Battle of beleaguered Bears braintrusts

[NorthsideAvenger]

10 minutes ago, raw said:

It's the Bears. Whatever move they make will come back and haunt them. At least, moving on from Fields has a ton of logic supporting it, which would at least be a new thing.

The thing is, I don't see them moving on from Fields. Those who are thinking the Bears will be drafting a QB with the Carolina pick will be disappointed. To me (and this is my opinion), it feels inevitable that Poles will trade the pick. The question is: how far down the draft board does Poles want to go?

Edited January 1, 2024 by NorthsideAvenger

[raw]

4 minutes ago, Rex Buckingham said:

He's always been capable of moments of brilliance. He hasn't shown he can be routinely good, and has shown a propensity for the negative plays like easily-avoidable sacks, fumbles, and picks. 

Well yeah. But yesterday, he did the routine stuff we want to see. He threw on time for the most part, consistently accurate, and threw with anticipation to guys who were "NFL open". And he still had the moments of brilliance with his legs. And the only negative play was before the 2 minute warning when Tyson Bagent should have been in that game anyway.

[CubinNY]

26 minutes ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

The thing is, I don't see them moving on from Fields. Those who are thinking the Bears will be drafting a QB with the Carolina pick will be disappointed. To me (and this is my opinion), it feels inevitable that Poles will trade the pick. The question is: how far down the draft board does Poles want to go?

I’d guess if they decide to trade it will be a swap of 1 for 2 or 3 plus whatever sweeteners they can get. 
 

id hope they would target MHJ, but its the Bears so poles may drop down so he can get another weak side linebacker or CB. 

[BigSlick]

14 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Jordan love in his first full season has tied the total of the Bears single season passing TD record. wtf 

This says significantly more about the Bears franchise than it does about Jordan Love, to be fair

 

 

[Bertz]

Fields since coming back from injury has QBRs for each game of

72.0

41.6

65.7

18.0

64.0

66.0

Average those out and you get 54.6 (technically I should weight these by dropbacks but that's more work than I'm willing to do right now and would only change the number a smidge).

If that was Justin's full season QBR he'd rank 17th in the NFL between Mayfield and Stroud.  In the same neighborhood as Goff, Lawrence, and Carr. 

So even in the best stretch of Fields' career he's been slightly above average?  I feel like the arrow is still pointing up a bit, and if we didn't have the Panthers pick I'd be happy to continue building around Fields.  But we do have that pick, so IMO the only reason to keep riding with Justin is because of the Bears' sad QB history and fear of the unknown.

[UMFan83]

10 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fields since coming back from injury has QBRs for each game of

72.0

41.6

65.7

18.0

64.0

66.0

Average those out and you get 54.6 (technically I should weight these by dropbacks but that's more work than I'm willing to do right now and would only change the number a smidge).

If that was Justin's full season QBR he'd rank 17th in the NFL between Mayfield and Stroud.  In the same neighborhood as Goff, Lawrence, and Carr. 

So even in the best stretch of Fields' career he's been slightly above average?  I feel like the arrow is still pointing up a bit, and if we didn't have the Panthers pick I'd be happy to continue building around Fields.  But we do have that pick, so IMO the only reason to keep riding with Justin is because of the Bears' sad QB history and fear of the unknown.

Plus QBR accounts for his legs too right?  So you can't say "well add in the running game and hes much better"

[Bertz]

5 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Plus QBR accounts for his legs too right?  So you can't say "well add in the running game and hes much better"

Yup.  And I think it does a certain amount of separating out WR performance from QB performance.  I would guess that's why even the recent numbers are fairly pedestrian is a lot of this production has been DJ Moore generated.

[Tryptamine]

9 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Plus QBR accounts for his legs too right?  So you can't say "well add in the running game and hes much better"

You also have to account for that Minnesota game QBR that completely tanks his average because he injured himself and for whatever reason they let him continue to play for another quarter before finally removing him when it was the injury that led him to miss the next month. 

 

Oops went back 1 game too far.

Edited January 1, 2024 by Tryptamine

[Tryptamine]

Also, I know it doesn't matter too much, but it kind of drives me nuts that Fields gets dinged for those 2 Cleveland INTs. The first one wasn't even caught the 2nd one was a hailmary that landed in Mooney's lap.

[BigSlick]

6 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Also, I know it doesn't matter too much, but it kind of drives me nuts that Fields gets dinged for those 2 Cleveland INTs. The first one wasn't even caught the 2nd one was a hailmary that landed in Mooney's lap.

Yeah that was a weird thing, I thought I remember the commentators saying that the league for later overrule those and make at least that first "interception" an incompletion in the stat book. I'm not terribly bothered by it overall because he played badly in that game and there were a handful of INTs that DBs just didn't catch. 

And that first Minnesota game still haunts me. I was at that game, Fields was coming off two extremely good passing games and he....stunk up the place. He was horrible. Getsy called a bad game, but Fields was terrible. And then we had to deal with a month of Bagent and interminable idiotic debate. 

[Bertz]

7 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Also, I know it doesn't matter too much, but it kind of drives me nuts that Fields gets dinged for those 2 Cleveland INTs. The first one wasn't even caught the 2nd one was a hailmary that landed in Mooney's lap.

Didn't he have two passes hit defenders in the hands and get dropped?  I remember karma more or less working out for that game.

[minnesotacubsfan]

32 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Didn't he have two passes hit defenders in the hands and get dropped?  I remember karma more or less working out for that game.

the ints on the hail marys were bad luck as much as anything, they had nothing to do with karma.

[Bearded_Beef]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

Fields since coming back from injury has QBRs for each game of

72.0

41.6

65.7

18.0

64.0

66.0

Average those out and you get 54.6 (technically I should weight these by dropbacks but that's more work than I'm willing to do right now and would only change the number a smidge).

If that was Justin's full season QBR he'd rank 17th in the NFL between Mayfield and Stroud.  In the same neighborhood as Goff, Lawrence, and Carr. 

So even in the best stretch of Fields' career he's been slightly above average?  I feel like the arrow is still pointing up a bit, and if we didn't have the Panthers pick I'd be happy to continue building around Fields.  But we do have that pick, so IMO the only reason to keep riding with Justin is because of the Bears' sad QB history and fear of the unknown.

FWIW Greg Gabriel is convinced that we're going to trade the pick and seemed to insinuate that Williams isn't the generational prospect that everyone thought he was at the beginning of the season.  I'm not sure the consensus on Williams has matched that of guys like Luck, Manning or Lawrence, so he makes me nervous.  His size also concerns me, but maybe that's just because of how Bryce Young has looked this year.

The question is, if Williams and/or Maye aren't as sure of QB prospects as you can reasonably be, do you think that you can win with Fields?  If you think we can win with Fields, why not throw open this window by continuing to stockpile 1st round picks and sign a few big ticket FAs?  I kind of agree with Greg that this trade could be the gift that keeps giving.

[Bertz]

22 minutes ago, minnesotacubsfan said:

the ints on the hail marys were bad luck as much as anything, they had nothing to do with karma.

Right, I'm saying I agree he had two INTs that shouldn't really be held against him, but he separately had two should-have-been INTs dropped by the defense so it's all a wash.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I definitely wouldn't put Williams in the Luck/Manning category. He's a half step down from that.

If someone offers you three firsts (the first one being fairly high) and more for him, I can see that being tempting.

 

But if you let that sort of maneuver talk you into keeping fields as your QB, you've outsmarted yourself 

[minnesotacubsfan]

5 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Right, I'm saying I agree he had two INTs that shouldn't really be held against him, but he separately had two should-have-been INTs dropped by the defense so it's all a wash.

and I'm saying thats not true. 1st of all, the defenders have to catch the ball for them to be ints (not slipped through their hands therefor KINDA an int) and secondly, one of the hail marys wasnt even caught, it was a missed call by the officials to call it a int - it hit the ground

[BigSlick]

25 minutes ago, Bearded_Beef said:

FWIW Greg Gabriel is convinced that we're going to trade the pick and seemed to insinuate that Williams isn't the generational prospect that everyone thought he was at the beginning of the season.  I'm not sure the consensus on Williams has matched that of guys like Luck, Manning or Lawrence, so he makes me nervous.  His size also concerns me, but maybe that's just because of how Bryce Young has looked this year.

The question is, if Williams and/or Maye aren't as sure of QB prospects as you can reasonably be, do you think that you can win with Fields?  If you think we can win with Fields, why not throw open this window by continuing to stockpile 1st round picks and sign a few big ticket FAs?  I kind of agree with Greg that this trade could be the gift that keeps giving.

Once again, there's a world of difference between 5'10" and 6'1" in the NFL. 6'1" is maybe shorter than you'd want to have your ideal QB prospect if you were building one in a lab, but 5'10" is so small it is nearly disqualifying. 

And if you don't like Williams, there's also Drake Maye who is 6'4". I honestly haven't scouted Maye very much so I don't have a lot to say, but there are plenty of folks who rate him higher than Williams. I dunno. We got a long ways to go before the draft rolls around. 

[jersey cubs fan]

Fwiw, Greg Gabriel knows nothing and nobody 

[jersey cubs fan]

11 minutes ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

I definitely wouldn't put Williams in the Luck/Manning category. He's a half step down from that.

If someone offers you three firsts (the first one being fairly high) and more for him, I can see that being tempting.

 

But if you let that sort of maneuver talk you into keeping fields as your QB, you've outsmarted yourself 

I have to imagine if they don’t take a qb #1, they will hedge their bets and take a QB elsewhere and continue to do that every year. They aren’t going to marry themselves to Fields. They don’t need to, for one thing. The “keep Fields” timeline exists on a spectrum. 

[Tryptamine]

5 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Once again, there's a world of difference between 5'10" and 6'1" in the NFL. 6'1" is maybe shorter than you'd want to have your ideal QB prospect if you were building one in a lab, but 5'10" is so small it is nearly disqualifying. 

And if you don't like Williams, there's also Drake Maye who is 6'4". I honestly haven't scouted Maye very much so I don't have a lot to say, but there are plenty of folks who rate him higher than Williams. I dunno. We got a long ways to go before the draft rolls around. 

Maye has the kind of arm that can make absolutely any throw,  but because of this, he tries to make a lot of throws he just shouldn't. He's going to throw a ton of INT in his first year; you just have to hope he understands that just because he can doesn't mean he should.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

5 minutes ago, jersey cubs fan said:

I have to imagine if they don’t take a qb #1, they will hedge their bets and take a QB elsewhere and continue to do that every year. They aren’t going to marry themselves to Fields. They don’t need to, for one thing. The “keep Fields” timeline exists on a spectrum. 

Any scenario in which Justin fields is your no. 1 QB heading into camp is a failed offseason 

[scarey]

6 hours ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

Any scenario in which Justin fields is your no. 1 QB heading into camp is a failed offseason 

Is that your qualification for the Bears? Or any team?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

2 hours ago, scarey said:

Is that your qualification for the Bears? Or any team?

I'm not intimately familiar with every team's situation, but generally speaking probably.

He's a really bad QB and if he's the best you can do, you're better off trying to develop a project than settling for him 

[NorthsideAvenger]

Help me understand how drafting a QB with a lame duck coach (if Eberflus indeed remains HC in 2024) is a sane plan? If Flus is fired after 2024, then the new coach would be stuck with a QB he did not draft just like Flus got stuck with Fields. Would it not make more sense to fire Flus this off-season and bring in a new coach, if the plan is to draft a QB?

 

 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

43 minutes ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

Help me understand how drafting a QB with a lame duck coach (if Eberflus indeed remains HC in 2024) is a sane plan? If Flus is fired after 2024, then the new coach would be stuck with a QB he did not draft just like Flus got stuck with Fields. Would it not make more sense to fire Flus this off-season and bring in a new coach, if the plan is to draft a QB?

 

 

Two responses:

1) What evidence do we have that Eberflus is a lame-duck coach in 2024?

2) Williams is a prospect caliber that everyone would want. It's not the same thing as picking a second-tier QB prospect and then finding out he's not the right type of second-tier QB prospect for your new coach.