WrigleyField 22

Eh. The dream is largely over. Last I checked I was in 40th, and I probably need 80 points combied from Lazard and Najee to win the million. A chess player I know of through the interwebs is prob going to take it down. Well not 80, but pretty good from Lazard and Harris. Where did you end at?

I can't see how they can let him go. I love to see what difference he and Mack can do when they are both healthy. Doesn't he have one more year? Or will it just be the franchise tag? He's signed through 2024, but all the guarantees are paid out. I could see him traded, especially if there's a clean FO sweep.

How many games were there this year when you felt the Bears had a talent advantage over the opponent? Yesterday and...Detroit? How many times did you feel they were at a talent disadvantage? This yeah was about as standard as they come for the Bears, as far as W/L goes. Basically, their record was pretty predictable on paper. Clearly better teams- GBx 2, Tampa, Arizona, LA Rams all losses, all by double digits Clearly worse teams- Detroit x 2, NYG all wins, all by double digits except the one on short rest with the backup QB starting They beat a really good Cincy team before they became a really good team. And they lost against a really good Cleveland team before they became a mediocre team. Other than that, Raiders, Steelers, Ravens (with backup QB), Vikings and Seahawks they went 2-3 against the teams that are similar levels of mediocre as they are, and the games for the most part were really close. Probably beat the Vikings and their backup QB to go to a perfectly mediocre 3-3 against mediocre competition. I believe the Bears are the same 8-8 team they have been the previous 2 years, but they just had a tougher schedule. Yea I agree. They've been roughly a mid-range talent team since like 2017, with mostly schedule variance explaining the rest. Pace has built average teams. He hasn't done so particularly efficiently either. But he's not like totally lost either. Nagy is just bad. Hasn't put together a single impressive offense in 4 years. Team constantly is under prepared and ill disciplined too. Only thing he does well is "culture".

I'll be just as upset if they keep Pace. I want a clean sweep. But I can't share that sentiment. Nagy is such a larger issue to me than Pace. If the keep Pace I'll groan, roll my eyes and then see what he does. Nagy stays, I riot.

Isn't it sad that's a real possibility? I do not think it is a real possibility. The only possible chance is if Fields has a HOF performance. I said going into the season I thought there wasn't a playoffs or you're fired situation here. What they needed to do was make the offense look capable. Losing games 34-29 wasn't going to doom them, necessarily. But the offense has been crap all season, including in that game yesterday that was won by Glennon's incompetence. If they hang a 50-burger on the Vikings and Fields throws for 300+ yards, runs for a bunch with no turnovers, I could see a situation where George looks at the progress as justification to allow Nagy one more season. But his contract is up after next season, and if he hasn't already signed a cheap extension in secret, they aren't going to bring him back in a lame duck situation. The only other scenario is if they do hire a guy like Trace Armstrong as the big boss, and he decides to take a year to evaluate things, and chooses not to fire his client right away. That would be a strange choice. I think this post is on the money. Pace is another story. He may well stick around. Feels like a toss up at this point.

What's cool about Eddie Jak refusing to tackle? Let's Quinn get home for the record breaking sack.

Wow this is kind of cool.

Cardinals-9ers would be a pretty big difference. Saints-Falcons could go either way.

I wanna hear what this actually was. It's always been skirted around and Pace subsequently made a bunch of big changes in the org. What did Ballard say that they couldn't do otherwise? I know at least a few bloggers have felt it was just Ballard sour grapes and based on what Pace has done I'm skeptical that the issue was unwillingness to change.

Still gonna get a decent return on that $25 entry right?

I keep seeing takes that Matt Nagy is such a good guy, and maybe he is outside of football (nice of him to make a donation to JDs kids charity this week), but horsefeathers like this dispels that he’s classy. There is no benefit to Peters playing. Sure winning is fine but best for the team is clearly not playing a 39 year old with no future on the team over your highly drafted rookie. The classy thing to do would be to do what’s actually best for the team even if you aren’t going to be around. But hey now Nagy will finish his Bears career with a record over .500 so that’s something to brag about when he’s the QB coach of the Texans next year He may give off the appearance of classy to the untrained eye but Matt Nagy is not classy when it comes to football. Pretty sure if you ask people within the game, they'd say it's a classy move to give the HOF vet a chance to finish out his career on the field. It will also potentially help you sign guys in the future, so it's not all bad. All that said, I would have played Jenkins. Yea I think the Ifedi over Borom choice was a lot more egregious. Borom is basically already better than Ifedi. Ifedi has just shown up his teammate. It seemed forced as part of a dumb revenge game captain decision. Peters over Jenkins is still annoying as a fan, but I get it more. And neither decision is gonna be a make or break thing for those guys into next year.

Jersey, can you contain your excitement?

They said they've done a lot of jaguars games this year. Probably a reason for that. So it's like the D team.

And it happened in two different years!

Beautiful

Omg Demar. Worst FA signing of the offseason.

I’m still for expanding the playoffs. The competitive balance isn’t that relevant to the matchups themselves because people will still watch. People love brackets and there will be occasional upsets and the beat downs will still get massive ratings. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily take these semi’s being bad as an indication that future playoff games will be just as one sided. The top 4 teams aren’t always the actual Top 4 best teams. For example I think many teams in the top 10 would have beaten Cincinnati like Okie State or Ole Miss or Baylor. There are plenty of 2 loss teams that are better than teams with 1 loss or even teams with no losses. Those teams might have fared better against a Bama or Georgia, but because they were left out we’ll never know. The expanded playoff allows for those type teams to have a shot. Maybe. Perhaps running the regular season straight into the playoffs could help parity too. I'm sure a 4 week layoff helps the top teams recover whereas going straight into a playoffs would introduce some parity due to injury and just fatigue. Shorten the regular season by a game or two. Pay players for playoffs and expand it to 12-16 and let's go.

I may be way off, but the playoff system is destined to be disappointing. Instead of expanding, go back to the old bowl format, but instead of naming a national champ afterwards, have a game between the two top teams after bowls are all done. Yea I know it will be a quick turnaround and all, but we still get a championship Where do we stand now as far as these first round playoff games and actually getting us something interesting? 3/16 of interesting games in the semis?

Yea I'm not a big gambler, but under bets are what you'd want to hedge anyways right? Hedge against your own team.

If he's not starting he shouldn't be backing up. That's the only hill I'll die on. If they wanna wrap him in bubble wrap at this point I'm okay with it.

If it's on the wire at all with Najee into Monday night you gotta look at some prop hedge bets of some kind right?

The empty wheel lady's responses were even worse than the original tweet. People asked basic questions for her to defend and it was basically, "you just proved my point!". She totally had no actual point. When someone said Madden was pretty forward thinking about player safety her retort was he did that because he knew he had profited off the violence.

One thing keeping Leftwich from being my top guy is I'm not sure who would be coming with him. For one, the guys I'd probably have ahead of him would potentially come with a GM candidate as well (McDaniels, Roman, Moore). Secondly, the Bucs have a really good coaching staff but a lot of their top guys are older. Their younger guys are mostly unproven, especially in terms of being coordinators or playcallers. And Leftwich has only really coached under the Arians tree so it's not like he can pull guys from his past connections, unless it's from his playing days (admittedly, I haven't looked into anyone he may have played with or for). So, you're potentially looking at a 1st time HC, who will likely also have calling plays on his plate. You may get an experienced OC as kind of like a mentor, but I'd imagine you'd also get a 1st time DC since I don't see Bowles coming with Leftwich to make a lateral move. But I do love your 1st point, and it may be the most important when looking at the next candidate. Fields would be a fantastic fit with what Leftwich has shown he can do with an offense in the last 3-4 years. Yea, and antectodally, Bowles also was not successful in bringing staff with him when he left Arians.

Still have really no reason to trust this blogger, but horsefeathers it