NotKyle

Some of my own thoughts: Jayden Daniels looks very legit to me. He can do all the cool things you want a young athletic QB to do these days. He can run the ball himself, he can throw an incredible deep ball, he can throw on the run, etc. But really stands out on his tape is how monotonously accurate he is. With a nice, quick release to make it hard for defenders to close the gap. He never makes the easy stuff look hard, and there's a ton of value in that. Yeah, offensively they do a lot of short passes, outs and screens. That's what defenses give you these days. They look pretty capable of punishing defenses that oversell to try to take those away. And they just don't make many mistakes. Only 3 turnovers in 7 games is very very good. We're over here excusing Caleb Williams for throwing 2 picks in a game because he's a rookie, Daniels has only thrown two all season. I'm tempted to downplay our chances because I don't want to be disappointed, but if I'm being 100% honest, I think the Bears are a better team and are better than 50/50 to win even if Daniels plays. They haven't faced a defense anywhere close to this good, the best they faced was probably the Giants, who made them look ordinary. I'd really really really like to see our secondary back and healthy after the bye week. This is the wrong week to be missing Brisker, Stevenson or Gordon. Williams just needs to show that last week wasn't a fluke. He showed next-level accuracy that game and none of the confusion between him and his WRs on what route was being run, but it was noticeably better than even his other good games this season. I know dumb trash talking and hot taking is what most of the world enjoys about sports, so I understand the "1 vs 2, who got the right QB?" takes are inevitable. But they're still stupid. 1) Who wins this game doesn't say anything about who is having the better rookie season. Bryce Young won the head to head with Stroud last season. 2) Who is the better rookie doesn't say much about who will have the better career, I could cite dozens of examples. 3) I don't care if a QB drafted after Williams is better than him. It's a notoriously difficult to project position and there were 10 guys taken after him, including 5 in the top 12 picks. I'll always take a field that big against one guy if I'm betting on who is going to be the best. Caleb Williams is a pass-fail pick on whether he becomes a franchise QB, nothing more or less.

This game got flexed into the afternoon slot with the anticipation of a matchup of the two best rookie QBs in the league, picked 1 and 2 overall. Commanders: 31.1 ppg (1st in NFL), 21.7 ppg/a (15th) Bears: 24.7 ppg (12th), 16.8 ppg/a (4th) Current line: Bears -3 The big news at the moment is that Jayden Daniels is week-to-week with a rib injury of unknown severity. His coach says he "hopes he can play." We don't know anythign more than that. The hot take industry is desperate for a "Who got the right QB in the draft?" storyline, which I find insipid, but what're you gonna do? The hot take industry is gonna do its thing. This is a conference game between two teams with playoff hopes, so it could have tiebreaker implications down the line.

The Lions offense has more TDs the last four games than Jared Goff has incompletions in those games

The Steelers wrs went from widely villified to having a great night this week. So mysterious.

Daniels got hurt on the play where he ran for 47 yards and got tackled by two guys from behind and landed a bit funny. That's exactly why I didn't mind Williams sliding at the logo last week when he could have had more yards. Meanwhile, Fields' weird online cult was going crazy early last night and then got real quiet

Jayden Daniels out of the game with a rib injury, severity tbd

I am very happy with the Bears and yet still can't avoid the belief that they are the worst team in the division

My belief that the Packers defense isn't really good is disintegrating. Goff is playing at an MVP level

Am I completely opposed to a surprise fake punt there? No. But when you see the Vikings in a conservative look, not selling out for the block or putting extra men on the gunners, you have to check it or call a timeout

Quite excited that either Detroit or Minnesota have to lose. First look at Detroit defense without Hutchinson

Yeah, I really like Maye. It's an obvious comp that everyone makes, but he looks like Herbert out there. I"ve written a few words about how much I like Caleb Williams here and there. Jayden Daniels looks legit AF. He makes the regular stuff look so easy. Calm in the pocket, quick release, extremely accurate throws. I'm not particularly a Bo-liever, but he looks fine for a second-tier long-shot prospect.

I think the Bears are showing themselves to be pretty good at identifying offensive line depth. Davis (starter), Bates (probable starter) and Borom (swing tackle) have all been hurt or played themselves out (depending on how generous you want to be with Davis) and the line is still humming along with adequateness. Bill Murray is on a one-year deal but I'd probably want him back for cheap depth next year. He's 27 but he's a d-line convert in his third year playing o-line. He played half a game against the Panthers and it looked pretty clean (albeit with the caveat that the Panthers looked like they had completely given up at that point). We took Amegadjie with the 75th pick overall this draft knowing that he'd be a project, but I assume they'll want to see him at least competing for a top backup spot, if not a starting job, next training camp. He's been getting into games the last few weeks on special teams and in jumbo packages. He could still be a tackle if he developed a ton, but we're pretty set at RT and LT at the NFL level is such a huge ask. But I could see them moving him to guard, which is less demanding, and he has above-average starter potential.

The record for 120+ passer rating games by a rookie QB is held by Dak Prescott, with 5. Williams' 2 already ranks him 10th

I'm not interested in paying the price it would take, but I understand the impulse to go after Crosby or Garrett. DE2 is by far the weakest part of the defense. I'm really not crazy about Darrell Taylor. He lines up extremely wide, forces the offense to respect his speed rush around the edge, they respect it and that is the end of his impact on the play. Booker I like a little more, but he's not a starting DE on an elite defense. The main thing I like is his motor, he plays hard and chases down plays until the whistle.

I'd probably give him 3/48 so long as there wasn't enough guaranteed that I could walk away after 2 if I wanted to.

There's a few sticklers who don't like line checks, but mostly this is what all NFL offenses are supposed to be doing.

I was so sold on that whole trade. Torreyes ended up hanging around the fringes of the big leagues for awhile. All told, mostly thanks to Wood, those guys ended up being worth like 10 WAR combined after the trade, versus 2 for sean marshall.

How we feeling about a Jenkins extension? I know it's a copout but my answer is "depends on the price.". If he's dead set on testing free agency and we have to pay him top dollar, then I'm fine letting him walk. But I'd be fine paying him starting guard money for three years. It's not that I'm enamored with him, but if we don't, then we are just going to have to give the same money to a free agent guard that costs about the same and has just as many warts.

I don't remember specifically not liking Bryant and Rizzo. I remember a lot of prospects I liked that didn't turn into anything. Alcantara and Concepcion spring to mind. I said that what Epstein was doing wasn't some completely novel idea that the Cubs had never tried before. Fans were getting really fond of saying the Cubs had never tried to build through the farm system before. Coming in and promising to build through the farm system, hiring more scouts and modernizing development was also also the MacPhail plan. And he did it, the Cubs had a no. 1 farm system by the early 2000s and parlayed it into a pretty good run. I never said Hendry was better, but I pointed out that Hendry made 3 playoff appearances in 9 years as Cubs gm and Epstein wasn't on pace to blow that away. We ended with 5 playoff appearances in 9 years for Epstein, and it would have been 4 playing under the same playoff format Hendry did. He got us though the playoffs coin flips once, and that cements his legacy, but the narrative surrounding Epstein being a genius savior who was the first guy in franchise history to try to build through the farm system was overblown. And we were right back to rebuilding less than a decade later. Epstein wasn't bad, but he didn't really deliver on the dreams and promised of sustained success. We were supposed to be the Dodgers and we can't even keep up with the Brewers. If you go waaaaay back to the 2012 threads before we hired him, I said that he wouldn't be one of my top choices because I think there's more value out of trying to find a young, hungry guy who has the next market inefficiency figured out, rather than trying to get a second act out of a guy who already had one. Epstein's success in the farm system with Boston came from overslotting and leveraging compensation picks. But it's hard to stay ahead of the curve, a market inefficiency has a short shelf life as it gets diluted by copy cats. Then rules changes in the draft and eventually IFAs took it away entirely. Next thing you know, we are building a pitch lab a few years after the early adopters got the most value out of it. Whenever we move on from Hoyer, I'll say the same thing: I would rather try to find the next hidden gem genius front office than poach the most expensive existing one we can.

I 100% missed on Javy Baez and Kyle Hendricks due to a bias against strikeout hitters and in favor of velocity pitchers. I definitely never said we were worse off under Epstein than previous regimes. I didn't like that the first draft under Poles in particular went DB-DB-ST, and I don't like the Sweat trade, and I stand by both of those. I think I'd rather have Carolina's 2025 first instead of Moore, which is what I believe we were choosing from. I think that would be pretty cool right about now, tbh. Can you imagine having a shot at third straight first overall next season? I'll give you a Bears one for free: I was way too harsh on Braxton Jones at first, calling him the Ian Stewart of the Bears.

https://x.com/fball_insights/status/1847088771231039665

Meme Cutler >>> real Cutler

This is gonna be an extremely Kyle post. Don't open the spoiler if you don't enjoy reading those. "Dead dove, do not eat."

I was completely, thoroughly, gloat-inducingly right about Theo. There was no sustained success. There was tank, then there was spank, then there was another rebuild. I thought that post was fairly self- deprecating. "Wow Kyle is kinda cool now" "no I'm still insufferable."

Remember how I was *just* saying that NTs befuddle me because they try to infer feelings-based motivations for saying things... Anyways, forget that, let's do one more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIGi2plj6do&t=143s 2:23 of the video if the timestamp in the link doesn't work 1st and 10 from the Carolina 23, 2:05 to go in the first half. 26 yard scramble. Two things I want to pick out about this play. First, it's 1st and 10. He's got some receivers in tight single coverage, and you *could* make those throws, but why risk it on first down? All game long, Williams showed a veteran-level instinct for being cautious on early downs and taking needed risks throwing into tight windows on 3rd down. Second, he stands in the pocket for 5 full seconds before running. Why not 4 seconds? why not 6? What was his trigger to run? Watch 33 on Jacksonville. He's the last man in the box behind the LOS, and Williams sees him turn his back to follow Kmet. That's the trigger to run and he takes it immediately. That's the difference between a 5-yard run where you have to try to beat a LB in space, or a 23-yard-run where nobody comes close to you.