-season, every Monday through Friday in Davie, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale with Jon Beason of the Panthers and our trainer, Pete Bomarito. He trains a lot of NFL vets. We start at 6 a.m. and work out for a few hours every morning. That gives me the rest of the day to myself.
Looking back, I would rate my second season a 7 on a scale of 1-10. It was pretty solid, but I think I can do more. Hopefully I can build off this season and continue to do more and get up into that upper echelon group of guys.
Greg Olsen is a tight end with the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com.
July 28, 2009
It’s my last couple of days here in Chicago before we report on Thursday to Bourbonnais for training camp. I just got into town from New Jersey and I’ve been working out at the facility and just getting everything ready for camp.
One thing I’m not looking forward to is living in a dorm for three weeks. It’s not too bad, we don’t have roommates, but it’s still a dorm room. We’ll eat three meals a day in the cafeteria and the food is actually pretty good, but it’s the same things every day for three weeks.
Your family can visit after practice and you can see them in your free time, but you don’t have much free time. And no one’s allowed in the dorms.
That said, I’m really looking forward to getting going. It’s been a long off-season, lots has happened and there’s been a lot of talk, so it will be nice to finally be able to go out there and work to put it all out on the field and get ready for the start of the season.
We’ll see what changes the coaches have in store for us, though the last two years they’ve been pretty consistent.
We’ll also see if any players show up not in the best shape because it’s easy to tell. But very few guys don’t use the off-season to get in shape, get healthy, work on things and get ready to go. The vast majority show up ready.
It’s not like I haven’t seen the guys in a long time. In previous years the team would break up after the last game and wouldn’t see each other again for months, until training camp. It’s not like that anymore with mini-camps and OTAs starting as early as March. We’ve been working together for months. Camp is really a chance to put the work in on the field and in the classroom and prepare for that first game.
By the way, my football camp in NJ went really well. We had about 170 kids come out and hopefully we’ll have more next year. Brian Cushing, Sinorice Moss and Drew Rosenhaus all came out and we had a great week.
Greg Olsen is a tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter as gregolsen82.
July 1, 2009
It’s been a busy off-season. I spent two weeks down in Florida for Father’s Day with my wife Kara’s family and I got to go to the Desmond Clark golf outing.
Then last weekend I was in Detroit because my buddy Drew Stanton of the Lions got married. We stayed at the new MGM Hotel & Casino downtown and that was fun. It’s just like a Vegas casino.
July 4th weekend I’ll be spending downtown. I’m going to the Cubs game on Sunday, going to throw out the first pitch and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the seventh inning stretch. I think there’s more pressure throwing out the first pitch. Everyone expects your singing to be bad, but if you go out there and your throw doesn’t reach the catcher you know you’re going to make somebody’s Not Top 10 list. I’d rather throw it into the bleachers than not reach the plate.
I also played Olympia Fields, it’s a really nice golf course that has hosted the U.S. Open here in the South Suburbs. I played with Paul Levin of Levin BMW, he’s a member there. It was a good time except it was hot as hell and we had to walk the course.
This week I’ll be working out every day, staying in shape, going to the facility to run and do drills, keep myself right for training camp.
Man, we gotta get moving on building up my Twitter following! I have over 2,000 but there are 4 million people here in Chicago. I want to try to get 10,000 by the end of training camp. Let’s make it happen. I’m going to try to make my Tweets interesting so people will want to read them, so follow me at gregolsen82.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter as gregolsen82.
August 19, 2009
I missed our first preseason game because I got dinged up a little bit in practice. A couple weeks ago I came down on my hip and ended up with a pretty good contusion that kept me out for about a week. But I’ve been back this past week and I’ll be out there Saturday for our first home preseason game, against the Giants. I’m looking forward to it.
We’ve had a really good training camp, we’ve come out and made a lot of progress. Guys are getting accustomed to each other for the most part and we’re in a pretty good spot, we’re where we want to be at this time of year. Now we just have to keep getting better as the preseason goes on so we can be tuned up for the season opener.
I think our receivers will surprise people. They’re going to be a pretty good unit. Earl Bennett has done a good job in camp. Devin is the guy everyone’s heard of, but guys like Earl and some of our young receivers have stepped up and filled voids and I expect them to have good years for us.
Jay has had a real good camp, he’s been as advertised, a Pro Bowl quarterback and then some. He obviously has a lot of talent, but he also did a great job of picking up our offense and adding his own little twists. The talk about him not being a leader is nonsense, he’s definitely one of our main leaders, he’s done a great job of getting the offense rallied around each other and making us feel like we could be really good.
As for the Brett Favre situation, it’s just been crazy. I don’t know how much that will change things in our division. The Vikings were going to be pretty good regardless, but anytime you add a Hall of Fame quarterback into the mix you get better. The way it played out was a little crazy, I guess when you’re that good and teams want you that bad, you hold the deck of cards. If he thinks he can play and he wants to play, he should play.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter @gregolsen82.
So we didn't have a pick until day two but managed to compile 7 second day picks. Now I'm not one to argue with GMs and coaches, because I know that I couldn't do better than the guys who follow these players for years, but did the Bears really do a B+ job? I understand the trade with Seattle; giving us more picks but I think we could have picked the best available player and had just as much chance of picking a starting caliber player in the subsequent rounds. How much faith do the boys upstairs really have in a sixth or seventh round pick and 9 undrafted FAs to actually provide real competition for starting spots on our roster? Tom Brady is the exception to the rule.
Most of these guys will end up selling insurance or forming concrete. I am really starting to believe that the Draft is just a ruse to get us fans to re-up our season tickets. It's a sense of false hope wrapped in a big shiney box that you open and find only Jerry Angelo's middle finger. These "executives" like our money, not us. Bringing in another tight end (we already have 3 on the roster), more DEs and no-account DBs is simply a sham perpetrated by the front office so siphon money from our pockets, money that in this economy could be used to bring actual joy or some sense of relief from everyday stress. Instead, a buch of suckers are gonna pony up $2500 - $15000 to watch another season of ineptitude from Ron Turner and Bob Babich ( oh wait I forgot he's been relieved of duty).
Oh well at least I can still wear my Forte Jersey with pride.
Stevus
September 11, 2009
It’s been a long preseason, I’m ready to play a meaningful game and I think the guys are ready. It’s even more exciting because we’re playing probably our biggest rival on the road on Sunday Night Football in our opener.
On offense we really just need to come out and execute the game plan that we set up. It’s important to get off to a good start to weather the storm of being on the road, then it just comes down to playing well and making plays when we have chances.
Green Bay has great fan support, it’s a fun place to play. The fans are into it and Lambeau is a great stadium. I’m looking forward to the trip up there and trying to get the season off on a good note.
We’ve had a good couple weeks of practice. I think we’re ready. We put a lot of work in all through the offseason, mini-camps and training camp, and everything was just gearing us up for Sunday night.
As for me, my goal is just to make a play anytime the ball is thrown to me. That’s all you can control, making the most of it when your chances come, and on other plays just take care of your responsibility.
Winning the first game is real important, obviously, but aside from wanting to get off to a good start, this is also a division game. Anytime you win a game in our division, it’s huge. So this is a real big opener for us.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter @gregolsen82.
Huge bears fan and big fan of Greg Olsen! Looking # 82 to go to his first pro-bowl this year(2009)! Go Bears, Good luck Greg! Looking forward to reading your blog all year!
Just looking to guage fan expectations for the air attack this year.
Over/Under: I Say:
1. 120 - WR receptions Over
2. 75 - TE receptions Under
3. 50 - HB/FB receptions Under
4. 750 yds - leading reciever Over
5. 35% - percentage of offense Forte is responsible for. Push
Talk amongst yourselves.
October 15, 2009
I went back to New Jersey this past weekend and got my jersey retired by my high school Friday night. That was cool, they had a ceremony at halftime and I got to see some guys I went to high school with. The coaches are still there and we had a great time, it was just cool to be back in town.
Saturday night we had a beefsteak dinner fundraising event for my charity and had a great turnout. There were 320 people and everyone did a great job of contributing. The Foundation is called Receptions for Research and it mainly benefits breast cancer organizations.
Sunday night I came back to Chicago.
The bye week was a nice chance to get healthy and recharge the battery. We have a long stretch now with 12 games in a row. It’s a long road ahead but the guys now are rejuvenated and ready to go.
We’re on Sunday Night Football this week in Atlanta against the Falcons. They do a lot of different stuff, mix man and zone defense. It’s a pretty good defense, they have fast guys up front who get after the quarterback and a good group of linebackers and a solid secondary, so it’s a good all-around defense. We have our work cut out for us. I’m excited to go down there, especially after losing to them last year the way we did.
I think everything is going well for the Bears, we had a pretty solid first quarter going 3-1. We’re in a good position to make a run at the division title and the conference game we have on Sunday is a good way to come back from the bye. We have to take care of business on the road because we have two games until we come back to play at home.
Personally, I feel pretty good about my performance thus far. My stats are not where they were anticipated to be at this point, but it’s early in the year and I’ll just continue to plug away. Balls come in groups, I know I just have to be patient and my time will come.
Greg Olsen is the starting tight end for the Chicago Bears. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.golsen82.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/gregolsen82.
that made me hurt just watchin it!! SO glad your ok olsen..cant afford another bear!!!
GO BEARS!!!!