UMFan83

Somehow Michigan is going to play (and probably lose to) all 3 of the other participants of last year's CFP. Already got blown out by Texas and lost a close game to Washington.

lovely

Speaking of QBs, Darnold with 347 yards and 5 TD today. Now on pace for 4,314 yards and 37 passing TDs. Of course journeyman former mega bust Sam Darnold is going to obliterate every Bears single season passing mark this year.

Man I'm so confused about where Caleb is at as a QB and what he's shown us means so far. This isn't a negative Caleb post, this isn't a positive Caleb post. I've said it repeatedly that I've seen a lot I love, things I just haven't seen from other Bears QBs, amazing performances late in games to put the Bears in a position to win etc. But we also see stuff like today where Caleb did basically nothing until the game was basically over midway through the 3rd quarter. He looked tentative, bailed out of the pocket too soon or hung around in it too long. And then with the Bears down 24-0 midway through the 3rd, he leads the Bears on 2 really nice looking professional looking TD drives with a really nice looking TD throws (especially the first one) to Rome. Overall I just don't know what we're really seeing. How much of his performances are hindered by a horrific offensive line? How much is hindered by disastrous coaching, especially now that the players got multiple coaches canned midseason? (I mean realistically they got themselves fired but it took player revolts to get the FO to do something about it). Why is he incredibly inconsistent? How much can be attributed to being a rookie? What causes him to get in a groove and completely turn around games that are looking like terrible performances? There's just so much I don't know and with 4 games left I'm not sure we'll find out this year. The good? Despite inconsistent play and a ton of coaching issues, Caleb is still on pace for ~3600 yards, 21 passing TD, 6 INTs. As mentioned before, when he gets into a groove he looks elite and has come up clutch several times in key moments. He has 5 performances this year that I'd classify as great (Carolina, Jacksonville, Green Bay, Minnesota, Detroit). The not so good? He's also had several performances that I'd consider poor or worse (Tennessee, Houston, Washington, Arizona, New England). Today I'd consider below average despite somehow having a 116.9 QB rating (His QBR was 32.5 and he had 5.8 YPA). Overall where does he sit amongst qualified QBs in stats? (there are 38 qualified QBs) Comp %: 62.6% - 33rd YPA - 6.3 - 35th TD - 16 - 13th Yards - 2,746 - 18th QBR - 46.3 - 35th (note: this is not updated with today's 32.5 QBR but there's a huge drop off between Caleb's 46.3 and the 36th best QB Minshew at 37.9, so I'm guessing he's still 35th) QB Rating - 87.8 - 27th Again, this is not meant to be a negative Caleb post or a positive one. I'm mostly expressing my confusion that I see a QB that for a decent chunk of the time legit looks better than any Bears QB I've seen in my life (I know, not saying much). But there's also a bad side that we've seen, and its getting hard for me to determine how much his environment is hindering him vs. him potentially just needing to improve/not being good enough at this stage of his career.

Weird that it looks like all the backups are in except for some reason Keenan Allen

The inmates ran the asylum and got the coach fired and this is the effort we’ve gotten post-mutiny.

So glad we got that extra offensive possession so I could see Caleb sacked for the 6th and 7th time

Great to see the 49ers putting so much effort into finishing off this beat down. just let them score so we can get another offensive possession to pump up Caleb’s numbers

It’s not really SMU vs Indiana. It’s the standard set where one team with an iffy resume avoids their conference title game due to losing a SOS tiebreaker and gets into the CFP without much debate while another team with an arguably better resume loses their conference title game on a 56 yard FG in the final seconds and is left out in favor of a 9-3 team that lost multiple games to .500 teams.

That's insane. Why havent they played?

One thing that jumps out at me in these rankings: don’t lose to NIU. I have a hard time agreeing that Texas and Penn State should be ranked ahead of Notre Dame but I guess if I’m arguing SMU shouldn’t be penalized too much for losing the conference championship games then Texas and PSU shouldn’t either

What about Indiana? A simple tiebreaker allowed them to avoid the Big Ten title game in favor of Penn State. Everyone has Indiana safely in even though their best win was by 5 points at home against a 7-5 Michigan team. They literally dont have another win against another +.500 team. Why does Indiana get to make it and SMU doesn’t? It’s a nearly identical situation. Indiana’s loss is slightly better (10-2 OSU vs 10-2 BYU) but SMU has beaten at 8-4 Louisville, at 9-3 Duke, vs 8-4 TCU. it’s complete crap to argue that SMU is out because they lost the extra game they had to play while Indiana gets in after beating literally no one. The funny thing is, the tiebreaker that got Penn State into the title game over Indiana is Penn State having a harder Big Ten SOS. Indiana continues to get rewarded for playing no one except OSU who they lost by 3 scores to, while people are arguing a team that lost by 3 scores to a 6-6 Oklahoma team and had another loss to a 6-6 Vandy team should be in over SMU

I know Army obviously isnt going to be in over Clemson but that makes me wonder, what if they were in contention for that spot with Navy still on the schedule? Would the Navy game just not at all factor into the CFP? Imagine the uproad if they snuck in at 12 and then lost to Navy next week. I'm assuming the committee has considered this scenario when they came up with this playoff model knowing there was at least a small chance that Army (or Navy) would be in a positon to be the top G5 champion.

If they put Bama in over SMU, the drama would be FSU last year x1000 The fallout would be teams flat out declining conference championship game appearances and more drama with ACC teams desperately trying to bail from the conference getting us closer to the Big Ten/SEC super league. I think the committee will do the right thing this time and keep SMU in over Bama. If SMU got blown out like it was looking like it might at times then maybe there’s a window where I could see them doing it (though still somewhat unlikely) but it just can’t happen without massive repercussions, especially with Bama also sneaking in last year over an undefeated team. Funny thing is, if there was still a 4 team CFP, we’d be seeing not only our first 2 loss CFP team, but likely our first two 2 loss CFP teams. 1. Oregon (13-0) 2. Notre Dame (11-1) 3. Georgia (11-2) 4. Umm…probably one of Texas/PSU/OSU/Tenn? what a completely wild and wacky season of college football

Ben Johnson absolutely seems like the guy that in 3 years we're saying 'I can't believe we had a chance to get Ben Johnson, he wanted to come here and it was so obvious he was going to be a great HC and we decided to hire this stiff instead'

I don't think its that uncommon for national tv broadcasts that are also broadcast on the local network to be blacked out. But in the past most of the market has had access to that local channel (yes I know I can pay $30/month to have access to watch the worst team in hockey or switch my cable provider to one of the few streaming companies that offers the channel). They just look very incompetent when they tell everyone it won't be blacked out on TNT and then mid-game they black out TNT.

Did they do that on accident?

Can you imagine, bottom of the 10th, 2 out, Cleveland down 8-7 and instead of Francona paying for the gamble of bringing in Michael Martinez for defense by having him be their last hope against a LHP (which he was significantly worse against), he gets to bring up Jose Ramirez or whoever? Just seems like such a terrible unnecessarily radical idea. Not interested in Manfred's "heat check" after implementing a pitch clock, bringing the DH to the NL and the Manfred Man

My favorite thing about Caleb so far: Week 8: Gets the ball at the Bears 38 yard line, down by 5, with 4:21 left in the game and leads the Bears on a 10 play, 62 yard, 3:56 TD drive to give the Bears a 3 point lead with 25 seconds left Week 11: Gets the ball at the Bears 30 yard line, down by 1, with 2:59 left in the game and leads the Bears on a 7 play 42 yard drive taking all the remaining time off the clock setting up a potential game winning 46 yard FG. Week 12: Gets the ball at the Vikings 40 yard line, down by 11, with 1:56 left in the game and leads the Bears on an 8 play 40 yard, 1:34 TD drive, converts a 2 point conversion attempt, then after an onside kick is recovered leads the Bears on a 1 play, 27 yard drive to set up a 48 yard FG to tie the game. Week 13: Gets the ball at the Bears 1 (!!!) yard line, down by 3 with 3:31 left in the game and leads the Bears on a 12 play, 58 yard drive setting up a potential FG attempt to tie the game. In the last 6 weeks, Caleb Williams has led the Bears on 4 different last minute drives to set the Bears up to tie or take the lead. The fact that the Bears are 0-4 in those games does not diminish the fact that Caleb Williams has repeatedly stepped up in the biggest moments and gave the Bears a chance to win all of those games.

Because I'm a dork, I'm gaming this out but we're in decent position to win a 3 or 4 team 9-8 tiebreaker with Washington and LA Rams (or 49ers) for the 7th seed lol And if the Packers did lose out and the Bears win out, I think we'd win the tiebreaker. But obviously that's not going to happen. None of this is going to happen but that's especially not gonna happen.

This is stupid to even suggest but is there a realistic scenario where the Bears could make the playoffs at 9-8? 100% agree there's almost no shot of going 5-0 against this schedule, but would be cool to see the players all get behind Brown and play the kind of football we were hoping they'd play all year. Sort of like the Lions 2 years ago, except we had to fire our coach to get that spark. Edit: And as I hit submit, I'm realizing that the 8-5 Commanders are the 7 seed and 9-3 Packers the 6 seed. So basically theyd need either the Commanders to lose out, or go 1-3 the rest of the season and the Bears win some 3+ team tiebreaker (since they cant win H2H), or the Packers to lose out and the Bears win a tiebreaker.

I will say that while overall the PC was a typical Bears mess, I did walk away from today with a slightly higher regard for Kevin Warren. He still might be a stiff that can't even get a stadium deal done, he might have went against his instincts and let Poles keep Eberflus this season, but it seems like he recognized today that Poles can't run football operations unchecked and has decided to step in and "help" Poles run the show. No idea if his input will be any good but at least he recognizes that horsefeathers needs to change. Definitely not something Ted Phillips or any of the McCaskeys would ever do.

Leaving? Like on his own accord? And do what? Shop around his resume of going 14-32 with a spotty draft record? I don't even dislike Poles and am ok with keeping him on (but woudn't be against letting him go other), but nothing about his track record in Chicago suggests he can walk away from the Bears job and have opportunities elsewhere. I'd guess he'd much rather be neutered in Chicago than attempt to find a job elsewhere

Uhh what in the horsefeathers horsefeathers?

I like that Warren seems to recognize the importance of this particular hire and is taking a hands on approach to finding the best candidate, It just feels like, if true, Poles is being neutered a bit here. Warren has a long history in football but not sure he's a strategic football guy. I guess that's where Poles assisting comes in.