Bears week 15 MNF at MIN on ABC

[WrigleyField 22]

7 minutes ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

I will say that I don't think it has to be Johnson or Bust.  Last year everyone wanted Slowik and the year before that everyone wanted Daboll.  There's always going to be a flavor of the year guy.

Ben Johnson is like the difference of a QB prospect who'd have been #1 for consecutive drafts and one who flashes onto the scene, which is more like Daboll.   There's bust/reward risk in each, but the former is a better hit rate.

 

I can't think of a more consensus 1st time HC candidate since Shannahan, really.

 

So like yea, they have to go through the full process or whatever, but he looms over any other candidate choice.

Edited December 17, 2024 by WrigleyField 22

[BigSlick]

Whoever we end up getting, I hope they encourage Caleb to throw the horsefeathers ball downfield into coverage sometimes. It's very nice that he doesn't throw a lot of picks, but you can see how it makes his game suffer in every other single way. 

He's still at this moment like, better than Fields ever was, but he can be so much more. 

Edited December 17, 2024 by BigSlick

[jersey cubs fan]

8 minutes ago, WrigleyField 22 said:

They've only settled into that by a lot of trial and error (they 100% sidelined him at one point). Also Roseman is certainly not the mold of Player personnel specialist. So they're kind of their own category.

Eh, he became the gm after being a player personnel guy during the Reid years. He ceded the title to Chip Kelly, but took it back after Kelly left and Pederson came on board. Pederson was the rare Super Bowl winning head coach that did not consolidate power, losing his job two years later. Roseman has overseen one of the most successful organizations of the past decade, surviving 4 head coaches in his tenure 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I'm optimistic (well, relatively) that we can finish the year with Williams on a little bit less of a downswing.  He's had two bad games in a row, and recency bias makes it feel like he's been bad forever.

The Lions' defense is more or less entirely on the IR, and their offense is going to score so fast we'll go lots of possessions.  

The Seahawks will beat us but they aren't terrifying.

There's a really good chance the Packers' seed will be locked in and they'll rest guys.

[BigSlick]

its so crazy that the washington literally just destroyed the whole team. like i dont think they're as bad as they're playing now, and they aren't as good as our most optimistic projections.... but clearly something psychologically broke inside them after that Washington game and they never recovered. which is annoying!! 

[Hairyducked Idiot]

4 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

its so crazy that the washington literally just destroyed the whole team. like i dont think they're as bad as they're playing now, and they aren't as good as our most optimistic projections.... but clearly something psychologically broke inside them after that Washington game and they never recovered. which is annoying!! 

I think the fractures were already there below the surface, the wins were just hiding them. We now have rumors that the offensive vets were in rebellion as early as this summer, and there was the whole big meeting thing they had early in the season.

But wow, since the Washington game, they've been on a fun-bad speedrun. You'd think a franchise with a history of falling apart wouldn't be finding new, more majestic ways to collapse.

Edited December 17, 2024 by Hairyducked Idiot

[WrigleyField 22]

11 minutes ago, jersey cubs fan said:

Eh, he became the gm after being a player personnel guy during the Reid years. He ceded the title to Chip Kelly, but took it back after Kelly left and Pederson came on board. Pederson was the rare Super Bowl winning head coach that did not consolidate power, losing his job two years later. Roseman has overseen one of the most successful organizations of the past decade, surviving 4 head coaches in his tenure 

Ceded?  He was stripped of that power, if that's what you mean. It was not willingly given up.

He also spent 2 years as a VP of Player Personnel after coming up through the admin side.  That is a-typical of most GMs, especially in past 30 years since the advent of salary cap. His background before GM was predominantly not personnel related.  Certainly not what Poles is (and it shows in their understanding of what the salary cap actually is).

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It's kinda fun to think about how we released our fullback because we had this great idea to let a backup lineman do it, and it's directly cost us two touchdowns this season.

[WrigleyField 22]

8 minutes ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

It's kinda fun to think about how we released our fullback because we had this great idea to let a backup lineman do it, and it's directly cost us two touchdowns this season.

The fullback who was signed to a guaranteed extension lol

[UMFan83]

27 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

its so crazy that the washington literally just destroyed the whole team. like i dont think they're as bad as they're playing now, and they aren't as good as our most optimistic projections.... but clearly something psychologically broke inside them after that Washington game and they never recovered. which is annoying!! 

Yeah its really hard to measure things like momentum or whatever, but I'm convinced the hail mary, and the fallout from it (like Eberflus completely deflecting blame, Stevenson's actions/benching, etc) absolutely had an effect on the season.  The margin for error was always going to be small because of the gauntlet the last half of this season but I can't see us losing to both Arizona and New England if we win the Washington game...beyond that we start to get into butterfly effect type of conversations.  The season was still salvageable but we didn't have the leadership in place to pick ourselves up for the next 2 critical games.

Amazingly we did fight through those demoralizing losses to put us in position to win the next 3 games, all against divisional opponents but managed to blow all 3 of them in the final seconds.

Like Kyle said, I don't think this team is 4-13 bad based on talent.  It probably wasn't a 11-6 caliber team either but the possibility of a borderline playoff team was always there.  Such an unbelievably frustrating season....we've had many frustrating seasons as Bears fans but all factors considered this might be the worst...this or 2013, but at least in 2013 we were fun with a good offense.

[BigSlick]

7 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Yeah its really hard to measure things like momentum or whatever, but I'm convinced the hail mary, and the fallout from it (like Eberflus completely deflecting blame, Stevenson's actions/benching, etc) absolutely had an effect on the season.  The margin for error was always going to be small because of the gauntlet the last half of this season but I can't see us losing to both Arizona and New England if we win the Washington game...beyond that we start to get into butterfly effect type of conversations.  The season was still salvageable but we didn't have the leadership in place to pick ourselves up for the next 2 critical games.

Amazingly we did fight through those demoralizing losses to put us in position to win the next 3 games, all against divisional opponents but managed to blow all 3 of them in the final seconds.

Like Kyle said, I don't think this team is 4-13 bad based on talent.  It probably wasn't a 11-6 caliber team either but the possibility of a borderline playoff team was always there.  Such an unbelievably frustrating season....we've had many frustrating seasons as Bears fans but all factors considered this might be the worst...this or 2013, but at least in 2013 we were fun with a good offense.

Yeah I don't think even if we have the most optimistic view of things that this would have been a playoff team this year. But 9-8 was within reach and a much better feeling going into 2025. Though that likely would have kept Eberflus his job so... would that have been good? I have no idea. 

Regarding most frustrating seasons....I don't think this is as bad as 2011 (I think?) where the team was hitting on all cylinders and then Cutler broke his finger and we lost him for 5 weeks, where we lost painful, awful games (including the notorious Tim Tebow game) and barely missed out on the playoffs. 

Ah well. Now we wait another 9.5 months before we can see Caleb play meaningful games again. Sigh. 

Edited December 17, 2024 by BigSlick

[Hairyducked Idiot]

The concept of variance always gets people persnickety.

If you do something stupid and it makes you go from a 2% chance of a bad thing happening to 10%, and that bad thing happened four times in a row, that's negative variance, but people don't like it described that way.

The Bears were unlucky this season and if you had an alternate universe generator where you could run this season back a million times, you'd usually get more than 4 wins by this point.

They've been unlucky with both close game results and injuries. That bad luck combined with bad roster-building decisions, poor leadership, and a toxic locker room to coagulate into the critical mass of suck we see play out each week 

[UMFan83]

27 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

Regarding most frustrating seasons....I don't think this is as bad as 2011 (I think?) where the team was hitting on all cylinders and then Cutler broke his finger and we lost him for 5 weeks, where we lost painful, awful games (including the notorious Tim Tebow game) and barely missed out on the playoffs. 

Yeah that season was pretty frustrating.  But at least that season we could blame on some ****** injury luck and felt like the team was in decent shape moving forward.  (though the defense was getting old and Lovie was apparently 1 year from being fired). 

This season just feels so demoralizing.  We tanked for 2 straight years to get to this point, got the gift of a lifetime with the number 1 pick from Carolina, there was a no doubt QB available that teams had been salivating over drafting for 2 years, seemed like many of the other pieces were in place based on the last 2 years of team building.  Then the season starts and it looks like things are actually happening as hoped and not only that, the QB looks legitimately elite...like no doubt in my mind that we actually managed to get the elite QB we've wanted forever.  Then over the next 6 weeks we suffer 4 different horrific losses that at worst we should have gone 2-2 or 3-1 in, the QB considerably regresses (note: I'm in no way out on Caleb or anything but my confidence in him being an elite QB is noticeably less than it was after the Jags game. It just has to be), the players force the coach out, holes start being exposed all over the roster, the GM seems like he might be out.   Feels like we're about to start another rebuild/reshuffle and like, I just can't deal with this crap anymore.

2011 was incredibly frustrating, but this feels more frustrating in more of a big picture way.  It just feels exhausting to put any emotional energy towards this team anytime soon and while there are still plenty of positives on this team, its going to take a lot for me to feel excited about the team again.  Like tangible results on the field, not just hiring the hotshot coordinator, or actually using our cap space to address holes (crazy idea!).  I'm just spent.

Edited December 17, 2024 by UMFan83

[minnesotacubsfan]

1 hour ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

I'm optimistic (well, relatively) that we can finish the year with Williams on a little bit less of a downswing.  He's had two bad games in a row, and recency bias makes it feel like he's been bad forever.

The Lions' defense is more or less entirely on the IR, and their offense is going to score so fast we'll go lots of possessions.  

The Seahawks will beat us but they aren't terrifying.

There's a really good chance the Packers' seed will be locked in and they'll rest guys.

The Packers aren’t going to rest anyone until they are up by 30 points

[BigSlick]

1 hour ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

The concept of variance always gets people persnickety.

If you do something stupid and it makes you go from a 2% chance of a bad thing happening to 10%, and that bad thing happened four times in a row, that's negative variance, but people don't like it described that way.

The Bears were unlucky this season and if you had an alternate universe generator where you could run this season back a million times, you'd usually get more than 4 wins by this point.

They've been unlucky with both close game results and injuries. That bad luck combined with bad roster-building decisions, poor leadership, and a toxic locker room to coagulate into the critical mass of suck we see play out each week 

This would all be true if we were talking about emotionless automatons that operate purely on the basis of random odds, but we're talking about a sport that, even among professional sports, involves huge swings of emotion. A baseball player going up to bat 700 times in a 162 game season we can roughly estimate makes most of those at-bats roughly equivalent. Not exactly the same in football, IMO. But, its IMO. 
 

EDIT: hah, and then I hear a quote from DJ Moore that he felt like the Hail Mary was the turning point of the season. Of course, that’s said ex post facto, looking back on the season and trying to find an explanation. But well, he also said it. 🤷‍♂️

Edited December 18, 2024 by BigSlick

[Hairyducked Idiot]

2 hours ago, BigSlick said:

This would all be true if we were talking about emotionless automatons that operate purely on the basis of random odds, but we're talking about a sport that, even among professional sports, involves huge swings of emotion. A baseball player going up to bat 700 times in a 162 game season we can roughly estimate makes most of those at-bats roughly equivalent. Not exactly the same in football, IMO. But, its IMO. 
 

EDIT: hah, and then I hear a quote from DJ Moore that he felt like the Hail Mary was the turning point of the season. Of course, that’s said ex post facto, looking back on the season and trying to find an explanation. But well, he also said it. 🤷‍♂️

I discussed the emotional impact in the post.

[gflore34]

15 hours ago, BigSlick said:

Yeah I don't think even if we have the most optimistic view of things that this would have been a playoff team this year. But 9-8 was within reach and a much better feeling going into 2025. Though that likely would have kept Eberflus his job so... would that have been good? I have no idea. 

Regarding most frustrating seasons....I don't think this is as bad as 2011 (I think?) where the team was hitting on all cylinders and then Cutler broke his finger and we lost him for 5 weeks, where we lost painful, awful games (including the notorious Tim Tebow game) and barely missed out on the playoffs. 

Ah well. Now we wait another 9.5 months before we can see Caleb play meaningful games again. Sigh. 

Had they gone 9-8 there's a good chance Eberflus would have improved as a coach, 9-8 doesn't happen with the version of Eberflus that got him canned.  But, alas, Eberflus didn't learn from his mistakes and never attempted to improve, although it's a horsefeathers show now, it may ultimately turn out to be a good thing he was terminated.  I believe Poles is soon to follow him out the door, a clean GM/HC slate is probably best.  Although it's the Bears doing the hiring nevertheless, a clean slate is probably for the best.

[BigSlick]

I don't even know what it would mean for Eberflus to "improve." The man was either the unluckiest human being on the planet or completely and totally incompetent. 

Eberflus was the football equivalent of William H Macy in the Cooler. He was a vortex of good fortune. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. 

Edited December 18, 2024 by BigSlick

[gflore34]

31 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

I don't even know what it would mean for Eberflus to "improve." The man was either the unluckiest human being on the planet or completely and totally incompetent. 

Eberflus was the football equivalent of William H Macy in the Cooler. He was a vortex of good fortune. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. 

Clock/Game management?  Better challenges?  Point is, no way the Bears going to win 8-9 games with the fired version of Eberflus.  I'll give you the unlucky side, while being largely incompetent, he and Bears have had the most awful luck in 2024.  Outside of Caleb not being a complete disaster nothing has worked, everything that could go wrong, has, it's mainly a by product of being terrible in the trenches.  However, almost all of Poles' other moves have backfired.

Edited December 18, 2024 by gflore34

[gflore34]

I've a prediction regarding the Vikings - they'll lose a big or playoff game on a blocked punt.  Our lower than dirt Bears managed to block one and came close another time, they found something and took advantage of the Vikings punt team.  Just something to file away for later in the season.

[UMFan83]

6 hours ago, gflore34 said:

Clock/Game management?  Better challenges?  Point is, no way the Bears going to win 8-9 games with the fired version of Eberflus.  I'll give you the unlucky side, while being largely incompetent, he and Bears have had the most awful luck in 2024.  Outside of Caleb not being a complete disaster nothing has worked, everything that could go wrong, has, it's mainly a by product of being terrible in the trenches.  However, almost all of Poles' other moves have backfired.

Eh.  While Eberflus is largely to blame for the Washington and Green Bay losses, it still took rather improbable things to lose games - a deflected hail mary and a blocked kick (even if GB saw something on tape and exploited it, its still not a particularly easy thing to do).  Win those 2 games and we probably win the NE game and then need just one of the last 3.  I know I'm stretching a bit here, but I could definitely see a scenario where the fired version of Eberflus wins 8 games.  Heck he won 7 games last year and that was despite blowing 3 different games where the Bears had a 90+% win probability or higher in the 4th quarter.  He was also largely to blame for much of those losses, but again a luckier version of this same Eberflus is winning 8-9 games.  

[minnesotacubsfan]

23 hours ago, Hairyducked Idiot said:

I discussed the emotional impact in the post.