WrigleyField 22

When it became clear they were going to give Pace one more draft, this was basically the exact scenario most of us begged not to have happen. Specifically trading up for a QB?

I was able to successfully pysch a fantasy football opponent into using a draft pick on Ebner, by dropping the "I heard Bears aren't happy with Herbert's pass blocking" during the draft. He still hasn't dropped him. Ebner is only rosters in like 1% of ESPN leagues, and this isn't a particularly deep league, but I think he's committed now lol. We'll see if pays dividends for him down the line lol.

Is a 1.5 pass block score good? It's like golf right? Red means good?

Yea that's a good point on the read option, although Fields isn't that great at that play at this point. But his athleticism over 1 yard covers that gap. But I feel like I've watched slow ass Foles types take that read option. It the D sells out one way, you can take the undefenderd route easily. But if you aren't a threat to pass or whatever it takes options away. But if your butted up to the goal line even a Tom Brady athlete can reach over at a pretty high rate. And really you could make the argument a guy with enough grip strength could one hand it to extend his reach because there's no "completion of the play" they have to go through there. Cross the imaginary plane and it's done.

So those rates are at a yard or less... I'd suspect the difference between a yard and a foot or less is a pretty big difference in the "just reach over" decision. At a yard, yea get the extra blocker. Down to a foot, or inches. Just get under center and reach. So, I actually get why teams do the shotgun run when they only need a yard. Out of the gun, you aren't really picking a hole before the play and running thru it. You are giving your RB a chance to pick his hole based on where the push is. Whereas under center, you are going thru a predetermined hole and hoping your OL blocks it up well enough. My biggest issue with what the Bears did is more with the play call itself. They basically did a QB sneak from 4 yards away. Fields got to read the blocking a bit, but he's also not a RB. Snap it to Montgomery and let him go straight ahead or hand it off and like DM find the soft spot (he's actually not very good at this though). So I think the benefit of the QB taking a snap is you can clear some defenders by making them respect a wide out (I don't remember if Bears did in that play) Obviously like you said, a RB is gonna read holes better. But you definitely don't want a handoff. That removes a potential blocker. So direct shotgun snap is the best/logical play, but maybe you make the case for a Wildcat scenario where you remove the QB from the play completely. If a D REALLY sleeps on it you might have a RB who could still make a dump sideline pass if they leave a WR completely uncovered.

So those rates are at a yard or less... I'd suspect the difference between a yard and a foot or less is a pretty big difference in the "just reach over" decision. At a yard, yea get the extra blocker. Down to a foot, or inches. Just get under center and reach.

Bears have so few passes I'm not even sure it's statistically relevant. Depending on what the % of targets as pressure is, you can file this under "Fields has no time" or "Fields takes too many sacks" or "Fields bails on the pocket too quick"

And I feel like I've made this point, but if you told me 5 weeks ago "Bears will lead the NFL in run rate" I'd have said, "no horsefeathers", but I might have thought it'd look better than it has. I think Dilfer talking about getting throws in on more nuetral to run favored scenarios is key. Or just go with a random play generator. You'll be unpredictable at least.

I have no idea if this theory is actually sound but given the Bears ridiculously high reliance on the run, I imagine that leads to less possesions/overall plays. If that theory is correct then I'll make another assumption that less possessions means less opportunity to separate from your opponent, thus a spread that is lower than you might expect. So they're the 13 seed mid major trying to grind games to a halt and play for variance.

:|

From a a single fan view watch, I'd say last week it was a median rookie performance. At this point for 2022 I think Fields merely looking like a rookie and hopefully not suffering and long term development delay would be best case scenario. But I'm not totally convinced 2023 actually turns into a "let's see if we can maximize his development" instead of bad plaititues about building a whole team and making him prove it first (which almost no young QB is ever asked to do let alone succeed so).

Also it looks like Sam Mustipher is going on a Twitter block rampage and damn if the joke doesn't write itself.

Great to hear re: Fields. I've come to accept that improvements are going to come gradually. I was thinking today that they are probably looking at Fields as a 1-2 year project. And while I'm not sure how giving him nothing to work with and getting destroyed by opposing defenses helps him, I think they are content with doing what they do best (run the ball) and slowly bring Fields around as he (and the team as a whole) gets more comfortable with the offensive system. Maybe the FO never saw him as the answer and are trying to prove it but I also think that the team has so many holes and are committed to building through the draft so the last thing they want to do is use a high 1st on a QB at this point. Seems like a very old school approach to QB development when we've seen quite a few young QBs figure it out quickly (especially ones with multiple years starting at a major P5 school) so don't take this post as me necessarily being on board with the plan. Just trying to make sense of whats happening out there. Just from a fan standpoint it definitely felt that way from last week to this week. He looked more like a struggling rookie than a guy completely overwhelmed. Just gotta build. At this point it's clear the starting point for Fields was back to zero and not from like the Pittsburgh game high of his rookie year. Theres still a prospect there, but he's not a unicorn. Just a very talented guy, but who's success is far from certain (this is what most young QBs are).

Any of them. Victor in 2019 is the only 6'3"+ target of any significance he had at WR at Ohio State. No, his targets at OSU weren't particularly big, but they were far more talented than your average college DB, where the talent differences are much more pronounced. He could throw deep ball after deep ball last year from clean pockets and Wilson, Olave, and Smith-Njigba (who I would lvoe the Bears to pick next year) would either dust their DB and be wide open, or were good enough athletes to GUAGI That's kinda the point though. I'm not entirely sold that Fields just needs a go up and get it basketball threat because those guys aren't gonna look as open in the passing game. Obviously if you want him to be THE guy, he has to throw to either, but if you're looking to maximize early success and then build, maybe he needs more horizontal speed separators to get comfortable. I remember Kurt Warner talking about this adjustment as well though going from the greatest show on turf to throwing to Fitzgerald in Arizona. Fitsgerald's open looked a lot different than Bruce/Holt and he had to get used to the guys not being 2 yards separated from a defender. But thats adjusting to throwing it up to one of the best WR in his generation, not some run of the mill basketball target. And Fields isn't a vet with 3+ years of quality NFL starts either. In 2023 you could probably overpay Lazard to a contract the Pack won't want to compete with. But it's not looking like a good FA class. He's the basketball target type, and will be among the better FA market in this class. Otherwise it's draft or a likely expensive trade market. Pretty sure Christian Kirk could create some separation right now, but everyone dunked on Jags for overpaying. Probably some options for actually patching the line at least. Orlando Brown, how do you feel becoming the highest paid tackle ever?

Isn't that the opposite of the WRs he has the most success with at Ohio State? Olave or Wilson? Any of them. Victor in 2019 is the only 6'3"+ target of any significance he had at WR at Ohio State.

Isn't that the opposite of the WRs he has the most success with at Ohio State?

So 2.8 is still on the high end for average TTT. Most of that is one Fields, but you could probably assign some blame to receivers not getting open. I recall that ESPNs pass rush win rate was higher on Bears OLine than other grades. They define a win as 2.5 seconds until pressure. So you could probably prove a narrative there where Fields is creating a lot of the pressures in the 2.3 to 2.8 second range. But some combo of him needing that time to see the opening or the WRs needing to get open creates a unwinnable combo. But again this holding the ball isn't new info about Fields. What's new is his footwork though. I'm sure the footwork is designed around the idea that its tining maximizes the throwing windows that will be available, but it's not connecting right now and I have no idea on a realistic expectation is to pick that up for a young QB. Probably a long time. Just one of two of going all in on fixing the line or getting Fields a bail out receiver would have been quite big. And you probably could have still half assed the other. Either would have provided some breathing room for Fields current skill level and let you run a run heavy offense that still had a non-dead-last pass component. But Poles most agressive FA move was a 3T tackle he backed out on due to a failed phyiscal (even though he knew he was recovering from an injury anyways). Then we got Patrick and Pringle. Not great, Bob.

Actually the deep ball first read to Mooney is probably their best pass play right now. The Fields who is an accurate deep ball thrower is tough to use on anything complex or slower developing right now. Partially because he still isn't quick in his progressions and because his line isn't good, and no receiver can really bail him out (which probably doubles down on the processing because he's stuck looking for open open instead of open enough). Just chuck it deep. If it's a pick, it's probably just a early punt oh well.

Not so much yesterday, but the first three weeks he played himself into a lot of those pressures I agree with that, especially last week. Vs. GB, wasn't really enough of a sample size to work with. Vs. SF again sample size, but he definitely did run into pressure a bit there as well. This is the perfect storm of suck. Bad OL, bad playcalling, bad conservative strategy, bad WRs, bad QB. At this point, I'm holding out hope the QB is a symptom and not a cause, because he's literally the only guy here that has the proven talent and track record (based on college and draft status, and sometimes last year) to not suck. Yep. Perfect storm indeed. The only truely good thing they have is RBs. Everything else, even where they have promising young guys, is dragged down by the bottom of the roster. It's tough to be even a good starter and prop up a bottom 5 unit elsewhere. The only hope over the next 13 games is Getsy having some relation about how to turn this O into a system O that can reliably do certain things well and then slowly build the rest of you can get Ds to respect other aspects. Basically the only things D respect now is backside contain and the run game a bit. There has to be a passing component they can exploit in there or theyre doomed.

This offense is so horsefeathering full of holes that Poles ineffectiveness last off season only creates a situation where he's likely to be ineffective this next off season. HTF is he going to plug the holes in one off season? He has draft picks and salary cap space, but whats he proven so far? he can oversell a terrible NFL offense? I mean, this past offseason is basically totally useless as to trying to tell us what Poles can do because he mostly punted on trying. You got a couple second rounders you can try and evaluate him on, but even then, grading draft success takes time. So who knows, but they have cap space to do whatever they want this offseason. Enough to dramatically increase the quality of the O. Not top 5, but competent, middle of the road O. Getting beyond that you need a QB obviously. If he punts on trying in FA again it will erase any idea that he is planning on building around Fields.

rofl, hope!

Okay now into fantasy cheering mode. Let's go Barkley TD lol.

Okay let's see if the undefeated record with a EJax pick holds up.

I don't necessarily expect Pettis to come down with those but damn, wouldn't it be nice to have a WR who could.

Well they wanted to try something, but the line (and Martindale blitzes) aren't allowing for much today. Eventually they gotta make them pay for being blitz heavy. He's connected in some deep ones. There's gotta be a weakness Getsy can find to exploit. Bears have done a decent job with 2nd half adjustment this year. Big ones needed on both sides.