NotKyle

That was just a bad holding call. Ref saw the LB fall and assumed Swift pulled him down, but really it was just his own momentum.

It's a big ask because we're gonna be running it out, but I really really want to find another 100 passing yards for Williams in the second half

I was set to give Williams a B for that half until he put together an A+ two-minute drill. Williams has looked at his best in those situations all year, and he capped it off with his best play of the year. So now I'll give him an A-. I *have* to ding him on putting two balls into defenders, especially the first rep of the game which was as bad as a bad rep can get and got bailed out by a great play by Allen. I could nitpick a couple of other plays and throws, but there was so much more good than bad. He benefitted from some easy throws for big yards early, but he also manufactured some easy situations for himself. I said for Fields' last two years here that his lack of command of the offense at the line was killing us and making OCs look worse than they were, and we're already seeing the opposite from Williams: he has impressive control of the offense at the line and is making Waldron look good. He looks like a veteran out there. He had a couple of nice escapes from the pocket for first down. He had a really nice veteran rep on 3rd and 11. Then he capped it off with an extremely impressive two-minute drill that was capped off with the best play of his career to date, an impressive read, execution and throw for a long touchdown.

*erases his "I'll give Caleb Williams a B for that half" post and starts over*

I don't see any reason to ever run anything besides power right behind Kramer in one-yard situations. Just make it our tush push.

I'm so brainrotted that I'm a little disappointed we got the ball there because I wanted to see Williams get a long field in the two-minute drill to see what he could do.

That's a professional third down rep from Williams. Read his progressions, took what's there, got the first down.

It's meaningless in the long run, but I wish we'd get Williams some stat-padding 1-yard td passes

I'd really like to see Johnson on some of these early down r-... Never mind

Williams is so good at line calls. I love that.

Maybe we limited our offensive sad times to just the first two pass plays today and we can play in second-half mode from here on out.

Much better. Or at least, the Panthers defense is that bad.

Brisker abandoned his gap

We're doing this again, I see. It's the NFL. On 1st and 2nd down, you wait for someone to be open or live for another play. On third down, you find someone in single coverage with leverage and you throw it. Good QBs do it every single week, repeatedly.

That's all Caleb Williams. He sprayed an easy throw and got saved from an interception, then got confused and held the ball on third down.

I hate games like this because it feels like there's no upside. There's only meeting expectations and major failure. The only thing standing in the way of the offense today is Caleb Williams. This is a pass/fail game for him (for the week, not that he fails forever if he has a bad one today).

Hey look, Sam Darnold's back

Is that what you want or what you think the Bears will do?

I mean, do you want "responsibility" or do you want objective analysis? Because sure, if you want responsibility, it's not unreasonable to say that the record is the record and fire Eberflus. I don't think we'd be losing anything all that irreplacable. But objectively, they tanked a season, they had a visibly improved season 2, then they brought in a rookie QB and it's extremely rare to win with rookie QBs. Do many coaches get that kind of slack in the NFL? No, but that's what happened. I know Bears fans have the same laundry list of meatball coach complaints that 25 other fanbases have, but I think Eberflus is fine. He's not a difference-maker like Reid or Tomlin, but he's not terrible either. I have basically two criteria for a coach: Don't lose the locker room, be capable of running hiring people who can run the current NFL meta. We got out of whack on the GM/Coach/QB cycle back when we let Pace trade up to draft a QB, which was a huge mistake. You could make a case that they should have fired Eberflus last offseason, but since they didn't, the easiest way to get back in sync is just not fire Eberflus for failing to win with a rookie QB.

The back half does look scary, but NFL seasons are long and a lot can change. A couple key injuries, something gets figured out on film, suddenly a team that looks hard now could be a lot worse. The Vikings are probably legit, I'm not sold on Darnold, but their defense is definitely the caliber that can carry a team deep into the playoffs. Maybe I'll eat these words, but I'm not sold at all on the Packers and think they're getting a perception boost from historical mystique. What they're showing on the field and in stats looks extremely mediocre. I'm a little lower on the Bears than I was pre-season. Caleb Williams wasn't as immediately ready to set the NFL on fire as I hoped. It's still possible to have a great season, but 6-8 wins seems more probable to me. If they want more, it's entirely on the QB taking a quick leap and becoming a legit plus QB by NFL standards right away.

It's definitely been a problem so far. But I'm not edging towards the ledge on it just yet. Film-wise, I think it splits into three categories of bad throws Or like 2.5 because 2 and 3 kinda overlap 1) I don't think he's got the best up-and-down, 40+yard deep ball. That part is just he is who he is, I remember at least one pre-draft scouting report mentioning it. That's not disqualifying, neither does Patrick Mahomes. 2) He's racking up bad throws on miscommunications and bad timing plays. We've all seen the times he clearly expected a receiver to run a different route than they did. But there's also throws where I think he put the ball exactly where he wanted to, but he throws it assuming a perfect release before the release actually happens. Which kinda bleeds over into my next category 3) He's unwilling to hang balls up in the air and let his receiver outleverage a DB to get win it. IMO, he's throwing too many "my guy or nobody" balls. Not every throw needs to be a laser dime that the receiver can exactly reach if he runs through it and uses his whole length. If Rome Odunze in heading toward the end zone in a 1-on-1 with leverage behind the DB, hang it up in the air and let Odunze show why it's good to be a 6-3 receiver with a 39-inch vertical. I actually thought WIlliams' accuracy really popped on film against the Rams. He was placing balls *exactly* where he wanted them, perfectly leading receivers with eye-level throws out in front of them (often with excellent anticipation). If he can throw it on a line, even 30 yards downfield, he can put it anywhere he wants almost every time. His issues right now are processing and confidence in his processing, which is normal for a 4th-game rookie. I'll be concerned if he doesn't show steady progress in those issues throughout his rookie season, but not yet. So like, right now, we could compare his processing of NFL defenses to learning a language: He looks conversational but not fluent. He looks like he knows his pre-snap reads and he reads his immediate post-snap landmarks correctly most of the time, but he's not always picking up on the small details that make the difference between a good read and a great one. Like on that play where Odunze got behind everyone. He read that the safety was hanging out in the area Odunze was running through, which would be an indication to move on from Odunze and down to Kmet, who he hit for a 10-yard first down throw. But what he didn't notice was that the safeties hips were completely flat, he was looking to jump a shorter route but had zero chance to turn and run with Odunze downfield, which Odunze recognized and blew right past him.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2024/advanced.htm

It's going to take awhile before the brutal first two games stop dragging down our offensive stats, but I think eventually they will. I'd be surprised if Williams has more 79-net-yard games in him. Williams Games 1-2: 56% completion rate, 134 yds/g, 0 TD, 2 INT, 4.1 yds/attempt, 53.0 rating Williams Games 3-4: 66.7% completion rate, 250 yds/g, 3 TD, 2 INT, 6,9 yds/attempt, 88.8 rating Obvously all the games count, but I think it matches the eye test that says Williams looked overwhelmed and confused for a game or two before settling down. I think our offensive line is below-average but not terrible, like around 20th in the league. We are 21st in pressure rate allowed, 17th in pocket time, and 23rd in yards before contact. (We are dead last in broken tackles and broken tackle rate from RBs, with 1 broken tackle in 100 rush attempts). Swift had a huge game last week as we were able to get him the ball in space and give him some lanes to run through untouched, but he's still a massive part of the reason the running game struggled weeks 1-3.

Late to the party but my main thoughts on this game were: 1) We ran less zone read and more gap concepts in the run game and that seemed to help us a lot. That's not something you can do against every team, but the Rams have an undersized defensive line and that helped us a lot. The blocking on the Swift touchdown was beautiful, every single person hit their blocks (give or take kmet putting his guy on the ground but letting him roll into the hole for Swift to jump over). 9 blocks take out 9 defenders, 1 defender overruns the hole, and that just leaves Swift to outrun the safety. 2) I liked Caleb Williams' game against the Colts a little better than this one, but this one was fine. He looked confused by what the Rams were showing in coverage and unwilling to take chances driving the ball downfield, but he didn't make any big mistakes and he used his RBs as checkdowns in a way I hadn't seen him do much before this game, so that's progress. After two terrible games, he's put up 2 in a row where he looked like a respectable NFL QB, which isn't bad for now. It's all about continued growth. After yips in week and a little bit into week 2, we're seeing the accuracy that we expected to see. He was consistently placing short and intermediate balls exactly where he wanted to, even on intermediate throws. The TD to Moore, the PI to Allen in the end zone, the first down to Kmet were all big-boy, impressive-even-by-NFL-standard throws that were between 15 and 20 yards past the LOS, thrown with perfect placement and anticipation. I've seen people debate whether the ball where Odunze was held or the stop and go to Moore were catchable or not, but after watching them too many times, I'm convinced both were pretty much where he wanted to place them and would have been catchable with perfect releases and outstretched arms (would have looked like the Kmet catch). But that's a trend I'm seeing with him: He is throwing with so much anticipation that he's assuming the receiver gets a perfectly clean release and placing balls that only the receiver can get to. Maybe that's tactical to avoid any chance of an INT, but by the send of the season I'd like to see him develop the confidence to hang some balls in space a little bit when his receiver has leverage in a one-on-one, let his receivers fight for it and win. Yeah, some of them might turn into interceptions like the one vs the Colts, but I think he'd get more than enough big plays to make up for it. 3) I owe a big apology to Swift 4) I will acknowledge that Tory Taylor had an incredibly game while pointing out that even including that game, he's slightly below average in most NFL punting stats. Bears fans are having fun, and that's fine, but he's hardly the only big-legged punter out there and there's plenty of guys who can do what he does. 5) I think Braxton Jones' personal foul was a crap call. You are allowed a blindside block under many circumstances, including 1) if the defender initiates the contact or 2) the force is delivered with the arms through open hands. It was a clean block for either of those, let alone both.