WrigleyField 22

I wish there was just a Theo type hire out there, but obviously he was such a unicorn hire. Well respected, young, proven. The closest I can come up with is Schnieder in Seattle who's been the number 2 to Carroll the whole time and Roseman in PHI who did technically build a SB champ, but looking at the whole of the results is pretty meehhh. I don't really want the Chiefs guy who's been under Reid the whole time or anyone from under Bellicheck. This Dodds guy does sound interesting. Or maybe just hire from within with Champ Kelly who's gotten some buzz. Riddick I'm kinda meh on.

Out welcoming your stay should be a phrase. Like instead of out staying your welcome, a bad guest situation, you have an overly gracious host that turns off the guest. Damn I knew that didn't sound right but was tired and just went for it.

Give me an over/under.

Man, pro-football reference has put their game index searches behind a pay wall, which sucks. Trying to figure out the recent history of NFL coaches with 5+ game losing streaks. Anyways, just manually searching through several of the past years I can only find a couple coaches who survived a 5 game losing streak in their 3rd year or later (plenty of 1st and 2nd year coaches survive losing streaks like that). It just so happens most of these long losing streaks of that variety are from those 1st or 2nd year coaches. So already not friendly company for Nagy. The guys who did survive; O'Brien/Houston in 2017 Garrett/Dallas in 2015 Coughlin/New York in 2014 Smith/Atlanta in 2013 O'Brien is the only one Nagy is in remotely a similar situation to (O'Brien was in year 4 at that point, and Houston made FO changes that offseason). Coughlin was a two time SB champ. Smith was in his 6th year with playoff births in 4 of his first 5. Garrett and Jerry just had that weird relationship where Garrett out welcomed his stay from seemingly day 1. He was in year 6 despite pretty average results. ETA- found another. 2018 Carolina/Rivera. They had an epic collapse, starting at 6-2 before rattling of 7 straight losses. Rivera survived that but was in year 8 and had 4 playoff births and a SB trip to his name by that point.

He'd been a Director of Scouting for 8 years preceding that hire. Who cares what he had done 20 years prior. I cared, it was a predictably terrible hire. Okay. But I think it may also kind of prove the point? Seems like the best guys typically get moved to the pro personnel side pretty quickly to prep them to oversee all aspects of team building rather than just be draft focused.

I'm not sure that really matters that much. Emery was a long time draft guy. Pace was a pro guy and he's been way better (despite the top 10 busts). I would kind of like to see someone with a variety of experience. Pace never got outside of being under Loomis. Maybe more depth of experience/views would have served him well. Pace’s time in Chicago is going to be judged on one decision in drafting Mitch and passing on two probable Hall of Famers. I’m not sure having more experience on his own would have helped Pace. Well it may very likely not have sunk him still yet. He may get another swing at at. I can't say exactly what diversity of experience may have done other than possibly never really going through that thorough QB draft nalysis. Never working through different coaching and QB decisions since Payton/Brees just clicked right away? Not having as wide of a professional network to draw from?

I'm not sure that really matters that much. Emery was a long time draft guy. Pace was a pro guy and he's been way better (despite the top 10 busts). I would kind of like to see someone with a variety of experience. Pace never got outside of being under Loomis. Maybe more depth of experience/views would have served him well. Emery was a strength and conditioning coach and in no way shape or form suitable for management He'd been a Director of Scouting for 8 years preceding that hire. Who cares what he had done 20 years prior.

I'm not sure that really matters that much. Emery was a long time draft guy. Pace was a pro guy and he's been way better (despite the top 10 busts). I would kind of like to see someone with a variety of experience. Pace never got outside of being under Loomis. Maybe more depth of experience/views would have served him well.

I feel like everything before "draft a QB" could be struck and it'd still be true. Outside of Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore, when hasn't it been that simple?

I read he was going to hire McDaniels if he got the NYG job, which gives me some pause. But like pretty much any GM candidate they could hire, it's hard to really know anything substantive.

At this point its pretty clear Phillips has been Crane Kenney'd. He's not standing in the way of anything. Well there’s a knock against the ownership then. What’s the point of that? Fire him and hire someone who can do the job. If that’s the case then Ryan Pace is pretty much the top dog with regards to football operations which is crazy. Well run orgs start at the VP level setting the tone and vision for the team. Not to mention we are much more likely to attract an established, highly regarded name to fill that type of role. That’s where the biggest void is with the Bears right now. Because like Kenney, he does the businessy things? Most football orgs I think still start with the GM at the top. Not like basketball and baseball that have moved the the VP-GM hierarchy. And a guy like Pace being in that role isn't really some outlier either as far as I can tell. Maybe the Bears need to try a Bellicheck/Reid/Carroll model where the head coach is the top exec too. But their current structure doesn't seem weird or a problem, outside of the people.

Honest question, how does a relatively hands off ownership affect a team being futile for most of the last 25 years? The Bears don’t have a good QB, they don’t have the coaching staff that could develop a good QB, they don’t have a FO that can hire the guys that could develop and coach a good QB, they don’t have executives that can hire the right FO that can hire a coaching staff that develops a good QB. But where does ownership fit in? Should they be more like Jerry Jones and be more involved, maybe clean house more frequently (like Ted Phillips) when it’s clear the team doesn’t have the right pieces? Maybe they should be building connections within the game and improving the image of the team? Maybe make changes like artificial turf at Solider Field so it’s not knows at the stadium where speed goes to die? These sound like I’m challenging your viewpoint and I’m not. I just always hear how the Bears need new ownership and I have a hard time figuring out why that would make the difference. I’m sure there are several reasons that I’m just not thinking of. They’ve had enough time. Whether they are too hands off or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that they can’t lead a team that can field a consistent winner. At the very least they need to get rid of Ted Phillips. Start with him and a new President will clean house. At this point its pretty clear Phillips has been Crane Kenney'd. He's not standing in the way of anything.

New ownership is needed. Virginia and the rest of the McCaskeys are utter failures too. Honest question, how does a relatively hands off ownership affect a team being futile for most of the last 25 years? The Bears don’t have a good QB, they don’t have the coaching staff that could develop a good QB, they don’t have a FO that can hire the guys that could develop and coach a good QB, they don’t have executives that can hire the right FO that can hire a coaching staff that develops a good QB. But where does ownership fit in? Should they be more like Jerry Jones and be more involved, maybe clean house more frequently (like Ted Phillips) when it’s clear the team doesn’t have the right pieces? Maybe they should be building connections within the game and improving the image of the team? Maybe make changes like artificial turf at Solider Field so it’s not knows at the stadium where speed goes to die? These sound like I’m challenging your viewpoint and I’m not. I just always hear how the Bears need new ownership and I have a hard time figuring out why that would make the difference. I’m sure there are several reasons that I’m just not thinking of. Yea I mean, new ownership is probably a coin flip odds as far as getting better/worse in the area of team building (getting someone who intervenes too much). The area where the McCaskeys hurt are probably in things like the stadium deal. But it really depends on how much they admit their limitations. Emery/Trestman was a disaster where they went out completely on their own. When they listened to others, they've been merely above average to average (Angelo, Pace eras)

New ownership is needed. Virginia and the rest of the McCaskeys are utter failures too. I doubt they’ll sell, so I guess the question is, do the McCaskeys have a “Rocky” in the family? There are some questions if they can keep the team intact once Virginia dies and meeting the NFL ownership rules in regards to minority ownership. SUPPOSEDLY they have a transition plan in place. We'll see, eventually.

The offense has been about as good as could have expected minus the fumble-TD where Mitch got face masked twice.. The D has really done nothing all day. All those long drives were hard to watch. A typical night from the D and this is probably an interesting game. Anyways, probably for the best. Fire Pace-Nagy.

Lol bears

I wouldn’t mind so much either, but he was so obviously double covered. There was really no chance at all for a completion. And it should’ve been Clear from the beginning I mean it obviously wasn't good, but I think the play calling has been good for Mitch so far.

Will this be the game that causes McCaskey to get angry enough for a complete overhaul?

Meh, at least throw it 30 yards down field when you throw a pic. Like them going aggressive with Mitch and setting up longer pockets rather than trying to ask him to make quick reads.

How exactly does the cap hit work when trading? Does the players cap hit simply transfer from one team to the next? At one point in time I thought that the pro-rated signing bonus accelerated into the season that the player was acquired. This would make high salary/signing bonus guys impossible to trade, though I guess any trade could have a restructure built into it. The old team immediately takes any dead money hit in the form of prorated signing bonuses, all accelerated. The new teams gets all base salary cap hits, both guaranteed or unguaranteed. So for Stafford: The Lions would take a dead cap hit of 19M for prorated salary. I'm not exactly sure what happens with his roster bonus though. It's due March 17 in 2021 and 2022 ($10M each year) so he might have to be traded before then for the Lions to not pick that up. But with a 33M cap hit the Lions still would end up net positive to trade him in that scenario. So certainly not impossible. And IMO the dead cap part is overblown. It's dead cap for a reason, it's a sunk cost. The savings is the annual salary that you get out of. And you can almost always move around other salaries to offset for the acceleration aspect of that contract. And yea any restructure could happen as part of the trade, though only on unguaranteed portions I believe.

I'm in the only television market in the US that is forced to watch this game, and only this game, in the afternoon. It had better be good. You'll be able to watch the CBS late game: https://506sports.com/nfl.php?yr=2020&wk=12

I kinda wanna watch this.

History of QBs with declined 5th year option Teddy Bridgewater. This was mainly injury influenced. Signed 0.5m/1 year contract Blaine Gabbert. Resigned with SF (who had traded for him) for 2m/2 Jake Locker. Retired. I think he actually would have gotten a small backup deal and this was a legit retirement and not that he couldn't find work. Christian Ponder. 1.5m/1 EJ Manuel. 0.8m/1 The 5th year rookie contract structure is fairly new. For instance Alex Smith had a 6 year contract, and renegotiated the final 2 years of it after his 4th year in the league.

Then Foles can come in as the back up for a guy they draft or sign. If they draft a guy, Foles would serve better as a starter/mentor then a back up I'd rather Mitch lights up the scoreboard, gets a new 1-2 year deal while dropping Foles (despite the cost) and still drafting a high-ceiling qb If you were really set on moving on from Foles, in a trade the trading team would be in for 2/8M with 5 guaranteed. As a backup, teams could do worse. Even if it was like a conditional late round pick in 2022, just giving him away saves 5M there for Chicago. Needless to say I'm not bullish on Mitch having some great 6 game run here that makes me believe he could be a bridge QB for a year or two. Foles as a backup and possible bridge QB in 2021 is the most likely course.

Costs more to lose Foles than to keep him next year. Also, if you believe the rumors it sounds like Pace is pretty safe because the McKaskey family loves him. Are these substantial rumors at all? I thought there were rumors George is "pissed about the offense" or something Just curious how safe is safe? "Extend him and let him hire a new HC" safe or "let him ride out his final contract year before deciding" safe?