PosterToBeNamedLater

I don't know if this is true about the bears, but I remember hearing something like this about the Bengals a year or so ago when the topic of paying Jamar Chase came up. The reporter was saying it was hard for a team like the Bengals (whose owners aren't as rich as other owners) to sign big contracts because when you give a contract with guaranteed money, you have to put the guaranteed money in an escrow account. So in a player like Chase's case, whose contract had 112 million in guaranteed money, the owner has to have the liquidity to pay out 112 million at the time of signing, even if it will be paid to the player over a number of years. Maybe that is what they were referring to. Obviously the bears owners, like the Bengals, aren't as rich as many of the other team owners since their wealth has come from the team and not some outside source, but I have never heard that they don't have the money to do these things before.

I'm seeing on another site that the tweet they mentioned on Rich Eisen about the Bears offering two firsts was fake.

Watching the patriots game earlier and seeing the Diggs TD catch and then the Boutte catch and I was like, "I don't know if I can remember a catch by a bears receiver as good as those all year (maybe the DJ overtime catch against the packers was like the Diggs catch). We usually have a decent amount of dropped catches." Then Rome starts the game off with that drop. Unbelievable.

Richard Sherman in the postgame had me laughing when he was talking about the Bears being like Bane from the Dark Knight Rises. He said something like, "We were born in the darkness, we've been coming back the whole season. The packers, they merely adopted it. You haven't lived this way. You could see it with the lack of execution and mistakes down the stretch. The bears are like, 'hey this is where we've been. Welcome to the party. Oh the playoffs are different for you?' " I don't know if they are just great at halftime adjustments. Or maybe with Ben's whole make different things look the same, his early plays help set up later plays. Not that they aren't trying to be successful in the first half obviously, but things like the go-ahead touchdown to DJ. Wasn't that the same play in the first half where they threw the screen? Then at the end of the game all of the defenders bit at the fake to the screen and DJ is wide open for a score.

I hate it. Not because they have lost before or whatever, but it just looks so much worse than Navy with white pants.

Wasn't that bichette who was still hurt and couldn't run very fast?

Me neither. I didn't like the hire when they first hired him. His San Fran unit was one of the worst in the league and if I remember correctly, were getting worse each year. I was looking forward to him being replaced this year. There were rumors they were looking into the Saints guy, but maybe when that fell through, they just kept him because of a lack of options.

Yeah, and I'm kindof surprised the Cowboys didn't run more. It seemed like they would get minimum 5-7 yards with Williams and then they just stopped doing it. Not even when they were down big, but before that, too. I didn't understand why they didn't just keep feeding him the ball. That said, I do think Dennis Allen was an upgrade over Eberflus (he just might not have good enough players). Its kindof great that we could massively upgrade head coach with one of the best offensive playcallers, and even though we are replacing a defensive head coach, we upgraded at defensive coordinator as well. Just another one of the reasons I hated the Eberflus hire from the moment it happened. He wasn't even coordinator that ever had a dominant defense and he still somehow was our head coach.

Yeah I didn't feel good after that first drive at all. I mean, great, a touchdown... but when ESPN would show the replays and you could clearly see someone breaking wide open downfield and Caleb either not seeing it or not throwing it gave me a really uneasy feeling. As you said, it definitely didn't feel like the drive had any flow. My confidence level that he will ever be very good is extremely low right now.

I already naturally root for Canadian teams over hockey teams in places like Florida, Las Vegas, etc. But I am definitely rooting harder for the leafs now.

I found this. It was in response to someone saying a self-proclaimed mets insider was saying that the cubs asking price for Bryant was PCA.

The next time Jed and Theo get together to catch up: JED: I work in a baseball front office because I always had a thing for beating up on bad bullpens. 2015, 2016, it got wild. We were coming back on bad bullpens every night. Always different ones… young pitchers, old pitchers. Sometimes multiple pitchers a night. I was out of control. I became insatiable. And you know, after a few seasons of that, I started to lose it. Why do I feel this need to beat up on bad bullpens? What is desire? Why does this form of a bad bullpen pitcher have this grip on me? I realized that I could see the Cubs come back on a million bad bullpens and I would never be satisfied. Maybe, maybe what I really want is for the Cubs to have one of these bad bullpens. THEO: Really? Not Really? JED: No really. So one year, I signed some bullpen pitchers… and instead of our offense playing f the closer… Our closer started f-ing us… and it was kindof magical. And I got it in my head that I wanted our bullpen to be one of these terrible bullpens… getting horsefeathered by the other teams, and to feel that. THEO: Uh huh JED: So one year, I put out an ad for a former closer with falling velocity who could come over and blow games for us. Found some guys that could do the job. Then I put on a jockstrap and a jersey, made myself look like one of these pitchers. I thought I looked pretty hot. Then Brad Boxberger would come into the game and rail the horsefeathers out of us. Then I got addicted to that. Some games, three… four guys would come into the game and rail the horsefeathers out of us. All of them I even had to pay. And at the same time, I hired Craig Counsell… To just sit there, and watch the whole thing. I’d look in his eyes while Eli Morgan is giving up 6 runs in 2/3 of an inning and think… I am him. And I’m horsefeathering me. THEO: Um hum... JED: Hey, we all have our Achilles heel you know. Where does it come from? Why are some of us attracted to the opposite form you know? Baseball is a poetic game. It’s a metaphor. A metaphor for what? Am I a middle aged president of baseball ops on the inside too? Or inside, could I be Caleb Thielbar? THEO: Right… I don’t know. JED: Guess I am trying to blow games on my way to the answer.

That really was a gut punch seeing the title of this thread. If you told me there was a thread about Rickey Henderson that just came up, I would have been much more inclined to bet he signed to play in some random league somewhere but was still playing.

The thing that gives me the most hope is that his best games have come when the line didn't seem to be a dumpster fire (whether it be this game where the game plan had him getting rid of the ball quickly or the opposing defense didn't have a very good DL). I was always worried during the great stretch that once we played another defense with a good DL, things would get bad again like the Houston game. I know the QB can be at fault for sacks as well, but for some of these games, there were so many plays that gave him no chance. Every QB plays better when the line holds up and we have seen him look really good when it does. I hope this off-season sees major improvement to the line.

Not only that. It seems like the chargers are a good example here. I don't follow them closely, but I do remember that for the entire Brandon Staley era, every week seemed to be that they lost another close game that they either could have won or shouldn't have lost. Listening to national podcasts, they were constantly talking about how they can't bring him back/have to fire him. Here is a quote from from a story after one of their losses just about a year ago to the packers: They moved on and are now 7-3 this year after constantly losing winnable games (and even having a bad salary cap situation in the offseason).

I was just answering who he is. I don't know if the bro thing was directed at me or just making fun of the name of his podcast. I don't listen to the podcast and don't watch the show he is on. He just does work for the NFL network so he might have better contacts than a random podcaster. But he also probably just talked to someone who doesn't know and is just assuming they won't fire him with two years left. The story about Eberflus having more years did come out this week from Brad Biggs I think. I'm not sure if it is actually true or if they are just wondering whether he received a 5 year deal at the time. I was actually worried he might have gotten a secret extension before this year because they were taking a rookie QB and didn't want him to be a lame duck coach or fire him after 1 year with the new QB like they have. If I had to bet on it, I would say they don't fire him.

Rank actually works for NFL network, so he isn't just a random guy with a podcast. He is a Bears fan, lets it be known on NFL Network, and has that Bears podcast in the link.

I agree with this, and it is one of the main reasons I wanted them to move on from Eberflus. I know turnovers are bad if you want to win, and I know all teams don't want their QB throwing picks, but I do think it is the main rule that drives Eberflus. No turnovers on offense and create turnovers on defense. "Honor the football." I worry that he stresses it to the point that the QB is afraid to take any chances and that might be part of the reason his accuracy has been off.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if lots of defenses give up a go-ahead score late in the game just because so many games are close. However, I do remember reading something when he was hired that even when his Indy defenses were ranked relatively high, they were last in the league in 4th quarter defense. I remember wondering if it had to do with the fact that he stresses hustling all the time and maybe they tired out by the 4th quarter or whether it was because he has a relatively simple defense where players are supposed to do their job well as opposed to trying to confuse the other team and that by the 4th quarter, the other team got comfortable with calling the types of plays that would be successful.

I'm going to preface this by saying I don't actually care about this all that much, and I'm sorry for adding to the punting discussion when I don't think anyone cares. So I will spoiler it below:

Are punting stats all that great at telling who are the best punters? Average distance: Punters don't always try to kick their hardest. They might be trying to pin a punt inside the 20, they might not want to outkick their coverage, etc. Number of Touchbacks or number of punts downed inside the 20: One punter may have more/less opportunities than others. Looking right now, the total number of punts between punters in the league varies quite a bit, with some more than twice as many than others (not even counting the ones that have only played 2 or 3 games). Inside 20%: I'm pretty sure all punts are lumped into this, so you could be kicking from your endzone with zero chance of having it land inside the 20 but it will hurt your % in this department. I might be wrong on this, but it seems like Taylor hasn't had a ton of chances to punt from close to mid-field. Seems like he is usually punting from farther back in Bears territory. He does have a 10:2 ratio of punts inside the 20 versus touchbacks though. Net punt yards/attempt: Besides the same issues that average distance has, this also depends on how good your punt coverage team is. Yes, it also depends on if the punter out-kicks his coverage, but maybe you learn more about what your coverage team can do as you play more games with them. He also is punting in Chicago where the wind and cold weather can have an effect. We saw that he punted well at Iowa in winter conditions. I know at least one of the games the wind was pretty strong this year. We have already seen Taylor have a game where he had a pretty decent effect on the Bears winning. Switch him out for Gill and I don't think they win the Rams game. I'm not saying he is the best in the league after 6 games, but I don't know if the stats really show much one way or the other. I also wouldn't expect him to be the best in the league after 6 games, or that he needs to be in order to use a 4th rounder on him--in a year that was widely considered to have very little depth after the 1st/2nd round. I just expect him to be really good. I looked back at the bears draft history and over the last 20 years or so, there have been very few fourth rounders who did much at all (Eddie Jackson was probably the best one, and even he had only a couple of good years and a lot of mediocre to bad). Roschon was a 4th from a year ago and he is the epitome of replaceable, but no one cares about taking those types of players in the 4th. Most of the players were nobodies. Drafting a punter that will most likely be a good one for 10 years or more doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Also, we are still at a relatively small sample size. I know when you made a post about this a few weeks ago, I looked up the punting stats. The player leading the league in average had a "longest punt" of 84 yards. At that point in the season, one punt that takes a fortuitous bounce and rolls 30 yards will raise your average by 1-2 yards or so. Taylor was described as a punter that has multiple clubs in his bag. He can hit it far, but he can also punt it where he wants pretty well if he is trying to pin it. He is good at having it not bounce into the endzone. Are there other punters that can do that well? Probably. Do all of them? Probably not, as the Bears saw for the past few years. I can only remember 1 punt this year where it was a shank type disappointment. Gill had 1 or 2 a game it seemed.

Was this already posted in another thread? https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/oakland-a-s-hat-goes-viral-for-its-all-too-perfect-design-quickly-gets-removed-from-the-store/ar-AA1r8EWH

Also, holy crap, did Shelton get destroyed on the play at 2:47. I somehow missed that while watching the game.