Week 2: Bears vs. Bengals

[WrigleyField 22]

[Soul]

I'm not sure who was calling plays on that first drive but I wish they'd call them all the time.

 

I don't know but it seemed consistent with what I've seen from Nagy before, with a script of plays that seems to work well initially but then subsequent drives are sluggish.

 

If true, all we need to do is stop the game after the first drive, do another week of prep, then continue.

[raw]

Hot take but I think Fields kind of proved it was the right decision to ease him into the season/career. His talent and upside is obvious but there are some rough edges to work around and I think having a few snaps every game was/is helping.

 

I was watching this one of my phone from the beach so I didn't catch every play, but I can't complain.

It will be interesting to see how he does if he plays next week with a full week of game install. It's a much better D and if he comes out crisper we may chalk it up to not having a game plan installed and 1st team snaps all week. Of course even if he plays out the season and generally proves he's ready I'll expect some big up and down moments still. Especially with young QBs, I think fans make the mistake of treating every positive and negative game as determinate of a direction when in reality, sometimes it's just gonna be noisy.

 

Yeah, felt like he was running the Dalton game plan with the read option plays mixed in as the ones he'd be running if he were coming in for a play here and there. Also, not having thrown much to ARob, Mooney, etc. seemed to show as a lot of the timing was just off and a couple times they didn't seem to know what to expect with the ball placement (ARob in the end zone twice). I don't really expect too much more (catchable passes caught being the difference) with only a week of reps with the 1s if he does start this week. But a change in the gameplan should make a huge difference....like maybe get more than 7 offensive points per half?

[Old Style]

I'm not sure who was calling plays on that first drive but I wish they'd call them all the time.

 

I don't know but it seemed consistent with what I've seen from Nagy before, with a script of plays that seems to work well initially but then subsequent drives are sluggish.

 

If true, all we need to do is stop the game after the first drive, do another week of prep, then continue.

We actually ran pass patterns beyond the first down marker on 3rd down multiple times. That's not typical Nagy.

[WrigleyField 22]

 

Yeesh.

[raw]

To sum up Fields' first real playing time....

 

Ugly:

- The fumble. He was too careless with the ball. Holding on with just 1 hand while trying escape a messy pocket is a bad idea. Young player mistake, trying to do too much to salvage a play that was unsalvagable. Take the sack, live to play another down. Quietly though, him getting on that fumble that was a clear TD the other way waiting to happen may be the difference between 1-1 and 0-2 right now.

 

- The false starts. While the 2nd one, I'm going to put more on Mustipher for not snapping the ball (also late getting the plan in and out of the huddle, Mustipher has to know the clock is short and snap the ball). But this is a muscle memory flaw Fields has to correct. He's rocking/stepping back in anticipation of the snap. It's not a penalty if the ball is snapped, but it's also not something he should be doing. Makes it tough for him to field a low or bad snap if he's retreating at the same time. Equivalent to a WR trying to run with a ball before he catches it.

 

Bad:

- The interception. Could call this ugly, but Fields in the postgame knew exactly what he did wrong without having to "watch the film" like other QBs would say. It was a well designed call by the defense. Show 7. Bring 6. But have the 1 LB fake blitz and drop into the area that they correctly guessed would be Fields' hot read.

 

- Missed Mooney for a TD in the redzone. Threw it out of bounds and didn't give him a chance to make a play on the ball.

 

Hopeful:

- If you add the Robinson dropped TD to Fields' numbers, his QB rating goes from a dismal 27.72 to just a bad 70.99. If you add the ball that hit off Mooney's palm (more of a timing issue of not practicing together than a miss or a drop), then 6-13, 60, INT goes to 8-13, 118, TD, INT. Add in the 13 yards on the would-be 3rd down conversion minus a horrible OPI call on Kmet, and his QB rating is respectable in the low 80s. And that's not to mention, he's probably not even throwing the ball late on the INT if it's 27 or 30 to 10 instead of 20-10 because the Bears converted these other plays.

 

- He did hit that same route to Mooney after the first incompletion on that play. Mooney ran the route pretty much the same way. Flattened out at the sidelines, where previously it looked like Fields expected him to angle it more. Same exact play. Incompletion was at 23 yards. Completed for 21 yard gain.

 

Like I said before, it seemed like the Dalton gameplan, but Fields took more shots down the field. There were 0 moving pockets. Still very little playaction (which just may be a thing Nagy doesn't do much). Wasn't really a gameplan built to help Fields succeed. Be interesting to see if the gameplan is very Fields specific next week or if another DPOTY on the other side means another checkdown happy gameplan. Overall, he probably showed he wasn't ready. But who cares? This team isn't competing this year and Dalton being ready isn't any better.

[David]

[David]