Hairyducked Idiot

2018 is correct, but I'm shocked at how close we were in 2021 (5225 vs 5384)

I could see them winning 2 or 3 more games down the stretch. Fields is starting to transform into some sort of game manager and has cut down on the sacks a little. The defense is proving it can shut down bad QBs. Thank goodness we have the Carolina pick

I'll start the book but then da bum has to come in and take over

Fields really needs to ball the next *checks notes* five games to save his bears career. Unless he doesn't. Then it's the next four games.

For those keeping score at home; Fields was a generational 1b who only fell to outside of the top 10 and to 4th QB taken because of a conspiracy by Dan orlovsky to spread lies about his work ethic, and a separate conspiracy by NFL teams to take their scouting advice from orlovsky. Maybe that only counts as one. Then his rookie year was tanked by nagy who both held him out of no. 1 reps and then later forced him into a starting job before he was ready as a conspiracy to save his job. And now Eberflus and Getsy are conspiring to run suboptimal but still winning game plans to try to make sure they can keep their jobs but not give fields any credit so they can still draft his replacement. So many different people enacting separated, complicated conspiracies to make him seem to be to casual observers a bad QB who can't execute pro-level game plans. Most of which would appear to be against the self-interest of the people enacting them but that's just how deep the conspiracies against him go. Edit: oh wait I almost forgot about Poles' secret plot in year 2 to give him no weapons so that it would ruin him so that poles could draft his own QB, which he then declined to do in order to make the conspiracy extra sneaky

It's unbelievable how many conspiracies against him Fields has had to overcome at this point. Almost trumpian.

It is completely, unavoidably true

The reason they called so many screens is that it's the only anti-blitz play fields can reliably execute

I thought Bagent settled the "is the QB allowed to check the plays" debate

Even completed it's not true: 25 seconds in and I've already seen fields hit one past the sticks

I'm fairly certain that's not true. Off the top of my head, there was the hospital ball overthrow to Mooney on an early third down. There's no way that wasn't beyond the sticks, right? And Dobbs had the bomb that was almost brought down but touched dirt as the players were rolling through. Or does it just means completed?

I won't like riot in the streets if they do something like that, but I think it's too clever by half. Caleb Williams is the best prospect we are going to see for a couple years at the most important position in the sport (or any other major north American sport). If the Carolina pick is 1OA, just take him

I would argue that inconsistent at the most important position in the sport is functionally the same as awful

My stance for two years has been I mostly like the way he builds but hate what he's building toward. Unless he comes through with the right QB pick in the draft next year, we are getting yet another iteration of trying to relive the Halas dream with rough and tough guys dragging games down into the mud and trying to win 12-10 every week.

One thing I will say is fields has gotten better at executing this Bagentian throws than he used to be. 2021 Fields would have missed some of those short throws

Alright it's past midnight. Hope everyone had fun. All wins are good wins, fields finally stepped up and did the thing with the game on the line. It'd be nice if he did it more than once a year, but I'm not gonna deny that he did it for this game. The playcalling was, imo, what it had to be. Let's stipulate for now that the coaching staff's primary motivation is to win as many games as they can, they're not going to call a suboptimal game plan relative to that goal just to "see what they have" in fields or whatever. If someone wants to argue they should, cool, but that's a separate argument. Minnesota is going to blitz and blitz often. They blitz specifically so that they can take away your ability to run longer-developing passing plays. Those are simply not an option. Normally, the best way to beat the blitz is to have your QB identify where the blitzer came from and hit a hot blitz-beating route in the area he vacated. Justin Fields is really bad at that. And before anyone says I'm making this up to be contrary, I got receipts. Here's some quotes from his pre-draft scouting reports: https://www.nfl.com/prospects/justin-fields/32004649-4576-9504-963d-c33127e80752 "Field vision is average in face of the blitz. Missed open blitz beaters in the middle of the field against Indiana. Gradual operation time prevents expedited release." https://walterfootball.com/scoutingreport2021jfields.php "Can get rattled by the pass rush Can freeze when seeing the blitz Must get better at passing in the face of the rush Blitz recognition needs work" So what's left? Screens and quick hits, and we ran a ton of both. What else is there? Bootlegs? We tried a few, I don't believe any resulted in a pass attempt. Which makes sense, because the weakness of the bootleg is that it makes it easier for the defense to cover everyone. Max protect? Minnesota can either send more than you can block, or they can show bltiz and drop everyone and you've got a bunch of wasted blockers with no one to block and a couple of triple-covered receivers. I've seen them do both to good effect this season. Play-action? Just gives the blitz more time to get there. We tried it once, it looked awful and we smartly gave it up. Our non-screen dropbacks against the blitz were generally a disaster (no idea why they stopped blitzing on the final drive). Sacks and fumbles and missed throws and all manner of bad things happening. So the coaching staff went up against a defense that is one of the best at the thing fields struggles most with, came up with a game plan to help mitigate those issues and it gave them their best chance to win. Which, you know, they did.

But since this is going to turn into yet *another* thread where people would rather gossip about who they do and don't like like little kids than talk about sports, you win. I'm out for the night.

Hold every poster in this thread to this standard. Don't let anyone comment on any play unless they give you their professional football credentials and a five-minute breakdown of the all-22. You won't, because this has nothing to do with anything you said. What actually happens is I rub people the wrong way because I call what I see and dont'filter it through a pro-Bears bias, and this is how people react to such annoyance.

We'll see. It's gonna be fun.

I'm going to hold you to this standard in the future.

Ooooooh, the big mean man said a *bad thing* about a *football play* in the *football thread*. oooooooooooh, he's such a troll. The only thing more predictable than this is when bukie shows up after we lose looking for someone to yell at.

I know that I see NFL QBs make plays every week where they find receivers to throw to even against good coverage. I know that Justin Fields has made a career out of failing to find those throws in important situations, and I know that he failed again in that one. I know that I've seen every variation of "well, theoretically we could come up with some way where it's many other people's fault that things wrong even though it seems like Fields failed" and I remain unimpressed by them.

Whatever you need to tell yourself.

This is literally the only offense I can conceive of running with Fields' abilities against this defense. They're going to blitz. They're going to blitz all night. There are two primary ways to beat the blitz: hot throws and screens. Blitz-beating hot throws have been a known weakness of Fields since his college scouting reports. Calling them would not suit Fields' abilities. We've tried a couple of rollouts to get him out of the pocket, which is something people call for a lot, and nobody is open because those plays are make life easier on the defense.

We've tried a few of those on third downs. Fields has missed two open receivers and we just talked abotu the third.