UMFan83

Back to reality...it was a fun 4 years. Michigan seems pretty far away from relevance.

Playing around with the playoff simulator earlier today it’s hard to find scenarios where the Bears miss the playoffs at 11-6, especially with the Lions loss yesterday.

Ehh we'll see (or we won't see if OSU wins like they're supposed to). I think the fact that the committee moved Michigan up 3 spots this week after a blowout win over a bad Maryland team was telling and put them in a more advantageous position to move into the field if they beat the number 1 team. They have no bad losses (they lost to the CFP number 8 and 17 teams on the road). Their wins were mediocre but they do have a road win over a pre-Raiola injury Nebraska and a 17 point win over Washington who is currently 15th in SP+ (though the committee probably doesn't rely too much on this as they aren't in the CFP field right now). A win over OSU would really boost their resume IMO and put them right on the cut line. Honestly I haven't done a deep dive on the resumes of the teams UM would have to jump to get into the field since the entire scenario relies on Michigan beating Ohio State so if they can do that I'll look into it more lol. Edit: Also the close wins over bad teams is really just a 2 week stretch of scraping by Purdue and Northwestern. They only beat MSU by 11, but it's a rivalry game, on the road, and MSU had a garbage time TD to turn it from a laugher to a comfortable win. Outside of that they blew out 2 bowl bound NC opponents (albeit their names are New Mexico and CMU lol), won a close road game vs Nebraska, then blew out Wisconsin and Washington. Of course I'm just playing my role as an annoying UM fan here, but that's how I see it 🙂

What do you do about Conference championship games in this new era? Asking because in the event Michigan beats Ohio State this weekend, I'm actively rooting for scenarios where Michigan does not make the Big Ten championship game. Without making it they are probably a bubble team, maybe 60/40 to get in. If they make the championship game, they would then have to go beat the number 1 team in the country for the second week in a row to make the CFP, because I doubt they make it with 3 losses. Obvious answer is don't lose 2 games in the regular season, but still any model where you have teams wanting to avoid playing for a conference title seems wonky. Would it make sense to lock the CFP teams in before the conference title games and only use those games for seeding purposes?

Yep…if only our LB corps was not depleted now lol.

Also, the Playoff Machine is active for this year now: https://www.espn.com/nfl/playoffs/machine Gonna mess around with some scenarios today but its nice to be able to use it and not have to come up with convoluted scenarios like "Bears win out, Lions lose four games, Green Bay collapses into a giant sinkhole, and the Bears get the 7 seed"

Ugh. I mean absolutely make sure Jaylon is 100% before returning rather than rush him back in a game we're going to be decided underdogs, especially because last time he made it 3 quarters before hurting himself again. But I'd also love to see the best possible defense we can put out there against the defending SB champs

On a similar note:

Am I correct that Jaylon has to come off IR this week otherwise he's lost for the season, but Kyler has 1 more week he can be on IR? Doesn't mean Jaylon has to play, but it seems likely after practicing in full a couple times last week. Who knows about the LBs (outside of Edmunds), but getting both of the DBs back to slow Brown and Smith would be great. On the flip side, I have a feeling Barkley is going to feast on us.

The weekly winning really helps I'm sure 😂

Yes I selectively use PFF when it makes the Bears look good but an update on the Loveland/Warren debate:

I don't even think it's a big deal. There's an article somewhere in this thread about how Caleb's completion % isn't even really a big deal in the offense that Ben Johnson is trying to run. No doubt he misses some throws every week that make you scratch your head, but Ben also wants him pushing the ball down the field consistently and picking up chunk plays. He can miss a few throws if they are hitting a lot of intermediate passes imo. Ideally the fully formed version of Caleb will involve missing less throws but for now its working for him and he's been pretty good as a whole.

I think 2 more wins puts us at like a 40% chance of making the playoffs (not based on any math, just my own guesstimate). The issue is, you have the following teams that can play under .500 the rest of the year and still finish 10-7: Lions/Packers (whichever doesn't win the division in a scenario where the Bears finish 10-7), and 2 of the Rams/Seahawks/49ers. If the Bears finish 2-4, at least 3 of those losses will come against the NFC and at least 1 of them would come against the Lions or Packers. They play SF H2H, so if the 2-4 comes with a loss to them, SF wins the tiebreaker. If the Packers win the division, one of the Bears wins would need to come against the Lions to have a shot at the tiebreaker over them (both teams are 1-2 against the North). If the Lions win the division, the Bears would need to sweep the Packers or go 1-1 and hope the Packers lose 2 more division games since they are 2-0 in the division. All that to say, the Bears should aim for at least 3-3 to feel good about the playoffs.

Yeah. I mean you gotta give him more than 7 starts or whatever but as the leader of the JJ is actually good bandwagon I’m throwing in the towel.

Definitely 2001 vibes with how they are pulling out wins but obviously the franchise is in much better shape for a sustainable run of success than they were back then.

Need better from you Taylor

Come on just a 1st. No bad Caleb throws, no negative running plays

Appears like none. This is it

Every week wtf

More than fine with punting there. The bears offense is moving the ball. If the Steelers score here which is fairly likely, I have confidence the Bears can move the ball again. But giving them the ball inside the 40 is not optimal imo. Strangely enough the Bears have thrown the ball on 17 straight plays

Apparently Stevenson was seen heading into the locker room. If he’s out that’s our top 3 LBs and top 5 CBs all out plus our starting and backup LT

Need about 3 more TOs to have a shot

Yeah they suck. Getting to the second level with ease

Yeah I haven't been following qualifying too closely but saw the results last night. Crazy that several of the countries that you'd normally see in the hex like Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, Nicaragua and T&T either were eliminated or only made the playoff while countries like Curaco and Haiti qualified directly. It's going to be an interesting WC with the new format and all the first time qualifiers.

How about just in general. Only friendlies but they’ve been beating some good squads lately.