WrigleyField 22

Saw this over on RealGM. NBA players union plans to negotiate for equity interests in the next CBA. Predictably a lot of fans on RealGM are just complaining that the players are paid enough already, but man, I'd love to see it. If there was a sport where the players actually had leverage, it has to be basketball. The athletes have made the NBA. The article presents it more like a shared union benefit than necessarily an individual player benefit, but I'm sure it could function as somewhat of both, wherein all players get access to the equity benefits, but may do at certain max/min rates where the stars basically subsidize the low end guys, kind of like max/min salaries do today. And from the ownership standpoint the question is whether such an equity benefit would be shared among owners as well or given more on an individual basis.

probably indifference with some cheers. his years at the U of I weren't great Yea but no one really cares about U of I Football that much.

Yea I think my first memory of being a Bears fan was whatever year they played SF in the playoffs, I think that was 94. I was about 6 then. So that is me. I guess circa 97-2001 my Sundays were often taken up with pop warner football games so I actually missed quote a bit of the slog of the later Wannedstadt and Jauron years. Had a pop warner coach yell at us to not watch those Bears teams if we wanted to be good and watch the Packers instead lol. Then entering HS was the Lovie years so that was generally fun and got me into adulthood years. I've also not moved around the country for any extended time and actually dealt with questions of access so I'm just Chicago Sports through and through.

An actual interesting sports radio segment? Thoughts on coaching up Fields and his development

Well he definitely seems to take more time to process, but in times of pocket distress he has seemed a little panicked this year. But it's also been obviously really low volume and noisy. That stat is somewhat confusing. It's time to throw or to pressure. So a guy could get pressure and navigate it and still throw a half second later. It doesn't measure that I guess. Last year Fields wasn't really near the top of that metric, so if you'd ask me then I'd assume it's because he was getting quick pressure then, not that he was getting out the ball particularly quick either.

Maybe. But at the same time Fields isn't super inclined to be a pocket passer. I don't think that was true at Ohio State, but obviously he's still getting accustomed to the speed and bailing on the pocket. He still ends up running at times when a pass probably did exist. But then when he runs he isn't "looking to create" on the run. I guess it feels more reactive. I actually want him to run more at times. Granted, I can't see All-22, but whenever he holds onto the ball more than like 2.5 seconds, I think he should just take off. Even if the D has a spy on him, it's not a guarantee he's going to get caught by that guy, especially not before 3-4 yard gain. IMO, that's way better than him holding onto the ball, being more likely to be sacked or to force a throw that's not coming open. I mean, purely from an immediate value add, I guess so, but I'd also like to see growth where he can stick around in a less that perfect pocket if it means he can get a guy open downfield. Right now he's pretty binary about sticking in the pocket or bailing on it completely. I think a lot of that is just how young QBs get taught this way. Including the best young QBs in the game, the young ones all love that spinout maneuver, whatever its called. It works well, but it changes the whole pass progression to do so.

thats been my impression as well. I get the impression that Fields is more inclined to be a passer first, where Hurts and/or Jackson are much more willing to channel their inner Jim Brown Maybe. But at the same time Fields isn't super inclined to be a pocket passer. I don't think that was true at Ohio State, but obviously he's still getting accustomed to the speed and bailing on the pocket. He still ends up running at times when a pass probably did exist. But then when he runs he isn't "looking to create" on the run. I guess it feels more reactive.

I don't know, just thought Hurts came in already having done a lot more running and RPO stuff than Fields ever did and had more natural running instinct. Fields best runs are still usually just beating guys to a spot in a straight line and not creative running more like a RB (which a guy like say Lamar, or maybe Hurts, provide)

George has shown a clear, “whatever didn’t work last just do the opposite next” approach. He’s gone D/O/D/O/D. If Eberflus fails, I would bet he takes an offensive head coach next. But while Trestman was sort of an out of the box guy who had been around a while and seen a lot, and Nagy was relatively fresh and studied under one guy, he’ll probably look for either a guy with a ton of OC experience or a former head coach next. And that guy will get 2-3 years before they go back to defense. They just don’t have the offensive infrastructure in place because they’ve never prioritized it. It is not an accident that the offense always sucks. This has been a defense first team and the couple times they strayed from that they quickly returned to the old model. Yet overreacting to the latest failure will still give them an infinite more number of swings at an emphasis on offensive success than a organizational mindset that D is all that matters. So it's something. Anyways a team like the Steelers has managed O prioritization with D coaches. It's certainly not the only metric by which to say whether an organizational emphasis exists or not. Unfortunately the Bears have been pretty disorganized forever which has only slightly improved from Michael to the Ted Phillips and eventually Phillips/George leadership (low initial standards and all that). And the 80s success was also pretty disorganized but had some nice headwinds from the last period of stability the did have with Finks before old man George dumped him.

Add it to the list of Bears offensive futility. I swear that since I first remember watching the Bears regularly (1994) we've had about 10-12 offensive seasons that would be on most teams bottom 5 offensive seasons ever. Change the players, change the coaches, change the FO and we just cant figure out how to have any sort of success offensively, particularly passing offense. Dating back to 1994 they’ve had a defensive minded head coach in all but 6 seasons. The rest have all been defensive first and the bulk of those were guys in their final job, with minimal prior head coaching success. You can say they’ve changed coaches and still same results, but those changes have rarely shown a concerted effort to prioritize offense. It’s not some weird hex, it’s organizational but philosophy. Defense first. Maybe hire an offensive coach on occasion but if that fails go right back to defense first. We are back in a defense first situation and have to pray they magically find a qb or have a Ron Turner situation where the OC cobbles together a good season once or twice. I hope the current version of ownership is more balanced. All those seasons under an O coach happened once George took over from Michael and initially it was very concerted reason specifically for that change. Obviously they've still spent half the time with D coaches in that span, but I don't think D first is a concerted management mandate anymore either.

Here is a little more info for BTT. https://ontapsportsnet.com/bears/bears-justin-fields-average-rookie-qb-stats-comparison Among rookies over the past 10+ years, Fields had the best Big Time Throw rate. Obviously that's only graded against other rookies, but yea hopefully that 10 game sample is way more representative than the 2 game sample. Turnover worthy throws, meh as a rookie, but that's okay if the big throws are frequent enough.

I can't remember the criteria for big time throws. Isn't a pretty strictly yardage thing or is it somehow one of those yards over expected metrics?

Bad and boring about sums it up. Technically he is not anywhere near the boring quadrant. Just strictly bad.

BPA to me, has always been more a scouting/preparation thing. If you go in looking for a WR you can definitely justify it, but you're just opening yourself up to bad confirmation biases. So you kind of have to do the whole "7.34 v 7.32" rating thing with no positional/need bias and then when it actually comes down to it have more esoteric value based decision making. And it might actually be somewhat intuitive to directly "BPA" a WR and CB as an example, but is pretty impossible for a FS verse a G. Eta a guy I know online only and has pretty reputable claims to have done some contract work with nfl teams on systems design (mostly playbook stuff but has some exposure to draft systems) told me that the grading systems don't do nearly that level of granular grading. Probably more analogous to a 5 star rating system than a baseball type WAR metric. A little more complex, but not down to declaring 100th perctible variances across players.

Too early to call Gordon a wiff, as bad as Sunday night was. And what you're describing is opposite of BPA then anyways.

No one thinks so of the 2022 draft, for sure. There's a wide gap between "can't be replicated" and "rare enough that you embrace the opportunity when it's there". Yea there will be some Fields level talents in future years, but when you literally have no good alternative now and have no certainty of your ability to be in a future position to do so, you go for it.

Although to the WR point, parralel building does often mean established but still young WR with your QB.

You don't have to build it in advance either though. In fact parallel building is probably best so you line up primes. Lack of a first rounder aside, the Bears really weren't that limited in building around Fields even for 2022. They just went ultra conservative with cap use. I hope Cunningham picked up some roster composition and cap strategy from Roseman and is bringing it to Poles and we see it in 2023 and beyond. Roseman gets the cap mechanics better than probably anyone (though Loomis is up there with him). This was a decent primer article from this past spring that touches the surface a little. I like pre-building because 1) offensive linemen last forever so they're great value if you don't already have them and 2) it usually takes receivers and tight ends a year or two to hit their stride I'm not convinced how rooted in reality either of those things are, certainly not to the extent people treat them. There is definitely some variance in the research out there about career arcs and the significance of OL career spans. I have a suspision there is a selection bias for this that creates a greater impression than actualy exists. But anyways, parallel or post hukdikg with a Fields type talent > prebuilding with a Kenny Pickett talent. Obviously you cant predict what will be available in the future, but sometimes when the prospect is sitting there, you just make the move.

The off target % is bad there, but we're also dealing with such a small sample. Like the Mooney bomb was way off and that's 10% of his throws. Must have an impact. Over the course of last year, I believe advanced stats showed him to be a pretty accurate deep passer. The time to throw and target separation make sense based on what we've always known about Fields, even as a prospect. There's still a lot to work with and the O just has to meet him where he is and make marginal improvements in those araas over time.

What Philly has done with him is put him behind the best OL in the league. Also drafted and traded for WRs with 1st round picks. Bears are a long way from being able to emulate that. I wanted us to go that route so bad. I didn't even want to draft a QB until we started rebuilding the situation around the QB. Because I didn't want to end up exactly where we have ended up. The only good thing about losing to the Packers is it gets the rest of the fan base on board with my doom bonering You don't have to build it in advance either though. In fact parallel building is probably best so you line up primes. Lack of a first rounder aside, the Bears really weren't that limited in building around Fields even for 2022. They just went ultra conservative with cap use. I hope Cunningham picked up some roster composition and cap strategy from Roseman and is bringing it to Poles and we see it in 2023 and beyond. Roseman gets the cap mechanics better than probably anyone (though Loomis is up there with him). This was a decent primer article from this past spring that touches the surface a little.

Isn't Hurts a much better natural runner than Fields (and a weaker passer). I think Fields is still more the mold of a moving pocket guy who punishes you when you leave the run open, but he has the arm talent to develop into a primary passing threat more than a run-led threat. It's the recognition that isn't up to par with the arm talent right now though. That still has to be developed (with lots of reps and coaching).

Virginia will die and Pat Ryan will buy the team from the McCaskey estate and then force the coaches to start Siemian because he has a boner for everything Northwestern. That's the best I got.

this might be why we thing Fields holds onto the ball too long..the routes are long Are the targets exceptionally long, because I feel like it's been a lot of RB dump offs on actual targets. But I guess I can remember like 4 long targets off the top of my head so that is 14% of passes to help bump the average...?

It just helps show how constrained or not a QB is by the depth of routes being called by they OC. But yea the Bears one doesn't seem right, but maybe there's a "actually they've had a lot of deep routes/targets when the denominator is only 28" so it just doesn't feel like it.

I don't know if it's a weird small sample size issue or what, but this is not how I would describe my recollection of the Bears offense.