raw

The Cowboys are an amazing cluster horsefeathers right now. Dak is going to throw for an NFL record in yardage (on pace for over 6000), but the Cowboys are going to have double digit losses. And they're still going to win the division by a game and a half. And I don't know if that's proof that the Cowboys should re-sign Dak or proof that they shouldn't. Either way, it'll likely be the wrong decision.

19/141 with 52Ks. Mindblowing stats. These guys have been MVP candidates since then and completely horsefeathers the bed in October.

Well, this sucks.

They've only scored 1 in their last 2 postseason games.

Weird. Meanwhile, Football Outsiders has the Bears as the 5th worst 3-0 team in terms of DVOA since 1985 (overall ranked 17th in the league) https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2020/week-3-dvoa-ratings PFF subjectively grades each play based on what (they think) each guy's job is, and FO is pure numbers and algorithms, as i understand it, so i wouldn't expect them to necessarily line up (if at all). that said, i don't really look at DVOA seriously until at least 6 or 7 weeks in. THAT said, i think FO is closer to the mark than PFF on these Bears, but we'll see. Somehow, I think both are right....if that makes any sense. The offensive numbers make sense. Had 2 pretty good weeks running the ball. Last week, wasn't as good, but when you factor in Cohen and Trubisky getting 66 yards on 3 carries, overall it's not terrible. Pass D is understandably bottom 1/3. Defensively, the pass defense has been wonderful outside of a few plays against soft defense. Run D is surprisingly high, but teams haven't really run all that much against the Bears. Teams have thrown the ball 62% of the time against the Bears D. And it's been mostly big plays with some short stops mixed in. The tackling has also been pretty good, the big runs have been virtually untouched most of the way. Teams are always going to have crazy numbers early in the year, and especially when they win in the fashion that the Bears have. They haven't been always good, but they've been really good when they had to be which is winning football, but it's also how you end up middle of the road in DVOA.

Matt Nagy's Bears continue to master September and will finish the 1st month of the season at 9-2 in the last 3 seasons. This time, they actually won a season opener and sit atop the NFL at 3-0 just like we all expected. Thru 3 games, we still don't know for sure what we have in Soldier Field. The team has played a bad half followed by a great half, then a great half followed by a bad half. The defense goes back and forth from looking like a front seven on it's last leg to a championship caliber unit. The offense goes from struggling to find WRs, to finding WRs who then drop or get the ball taken away from them, then to an unstoppable force. On the positive side, the Bears scored offensive 3 TDs in a game only 5 times in 2019 but have scored 3 times on offense in a quarter twice already this season and from 2 different QBs. The defensive numbers overall are pretty decent, despite some frustration at times. Last week's performance is especially impressive when you realize that the Falcons got 14 of their points on bogus roughing the passer calls. First one negated a fumble, second a 3 and out, both led to drive extensions ending in a TD. The Colts bring in a very well coached team, that quietly has the league's #1 defensive unit. DeForest Buckner has been a huge addition to their DL. Their LB crew is great. Xavier Rhodes has had a resurgence at CB. Offensively, Reich has really reigned in the oft-erratic, Philip Rivers the last couple weeks. Going with a lot of short passes to limit Rivers' mistakes and time with the ball in his hands after 2 picks in his Colts debut. They aren't running the ball very well right now, but that hasn't meant much against the Bears D so far. Should be another close game. The Colts are clearly better than the Lions, Giants, and Falcons. But they did lose the opener to the Jags. I expect a lower scoring game that Weeks 1 and 2 as both teams have good defenses that kind of matchup well against the other offense. May be similar to the Bears/Chargers game last year, except with more competent QB play on the Bears side.

Yeah, rumor has it that Pierce is getting the call up. I do think though that the replacement for Cohen though will be more Montgomery and Patterson. Nall may get 3-4 more snaps per game. Pierce may get a few snaps here or there, but I'd imagine pass protection is going to be an issue for him.

The last game you watched was a game that was being played opposite a Bears game? It was on the TV. Game was on the computer. Honestly, it was background fodder during non-commercials. But I believe the Bears game ended around the 6th inning.

The Bears have too many holes to waste a late first round or second round pick on a developmental QB. Unless there's a unique circumstance where a top QB falls for some reason, I'd rather devote picks and money elsewhere during the rest of this competitive window and ride the cheap starting QB with a history of being average. I agree that the Bears have a lot of holes, but I think you 100% draft a developmental QB. If you have too many holes to fill, the best thing that hides holes on your team is a great QB. If the Bears think they can draft and develop a great QB (they never have, but Nagy hasn't had a pick yet) then you draft him. Also, now that Foles is the starter....if the Bears re-sign Robinson as most expect, every single starter on offense is under contract for next year. The defense would have 9 of 11 under contract. Granted, some of those starters may be holes now and especially by next year....but I don't think they have so many holes that they HAVE to avoid a QB if one is on the board.

I think the plan is Foles and draft a QB next year. I think history has shown Pace doesn't give a horsefeathers about pissing away draft capital or the future cap. If the opportunity presents itself to trade up to get a QB (Lawrence will be too far up), I think he'll move up in the 1st to take one. If not, I think they take one in the 2nd and try to develop him for a year or two behind Foles. Of course, Pace has also not shown a willingness to bring in a developmental QB.

I find it a bit ludicrous to bag on Foles' abilities in this game. He came into a game with a team he had zero previous history of game time action with. He came into a game with a huge deficit to overcome. He came into a game where there was quite likely a bit of adversity in pulling a QB out of a game that had yet to lose a game this year and already had one 4th quarter comeback on his resume for the year. And yet, he threw 5 TD passes in less than a full half of play. The TD to ARob was perfectly thrown. And I'll never stop arguing that that play should have been a touchdown. ARob had control of the ball in flight and he maintained that possession to the ground. The opponent never had possession and only stripped it away after they were on the ground. ARob had possession and had all kinds of body parts on the ground to rule it a catch. Now, I'm not calling Foles the next coming of Brees here. But, he clearly is an NFL QB who can make solid throws and read defenses. He put twice as many points on the board against the same defense as Trubisky and in less time than Trubisky while also having 2 more scores taken off the board. Foles would have had some amazing numbers if some of his earlier throws were actually caught. Graham dropped an easy one. Miller dropped a perfect throw in the endzone. ARob got his ball stripped away from him. If I had to guess, some of these receivers had a tough time with those balls because they aren't used to seeing a perfectly thrown spiral his them in the hands. Sure, he got lucky on a couple of throws, also, but I've seen the best QB's in the league get lucky on some throws occasionally. They also get picked off once in awhile. Foles is going to have trouble in the pocket with this line occasionally. But, I think he's already got DB's and LB's backing up a bit more since he had already shown he can connect on passes beyond 10 yards. That's what this offense needed. Credit to the Bears coaching staff for making the move and credit to Foles for turning what appeared to be a loss yesterday into a win. Wonder if they will look to the rookie Pierce to replace Cohen. he came into the game against one of the worst D's in the league that were playing simple bar tricks on a young, terribly unsystematic QB. He's lucky to have won the game, and I'm not sold on Foles going forward given his past play, but I would have thought he could have more success against a team like Atlanta 3-10, with a TD and an INT on throws over 15 yards, and a lucky break that those numbers weren't 2-10, with 2 INTs. He wasn't masterful out there yesterday, but did the job. I'm not sold on Foles either, and I don't think many are. But when he has had success in this league, it's been with the guys coaching him on the sidelines. Nagy has schemed guys open and made it as easy as possible for Mitch. Maybe he throws more at Foles and he can't handle it. But even then he can always scale back and give Foles the easy reads/throws. Foles historically doesn't miss those, even if the ball does flutter there at times.

You missed one winless team, the Texans, aka the anti-Bears, 0-3 after a schedule of Chiefs-Ravens-Steelers. Good catch. I saw a tweet that missed the Texans as well. I was going off of that.

LET'S GOOOOOO! My first game thread post this year (I think). Haven't watched the team much live this season. Last game I watched was a no-hitter though.

Yeah, this is a very important point. I said at one point this offseason that if you made a switch at QB at any point during the season, it would probably be a lost season. Because the typical QB switch involves a bad game by the starting QB. A bad game by a starting QB typically ends in a loss for that team. But 1 bad game doesn't always mean a switch between weeks. Typically, the QB is given another half at least to see if he can get back on track. And if he can't, that typically means a loss too. So, you're talking 2 losses before your 2nd QB gets a full week of starter's reps. That's why I was so surprised a move was made, but it's also as good a reason as any to have made a move when they did. Because losing this and then a bad Trubisky half to start next week would've put the Bears potentially at 2-2 with a short week to get Foles ready. And this team probably wasn't coming back from a 2-3 start.

Just looked at the reverse standings and if any of the currently 10 worse teams end up with the #1 pick at the end of this season, there will be some HUGE dominoes that fall. 0-3 teams: Atlanta, Giants, Denver, Minnesota, Jets, Miami. 0-2-1 teams: Cincinnati and Philly Then you have Dallas and the Chargers at 9 & 10 spots. The only of these teams that I think would NOT take Trevor Lawrence first is the Bengals. That means if any of these teams ends up with the #1 pick, they'll be able to potentially trade it for the largest compensation in the history of the league (Lawrence is a franchise changing prospect). OR they'll put either a young QB with potential or an established stud on the market. These teams would almost certainly get rid of Daniel Jones, Drew Lock, Sam Darnold, Tua Tagavailoa, and Justin Herbert; and could get really good compensation from a team for a young, cheap QB. Dallas still hasn't signed Dak long-term so they'd obviously let him walk, putting a 40Mil/year QB on the market. They likely aren't #1 pick bad anyway. Atlanta definitely has #1 pick potential, and Matt Ryan has a near 41Mil cap hit next year which makes him almost untradeable. But even at 35, I could see a team finding a way to make that contract work if they're close. Cousins has a 31Mil cap hit for next year, then can be cut with 10M dead. Again someone close could make a move. Wentz is really interesting as well, as the Eagles drafted a QB this year. But the way he's playing, they'd have to get rid of him for a generational talent like Lawrence. 34Mil cap hit, an out after 2021 but way younger than Ryan and Cousins. Intriguing for any team. But a team like Dallas (cap space w/o Dak), New Orleans (cap space if Brees retires like he should), New England, Chicago or Las Vegas could be a team that could manuever enough space to try to make a run with one of these big money, veteran QBs.

They still have 6 games against teams who are probably worse than they are. Win those and 1 against one of the teams who may be on a similar level (Colts, Rams) or the Bucs at home on a short week and you have your 10 wins and take your chances in January.

Gonna be interesting to see this team going forward. Foles doesn't have Mitch's ability, but he's a much more coach friendly QB. I think Nagy has been wonderful as a playcaller for the most part. It will be fun to see a QB who knows where the ball should go nearly 100% of the time. But it will be complicated a bit by the inability to get it there on all occasions. There will be no threat to see a play like the 45-yard run from Mitch today, but there's more opportunities for plays like the winning TD where the QB knows what he's seeing from the defense, checks to a great play, and stands in the pocket in the face of pressure and make a throw. If Nagy keeps scheming guys open and the OL keeps playing the way they are, there's no reason this shouldn't be a competent offense for 60 full minutes of football.

They need to contract this franchise.

Didn't get to watch the game today, but followed online. At any given moment, the Bears are either the best team in the league or the worst team in the league. They can't even consistently be a first or second half team. I don't know what to make of the QB change. If you're going to pull the plug on Mitch that quickly, why did he win the job? Maybe it was back-to-back unproductive halves. Maybe they weren't happy with his performance in the first 2 weeks outside of the 4th quarter of Week 1. Maybe they were tired of hearing about how they should have signed Cam. I don't know. Matt Nagy is now 9-2 in September and 8-0 in Weeks 2-4 in his coaching career.

The longer this week goes, the more confident I feel about a win this week. The Falcons are beat up. This game has vibes of 2018 Tampa. The Bears coming in with a shaky offense that's showing potential but not able to put it together. Nagy has shown the ability to take advantage of bad defenses. The Falcons have actually stopped the run pretty well, but you can do whatever you want against them thru the air. It's not the team's strong suit, but they don't rush the passer much, can't cover, and will be missing at least 1 of their DEs and their starting safety at least. While throwing the ball around the field hasn't been the Bears' strong suit, I think if Mitch gets a clean pocket most of the day, there's no reason he shouldn't pick apart this defense. And the defensive matchups favor the Bears, I think. The Falcons have a great passing game, but they aren't a team that's going to get the ball out quickly. I believe they have the highest depth yards per attempt and are constantly trying to get intermediate to big plays. And the Bears defense simply doesn't allow that very much. The CBs and safeties have played tight coverage and allow next to nothing after the catch. And while the Bears pass rush hasn't been phenomenal, Ryan isn't going to be able to consistently hold onto the ball to hit those 15-20 yard windows he wants.

So, we have some interesting injury reports for these 2 teams this week. The Bears have a bunch of people on the injury report: Mack, Quinn, Robinson, Miller, Mooney and Kmet.....but all have practiced in full this week, except for Mack who has been limited, as he was last week. Additionally, a few guys had vet days off. So while the Bears injury report has a bunch of names, the only guy that's not gonna play this week is John Jenkins who is probably going on IR with torn ligaments in his thumb. The Bears signed 6-7, 350lb Daniel McCullers who will likely take his roster spot. On the other side, the Falcons injury report has just as many names (if not more) but tons of important guys have not practiced yet this week with only tomorrow left on the practice schedule. The biggest name is Julio Jones who is nursing a hamstring injury. But also their RT, McGary is likely out this week. Neither of their starting DEs have practiced, and both backups have been limited though the backups (including 2nd round pick Marlon Davidson) are likely to play from what I hear. One of their starting safeties has also not practiced this week. Their nickel, LT and one of their starters at LB were all limited today after being out yesterday. Another backup tackle against Mack/Quinn is happening. Julio, the safety and the 2 DEs are ones to watch if they practice tomorrow. A lot of fans are prematurely expecting 30+ points from the Bears offense against a terrible Atlanta defense, which doesn't seem like a wise bet with this offense. But if these guys are all missing, there's really no excuse for the team not to put up around the 27 points they did against the Lions.

Tyrod Taylor story is f'd up.

Man, i'm kinda excited about this team. I think you have to keep LaVine and Lauri now (Bulls better version of SGA and Galinari). I'd go all out for a difference making PG though. If there's any way to get LaMelo, please get him.

Playcalling has been near excellent so far, IMO. There's some weird short yardage stuff, but that's been about it. The rest of the plays have been designed perfectly to give Mitch easy reads, isolate good matchups, and they have moved the ball pretty well for the most part. Patterson has been getting the ball like a normal RB (especially in Week 1). Cohen up the middle is actually preferred. He himself believes he's more effective up the middle. Become very predictable if you only run Cohen outside or throw him the ball when he's on the field. Agree with the TEs. They were very involved week 1. Graham had a lot of targets. Kmet had at least 1 that I remember. Should've had a TD from Harris, but a bad Mitch throw. They were targeted again Week 2, but only 2 total catches. Pace is almost the same as the TE group's production last season after 2 games.

Two weeks into the season, and our Chicago Bears are one of 11 remaining 2-0 teams. Couldn't ask for a better start! Unfortunately though, the Bears are who we thought they were. An inconsistent offense, led by an inconsistent QB, and dependent on a defense to hold teams in order to close out games. As usual, Bears fans can't agree on simple things about this team. I've seen social media arguments on whether the defense is good, whether the team is good or bad, and even saw a fan called a radio show and said he'd rather the team be 0-2 but putting up numbers like the Atlanta offense. To be fair though, the Bears are a couple plays either way from having a completely different narrative around this team. Dropped passes from Graham and Miller would mean a couple extra TDs and a pair of 2 score wins where nobody would could complain much about the offense. Conversely, a dropped pass the other way would have led to a Week 1 loss. A bad DPI call on Jackson's pick 6, a missed DPI call against Robinson in the end zone, a snatched away INT, a couple of tipped passes here, a missed holding call there and the Bears season could be completely different. I know a lot of teams have looked like well oiled machines, but the Bears have looked about how we expected. I think Trubisky has been much improved over last year. He's doing some things he hasn't been able to do in the past. He's looking off safeties. He's not relying on the checkdown. He's reading the defense. He still has accuracy issues, but overall he hasn't been an issue. This week will be a "something's gotta give" game. The Falcons have given up 38 and 40 points in the first 2 weeks. They are also averaging 32 points per game, so it's imperative that the offense doesn't leave any points on the field this week against what will be the worst of the 3 bad defenses they face to open the season. The matchup of the week is strength vs strength so far this year. The Falcons had 3 WRs over 100 yards in Week 1. The Bears defensive backfield has played really well so far. Desperate team at home, only 1 game out in their loaded division, coming off a tough loss. The motivation will be there for Atlanta. Again, I imagined before the season that even a good Bears team would be 3-1 after week 4. This is winnable but would not be surprised with a loss.