raw

Well at this point, I'm expecting Cohen to be PUP and out the first 6 weeks at least. Haven't heard any update. I think Byrd and Goodwin are fine as replacements for Miller. While Miller showed flashes he was pretty inconsistent, didn't seem terribly smart, and has continually had shoulder issues. Not expecting much from Adams, but if Fields is a star we'll eventually get to regularly experience that thrill of no name WR becoming household names and solid contributors. Even with Cohen still out, the RB room looks deeper too. Really I think all the skill groups got deeper. It's on Kmet and Mooney (and perhaps Montgomery) to elevate their games to improve the high end. I'm very high on Mooney personally. Less so on Kmet and Montgomery, but if one of those 3 had a huge breakout year, the other two would be fine as is, probably. I think I side more with the former comment than the latter. While I do think the Bears are slightly better off at WR than last year (Mooney a year of experience, Byrd/Goodwin as the #4 is an upgrade over Wims as the #4 last year), I don't think they are improved enough. I like both Goodwin and Byrd, but they both have only produced in 1 NFL season each. Byrd's season was just last year, so that's promising, but that big season was essentially what the Bears had been getting from Miller. Goodwin's productive season was 4 years ago now and it was when he was basically the #1 WR for the Niners due to a bunch of injuries. So, I don't think the Bears should have much problem matching last year's production: Robinson is Robinson. Mooney should be better. Kmet should give you what Graham did last year. Graham should be able to chip in with 2020 Kmet like numbers as TE2. Byrd and Goodwin should be able to make up for Miller's lost production + whatever Wims, Ginn, etc. gave them. But the issue is the production last year wasn't good enough, and it doesn't project to get much better unless the OL can hold up and Fields plays way more than he sits, and gets that deep ball working. I would look for the Bears to be active on the waiver wire within the next 2 weeks. If a decent WR becomes available, I think the Bears jump all over him and either try to stash Adams or Dazz on the practice squad. FWIW, I also see them looking hard at CBs and OL that are cut. They could definitely add 1 more body at both spots and cut some dead weight (Hambright, Roberson/Trufant) who are only going to make the roster out of desperation.

If the Raiders would have been willing to give up a 1st round pick or even like a 2nd and a 4th or something like that, AND were paying the remaining 40Mil guaranteed on Mack's contract, I would have made the deal. Before the draft, it would have been ammo to get a QB. After the draft, it would have been cap space and recouped picks from trading for Fields. I love Mack, and he's still a great player, but the Bears need to balance the use of assets more on the offensive side of the ball, and the defense could stand to get younger.

Honest question, what is the potential negative repercussions of starting fields before he’s ready. Development of bad habits? Loss of confidence? I feel like on the job training would be more valuable than having him watch and learn from umm Andy Dalton. If he’s the best QB or at least has the highest ceiling I’m struggling to understand how we can “break him” by playing him too soon. But maybe I’m missing some obvious reasons why playing him too soon would be bad Every QB is different. You can have a Justin Herbert get thrown out there at last second notice and win Rookie of the Year or DeShone Kizer and Josh Rosen get thrown to the wolves on an awful team and lose all confidence right away. Or you can have Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes sit a year or two and become franchise guys. From what I've read from Bears beat guys, Fields hasn't really separated himself from Dalton much at all this camp and despite Dalton's poor play so far in preseason, he's still playing with no Robinson, Mooney, Montgomery, Kmet against #1 guys while the Bears are hiding Fields against #3's. Yeah, there isn't a magic formula for when to play a QB. Some need the time to sit and learn, some don't. I wouldn't say Mahomes and Rodgers needed to sit as great as they are. I wouldn't say Rosen and Kizer shouldn't have played, because they are still bad. I think there are 2 reasons why you sit a highly drafted QB. 1. You have a veteran starter that can lead your team into contention (ala Alex Smith (Mahomes), Brett Favre (Rodgers), Jimmy G (Lance)) 2. The QB simply isn't ready to run the offense I'm perfectly fine with Dalton starting. My issue is the reasoning. We don't NEED to see him in the regular season. And he certainly doesn't fit into the #1 scenario. If #2 is the reason for sitting Fields, then Nagy has failed to get him ready, because by all account Fields seems like a guy that could be ready to play right now.

Best case scenario with Dalton starting is he plays not terrible enough to allow the defense to carry him and the offense to 9+ wins and another playoff season. But the problems are A) the defense doesn't appear capable of doing that. Not even based on today with several missing starters, but on paper the back 4/5 is below average with probably liabilities in Trevathan and Quinn in the front 7. And B) even if Dalton leads the team to a decent record, he's gone after this year because he's 36 and you have the future QB on the roster already. Why are we wasting time on a 35-year old QB who has won only 11 of his last 33 starts? You want to see him in the regular season? Throw on some tape that has gotten progressively worse in the last 5 years. If the issue is you don't think Fields is ready to start, then say that. But don't give me this crap about needing to see Dalton in the regular season.

Only the Bears can make a meaningless game, even more meaningless by learning absolutely nothing about their team. Dalton didn't do anything to show he upgraded the 28th best QB situation in 2020 to any higher than 28th. But Fields didn't do anything to make Nagy re-consider his dumb ass idea that Dalton is the clear #1 with no competition. OL was bad with 3 backups on the 1st team, but Sam Mustipher also sucked today. Nagy talked about getting starters more reps this preseason so they wouldn't get off to the slow starts of past years, yet the Bears haven't played WR1, WR2, TE1, TE2, WR3, WR4, RB1, or 3/5 of their starting OL (due to injuries on the line, which I know) for more than 5 total snaps between them. Justin Fields isn't 100% ready to take the reins and never look back, but Dalton isn't capable of winning games. Fields at least can do some damage with his legs, which also makes the defense commit another player to him and not the passing game. But you aren't doing your offense any favors by not letting Fields throw to the #1 offensive weapons. And if you're hellbent on Dalton starting, then you aren't even doing him any favors because he's not playing with them either. Just frustrating to see the same old terrible offense, vanilla gameplan or not.

i've been seeing a lot of people whose opinions on OL play i would respect say pretty positive things about borom in camp. it would be cool if he could win the job now and turn out to be a solid LT...then just throw jenkins into the shallow end to start at RT if/when he's ready. then switch them next year if you want to get crazy. but yeah i realize it's crazy to expect anything out of a 5th round rookie LT. In the crazy event that Borom is a solid LT, there's no way I'm switching them around next year. That would be crazy. Would be great to see a Peters-Borom competition at this point though. I'm not a huge fan of the Peters move. But either way, it's going to be a competition. I'd love it if Borom can flat out win the LT job in the next 2-3 weeks and the Bears can cut Peters (he should be available to bring back on waivers). But even if Peters is the guy, Borom is going to be out there at some point based on Peters' recent history.

I think the OL talk is overblown. If you think the OL has issues and isn't figured out because Jenkins had surgery, then it had issues with Jenkins as none of us have ever seen him play an NFL practice, not to mention a game. One thing is for sure though, Pace definitely tried. I know everyone hates the trade up for Jenkins, especially now that he's probably going to miss his rookie season, but it was a legit attempt to improve this OL. Pace added a 1st round talent after making a move for the only more important position on the OL. Then he doubled up with Borom in the 5th. The OL stuff isn't for a lack of effort this time, at least. This group, with or without Jenkins, was never going to be great. The hope was the increase of talent (2nd round pick) + a healthy Daniels (another high 2nd round pick) + Whitehair in his best position was enough to make this unit serviceable while guys like Jenkins, Borom, Mustipher and even Daniels improved during the year.

It's funny because I've heard plenty people raving about Fields' arm.....From his pro day at Ohio St to the people at training camp. But I feel like he doesn't have a super impressive arm. Not meaning that as a knock as I think he's definitely got an NFL caliber arm and it's certainly good enough, but I always thought his arm was more Deshaun Watson than a complete arm cannon like Jay Cutler had and guys like Josh Allen have. I've heard people say, "haven't seen the ball come out with this much zip since Cutler" and I don't think Fields has that level of arm. Again, which is completely fine.

It took a week's worth of practices, but there are finally whispers everywhere you look about Fields being more than the Bears even hoped for. The Riddick quote. The report from fans attending camp. The people who say they have contacts in Halas Hall. There's just something different about Fields and everybody seems to know it but nobody is saying it too loudly because they're afraid of getting ahead of themselves.

The OL injuries are interesting. It's never good to have OL injuries, and it's not good when they're not guaranteed to be good to begin with. But it is at least encouraging that the Bears have 5-6Mil in cap space (depending where you look) and the Bears actually have NOT signed anyone. That shows me they aren't too concerned about the OL health long-term. It does suck that your rookie LT has 0 snaps in practice after a week though, especially when they said he would practice yesterday. I doubt he's ready for the first preseason game, but not in danger of him missing any real time just yet.

Stealing first base? It’s called a dropped third strike Then still him saying, "you do that a lot in baseball" means he chose the right sport because apparently he struck out a bunch. Also, side note.... dropped 3rd strikes in little league destroys me. My son's team once struck out 20 kids in a 6 inning game this past season and they actually turned 4 outs in the field that game. They had two 5-strikeout innings that they pitched.

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Shaky the first day whereas Dalton looked crisp. Looking better and more comfortable in subsequent days. That's the gist of what I've seen. Fields hasn't been bad by any accounts, but Dalton seems to have been the better QB on the first 2 days. I've read Fields has been better the last 2. Reports are about what you expect. Dalton has leadership, solid command of the offense, helping out Fields whenever he can. Fields is fearless (throwing into tight windows) and showing strong arm talent, while at times holding onto the ball a little bit longer than desired.

I don't know if the Blackhawks are trying to be good or bad, but they will definitely be different this coming season. Trust the process? Probably not.

You COULD make it work, but getting a wing (or 4 if keeping PWill at the 3) is probably a priority over Rose. However, Rose Lavine Lonzo PWill Vuc Not a bad 5 to close out games if PW takes a nice leap. Lonzo has enough size to make it work. Would feel a lot better about that 5 if one was a legit shooter. 4 of 5 can knock down a shot from time to time, but as much as I love Derrick, I'd prefer a spot shooter as the 5th guy down the stretch.

Miller was clearly on the block all off season. Sucks they couldn't get much for him. Hopefully they replace his roster spot with someone like Steven Nelson. Wish Miller got a chance to play with a good QB for a change, but there was very little chance/incentive to sign him longterm after this year anyway. And he's still not getting that good QB in Houston, most likely.

Anyone know anything about Simonovic? I see he's listed as a C, but I've seen highlights and he's seems more like a SF/PF hybrid. Kinda like what Lauri was supposed to be. Doesn't seem like he'll get much money so that shouldn't be an issue. Wonder how much they expect of him as far as the rotation. If they expect him to be in the rotation, that could effect the roster spots of guys like Thad and what they do with Theis.

https://twitter.com/friedgehnic/status/1414644136460828676?s=21 It's done.

Not sure if this was directed at me but I tend to believe the person making racism claims. But when guys like Shaq, Robert Horry, Barkley, and so on claim that Scottie is being ridiculous with a comment like the one in question it makes me think Pip is off base, especially when he's out doing product promotion. Not directed at you at all. More so to the people writing articles to go out the way to discredit Scottie (granted, none on here, but I've seen them on Twitter). Pippen is definitely full of horsefeathers, but the response shouldn't be to point out all the times Phil has NOT been racist. The burden should be on Phil Jackson to defend himself (if he even cares to) or on Scottie to backup his claims. Not for a 3rd party, who either doesn't or barely knows either of them, to decide if the claims are legit or not.

It happens all the damn time and it’s so frustrating. Had a conversation yesterday with a mutual on Twitter who said he didn't see anything wrong what Rachel Nichols said and explained he didn't think it was fair that people were labeling her a racist because of it. I explained why what she said was racist (not that she was a racist) and that he was a hypocrite because he took exception with a white woman being called racist but didn't take exception with a black woman being stigmatized as unworthy of her position with someone saying she got it because of race. Meanwhile, Maria Taylor is a 6'2 former D1 college basketball player and Nichols is a 5'2 non-athlete.

Phil Jackson is probably not racist. But it doesn't really sit right with me that people with no close knowledge of the situation or a personal relationship with neither Pippen or Jackson go out of their way to defend the person called racist and make the accuser prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt like racism is a criminal offense being tried in court.

Which means there's no way in hell he did NOT know he was coming into a no-hitter, as he was extra amped in a 4-0 game.

Pujols in particular looked way overmatched. Yeah he was way behind on the fastballs Hes just now swinging on strike 3. Sent from my SM-A115AZ using Tapatalk

Not a prediction but I follow this guy on Twitter. And this is not a thing he does. https://twitter.com/bearcub712/status/1408248331206369280?s=19 Sent from my SM-A115AZ using Tapatalk

No No. Cubs are 1-0 this year when they give up 0 hits! Sent from my SM-A115AZ using Tapatalk