PosterToBeNamedLater

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.

This is the play some people are referring to. 6:13 in the video if the timestamp doesn't work.

If you kick it into the end zone and it is downed or out of the end zone, the ball is brought to the 30. I think I remember what you are referring to with Hoge, though. I believe he was wondering if it would be good to switch that to the 35. I think his thought was that if the average position after a return is the 29, then teams may just eventually kick it out of the end zone and give up the 1 extra yard in order to save the chance at a big return. However, if it is the 35, maybe they would hesitate to do that.

Just the keeping track of negative things that happens to your team in a game or season. I usually am thinking the same thing as you, and you are good at posting it.

Taylor doesn't just have a big leg. He also has good hang time. He also seems oddly good at having the ball bounce in a way that keeps it from going into the end zone. Those things don't show up in the average distance (unless it is a net distance thing where the hang time causes more fair catches). I am unapologetic about liking the pick. I can already see a future game where the other teams fans are posting on a message board and their version of UMFan83 is saying something like: VikingsandUMFan83: This is the Vikings 4th possession of the game and their first time starting past the 15 yard line. On the previous three drives, we have started at the 8, 15, and 4 yard line.

https://therokuchannel.roku.com/watch/39919ed091cbd7e93c32745db6ec94f7 This has some more behind the scenes stuff from the draft--not just the Bears, but they seem to have the most airtime. We have seen some of this before in their 1920 football drive episode, but this has new footage. For example, around 32 minutes in when Atlanta is on the clock, Poles calls the Falcons GM and asks if they would be willing to swap the 8th/9th pick for a future 4th. In the previous footage, it just seemed like they waited and it worked out for them. You don't hear the Atlanta side, but what a weird move for them not to accept it. The Bears obviously already took Caleb. If the Falcons were just taking Penix, why give up the free pick? Maybe they thought the Bears would then trade back with a team that wanted a QB (since Rapoport had given the rumor on air that Atlanta might be interested in drafting Penix at 8 an hour earlier), and that small chance wasn't worth a 4th rounder. ETA: I guess looking back on the video now, the call was made when the Giants were making their pick (TV in the background), so maybe they said they would think about it or something and we never see a 2nd call. But nothing in those next picks changed who the Bears or Falcons wanted, so I still don't really get why they didn't take the deal unless they really were really worried about not getting Penix somehow.

Funny that the ump probably got the call correct (and the call probably only stood because of his initial call), when he actually made a terrible call in the first place. Like, Alonso's hand got to the plate so much earlier than the tag. There is no way the ump could have seen that his had bounced up in the air over the plate the entire time before he was tagged. I know in real time, everything happened so quick and it is hard to be an ump, but thanks for blowing (but actually not) the initial call.

Yeah, honestly, my main hope for today was that they wouldn't trade any future picks to move up. Next year is supposed to be much deeper because of how many players stayed in college that could have come out.

Weirdly I was kindof hoping for this. Odds of another player actually ever being anything probably weren't that great (especially in this draft where it has been said the talent level really drops off in the later rounds). The current punter was bad, so getting someone who actually is sort of a "weapon" as a punter and really good at pinning punts inside the 20 doesn't upset me. Edit to add: kind of funny to hear Eisen say that he was probably Iowa's best offensive weapon, and that he wasn't even joking.

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I bet poles will do some trade downs with the 3rd/4th round picks to pick up some later round picks.

Yeah, I have heard this WR draft is deep, which is partly why I said it may end up being the right decision. I just feel like the top 3 seem really likely to be very good, whereas it seems like every year there are WR's that shoot up the draft because they test well, or run extremely fast and bust. I know Thomas Jr. has been thought of highly for a while, but I hadn't heard of Mitchell before his test results from the weekend (I also don't pay much attention to college football, so what do I know). But also, I think I saw someone else reference their super high athletic scores and then mention that while they scored super high, they didn't do all of the tests, so it might not mean as much.

If I had to bet, I would bet that, too. It will be really annoying if one of those top 3 receivers is there at 9 and they do trade down (even if it might end up being the right move). I just really want blue chip offensive players.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind if they drafted a good center and started them. I guess part of it is that FA is before the draft. Without a 2nd rounder currently, we don't know if a good enough one is even going to be available. And even if the rookie starts, there are injuries and we need depth. And even good centers don't cost that much where it will make it hard to spend elsewhere. I wouldn't mind them picking up a guard in FA as well, whether as depth or to start over Davis.

I wouldn't be stunned either. I mean it won't be that hard to replace Fields' production. We will probably improve at QB, even with a rookie.

I actually wouldn't care too much if they spent money on the D-line this offseason (and I say that as someone who is fully on board with being annoyed at how they have focused so much effort on being good on defense in the past, and fully on board with improving the offense). I would hope they spend to get a good center (center shouldn't cost *that* much money). Even if they want to draft one, it might be good to have an experienced one at first with a rookie QB. But I feel like most really good offensive skill players don't hit free agency. I want both first round picks used on offense. Ideally, Williams at 1 and Odunze/Nabers at 9 (if they are gone, I would be happy with one of the left tackles or Bowers). One of the reasons I liked the Sweat trade from last year was I hoped they wouldn't feel the need to force a pick on the D-line with one of their 1sts in a draft where the top prospects are all offensive players. I really won't be surprised if they trade back from 9, though. So to me, it would be ideal if the Bears can try to really improve/load their offense through the draft. While those players are cheap, I don't care if they spend some money on Hunter/Chris Jones/some other good D-lineman. When the offensive players get to the stage where they are going to be expensive, focus the salary cap money on them and draft defensive players to replace the older ones.

From what I am seeing, it seems that he is interviewing for a position on the staff, but not necessarily the DC position. I think he is also interviewing with the Eagles as a linebackers coach--so may be similar with the Bears. Maybe Borgonzi gets the DC title and they need to fill the linebackers coach position.

Yeah, I would probably rather not spend on Young (but I do agree that I would rather go offense with both first round picks). Aside from the injury concerns, I remember reading something when both Young and Sweat were traded where the reporter said that Washington didn't want to lose Sweat, but that they felt losing Young could be an addition by subtraction. I think part of it was that he wouldn't always stick to his assignment on a play so that he could try to make a splash play, and he wasn't always committed off the field.

I'm a little more than halfway through this, but I have liked this so far. I do hope we draft Williams.

That was my first thought, but it seems like Fangio is the frontrunner for the Eagles DC position.

I agree that part of the problem was Fields possibly handcuffing them, but I definitely worry that a big part of the problem with offensive play calling was on Eberflus. I know most Bears fans think Getsy was the main problem (and I am fine moving on), but I do wonder how much was Fields/Eberflus. I still remember the halftime interview of the Denver game where Eberflus said something like, "Fields has been incredibly efficient, but we are going to be relying on our defense in the second half." I remember rolling my eyes so hard at that. I mean at that time, they were still in the midst of like 20 games of being one of if not the worst defense in the league. Maybe it was just boring coach speak in that the defense should be able to hold on in that game, but I think he does feel like you can still just play conservative and have your defense win you games in the modern NFL. And I absolutely think he gives the message to Getsy that he wants to run the ball and eat clock, etc.

I'm getting really tired of that Brisker celebration. He does it way too much.