Bears week 4 vs Rams: Sunday at noon on Fox

[raw]

5 hours ago, gflore34 said:

He played fairly well last season, unless there's a injury involved, I'm not getting how his play went from competent to garbage.

Yeah, he has a back injury that has been nagging him since camp started. There were concerns that it was becoming too much this week and there were plans discussed (Amegadjie at RT or Pryor at RT, Davis at RG) if he had to miss this past Sunday.

6 hours ago, BigbadB said:

In watching the entire clip, he clearly had issues with Moore throughout. Granted, he was pretty accurate on some of his criticisms. The routes were not fooling the defense on some plays and he wasn't blocking on others. With that said, he probably is frustrated in not having many opportunities for longer routes because of the lack of Oline protection. There is still plenty of time to get everyone on the same page and turn this offense into a playoff caliber unit. Well, maybe not the Oline, but they could still make it happen in spite of the Oline. Braxton Jones looked really bad on several of the plays JT analyzed. 

He's definitely frustrated more with the playcalling than the QB. There isn't a ton of Caleb missing him on routes (he was open for a TD on the play Rome got held with no call in the end zone), but his route tree has been really lacking. They are using him like they should use a guy like Velus. A lot of screens and short stuff to let him make a play after the catch, when he's really good before the catch as well. Week 1 was heavily focused on Keenan as the 1st read. Week 2 was just a bloodbath from the OL. Weeks 3 and 4 was even more of the short stuff. 

I think after Getsy, DJ is just sick of terrible playcalling....hence the offensive captains meeting with Waldron last week. 

[NotKyle]

Late to the party but my main thoughts on this game were:

1) We ran less zone read and more gap concepts in the run game and that seemed to help us a lot.  That's not something you can do against every team, but the Rams have an undersized defensive line and that helped us a lot.  The blocking on the Swift touchdown was beautiful, every single person hit their blocks (give or take kmet putting his guy on the ground but letting him roll into the hole for Swift to jump over).  9 blocks take out 9 defenders, 1 defender overruns the hole, and that just leaves Swift to outrun the safety.

2) I liked Caleb Williams' game against the Colts a little better than this one, but this one was fine.  He looked confused by what the Rams were showing in coverage and unwilling to take chances driving the ball downfield, but he didn't make any big mistakes and he used his RBs as checkdowns in a way I hadn't seen him do much before this game, so that's progress.  After two terrible games, he's put up 2 in a row where he looked like a respectable NFL QB, which isn't bad for now.  It's all about continued growth.

After yips in week and a little bit into week 2, we're seeing the accuracy that we expected to see.  He was consistently placing short and intermediate balls exactly where he wanted to, even on intermediate throws.  The TD to Moore, the PI to Allen in the end zone, the first down to Kmet were all big-boy, impressive-even-by-NFL-standard throws that were between 15 and 20 yards past the LOS, thrown with perfect placement and anticipation.

I've seen people debate whether the ball where Odunze was held or the stop and go to Moore were catchable or not, but after watching them too many times, I'm convinced both were pretty much where he wanted to place them and would have been catchable with perfect releases and outstretched arms (would have looked like the Kmet catch).  But that's a trend I'm seeing with him:  He is throwing with so much anticipation that he's assuming the receiver gets a perfectly clean release and placing balls that only the receiver can get to.  Maybe that's tactical to avoid any chance of an INT, but by the send of the season I'd like to see him develop the confidence to hang some balls in space a little bit when his receiver has leverage in a one-on-one, let his receivers fight for it and win.  Yeah, some of them might turn into interceptions like the one vs the Colts, but I think he'd get more than enough big plays to make up for it.

3) I owe a big apology to Swift

4) I will acknowledge that Tory Taylor had an incredibly game while pointing out that even including that game, he's slightly below average in most NFL punting stats.  Bears fans are having fun, and that's fine, but he's hardly the only big-legged punter out there and there's plenty of guys who can do what he does.

5) I think Braxton Jones' personal foul was a crap call.  You are allowed a blindside block under many circumstances, including 1) if the defender initiates the contact or 2) the force is delivered with the arms through open hands.   It was a clean block for either of those, let alone both.

[BigSlick]

Oh yeah I definitely agree on that Braxton play. It was a dumb call, and I don’t think Braxton was even trying to really lay a huge hit on the guy. Overall the officiating was just…overboard in the first half. A lot of it hurt us, a lot of it hurt the Rams, overall they just needed to let the teams play. Too many ticky tack flags make for a poor and uninteresting game to watch.