NotKyle

Will it let me post a gif? It was almost a basketball hook shot.

I'm so enamored. I'm actually trying to tone it down. I could make a dozen posts like that about different plays this week. Actually I'm gonna do another one. Go to 1:29 if the timestamp link didn't work. If you can time it right, pause it at the exact moment Williams begins his windup, around 1:32. Look at how he's staring down and squared up to Kmet on the in route, and both 51 and 30 on Jacksonville are reading his eyes and crashing down it. Except he doesn't throw it where he's looking, He throws this funky little no-look sidearm to Johnson in the flat, who thanks to Williams' manipulation of the defense, doesn't have anyone within 6 yards of him. Separation is a QB stat. Everything is a QB stat. (Actually if we really wanted to get into the weeds we could talk about how this is a great example of how one of the ways offensive coordinators are trying to beat split field coverage is by sending receivers across the field to create 4 receivers on the weak side against 3 defenders in coverage).

I'm the exact same insufferable, obsessive message board addict I've always been. But Bears fans all over the internet have been telling me how refreshing my takes are when from my POV they're the *exact same takes* that got strong pushback the last few years. I started to write several paragraphs on the insane (from my POV) way neurotypicals approach belief, but I'm trying to keep this short. Things like: "Quick, accurate decisions from the QB are the most important weapon in football and will make your supporting cast on offense look significantly better or worse." "The QB actually has at least as much, if not more, control over the playcalling as the OC. The OC can't see the defense lined up and the headset cuts off at 15 seconds. Through target choice, checks, options, alerts, hots, and scrambles, the QB has final responsibility for everything including targets and run/pass ratio." "Single coverage is always open enough in the NFL, a good throw to leverage will give your receiver a chance." Have gone from the stupidest thing they've ever heard to brililant insight.

It's football, I think it's safe to assume that more IRs are coming and will resolve any potential roster crunch. 11 DL seems a bit much. You probably don't need all four of Booker, Taylor, Robinson and Hardy. (Taylor has shown me basically nothing the last few weeks. Booker fills the exact same role but with a better motor). I could maybe see them replacing Pryor with Bates. Pryor has been pretty bad. He's slow and doesn't always get the same depth as the rest of the line which creates creases. He's a beast in gap-blocking runs though.

Yet another play that I love more every time I look at it, this time the second TD to Kmet https://streamable.com/0149dw To me, that looks like his third read. He's looking first at Moore on the slant to his left, but gets off it *immediately* when Moore doesn't get a clean release and the LB following Swift into the flat is crossing the throwing lane. (You could argue Williams is never intending on throwing it to Moore there and is just looking that way to fake out the defense). I'm pretty sure his next read was supposed to be Allen on the rub in, but the instant that Williams sees the LB isn't turning his hips to follow Kmet to the back corner, he fires off the throw. It wasn't like a 1..2..3 rhythm progression, just an instant see-and-react. He makes that look so much easier than it is. A whole lot of NFL Qbs would hang on that slant for a half-second to let it develop, maybe throw it anyway in the back of the end zone with a small chance of completion. And the fans say "Wow, our WR can't get open on a simple slant, how could any QB succeed in these conditions?" Or they hang on it, then try to work back to the right, and by that time the bullrush on Wright is getting home and they either get hit as they throw or outright sacked. and the fans say "wow, our OL is so trash, the QB doesn't even have a chance." This is what we've been begging to see for decades. That was the Aaron Rodgers BS.

Yeah, I don't want to use the draft to bandaid whatever perceived hole on the roster we're Nagying about. That's what FA is for. In the draft, I want to be thinking long-term and be proactive. I want to be one of those obnoxious teams where you think "OK, their good player at that one position finally moved on" only to have them have a second-round pick from two years ago waiting in the wings to take over and be a star right away. So yeah, if there's an OL or an edge early that they like, go for it. But I'd be just as open to a safety, or a LB (Edmunds will be 30-year-old UFA in two years). We've been making plenty of use for two TEs this year and could easily use another one. I've gotten accustomed to a 3 WR lifestyle and I don't want to go back when Keenan Allen retires or if DJ Moore follows the A-Rob aging curve, I would have zero problem with a first- or second-round WR. And god help me, I wouldn't ever use a first on the position, but if there was an RB you really liked in the second, I wouldn't yell at them over it. We've got a franchise QB that could settle the position and keep us in contention for the next 15 years, we can keep playing the long game and accumulating value.

Drake Maye getting an MRI on his knee for unspecified reasons

The TD to Allen that Williams alerted into a fade, someone messed up the blocking assignments (pretty sure it was Jenkins) and a DT was let through unblocked. It just didn't matter because Williams made a great pre-snap read and threw a perfect fade while Allen ran a nice route and catch. When you get great QB play, it covers up for a lot of other stuff. If you're making excuses for your QB by saying everyone else looks bad, it's usually because your QB isn't good enough to make anyone else look good

Same. People keep saying he was perfect and he definitely wasn't

Cole Kmet becomes first long snapper to win a special teams player of the week award. Not joking

It's more intentional than that sounds. It's not "oops, he got beat, I better cover for him.". It's "that guy is coming across the middle, my teammate will take his first three steps and then pass him off to me." So instead of playing one guy no matter what, or sitting in an area of the field, defenses are now doing rules-based coverages. This video does a good job of explaining it: Every defender has a set of rules to follow where they decide who to cover based on what routes are run. So in the most common one, quarters, the nickel starts out on the slot receiver, but he has these rules 1) if the slot goes to the flat, he's mine and I follow him all the way 2) if the slot goes to the middle, I cover him for a few steps then pass him off to the MLB 3) if the slot goes deep, I cover him for a few steps and keep him from working inside, then pass him off to the safety 4) once i pass off my guy, I read the QBs eyes and try to rob wherever he's going There's lots of complications and changes the defense can call, even after the ball is snapped, but that's the basic idea. It's hard for the QB to trust middle field reads because guys are being passed off and at the same time defenders are hanging around trying to rob.

I don't know anything about lacrosse, so maybe?

From the guys who brought you the infamous "WTH Is Justin Fields doing?!" video last year, we get 20 minutes of unrelenting Bears offense praise. Some notes: 1) The Mahomes comps keep on coming, I've seen several of them this week. 2) I suspected this and it's nice to have it confirmed: The fade to Allen was an alert. The playcall was a duos run to the right, but that playcall comes with an alert where Williams can throw the fade to Allen on the left if the matchup looks juicy. And he did, and it was. I have been trying to get people to get this for years: NFL plays are not run a single way dictated by the playcaller, they have multiple options, and the QB decides what happens at least as much as the OC. It's hard to say any one thing about Caleb Williams is most impressive because he's been so impressive in so many ways, but his command of the offense is *insane* for a rookie. He's been throwing alerts, calling checks, hitting hots like a 12-year-veteran. Honestly, it reminds me most of Aaron Rodgers.

For real, you can already see Waldron's reputation coming out. He's known for building variations and iterating on what they've already shown. He'll run a simple run play and then we'll see five or six different new plays built off selling that run. He really loves taking a play we've already run, throwing in a fake wrinkle, then actually executing a second wrinkle. One of the QB youtube guys showed last week that the long TD to Moore was an iteration where first we showed the audible into a Kmet screen we've run a few times, but then we made it look like it was a fake to throw deep right, only to actually be throwing deep left. Early second quarter on Sunday, we've got 3rd and 6 from the Jacksonville 48. We run the same double-crosser routes that we got for the first long TD in week 5, but this time we pair it with Moore motioning into the backfield and then heading out to the flat on the right, so it looks like the crossers are a distraction to get the ball to him. Except both he *and* the crossers were distractions and we were actually running a little slip screen on the left to Roschon Johnson, who gained 17 yards and probably would have gotten more if he hadn't stumbled a bit. It's easy to love an offense when you've just lit up two terrible defenses, but I do lowkey love our offense. And absolutely agree on the line. The right side of the line was getting insane push in the run game. I thought Wright had a bad game pass-blocking, but he and Pryor were pushing the line back 3 yards on outside runs.

The Vikings defense is, imo, 100% legit. That's the kind of defense that can take you to a Super Bowl and maybe win it. Thankfully those tend to be a 1-2 year thing. They are the trendsetters in the league right now, the best at running the split-field coverage that teams are starting to copy. The focus is on making everything as difficult as possible to read for the QB. First, they show blitz almost every play, but sometimes they bring it and sometimes they drop into a cover-3 or cover-4. So you can almost never throw deep, sometimes you just don't have the time and sometimes you won't have the leverage. And all those extra men in the box make it hard to run against. So the QB has to spend the first bit of his drop figuring out if he's hot or not, then he has to read the split-field man-match defense. The goal of these coverages is to muddy up the middle of the field. You can never be sure if the receiver you see breaking away from his defender is actually open or if he's just being passed off to a guy in the other direction. Now, I think the good news is, I think with personnel and philosophy, the Bears are in a good position to attack this type of defense. The weakest part of the field for this defense is the flats and general short perimeter game, so you want: 1) WR and backs who are threats to catch short passes and break runs 2) An offense that is well-practiced in the screen game 3) A QB who has a quick release, strong arm, and is comfortable hitting receivers in the tight intermediate windows that open up when coverage is being passed off 4) Mobile, run-blocking OL that can get to the perimeter on stretch runs Oh hey, that's *exactly* the offense we've been building with Waldron.

I was a skeptic in the draft, but having seen him in the NFL, I'm sold as long as he stays healthy. He'll come back to earth a little, as he already did the last two weeks, but he's legit af. He's hard to pin down in the pocket, has good accuracy, a quick release, and a good deep ball.

Absolutely. When you have a good one, you don't have to say "Oh man, it would have been fine if not for those one or two plays." When you have a good one, he's good even with those one or two plays.

I wouldn't be surprised if we do something in a mid-season trade, Poles has done it two years in a row. But I'm not interested in a Crosby/Maxx level deal. Obviously they are insanely good players, but the cost would be tremendous. I do not want this to turn into some tank-and-spank success-cycle BS. We have a 22-year-old franchise QB in place. Our window can be the next 15 years. Keep playing the value game. It's a meat-grinder league, you're always going to have more holes opening up than you think, keep your draft picks and keep bringing in more guys.

I'm going to be very annoyed when Green Bay beats Houston, who I suspect are a bit fraudulent.

I still do not understand that at all. Why on earth was the line not like Bears -5 to begin with, and why did it not move toward the Bears? What on earth were people seeing that made them think that? The best answer I could get out of anybody was "well, the Jags are too good to be 1-5" which is terrible reasoning.

Fields tape has been especially bad the last two weeks. He went full Tebow this week against the Raiders.

I'm trying to not get too focused on predictions and let it play out. This team is oozing with potential and upside. It sucks that the division looks this tough, but who knows how things will play out, the NFL season is a meatgrinder and the schedule that looks tough in October can be softened up by December. The defense says good things about Eberflus' coaching and Poles' drafting. This is arguably a top-5 defense. The offense is bum-slaying, but it's doing it so convincingly that you have to think it's at least average going forward, with the upside for a lot more. I am as convinced as it is possible to be that Caleb Williams is a franchise QB. "Franchise QB" is a continuum that goes from future inner-circle HOFer down to the Dalton line, and either end of that spectrum is a plausible outcome for him, but I doubt very much that he's a wholesale bust. I would really like the secondary to get healthy over the bye week before we play Washingotn, which will be an extremely tough game. Brisker will probably be back but you never know with concussions. We might not get much Kyler Gordon news because of the bye week, last I saw he was getting imaging done.

https://streamable.com/u6uz7y I love this angle on this play. This is one of the best anticipation throws I've ever seen from a Bears QB. Look at where Allen is when Williams decides to throw. But the timing and location are perfect so that the ball is right there when Allen turns around. Single coverage is open. Good coverage with inside leverage? Cool, Williams just throws it to the absolute limit of his reach on the outside shoulder. Nothing the defense can do about that.

There was never a world where we were keeping Justin Fields. Trading down and taking a different qb might have been a viable option, but I don't think they ever seriously considered it. Jayden Daniels looks very good, Drake Maye is a great prospect. It looks like it was a great year to take a QB at the top.

I thought Drake Maye looked fine in his debut. Plenty of rookie jitters, but plenty of flashes too. I hate that teams keep pulling the trigger on these QB upgrades before we play them. Maybe the secret was to pick in a year where there were no wrong answers.