All Chicago Bears NFL Top 100 Plays pic.twitter.com/IfzspKb360

— abdul #RR 🌍 ™️ (@ChiBearsAbdul) February 24, 2022

There once as a website called Twitter

That most people read on the shitter

The users are some

of the world’s wretched scum

But damn it, I just cannot quit her.

There once was a guy in Green Bay

Whose family had cast him astray

Though not enough rings,

ample drama he brings

‘til inevitably deciding to stay.

Data’s seven-part “Fields in Focus” series wrapped yesterday to rave reviews across the internet. You can scroll back and read each of the pieces, or you can download the entire series in PDF form right here.

Fields In Focus

Rookie seasons for quarterbacks are usually messy. But if there’s one major takeaway from our excellent “Fields in Focus” series, it’s this: the whole of the Chicago Bears organization owns the messiness of this kid’s rookie campaign.

Here are some other takeaways from the series.

• Justin Fields had very discernible issues this season but each of them falls under the same label: lack of experience.
  • Fields struggled with the underneath stuff, particularly because he was constantly looking down the field and coming back to the short stuff too late. It takes young QBs time to accept what’s there when it’s there. (Patrick Mahomes made a leap in that regard only this season.)
  • Fields took several sacks he shouldn’t have taken, and subsequently fumbled the ball too much, because it takes young (especially supremely athletic) QBs time to understand that ain’t Rutgers on the other sideline anymore. You can’t run away from most of the pass rush in the NFL, no matter how quick your 40 time.
• The most glaring point made in the series was in regard to the non-utilization of play action, even when it was proving to be where Fields thrived. It proves two things. (1) The previous coaching staff built their 2021 offense for Andy Dalton and never intended to play Fields. (2) The previous coaching staff once again failed at the most basic element of coaching: self-evaluation. It was a hallmark of the Pace/Nagy era. They were completely incapable of accurately evaluating their own performances/roster.
• Wood’s numbers are important, but they are not definitive. Numbers are only part of the story in the NFL. You can’t numerically quantify receivers running poor routes. You can’t numerically quantify the impact of penalties on play calls when it comes to down and distance. Football is a situational game; in a way the other sports are not. Sometimes an incomplete pass is a smart play, though the numbers won’t show that. Sometimes a one-yard gain is an achievement. So, use these numbers as an additional tool in your evaluation, not the only tool.
• If you believe explosive plays are the key to scoring points, it’s hard not to be excited by Fields’ potential. This line stands out: “When Justin Fields was playing, he was able to overcome a poor scheme and weak supporting cast to lead the NFL’s most explosive rushing attack and produce explosive plays at an above average rate on a per-play basis.”
• Fields improved during his rookie campaign; the eyes and the number tell that story. No reason to believe that improvement won’t continue in 2022. But that improvement will be greatly aided by strengthening the group up front and outside. Put simply, the Bears don’t have good enough players on offense. And until they do, their ceiling will be limited.

Super Bowl lesson.

Always be adding weapons.

Nothing else matters.

Allen Robinson

Believes he was sabotaged.

Just. More. Excuses.

There are a million ways to gamble on the Super Bowl. Well, maybe not a million, but there are thousands upon thousands. Today, DBB is keeping it simple with these three options to get rich quick. (As always, lines courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook.) These are not expected results. These are logical results, with solid odds.

Ja’Marr Chase Under 5.5 Receptions (+120)

Chase is one of the best receivers in the league but in his last eight games he’s only eclipsed five catches in half of them. (And when he does, he essentially wrecks the game.) It would be hard to see the Rams not sitting Jalen Ramsey on him for the duration and forcing the combination of Higgins and Boyd to beat them. If so, it’s easy to see Chase with a 4-70-1 stat line.

Joe Burrow Over 10.5 Rushing Yards (-120)

For all of you who believe offensive lines are the key to playing offense, I urge you to watch something else Sunday. Because the Bengals are in the Super Bowl, and they might have one of the three worst offensive lines in the league.

Burrow is going to be under pressure, constantly. He’s also one of the sport’s true gamers. With a championship on the line, Burrow is going to get every yard possible with his legs. Wouldn’t be surprised if he approaches this number in the first quarter.

Cooper Kupp to Score a TD & Rams Win (+105)

If you think the Rams are going to win Sunday – and I do – the only way to bet that is by parlaying the money line with an in-game prop. Cooper Kupp scoring a touchdown seems a pretty reliable prop, doesn’t it?

Kupp was every bit the MVP candidate Jonathan Taylor was, while receiving little of the press. (It’s a Colts thing.) Without him, this team isn’t even flirting with a Super Bowl. Don’t be surprised if he’s the MVP of the game,

[Note: There were two films I intended to see this season and did not – Drive My Car and Memoria. The former just didn’t happen yet but will prior to the Academy Awards. The latter, I missed my chance.]

For me, this was a year defined by a single piece of cinema: Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story. The gulf between this musical masterpiece and my second favorite film of the year was cavernous, as it was not only the best picture of the year, but the finest movie musical produced since Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof (1971). And it firmly resides with Jaws and Schindler’s List at the very top of Spielberg’s brilliant canon.

But West Side Story was not the only great entry in this truly great year of cinema. (As Maciej acutely pointed out yesterday, this was likely the product of many production houses choosing to skip the Covid-addled 2020 and pile their quality into 2021.) Quite often compiling a top ten list is a difficult endeavor for me. I’m hard on movies, and seemingly more so as I get older. I also don’t get giddy at the mere sight of subtitles – a defining feature of many top film critics in this country. (No, I’m not grouping myself among them, though I’m far more qualified to write about movies than football.) But this year I had difficult decisions to make at the bottom of my list.

But first, the bad…

• The Many Saints of Newark has no reason to exist. And it felt like everyone involved was aware of that fact.
• Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is the sort of silly, sophomoric garbage the New York Times salivates over because it has those aforementioned subtitles. If this film were in English, it would have swept the Razzies.
• Both Annette and The Sparks Brothers documentary proved that my life pre-2021, when I didn’t know who Sparks were, was just fine.
• Someone should find the grade school student who penned the script for The Card Counter because I’m pretty sure they also wrote The Tender Bar, and we need to stop the spread. (I’m confident the source material Paul Schrader used for Counter was just a glossary of gambling terms he found at a yard sale.)
• House of Gucci could be excused as kitschy fun except that it’s neither kitschy, nor fun, and it’s eleven hours long.
• Don’t Look Up begs one question: how did the man responsible for Anchorman and Step Brothers, two of the funniest films ever made, make one of the most humorless comedies ever filmed? And Adam McKay’s behavior on Twitter in defense of the film has made me resent the experience even more.
• Oh, and you may have forgotten Dear Evan Hansen happened, but I surely have not. It is a terrible musical, and it made for an unsurprisingly terrible movie musical.

But there was plenty to recommend in the films not included in my top ten.

• Tilda Swinton was magnificent in the Pedro Almodovar short The Human Voice. (Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers was less rewarding.)
• It was a year of sparkling debut features from female filmmakers, including Rebecca Hall’s Passing and Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby. (The most significant entry into this category will be discussed later.)
• Roger Ebert always liked to praise films that were unlike anything he’d seen before, and French Exit was one of those films for me. (Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance was the forgotten gem of the year.)
• I truly wish the filmmakers had made a film worthy of Clifton Collins Jr.’s performance in Jockey.
• The post-Holocaust documentary Final Account serves as a haunting reminder that while those who perpetrated those atrocities may be leaving this earth, their ideologies are not.
• Was there a more attractive couple in movie history than Catriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan in Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise overrated Belfast?
• I saw a critic describe Titane as “hallucinatory chaos” and I can’t do better than that.
• I will never understand Paul Thomas Anderson’s insistence on making every film three hours, but Licorice Pizza had some of the most memorable set pieces of the year. (That truck sequence!) Alana Haim was the year’s most surprising acting debut.
• The touching final 10 minutes of Flee made the experience well worth it but some better animation could have landed this documentary among the best films of the year.
• Worst Person in the World isn’t the masterpiece critics led me to believe but it’s as impeccably acted as any film this year. (I urge to you to see Being the Ricardos and this film and then argue that Nicole Kidman’s performance is better than that of Renate Reinsve. Then again, don’t, because that would involve sitting through Being the Ricardos.)

And the ten best films of 2021 were…

(10) Pig

A famed chef, now in self-exile, has his truffle pig stolen, and sets off on a quest to retrieve it.

That’s it. That’s the story.

And to reveal anything else about this quiet, determined and ultimately warm film, or Nicolas Cage’s masterful performance at its center, would spoil your experience.

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