NotKyle

Maybe Trevor Lawrence will shove these words down my throat, but I don't think Brisker and Stevenson are good enough in coverage to warrant concern about their absence I hate how confident I am that the Bears are a better team. I probably shouldn't be. But the jags offense isn't better than some of the other offenses our defense has handled fine, and the nicest thing I can say about the Jags defense is that it's probably a little better than the Panthers defense we just saw. Not much better. So yeah, you can always lose an NFL game on a combination of turnovers, missed opportunities and flukes. But I don't see why this game is close in the spread.

Neither are practicing this week. Poles this week described Borom as "getting closer" to returning to practice and Bates as "getting healthier" but nothing more specific than that.

That seems crazy to me. But historically, when the lines seem crazy to me, the lines are right more often than I am.

Jenkins dnp today with an ankle injury. Graders seemed to like what they saw of Bill Murray last week, and he might be next up with Nate Davis in the doghouse. He's an interesting guy because he's 27 but he's a DL convert, he's only been playing OL for a couple years

The more I watch, the less the Jags defense scares me. They won't be quite as easy to bully in the run game as the Rams, but I don't think their pass rush looks very good. And their secondary is the worst I've seen this season. Our receivers should be eating their lunch all day long. If the bears lose this game, it would look something like the Colts game: lots of ball movement on offense that fails to turn into points (bears lost that game by having two drives get to the 1 and not score, a missed field goal, and a turnover in field goal range, 20+ points left on the field). Except the Jaguars D is the worst in the league at forcing turnovers. I think there's a high probability we are spend next week recycling our "wow Caleb Williams, but to be fair he's doing it against bad defenses" takes for another week

Detroit is a harder split than GB. GB is living off of "but they're the packers!" aura imo. Maybe they'll make me eat these words, but I just don't think they look much more than mediocre.

Right now, my only doubt that he's a franchise qb is in the "well, you can never be sure of anything, maybe we are misreading the whole situation" margins. Because he sure looks like a franchise qb. He's done more adjusting to the NFL in five weeks than fields, Trubisky, McNown or Grossman did in two years. He has a long way to go before he shows where he is in the franchise qb spectrum, is he more Murray or Mahomes, but I can't see him being a bust

Chalk would be beating Jacksonville, Arizona and NE, losing to Washington. That would acceptable (I refuse to get baited into a fake rivalry between Daniels and Williams). Anything less would make playoffs a long shot. The divisional games, I don't wanna mark us down for 0-6 just yet. The Vikings look legit terrifying, that's a super bowl level defense. But the Lions and especially the Packers? I think we might be on their level and they should be just as scared of us as we are of them.

I'm probably getting way ahead of myself on the irrational exuberance, but if this defense lets that New England offense (even with Maye) put up 13 points on them, they should forfeit out of shame.

Here's the Caleb WIlliams mic'd up if you wanna hear him yell "let's go!" for 8 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv6F0M3_tcY And here's the all-22 for all his passes and runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EriJhLgH6IU Every time I watch it, I get happier with it. Maybe I'm glossing over how bad the Panthers defense is and getting overly optimistc, but this checks every single box I've ever wanted to see checked for a QB. In his fifth professional game. He claims that a gust of wind took the first throw of the game, and that was literally my only major complaint, so I'll take him at his word. And I put the sack on him, he hung on DJ Moore too long. After that, it was just a clinic. He wasn't perfect, no QB is perfect (he sold out Odunze on yet another wide open bomb) but it was elite NFL QB play. 1) He shows a complete and thorough control of the offense in pre-snap decisions. He's dictating protections, calling audibles, identifying blitzes and defeating them with hot reads ("I know!" is such an iconic moment already in his career). He looks perfectly comfortable choosing to take alternate execution options baked into plays. I've now seem multiple instances of him pulling called runs to hit quick stops to his receivers because the DB was playing off. I know some people want to do the "we'ved moved on from the last guy don't mention him" thing, but the contrast just leaps off film. All the stuff that Bears fans insisted was impossible to expect from a QB, this QB does. And suddenly our OC looks smart because of it. 2) His ball placement, timing and insanely quick release are giving his receivers a chance to catch the ball in stride, turn and make a move. I thought against the Rams he was late on a lot of passes that were completions but could have been better, but I didn't see any of that this week. Every single time I come up with a complaint against him one week, it looks better the next week. 3) He made good throwaways. At 5:53 of the all-22 video, the Bears try to run PA bootleg but the Panthers do a really good job sniffing it out, the DE and OLB both read it and are on him. *No* hesitation, he lasers it out of bounds past Kmet, who was running a much longer route. Saves himself a hit, and it could have easily been a -12 sack if he tried any of his bouncing around shenanigans. 4) He was seeing and attacking all sides of the field at all levels. None of that "but can he throw left" nonsense we had with Trubisky. He beat them left and he beat them right and he beat them middle. He took the underneath when they gave it to him, and when they gave him the deep he dropped a 40-yard touchdown dime on them. I honestly feel like 300 yards and 2 TDs undersells how well he played. If not for that ugly Moore drop, some touchdown vulturing and some garbage time, he could have had 350 and 4.

Bears are -2, which seems fair on neutral ground in an unusual situation that could be an equalizer. This game is a big turning point for my expectations. As of right now, I'm not wildly convinced this is a playoff team. I have trouble seeing a draft-pick chasing meltdown, but it's got "in the hunt but outside for all of december" written all over it. But if Caleb Williams and the offense put up another impressive week (against another terrible defense) then it gets harder not to think we have at least an adequate offense paired with a top-5 D, and at that point why not us?

I always hate how Mayfield gets lumped in with reclamation project QBs. He was fine with the browns, had half a down season playing hurt, and they decided to gamble to try to find better than fine. Darnold is a true bust to (four games of) success story

I haven't watched near as much video of the defense as I have the offense, because who cares about defense, but my probably unpopular opinion is that we can function fine without Brisker. He's a boom/bust merchant more than a consistent big-time player. When we win, he gets remembered for the big forced fumble and not the 39-yard touchdown run he allowed by abandoning his gap, or the completely unnecessary personal foul chasing a truck stick hit on a guy going out of bounds.

Bears defense is 1st in epa/dropbacks allowed on pass plays . Jaguars are 32nd

Do I get to pick one type of post I don't find fun and get rid of it too, or is this a one-way deal?

I honestly don't care that much about the pick. It's a fourth rounder. Sure, it's negative value to take a quarter out of your pocket and chuck it into the lake, but it's still just a quarter. I'm just frustrated by the false narrative that has formed around him in Bears fandom. If everyone here agrees, then what's the issue with the updates? Everyone agrees that Caleb Williams is awesome and we still post about that every thread.

Inside 20? No, it is where the ball ends after the return. He has had a couple this year that were definitely in range to land inside 20 but didn't, including the shank in Houston

He's 17th in i20%, 17th in touchback percentage. I count 3 punts that should have been i20s but were left outside, including the shank against the Texans.

Tory Taylor is 23rd in punting average, 21st in net average, 22nd in hang time, and 13 guys have kicked a longer one than his longest this season. There is no such thing as a special punter.

Brisker out with a concussion

I hated the tone of this video. He's veering into sheer clickbaiting with his extreme takes, everything is either the stupidest playcall ever or brilliant. And it's embarrasing for a man who is scraping out a living as a QB coaching specialist to trying get kids into D-III or worse colleges to be describing himself as a "proud dad" to an offensive coordinator in the NFL. But, all that said, the content of the video was beautiful. I loved all of it. The fact that the long TD to Moore came off a variation of the screen to Kmet that everyone hated is *chef's kiss*

Jags pass defense is terrible. They've given up 3 300 yard passing games, and the bills combined for like 270 and 4 TDs. The only QB to not light them up is Watson. The only issue this week is the possibility of London causing weirdness

Pretty sure that the Texans game was like 43%. There was a stat floating on twitter that it was like 42 of 43 plays, but it wasn't, it was 42 total, some plays have more than one pressure.

No. I had to put up with years of being told that I was an idiot/troll/doomer when I said basic football things like "QB is responsible for hot reads and needs to get rid of the ball.". Not to mention a few accusations of racism for daring to doubt fields. Not done enjoying this yet.

Yeah, maybe I"m just being irrationally optimistic and it's just a case of playing teams that can't blitz well, but it sure feels like he learned from the experience and adapted.