Hairyducked Idiot

"Losing games late is on the coaching" is one of those things that football fans take for granted that I don't really see any evidence of. I'd blame our historically awful 4thQ QB and our pre-Sweat horrible pass rush for that.

I don't like making hard predictions on win totals, especially in the NFL, because the nature of the seasons is so swingy. A bad team can win their division with some close-game luck and staying relatively healthy. A good team can be derailed by the opposite. But I think this is an above-average NFL team. They were bordering on decent last season, on the ascendancy side of the curve as Poles' big first two draft classes get experience, and did it all with an awful performance at the most important position. I'm trying so hard to look for downside risk I'm missing, but I don't see how we didn't upgrade at QB. Bryce Young had one of the more disappoitning first seasons for a 10A in recent memory and he put up roughly the same total passing+rushing yards as Fields did in 2023. And Caleb Williams is a better prospect with a much better surrounding cast. Even a disappointing version of Williams is just Kyler Murray, and Kyler Murray threw for 3700 yards as a rookie. The offense is talented, the defense is talented. Not Super Bowl levels of talented, but better than average. And we invested in an ungodly punter for some reason if that's your jam. I feel like Bears fans are in one of two camps right now: Deliriously screaming "woo!" (and those guys would have done that anyway. They did it for Kyle Orton for god's sakes) and being scared to say the team is solid because they're trying to manage any potential disappointment.

Dang, I turned the game on late and didn't even get to see Bagent, which was the only thing I cared about. I thought he looked really good in the pre-season up to this point, which is worth just barely north of nothing, but still. I think his play last year is being a bit overrated, and he's getting some buzz because he's so likable on Hard Knocks, but underneath it all I think there's some long-shot upside there. I think the arm strength could theoretically be unlocked with a significant improvement of mechanics, which isn't *completely* impossible.

I watch all the QB review guys (the ones with actual expertise, it's starting to get flooded with every random dude on his couch buying all-22 access). I like them all and I take them all with a grain of salt. Chase Daniel is a massive cheerleader for every QB. Kurt Warner just wants to talk about how he hates any slight change in how a play is called or run from when he was a player. I think O'Sullivan is probably my favorite analysis-wise, you just have to skip through to the next play a lot because he will legitimately repeat himself on the same play 6-8 times. The thing about Moore being a WR1 or not is like that stupid "ace" debate in baseball. Is there 1 per team? Is it a smaller subgroup and there's only a few in the league? Do you need prototypical physical traits? Blah blah blah, don't care. The Williams tweet was just dumb twitter rage bait and he got rage baited right back. I'm 3 plays into his Fields video for the week and we've already seen "missed multiple wide open receivers" followed by "wrong read on an RPO robs his RB of a chance to blow through a wide open hole" and then "Hops in place in the pocket on third down until the play collapses around him." I'm not done enjoying people finally realizing who he is.

Tank and spank is when you throw away a few years in order to be awesome for a few years, then go back to being bad again. Alternating cycles of rebuilding and "all-in" instead of a steady, sustained success. The rookie QB thing hasn't realy worked very often in the NFL. Under the current rookie contract rules, the only ones to win a SB in their rookie deals have been Russell Wilson and Mahomes.

I don't like a third for Judon. It's starting to feel less like a long-term sustainability approach and more like a tank and spank rebuild. It won't matter if Williams is who we hope he is.

I forgot it was hard knocks night, that's how quick my interest in it fell off.

Yeah I'm having fun breaking down the preseason but the reality is we don't know a single thing right now that we didn't already know from Williams' college tape.

I think this is a pretty fair analysis: Williams' decision making right now is like a C+. It's really good for a rookie but it's not really good compared to the best QBs in the league, and that's going to be the standard for him. He's showing an intuitive feel for reading defenses and timing, but there are times he's not quite on the same page as his receivers or he's been fooled by a disguised coverage. He's almost *too* decisive, in that there's been a few times he could have let plays breathe and instead hit a quick short route, or got off a receiver a little too quickly. One of his best traits is that his misreads are almost never disasters. He's not taking sacks and he's not throwing picks, and I think he can continue to not do those things in the regular season.

I've seen them try, and the plays they choose show that they don't understand what they are looking for. It's a lot more nuanced than "well they both ran a lot of ground while people tried to tackle them." Fields is a fast and powerful runner. There are a lot of plays where he uses that power and speed to take advantage of space the defense gives him and break off a huge run. I've been trying to explain this to Bears fans for three years: fields is a pocket passer, not an out of pocket improvisor. It's just that when a play breaks down and he takes off, as all pocket passers sometimes do, he's ungodly fast and strong. That's not even a little bit the same as Williams' freakish in-pocket abilities. His footwork is as good as it gets, allowing him to move in any direction instantly while maintaining an athletic base to throw off of, and he combines that with an unbelievable instinctive understanding of not just where the space is and where the pressure is, but where they are going to be. Much like his off-platform throws, I think it's hard for everyone to appreciate how good his footwork in the pocket is because he makes it look so easy. He's constantly making little adjustments to put him in the best spot, even as that spot is constantly changing. On the touchdown scramble from the moment he hit the back step of his drop to the moment he exited the pocket, 3 seconds elapsed and he changed directions 6 times, all of them justified by the changing situation around him. He also has an intuitive understanding of what's going to happen in the pocket before it happens. He's not just reading to open or closed space in front of him, he's reading blocks and shifts that about to happen and moving in anticipation of them

Speaking of missed throws, that was the only thing I didn't love with Williams today. He had either 2 or 3. FIrst pass he just overshot Allen. Second pass they were trying set up a quick hit inside and it ended up in the receiver's feet, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. He might have not liked the look and killed it on purpose or he might have just missed. And then there was one right before his big thrown to Odunze, where he had a guy and it looked like his foot slipped in the turf as he threw. 2 or 3 missed throws isn't as fun as last week when he missed zero.

OK, that was better than I expected when I saw the headline, I assumed "missed" meant he just didn't throw it. His inaccuracy gets overlooked for some of his other flaws. He misses a lot of throws.

Through three preseason quarters, Caleb Williams has attempted 20 passses and taken one sack. Justin Fields had a worse ratio of attempts to sacks in 37 of his 38 career starts, and his career ratio is 7:1.

Here's the TD if anyone's not watching. He's got ungodly athleticism in the way that he can bounce and shift and explode two steps in any direction *while still maintaining an athletic, balanced base that lets him throw or change directions*. And he combines that with an unbelievable feel for pressure and holes. There's been at least twice this pre-season where I've watched the play develop in the pocket and it looks like he's not just moving toward the space in the pocket, but he's moving to where the space is going to be before the space has actually happened. Almost Gretzky-like in the way he sees what's going to happen before it does.

His pocket awareness is top 5 in the NFL right now, and it's not 5th. There was a moment where he looked behind him as he was bouncing around to keep track of where the backside guys were that I can't ever rememeber a QB doing.

There's our Williams porn for the week

Eberflus said they were looking for 20-35 plays, iirc.

And as soon as we called a couple of plays that punish press coverage, we got two huge chunks. The Bears wanted to work on quick hits and the Bengals wanted to play press coverage. If this was the regular season, we'd have adjusted earlier, but you wanna work on what you wanna work on.

Three months from now, no one will remember a thing about this game. The Bears seem to want to work on quick hits and the Bengals are playing extremely tight coverage. If this was the regular season, we'd be punishing that coverage decision, but it's not.

Offense looks a bit sloppy today. That second down pitch play looked out of sync, but I'd need to see it again. Taylor has been worth 20+ yards of field position already, damn.

Missed two attempted quick hits, the grounding was a miscommunication with Moore about which way the route was gonna go.

Jinxes aren't real

He got tinstaapped. He was every bit as good as advertised on the mound.

The main thing keeping my feet even a little bit on the ground is that we haven't seen him in any regular-season action against first-string defenses that are actively trying to game plan against him. Until he does, the error bars on the projections are gonna be a bit wider. Anything's possible at the extreme end of the bell curves, that's why I hate terms like "floor" and "ceiling." I prefer something like "20th percentile projection" and "80th percentile projection." His 20th percentile projection is that he stagnates and never gets any better at reading NFL defenses than he is right now, which still leaves him as a better (taller, better at manipulating defenses, more poised, more accurate) version of Kyler Murray and Kyler Murray is an acceptable NFL starting QB. His 80th percentile projection is that he does get really good at reading defenses, and then he's literally Mahomes 2.0. It feels so taboo to say, but he looks more like Mahomes than any person who isn't Mahomes has any right to be. The only other prospect in my life as a sports fan that I've been *this* high on was Mark Prior.

The first throw gives us such a great view of his footwork and balance. It's as good as I've ever seen from a rookie. He looks like a tightly coiled spring that could snap off a throw at any moment. Which he is, the release on that throw is so clean and quick. Combine that with excellent velocity and there's just no chance for defenders to break on the ball (oh, and the placement is perfect too, because why not). Then the third one shows you that he doesn't even need that base. Still backpedaling in his drop? Doesn't matter, he saw something he liked on the slant and the ball is gone. Again, with velocity and placement. I have only been this all-in on a prospect once in my entire life, and that was Mark Prior (who got tinstaapped, of course). Not Kane and Toews, not Corey Patterson, not Bryant. It's incredibly possible that I'm getting caught up in the hype and I'll end up looking stupid in a few weeks when live NFL defenses give it their all against him, but gun to my head right now and promise me he's healthy for 17 games? I'm 100% expecting 4000+ yards immediately.