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Four Positives, Three Concerns from Sunday’s Victory Over the Niners

| September 13th, 2022


There is no reason to overreact to the first game of an NFL season, especially when a substantial period of that game is played in a deluge. But when a season is going to be defined by the development of a young roster, it is worth tracking that developing week-to-week. Tuesdays will be the day we do that on DBB.

Four Positives

  • Dominique Robinson. Scout friends, with much more developed football brains than my own, have been telling me about Robinson since the Bears took him in the fifth round. Well, Robinson had a jump off the screen debut Sunday and Senior Bowl Jim Nagy took notice.

  • Justin Fields. The quarterback was brutal in the first half against San Francisco, but once again he has shown the ability to forget the bad plays and forge ahead. His second half line? 5-for-8, 102 yards, 2 TDs, 0 sacks and a 145.8 passer rating. (And this second half would have likely been even better if the fourth quarter didn’t feature a large boat and two of every animal.)
  • Eddie Jackson. Not only did Jackson make the game-changing interception, but he was active and aggressive in run support, even making some noise on contact. This wasn’t EJ the finesse player. This was EJ the defensive leader and after one game it seems no Bears defender has been more significantly (read: positively) impacted by the implementation of Matt Eberflus’ program.
  • Khalil Herbert. After struggling this summer, Herbert was the best Bears running back Sunday and he seems to have a burst that David Montgomery lacks. It will be worth monitoring the allocation of carries moving forward.

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Week One Victory a Significant Moment for Head Coach Matt Eberflus

| September 12th, 2022


It was a dreary affair.

My cat, Bear, hides under the bed when he’s not feeling particularly well. I know this is pretty common for cats, but I love Bear and I don’t like it when he’s under there. In the second quarter, when the football game was unwatchable, I spent a few minutes laying on the cold wood of my bedroom floor, petting him as he purred. This seemed to me, at the moment, a far better use of my time.

Then halftime happened.

And the Chicago Bears that emerged from the locker room bore little resemblance to the team that went in fifteen minutes earlier. The offense, which looked like it was trying to operate in a phone booth over the first two quarters, expanded from sideline-to-sideline and let their athletic quarterback maneuver his way through the game.

Three drives.

5 plays, 72 yards, touchdown.

10 plays, 84 yards, touchdown.

5 plays, 21 yards, touchdown.

The defense had been doing their job. The offense finally showed up for work. And in those three drives, each uniquely odd, Matt Eberflus established, without argument, the Bears have a capable professional in the head coaching gig. Pioneering sports talker Mike Francesa has always defined the role of NFL head coach as having two tasks: giving players a plan for success and motivating them to execute that plan.

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Week One Minute-By-Minute Report: 49ers at Bears

| September 11th, 2022


7:14 AM ET

It’s almost unbelievable to think it’s here, the 2022 football season. After so much bullshit, so much nonsense, we finally have real things to discuss. I’ll be back in five hours. (I’m going to need every minute of it to shake off the dozen Pilsner Urquells I drank last night at the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens.)


12:45 PM ET

The conditions look absolutely miserable at Soldier Field today. But the squeegee crew is working hard to at least get the standing water off the grass pitch. (This is a proper minute-by-minute report. We’re going to use the proper nomenclature.


12:52 PM ET

Hey, did you guys here that Queen Elizabeth died?


12:55 PM ET

Sean Payton just showed up on the Fox pregame show to make a prediction. He looks enormous. Clearly he hasn’t retired from New Orleans cuisine.


12:59 PM ET

I just saw Deebo Samuel on the sideline and thought, “Is his name actually Deebo?”

Turns out, it is not.

His name is Tyshun Raequan “Deebo” Samuel per Wikipedia. That’s a badass name.


1:02 PM ET

Pretty sure Jim Cornelison just put an extra syllable in “perilous” while doing the anthem.


1:06 PM ET

My cat Bea doesn’t get the play Bear gets on Twitter, but she has decided to watch this game on my lap, while staring directly at my face. I’m not sure if she’s trying to display affection or instill fear.

Kickoff!

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Opening Sunday: 49ers at Bears Game Preview

| September 8th, 2022


For the thousands in attendance, and the millions watching at home…

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago Bears.


What Do We Make of Week One?

Not much.

No one has ever seen a Luke Getsy-run offense.

No one has ever seen a Matt Eberflus program in action.

No one has ever seen Trey Lance play starting quarterback in the NFL.

No one actually knows what the football game being played Sunday at Soldier Field will look like. But here’s what we do know about these two teams: one (the road team) almost made the Super Bowl last season and the other (the home team) didn’t come close. And that seems to be the basis for the seven-point spread on the game.

But what a dramatic matchup for the opener. And the entirety of the football world, intelligently or not, will see the contest as Lance vs. Justin Fields.

Lance spent the entire 2021 season on the bench, after a few early cameos. The Niners are a popular preseason pick to make the Super Bowl but that will be wholly dependent on his performance. (And the team has a built-in insurance policy with the re-signing of Jimmy Garoppolo.) There are folks inside the building in San Francisco that aren’t sold on the young signal caller. Might that change after Sunday?

Fields had a terrible rookie season, primarily due to mismanagement from the whole of the Bears’ football operation. His mechanics have been altered. His confidence has grown. And his performance in the third preseason game was a line of optimism cocaine for a city of football addicts. The Nagy narrative has spared Fields any high-profile criticism for his rookie performance. Starting Sunday, the performances land solely on his (hopefully broad) shoulders.


Tweet of the Week (Kinda)

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Five Predictions for the 2022 Chicago Bears Season.

| September 6th, 2022


This is one of the more interesting seasons in recent memory, with the summer injecting unexpected optimism into the whole affair. So, what do I expect from the 2022 Chicago Bears?


Prediction #1. The Bears will beat their over/under number of six.

On the 2022 schedule: Giants, Jets, Texans, Commanders, Lions (twice), Falcons. Every one of those games is winnable and none of them will feature a point spread outside the 3-point margin. If Eberflus has the defense playing at a top-15 level, and he should, all of those teams are going to struggle to score on the Bears.

This is not to say the Bears will win double-digit games. But 7-10? 8-9? Even 9-8? All three seem perfectly feasible. And a side note to the prediction: this will be an inherently fun team to watch.


Prediction #2. The “starting five” will not be the “final five” along the offensive line.

Someone will flop. Braxton Jones at left tackle? Teven Jenkins at right guard? Larry Borom at right tackle? It is highly unlikely all three will find success and the Bears will have solved their offensive line woes in one off-season. Add in the waiver claim for Alex Leatherwood, with the cost associated, and it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Chris Morgan and Luke Getsy work him into the starting lineup by mid-season.


Prediction #3. The Bears will struggle to rush the passer.

The last time Robert Quinn mounted back-to-back double-digit sack seasons was 2013-14. That is eight years ago. Quinn is capable of being an elite pass rusher (see: 2021), but his career has been defined by inconsistency rather than dominance. He’ll need help on the outside and help is not on this roster unless Trevis Gipson takes a massive leap in his third season. What is more likely is the Bears are debating between pass rusher and wide receiver in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft.


Prediction #4. Cole Kmet will score five or more touchdowns.

Rookie season: 28-243-2

Sophomore season: 60-612-0

Third season: 78-1,008-6

Kmet’s lack of touchdown production in his second year had nothing to do with him. It was entirely about the previously regime’s Jimmy Graham obsession. Graham wasn’t just playing a majority of red zone snaps but was also in Graham-specific packages that included fade routes thrown by an inaccurate quarterback to an old tight end.

With attention being paid weekly to Darnell Mooney, Kmet should be the beneficiary of mismatches over the middle and profit greatly from a red zone scheme that will work to get him open for easy scores.


Prediction #5. Justin Fields will have a breakout season.

I’m not going to get into the numbers game because the numbers are not important. A singular conclusion will be reached by the end of the 2022 campaign: Fields is the franchise quarterback the Bears have been desperate to find.

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The Eight Best Films I’ve Seen Since Memorial Day

| September 2nd, 2022


Each year, for Labor Day weekend, I write about something wildly off-topic. That usually means bars or movies and since my brain is concentrated on the latter, with graduate school mere days away, that’s where the road shall take us. This post is a football palate cleanser, a nice distraction before five straight months of non-stop Chicago Bears.

To prepare my brain for a return to scholarly life, I watched 67 films this summer. Those films fell into three categories: movie musicals pre-1960, English language classics by acclaimed directors and foreign language classics. Some I had previously seen two decades ago. Some I had seen pieces of here and there as an undergrad. I also read 11 books on various film-related subjects. I won’t waste space by listing everything. Instead, you can see the entire list of films and books by CLICKING HERE. (There are stars next to certain films. They are not a value rating. Ignore them.)

Of the books, I can’t recommend Anna McCarthy’s Citizen Machine highly enough. The book examines how the concept of liberalism evolved from notions of solidarity and “the people” to a concentrated individualism in post-Cold War America, illuminating how various entities (corporations, labor, etc.) used television to sell that message. It is a brilliant work.

For the films, I’ll be listing them in no particular order, and providing a brief comment or video clip that I hope piques your interest.  Here they are. (If you’re interested in seeing any of these films, they are all available either to rent or stream. You can check them all at JustWatch.com.)


High and Low (Director: Akira Kurosawa)

A stunning piece of storytelling, Kurosawa’s masterpiece is part kidnapping melodrama and part police procedural. High and Low is, in some ways, a combination of Rashomon‘s narrative flexibility and Seven Samurai‘s big Hollywood sensibility. It is one of my favorite movies ever made.


Bande à part (Director: Jean-Luc Godard)

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Super Bowl 57 Prediction: Western New York Celebrates a Title

| September 1st, 2022


Everyone loves the Buffalo Bills. Everyone. And quite frankly, that scares me. The NFL has become so unpredictable that it’s hard to imagine an overwhelming favorite making it all the way to the final Sunday and winning an expected title. But in order to get the Bills out of the Super Bowl, I need to find another team.

The Jets aren’t ready.

The Patriots don’t have the firepower.

The Dolphins worry me but it’s a big ask for a first-year coach.

The AFC South stinks.

The Bengals went to the Super Bowl last year. So why are the Ravens favored to win the division? (Vegas always knows something. Also, is “Vegas” even a thing anymore? Why aren’t the lines set in NJ or NYC?)

The whole AFC West is explosive, but it just feels like they’re going to beat the hell out of each other. That means the top seed is unlikely to come from the left coast and the top seed feels essential for those teams hoping to avoid the playoffs going through Buffalo.

The Buffalo Bills don’t have a major flaw on their roster, assuming Tre White eventually returns healthy, and in Josh Allen, they have the best player in the sport. If Von Miller can provide the prowess on the edge they’ll need in December and January, they will coast to an easy AFC East title and find themselves in Glendale playing for it all.


So, who wins the NFC?

I have no idea.

Am I taking the Packers again? No. Not with those receivers and not with the quarterback’s postseason record. (He’s one of the best regular season quarterbacks of all time but he’s a mediocrity in the tournament.)

I don’t trust Stafford’s health. I don’t trust Brady’s commitment. I don’t think Trey Lance is going to take a team to the title game in his first year as a starter. (And the Jimmy G re-signing strikes me as quite odd.) Who the hell else is there? Philly? Dallas? New Orleans? Nope. Nope. Nope.

I have zero conviction. And when you have no conviction, you just assume Tom Brady will do something ridiculous and overcome whatever he needs to overcome.



Super Bowl 57 Final Score

Buffalo Bills 30, Tampa Bay Bucs 23

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Tuesday Lynx Package [8.30.22]

| August 30th, 2022


From the final whistle of the last preseason game to kickoff of the opener is a weirdly dead time in the NFL. Teams are full week one install and shrouded in secrecy. Nothing gets out of any building. DBB season previews, predictions, etc. will all be posted next week. This week, we slowly waltz into Labor Day weekend and the de facto end of the summer. Today, some links.

  • Rosters will be cut down to 53 players by this afternoon and Courtney Cronin has her predictions here. There is very little drama at Halas Hall, as any young player with potential is going to be kept around, i.e., Jack Sanborn. The cut who felt like the “bubble boy” was Dazz Newsome and the Bears made that decision a week ago.
  • If you’re not finished digesting the final preseason game, Kevin Fishbain’s game story for The Athletic was the best out there. (Outside of my own, of course.)
  • I pride myself on knowing the names of local newspapers for every market in the country. But I had no idea there was such a thing as The Canton Repository. Here is a nice story from that publication on their hometown boy, Dominique Robinson, a player that has had a terrific summer for the Bears and will be part of their future plans. (His injury suffered Saturday could have an impact on the structure of that future.)
  • If the Jets were trying to trade Denzel Mims, showcasing him Sunday against the Giants was a smart move. His 7-102-1 performance captured some attention and Mims is saying all the right things about his future. This is a player the Chicago Bears should certainly be considering, but only at an extremely low cost.
  • ACTUAL BEAR NEWS: Sometimes clickbait demands to be clicked. “Vermont Woman Has Dog’s ‘Ninja Moves’ to Thank for Helping Save Her from Bear Attack” is one of those stories.
  • Josh Schrock of NBC Sports discusses the emergence of Elijah Hicks this summer. From the piece: “I really like his movement skills,” head coach Matt Eberflus said. “Elijah’s really doing a good job. You’re focused on that in the open field and also in man-to-man coverage. Can he mirror and stay with guys and then also be stout? Because it’s a physical game when you’re playing man-to-man, and he can do that. Can he anchor and stay attached to the tight ends or backs or whoever he’s covering? But yeah, I’ve been impressed.”

And a special shoutout to Brandon Thorn for isolating some of Teven Jenkins’ work on Saturday night.

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