“If only our guys had stayed healthy.”

This common lament from NFL fans at the end of a disappointing season reflects the harsh reality that injuries are an unavoidable part of football.  I don’t particularly like using injuries as an excuse, but there is no denying that the health (or lack thereof) of certain key players can have a dramatic impact on a team’s fortunes in a season.

With that in mind, I thought I’d take a look at how the Bears were affected by injuries in 2014.  When I do this study, I examine four different metrics.  No one of them is perfect , but together they should give you a pretty good idea of how badly the Bears were impacted by injuries.  Before we get to the numbers, let’s take a minute to briefly explain each method.

Procedure

The first metric I examined was games missed due to injury.  This simply counts any time a player on the roster is ruled inactive for a week due to an injury.  This is useful for seeing how much injuries impacted the roster as a whole, but completely ignores the value of a player.  A superstar quarterback missing a game means a lot more to the team than a fringe roster player who only plays on special teams, but they both count the same here.

The second metric, therefore, is starts missed.  This looks only at games missed due to injury by players expected to be starters with a fully healthy team (so the standard eleven on offense and defense, plus a third wide receiver and cornerback).  This helps distinguish in player value a little bit, but still treats all starters equally when in fact that is not close to being accurate.

The third metric looks at starts missed by Pro Bowl performers, that is, players who have made a Pro Bowl in the last 2 years playing for their current team.  The idea here is to look at players who are high-impact starters expected to be the best players on the field.  The flaws are that the Pro Bowl voting system is far from perfect, and again, there is still a difference in value between a star receiver like Brandon Marshall  and a nice cornerback like Tim Jennings, both of whom qualified as Pro Bowl players here.

Finally, I looked at money lost due to injuries, assuming each players gets 1/16^th of his cap for the season per game.  So if a player has a cap hit of $16 million for the year and missed one game due to injury, the team just “lost” $1 million.  The general idea is that teams pay their better players more money, but there will always be guys who are overpaid or underpaid, sometimes dramatically.  Players who particularly get overlooked here are young players playing well on relatively small rookie contracts.

So again, let me emphasize that no one approach is perfect here. Different teams will appear to have larger injury issues than they actually did (or vice-versa) if you look only at one of the four metrics, but looking at all four should generally give us a solid idea of how the Bears fared overall.  I should also mention that all salary cap numbers come from Spotrac and all injury information is from Pro Football Reference.

Results

Here are the totals for all four categories for the Bears.  I did this same study in 2013 with all 4 NFC North teams, which can be seen here.  For comparisons’ sake, I put up the NFC North average from 2013, the NFC North high from 2013, and Chicago’s totals from 2013.

Conclusion

All of the categories except Pro Bowl starts show the Bears being significantly impacted by injuries in 2014.  And none of these totals include the high amount of players who played through injuries that clearly hampered them, including Chris Conte, Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, Kyle Fuller, Jared Allen, Jordan Mills, and Jermon Bushrod.

The offensive line was particularly decimated, totaling 45 games and 30 starts lost.  This might help explain some of the offense’s struggles in 2014; it all starts up front.

I find the low number of Pro Bowl starts lost interesting.  It seems like the Bears lost a lot of high-impact (or at least highly paid) players, but it’s telling that few of them were Pro Bowlers recently.  The only players they have who made the Pro Bowl for the Bears in the last two years are Alshon Jeffery, Brandon Marshall, Kyle Long, Matt Forte, Martellus Bennett, and Tim Jennings, and those players stayed fairly healthy (or at least didn’t miss many games) in 2014.

I wish I had numbers from more teams to compare these to, but I simply don’t have the time to compile them for other teams.  Looking at them compared to the NFC North teams in 2013 suggests to me that the Bears were impacted by injuries more than average in 2014, but I don’t have a large enough data set to state that conclusively.

Don’t take this as an argument that the Bears would have been a great, or even good, team in 2014 if they had stayed healthy.  They had a number of problems, including too many overpaid players, excessively poor coaching, too many injuries, and not enough depth to compensate for those injuries.  Injuries certainly played a role in their struggles, but ultimately injuries are a part of football, and good teams need to find a way to overcome them.

One of the interesting decisions new general manager Ryan Pace will face this offseason is what to do with Alshon Jeffery.  Jeffery has one year remaining on his rookie deal, a time when many players sign their first big extension if they have already proven to be quality performers that the team wants to lock up for their prime.

Jeffery certainly qualifies after combining for 174 catches, 2,534 yards, and 17 touchdowns the last few seasons.  So at first glance, locking up Jeffery to a long-term extension makes absolute sense, and I’m sure Pace will have discussions with Jeffery’s agent about an extension this offseason.

Financial details

What will be important in those discussions is how much money Jeffery’s side asks for. He could look at Brandon Marshall’s deal from last year, which averages $10 million a year and guaranteed $22.3 million, as a baseline.  The Bears could point out that Marshall was a more proven receiver than Jeffery at the time of extension, but Jeffery can counter by pointing to the fact that he is much younger, meaning the team would be paying for his prime instead of later years.

The ideal contracts Jeffery’s side will likely try to compare to are those of Mike Wallace, Percy Harvin, and Dwayne Bowe.  These were all signed by players around Jeffery’s age by players less accomplished than Jeffery, and all have an average salary of $10.7 million or greater with a large amount of guaranteed money.

Of course, two of those three contracts were given in free agency rather than re-signing with your own team, and deals tend to work higher in free agency. Bowe, the only player who re-signed with his current team, was an impending free agent, so he had more leverage than Jeffery, who has one year left on his contract.

Closest Comparisons

The closest comparisons to Jeffery’s situation in the NFL recently have been Victor Cruz and Antonio Brown.  Both signed extensions with their current clubs with one year left on their rookie deals.  Brown signed a 5 year, $42 million deal with $8.5 million guaranteed before the 2012 season, while Cruz signed a 5 year, $43 million deal with $15.6 million guaranteed prior to 2013.

Jeffery is more proven than Brown was at the time of his signing, and that deal was 3 years ago.  Cruz is a closer comparison, as both players had similar numbers prior to their extensions, so we’ll use that deal as a baseline.  The 2013 NFL salary cap was $123 million, while 2015 is expected to be $140 million.  Adjusting for inflation, we’ll approximate a Jeffery extension to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 years, $49 million, with $18 million guaranteed, though it could end up higher than that.

Fundamental flaw

Add in the remaining 1 year and $1.5 million remaining on Jeffery’s rookie deal, and that means his total contract for the Bears would be roughly 6 years and $50 million.  This is a fairly conservative scenario, as I would not be surprised to see that sneak closer to $10 million a year than the $8.3 million per year that estimate provides.

There are a number of ways you can structure a deal, which could be back-loaded to keep early cap numbers low, but let’s assume Jeffery’s contract has roughly an $8 million cap hit in both 2015 and 2016.  Now let’s factor in the cap hits of Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Martellus Bennett to see how much money Chicago would have invested in their primary passing game components for the next 2 years (using estimated cap figures of $140 million for 2015 and $150 million for 2016).

That’s an awful lot of money when you consider that the best Chicago’s passing offense can reasonably be expected to be at that point is a lower-level top 10 passing attack.  No matter how high or low your opinion of Jay Cutler, he is never going to perform at a top 5 level in the NFL, so you’re paying huge money to have good but not great production.

Options abound

Is that a reasonable path to team success?  That is what Pace must balance when considering what to do with Cutler and Marshall and their contracts and how to handle Alshon Jeffery.  There are massive needs on this roster that need to be addressed, and spending so much money on the passing attack may leave them underfunded.

So what should Pace do?  I see a number of options that will get some sort of value from Jeffery, each of which have their pros and cons.

1. Trade Jeffery for multiple picks, spend that money elsewhere, and hope you can build a good team sooner rather than later.
2. Let Jeffery play out his rookie deal, spend that money elsewhere this year, and face the likelihood of having to pay Jeffery more after 2015 (especially after receivers like Dez Bryant and Randall Cobb get new contracts this offseason).
3. Give Jeffery an extension now, but backload it so the cap hits remain low until after some of those other deals are off the books and then balloon up to high levels.
4. Give Jeffery a balanced extension now and focus on rebuilding elsewhere through the draft.  Use the money freed up when those other deals come off the books to pay guys you draft now when it’s time to pay them in a few years.
5. Cut Brandon Marshall and use that money to sign Alshon to an extension.  Save the rest of your money for fixing the defense.

Personally, I like option 4 the best, but that has some negative short-term ramifications that could make it unattractive to a new general manager trying to establish some job security.  The only way the Bears would be likely to field a playoff team in the next 2 years under that method is if the general manager has some excellent defensive drafts to rebuild a unit that has been among the worst in the NFL the last two years.

Jay Cutler threw 18 interceptions in only 15 games in 2014, the 2nd most he’s thrown in his 6 year Bears career.  Of course, due to his high number of pass attempts (561, most in his Chicago career), Cutler’s interception rate of 3.2% was actually the 2nd lowest he’s had in Chicago, but he still turned it over too much, especially when you factor in his 9 fumbles.

Like I did for the first half of the season, I’m going to go through all 10 of Cutler’s interceptions after the bye and see what went wrong. Last time, I had three categories for the interceptions, and I will be re-using those three while also adding a fourth:

1. Poor decision. This is when Cutler makes a poor decision to force a ball into traffic.
2. Poor throw. This is when the decision to throw is not necessarily a bad one, but the throw is inaccurate.
3. Miscommunication. This is when Cutler and the intended target are not on the same page, leading to a ball going to nowhere and a turnover.
4. Receiver error: This is when Cutler makes the right read and delivers a good throw, but it bounces off the receiver’s hands and is intercepted.

Let’s get right down to it.

Interception 1

Cutler’s 1st interception of the season’s 2nd half came early in the blowout loss to Green Bay.  The Bears were already trailing 7-0 when he tried to get a pass to Martellus Bennett on 2nd and 10.  Bennett was open, but Cutler failed to lead him enough, allowing safety Micah Hyde to jump in front of the ball and grab the interception.

Note: At one point, all of these gifs worked. But alas, they are now just pictures of the first frame of the gif. Sorry. 

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 2

Cutler’s next interception came later in the same game against Green Bay.  Down 48-7 in the fourth quarter, Cutler stepped up under pressure and tried to force a ball in to Matt Forte.  A Green Bay linebacker tipped it, and cornerback Casey Hayward grabbed the ball for an easy touchdown.  This was 3rd down, but the Bears were in field goal range, so Cutler should have just taken the sack and let Robbie Gould kick.

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 3

Cutler’s next interception came against Minnesota the following week.  The Bears had the ball near midfield with 15 seconds left in the 1st half.  Trying to make something happen, Cutler forced a pass deep to Alshon Jeffery that fell well short and was intercepted by cornerback Xavier Rhodes.  I’m almost tempted to call this a Hail Mary of sorts, due to the game situation, but it was still an awful throw by Cutler.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 4

With the Bears up 14-10 and on the edge of field goal range midway through the 3rd quarter, Minnesota brought a blitz on 3rd and 9.  Cutler tried to make a play by getting the ball to Brandon Marshall, but safety Harrison Smith was there for the easy interception.  This was just a whole bunch of wrong.  Cutler lofted the ball into traffic off his back foot, which is both a poor throw and a poor decision, while Marshall failed to make the correct blitz read and adjust his route accordingly.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 miscommunication

Interception 5

After avoiding any interceptions in a win against Tampa Bay, Cutler got back in the act against Detroit on Thanksgiving.  He was able to avoid turnovers until the Bears were down big in the 4th quarter, when he threw two.  The first came on 2nd and 3 with almost 10 minutes left, when a scoring drive would have gotten the Bears back in it.  Cutler tried to force a pass deep to Brandon Marshall, but underthrew him a bit.  The Detroit cornerback was able to tip it, and safety Glover Quin came diving in to grab the interception.  Cutler probably shouldn’t have throw that ball, as Marshall was well covered, but a better delivery might have resulted in a big play.

Verdict: 0.5 poor throw, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 6

Cutler’s 2nd interception against Detroit came on the final play of the game, when the outcome had already been decided.  He tried to get a pass in to Marquess Wilson in the end zone, but it went straight to Detroit safety James Ihedigbo.  It’s hard to fault Cutler too much for this one, given the game situation, but it was a poor decision to force a ball to a covered man (though it’s possible nobody was open).

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 7

Cutler’s lone interception against Dallas came late in the 4th quarter with the Bears down 2 scores.  With 1st and goal at the 10 yard line, Cutler tried to loft a pass in to Josh Morgan in the back of the end zone.  Unfortunately, Cutler left it well short, and cornerback Orlando Scandrick was able to snag the ball out of the air and seal the victory for the Cowboys.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 8

Cutler’s worst game of the year came against New Orleans, when he threw three interceptions, starting on the first drive of the game.  On 3rd and 8, Cutler found an open Martellus Bennett sitting in a hole in the New Orleans zone, but the pass bounced off Bennett’s hands and was caught by Patrick Robinson.  Cutler did absolutely nothing wrong on this play, though I guess you could argue that his throw could have been a smidge better.

Verdict: receiver error

Interception 9

Cutler’s next interception came at the end of the first half.  The ball was snapped near midfield with 12 seconds left, and he tried to force a deep pass to Marquess Wilson.  Wilson made his break and ran upfield, while Cutler expected him to cut towards the sidelines, but either way this was probably getting intercepted, or at least falling incomplete, as Wilson was double covered.  I’m tempted to call this a Hail Mary, but the Bears did have a chance to make something happen shorter and kick a field goal here.

Verdict: 0.5 miscommunication, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 10

Cutler’s final interception of the season came late in the 3rd quarter against the Saints.  With the Bears trailing by 21, Cutler decided to go deep to Alshon Jeffery on 3rd and 3.  He had Jeffery kind of open, but the safety got there before the ball and grabbed an easy interception after Cutler overthrew his intended target.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 poor throw

Final tally

Over the 2nd half of the season, here’s how I have the tally for Cutler’s 10 interceptions:

• Poor decision: 4
• Poor throw: 4
• Miscommunication: 1
• Receiver error: 1

You’ll note that 3 of those 10 interceptions (numbers 3, 6, and 9) came in situations where Cutler was forced to try and make a play due to severe time limitations.  If you remove those, the numbers change to 2.5 poor decision, 3 poor throw, 0.5 miscommunication, and 1 receiver error.

Combining these totals with the first half of the season (when he had 7 non-Hail Mary interceptions) gives the following final count:

• Poor decision: 7.5
• Poor throw: 4.5
• Miscommunication: 4
• Receiver error: 1

I find it interesting that interceptions in the first half of the season were mostly due to poor decisions and miscommunications, while the 2nd half of the year saw poor throws and poor decisions as the main culprits.  This suggests that the Bears’ offense at least got on the same page a bit more as the season progressed, which is encouraging, but Cutler’s deep accuracy problems did not go away, nor did his tendency to force balls into traffic.

I don’t think Cutler’s ever going to stop making poor decisions that lead to risky throws and some interceptions, but having one of those every two games or so is not the end of the world.  What new coaches Adam Gase and Dowell Logains need to focus on will be improving Cutler’s mechanics and miscommunications among the offense.  Nearly half of Cutler’s interceptions in 2014 came from those areas, and reducing them would go a long way towards improving the offense.

On the surface, Jay Cutler appeared to have one of the better years of his career in 2014.  He set career highs in completion percentage and touchdowns and had the 2nd highest totals of his career in yards and passer rating.

Yet many people have argued that Cutler was actually not good in 2014, for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, he threw 18 interceptions, the 2nd most in his career.  He also had the 2nd lowest yards per attempt average of his career.

But the main knock against Cutler is that he accumulated too many of his stats in garbage time, when the game was already over and teams went into a prevent defense that allowed him easy access to meaningless completions, yards, and touchdowns.  I want to dig into the numbers today to see if this argument holds up.

2014

Using the database at Pro Football Reference, which lets you sort by game situation, I broke up Cutler’s statistics in 2014 into six categories: up two scores (9-16 points), up one score (1-8 points), tied, down one score, down two scores, and down three or more scores (17+ points).  I would have included up three or more scores as a 7th category, but Cutler never attempted a pass while the Bears held a 17 point lead (or greater) at any point in the season.

A first glance does seem to indicate that Cutler did indeed rely on some garbage time statistics to buoy his overall numbers.  He was at his best when the Bears were down by 3 or more scores, which can typically be described as garbage time, as the game is usually out of reach at this point.  Cutler’s completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio were all significantly higher than his season averages in these instances.  Removing this data from his numbers drops his season stat line from 66.0% completion, 6.8 yards per attempt, 28 touchdowns, 18 interceptions, and an 88.6 passer rating to 65.4% completion, 6.4 yards per attempt, 20 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, and an 85.3 passer rating.

In an attempt to visualize how this looks a little better, I’ve set up the following graph, which showcases Cutler’s passer rating, yards per attempt, interception percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio in all the various game situations.  In order to make the scales all the same, I compared their percent difference from the season average.  So a passer rating of 102.7 while down by 3 or more scores was 15.9% better than his season average of 88.6, and so on. Note that I set it up so that a lower interception percentage reads as a positive number, because this is the desirable outcome.

Here you can visually see that Cutler was at his best when the team was getting blown out, followed by when they were tied or slightly ahead.  When the Bears fell behind, his interceptions increased and touchdowns decreased, leading to a plummeting touchdown/interception ratio and lower passer rating.

All Chicago years

In order to get a better feel for what this type of data normally looks like, I compiled Cutler’s stats for all six of his seasons in Chicago in the same categories.  This has an added advantage of greatly increasing the sample size, which decreases the variation from one touchdown or interception in a smaller data set.

Here we see a similar trend, but with one important difference: Cutler’s stats when the Bears are getting blown out do not skyrocket like they did in 2014.  There seems to be a negative correlation between the team’s situation and Cutler’s performance, which can be visually seen in the graph below.

This negative trend is largely driven by interception percentage, which is at it’s three worst levels in the three categories where the Bears are losing.  This suggests that Cutler has a tendency to force passes when things aren’t going well, which compounds the problem and leads to further struggles.  Conversely, when the Bears have the lead, Cutler can play safer football, and his interception rates tend to be lower.

The numbers back up the assertion that Cutler’s performance variation is largely interception based. A regression of interception percentage against drive differential (+1 for up by 1 score, -1 for down 1 score, etc.) gives a correlation of 0.4, while the correlation for completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage (the other three stats that go into passer rating) are all 0.1 or lower.

Within season

Of course, one other factor to consider is that Cutler’s statistics have fluctuated from season to season, and ignoring that can lead to a data bias.  For instance, Cutler’s worst season in Chicago was in 2009, when the Bears played from behind more than in some of his better seasons.  Looking at Cutler’s statistics in each situation compared to the other situations in the same year, therefore, is an important control.

The  chart below shows that data, looking at how Cutler’s stats in each game situation compare, on average, to his total production from that same season.  So across his six years in Chicago, Cutler has had a completion percentage 6.3% higher than his total completion percentage that season when his team is up by 17 or more points.

Now we can see a clearer relationship between the game situation and Cutler’s performance, as completion percentage (0.36), interception percentage (0.33), and passer rating (0.45) all have meaningful positive correlations (while yards per attempt and touchdown percentage do not seem to have any discernible pattern). This is nothing shocking; as the team struggles and falls behind, Cutler is forced to throw more, his completion percentage drops, and his turnovers increase, which lowers his passer rating.

Conclusions

The numbers back up the notion that Cutler’s statistics were inflated by garbage time production in 2014.  19% of Cutler’s passing attempts came with the Bears down by 3 or more scores, but those passes accounted for 23% of his yards and 29% of his touchdowns (and 22% of his interceptions).  History suggests that is not a typical pattern for Cutler, so 2014 will likely prove to be an aberration.

The fact that Cutler’s performance gets worse as the team struggles points to how important it is for the Bears to start well with him under center.  When the team plays with a lead, Cutler seems to relax and avoid turning the ball over as much, while he starts pressing and turns the ball over more when they fall behind.  So if Cutler is going to continue to be Chicago’s starting quarterback for the next couple years, building early leads (or at least avoiding early deficits) should be a clear goal for the Bears, as Cutler’s turnover tendencies are likely to do nothing but dig a deeper hole once the Bears fall behind.

When John Fox and the Denver Broncos decided to part ways on Monday, speculation immediately connected him to Chicago.  He’s been the presumed frontrunner for the job ever since, and the Bears made his hiring official today.

This is not the direction I would have gone if I were running the Bears this offseason, but I’m not, and that’s a good thing.  It’s a safe move intended to restore the Bears to respectability both on and off the field, but I don’t think it is one made with a serious goal of winning championships in the next few years (though you could argue that’s a good thing given where the franchise is at right now).

A familiar path

To me, Fox is Lovie Smith, which-as Bears fans should know-comes with both positives and negatives.  They’re both around .500 coaches* who will have the team be disciplined and competitive. They both have issues with in-game management, struggle with using the clock and time outs correctly, and make overly conservative decisions.  They both establish solid defenses and like to run the ball on offense.

(*They’re both around .500 coaches when they aren’t given an all-time great quarterback as a finished product to pad their record with.  In his 10 years before Peyton, Fox averaged 8.1 wins and 0.6 playoff wins per season.  In the 8 years of his prime before Fox, Peyton averaged 12.4 wins and 1.1 playoff wins per season.  In their 3 years together, they averaged 12.7 wins and 0.7 playoff wins per season.  Since Fox’s presence didn’t change Peyton’s outcomes at all from what he was, you’ll pardon me for not giving Fox credit or blame for those 3 seasons with Peyton).

The Bears made a move to go away from Lovie 2 years ago.  It was a risk, and it backfired spectacularly.  Now they’re going back to a Lovie-esque coach, and you can see the appeal.  Fox should help stabilize the franchise and prevent it from being the laughingstock it was in 2014 (on and off the field).  The Bears currently have a lot of big personalities in the locker room, and you can be sure that Fox will keep them in line much better than Trestman did.

Here’s what the next five years will likely look like for the Bears: they will beat most of the bad teams they face, lose to many of the good ones, and end up somewhere around .500 overall.  They will not win the NFC North unless something happens to Aaron Rodgers, but should get 1-2 wild card berths.  And you know what?  That’s not such a terrible outcome; you can definitely do worse.

Future Concerns

In 4-5 years, Fox will likely be ready to retire.  He is currently 59 (60 in February), and only one current NFL coach is older than 65.  The hope is that the Bears in 2020 will be in a similar place to where they were in 2012, with a good team (albeit hopefully younger than the 2012 version) looking for a great coach to take them over the top.

My fear with this is that Fox will try to pressure the Bears to make win-now decisions, bringing in older free agents that give them a better chance to be good now but hamper their ability to be great in the future by stunting the growth of young players and/or creating future cap problems (like are an annual event in New Orleans, where GM Ryan Pace comes from). Pace must maintain the control of football operations he says he has and avoid making moves that help the team’s present at the expense of the future.

Of course, the win-now approach Fox brings also starts to give us some clues on veterans whose futures in Chicago were thought to be up in the air.  With Fox hired, I think it is very likely that Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall are both in Chicago for the next two years at least.  And that is not a bad thing, I just hope these moves don’t preclude the Bears from planning ahead and looking for their eventual replacements sooner rather than later.

Those veterans sticking around makes sense if Chicago’s plan is to be competitive now while building to be better in the future.  That is exactly what they should be doing, I only hope they don’t tilt that balance too far towards the now at the expense of the future.

Final thoughts

Personally, I wanted to see the Bears take a risk on a younger coach with more upside than Fox, and somebody who would be around longer than 5 years if they pan out, but I can see why Chicago thought otherwise.  In 2012, they were positioned to make a safe hire in Bruce Arians, but went for the home run with Trestman, and ended up striking out.  Now they don’t want to repeat that mistake, so they went with a solid double in John Fox instead of swinging for the fences and risking setting the franchise back even further.

You can do much worse in a head coach than John Fox, as Bears fans should know after watching Marc Trestman slowly destroy the franchise over the past two years.  But I think you can do better than him as well, and I wish the Bears would have made more of an effort to do just that instead of settling for a well known good-but-not-great coach.

The cynic could say they’ve seen this coming since October, maybe even September.  Even the most optimistic Bears supporter has had some inkling of it since the start of December.

But few could have predicted just how bad things would get in Chicago as the season continues to head south. Nobody is in charge inside of Chicago’s locker room, which has resulted in everybody doing whatever they can to save their own skin at the expense of the team.  Let’s recap just how far back the jarring lack of leadership goes.

September 3

Lance Briggs, the play caller and supposed on-field leader of the defense, skipped Chicago’s first practice of the season to go open his restaurant in California.  You’d think a guy coming off a 6 month offseason could have scheduled more intelligently.

Plenty of people-myself included-said this was no big deal.  It was just a walkthrough, and Briggs was a seasoned player who wouldn’t miss anything.  Plenty of people blamed Briggs for selfishly putting his own interests ahead of the team and not acting like a veteran leader.  Plenty of people blamed head coach Marc Trestman for giving Briggs the practice off for “personal reasons” while saying he didn’t bother asking what they were.

Chicago would go on to lose their season opener at home to the heavy underdog Buffalo Bills.  Briggs played a poor game and was directly responsible for some defensive miscommunications that led to big plays for the Bills.  In retrospect, this would not have not been a huge deal if it was an isolated incident, but it showcased the clear lack of leadership in Chicago, from the coaches to the players.

October 19

Following a nice road win at the Atlanta Falcons that was their best game of the season to that point, Chicago came out flat at home and lost 27-14 to Miami to fall to 3-4 with two difficult road games looming.  Particularly troublesome was the first half, when the Bears were held scoreless and only ran the ball twice.

There was a postgame outburst in the locker room from Brandon Marshall, one of the offensive leaders, that reportedly involved a fight with kicker Robbie Gould, the leader of the special teams.  Defensive leader Lance Briggs, meanwhile, walked out of the locker room rather than getting involved and trying to calm the situation down.

In press conferences that week, head coach Marc Trestman insinuated the reason the Bears weren’t running the ball more was because Cutler was checking out of too many runs, then revealed he stripped Cutler of the ability to make such checks in the second half.

Here we have the first instance of somebody under fire deliberately shifting blame to somebody else associated with the team in an effort to save themselves.  Don’t worry, it won’t be the last.

December 1

Following a Thanksgiving loss in which they called only 7 runs against 52 passes, Jay Cutler, Matt Forte, and Aaron Kromer all said the Bears need to run the ball more.  In doing so, they insinuated that the blame lied on Trestman as the playcaller to establish the run and separated themselves from the embattled coach.

Once again, we see fingers being pointed, with players and coaches trying to place the blame on anybody but themselves.

December 9

Following a home loss to the Dallas Cowboys that saw him injure two ribs and go on season-ending injured reserve, Brandon Marshall goes on the radio and admits he understands why people would have buyers’ remorse with Jay Cutler’s contract.  He also thanks those who visited him in the hospital, naming many names but not Cutler, leading to speculation that there is a rift in their previously close relationship.

I personally think this interview was blown out of proportion, but here again you see no clear leadership.  Marshall and Cutler are supposed to be the leaders of the offense, and very possibly the team, yet they are not exactly sticking up for each other publicly or toeing the company line.

December 11

Now we come to the latest, and most egregious, incident.  Aaron Kromer apologized to the offensive players, revealing that he had leaked some negative comments about Cutler to Ian Rapaport a few weeks earlier.  Patrick Mannelly then said on the radio several players had told him the apology felt fake.  Marshall took to Twitter to bash that players had talked to the media about the meeting, which was presumably supposed to remain private.

Yet again we see a free for all situation where every man seems to be in it for himself.  Nobody is keeping any players or coaches in line.  Nobody is stepping up, assuming responsibility, and making all this nonsense stop.

Who is in charge?

This leads to the obvious question: who is in charge of the Chicago Bears?  Normally, you would say the head coach.  So where is Trestman in all this? He has been involved in pointing fingers at others publicly.  He has not done anything that we know of to promote accountability since way back in August, when he suspended Martellus Bennett for a training camp fight.  Otherwise, he keeps going in front of the media and insists that everything is fine while chaos erupts all around him from players and coaches alike.

If the head coach is not the man in charge, then surely there must be some player who holds his peers accountable, right?  Not in this case.  The most logical candidate would be Jay Cutler, but he’s never been that guy.  That guy was Brian Urlacher until he retired following the 2012 season.  None of the logical candidates-Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, Matt Forte, and Lance Briggs-have stepped up to do that.

What we’re left with now is a sinking ship with no captain.  In a situation like that, everybody looks out for their own interests above all others, which will never work in a  sport like football, where you have to put the team above yourself.  And that is the greatest indictment of all on this coaching staff, and the biggest reason that they all need to go.

Jay Cutler has gotten a lot of criticism for turning the ball over too much this year, and rightly so.  Through 8 games, he has thrown 8 interceptions and fumbled 9 times, losing 4 of them.

I want to go through each of Cutler’s interceptions and break down what went wrong.  I will be splitting the blame into one of three categories:

1. Poor decision.  This is when Cutler makes a poor decision to force a ball into traffic.
2. Poor throw.  This is when the decision to throw is not necessarily a bad one, but the throw is inaccurate.
3. Miscommunication.  This is when Cutler and the intended target are not on the same page, leading to a ball going to nowhere and a turnover.

I’m not going to bother with Cutler’s most recent interception, which came on a hail mary against New England last week.  That’s a play where you don’t care about the turnover but are just chucking it up hoping for a miracle.  I will however, break down the other seven, showing gifs of the plays (hover over gif with mouse to get it to play) and assigning where I think the blame is due.

Let’s get right down to it.

Interception 1

Cutler’s first interception of the year came in the 2nd quarter of their first game.  On a 1st and 10, he looked to tight end Martellus Bennett deep up the seam.  The pass went well behind Bennett, who ran down the field while Cutler seemingly threw it thinking he would stop. Cornerback Corey Graham saw the pass and cut in for an easy interception.

Note: At one point, all of these gifs worked. But alas, they are now just pictures of the first frame of the gif. Sorry. 

Verdict: miscommunication

Interception 2

This one came later in the Buffalo game.  Rolling out to his right, Cutler forces a pass to Bennett back into traffic that goes right to defensive tackle Kyle Williams.  It is a ball that should have never been thrown.  This play also does feature a miscommunication, as wide receiver Santonio Holmes blocks for a run instead of running the clear out he was supposed to, but it doesn’t directly feature in the interception (though Cutler likely would have run for a 1st down if Holmes had run his route).  Still, that does not excuse this pass, which simply cannot be thrown.

Verdict: Poor decision

Interception 3

After going more than 2 games without an interception (though he did have a couple potential ones dropped in that span), Cutler jumped back on the wagon in week 4 against Green Bay.  With the Bears trailing 24-17 in the third quarter, Cutler tried to squeeze a 1st down pass in to Josh Morgan on a slant.  Green Bay cornerback Tramon Williams had lined up inside of Morgan and was sitting on the slant. He did not get the interception himself, but he did deflect it to linebacker Clay Matthews.

Verdict: Poor decision

Interception 4

On the very next drive of the Green Bay game, Cutler looked for Brandon Marshall down the right sideline.  He thought Marshall was running a comeback route, while Marshall ran a go route.  Green Bay cornerback Sam Shields ended up catching the pass with nobody within 10 yards of him.

Interception 5

In the first quarter against Carolina, Cutler threw a pass to Brandon Marshall deep down the middle of the field with three defenders around the ball.  Some people argue this was pass interference, but you can never throw the ball over the middle of the field with that many defenders there.

Interception 6

Late in the Carolina game, Cutler targeted Santonio Holmes on a slant over the middle.  The pass was a little high and behind Holmes and the safety behind the play was able to catch it.

This is a bit of a tough one to decide on.  It wasn’t a bad decision to throw it, as Holmes was open.  But I’m not 100% sure whether Cutler missed the throw or Holmes was rerouted from where he was supposed to be by the linebacker in coverage.  It looks as though Cutler steps into the throw with solid mechanics, but the pass is too high for a small receiver like Holmes to catch in stride.  I’ll say this is a combination of both and split the blame between miscommunication and poor throw.

Interception 7

This is the trickiest of the interceptions to figure out.  Cutler tried to get a pass in to Bennett, who was double covered, and overthrew him by a mile.  The safety coming in behind the play (a good 8 yards behind it) comes up with the interception.

On the surface, this seems like both a bad decision and a bad throw by Cutler.  But he was adamant after the game that he threw it to the spot it was supposed to go to, and Trestman indicated the same the next day.  This makes it seem like there was a miscommunication between Bennett and Cutler on what route to run, and Cutler thought Bennett was heading farther up the field.  Either way, it was still a throw into more traffic than I’d like, so I’m splitting the blame on this one.

Final tally

Here’s the final tally for Cutler’s 7 interceptions looked at here (again, I am excluding the hail mary against New England because it doesn’t really fit any of these categories):

• Poor decision: 3.5
• Miscommunication: 3
• Poor throw: 0.5

Let me be abundantly clear that I am not doing this to make excuses for Cutler.  He is obviously turning it over too much, and at that point it doesn’t really matter whether the interceptions come from miscommunications, poor throws, or poor decisions.  They have to stop, or more realistically be significantly reduced.

Rather, my intent is to try to figure out where the interceptions are coming from.  What has to change to limit the turnovers?  Let’s look at the three factors.

Poor decisions

Cutler has a penchant for forcing passes into traffic, and we see that here with half his interceptions coming from poor decisions, with several more poor decisions that featured dropped interceptions or interceptions called back by penalties..  He’s always going to be a guy who takes some chances, and that’s never going away.  With that said, one interception every two games from poor decisions is something you can live with (which is good, since that will always be there for Cutler).

Poor mechanics

The plays that need to be eliminated, or at least vastly cut down, are the miscommunications and poor passes.  I’ll talk about the poor passes first.  These usually result from poor mechanics, which has been an issue at times for Cutler this year.  It didn’t show up much in this study, but it is a big reason he is struggling so much to complete passes downfield this year.  According to Pro Football Focus, Cutler has been accurate on only 36.7% of his deep passes so far this year, 21st out of 30 quarterbacks with 15+ such attempts.  He is throwing off of his back foot too often instead of stepping into his throws, a regression back to 2012 and before habits, and that needs to change.

More relevant to turnovers are Cutler’s 9 fumbles in 8 games.  This is also largely due to poor mechanics, as he is not properly protecting the ball when the pocket collapses around him.

Miscommunications

Perhaps most troubling is the startling number of miscommunications on Cutler’s interceptions.  Four of his seven interceptions (again, not counting the Hail Mary) have involved at least some sort of miscommunication, with a 5th having a miscommunication on the play that was not directly involved in the interception.

It is baffling why there are so many of these issues on an offense that returns pretty much every key figure from last year.  Sure, two of the five miscommunications mentioned above relate to Santonio Holmes, who is new to the offense and was brought in late in the preseason.  But the other three are with Cutler and either Martellus Bennett or Brandon Marshall, who he has been playing with for a while.

I don’t know where all these miscommunications come from, but somehow Cutler needs to make sure he is on the same page as his receivers going forward.  Limit these miscommunication turnovers and avoid the rash of fumbles caused by poor mechanics, and suddenly Cutler’s play seems a lot better.

Find a way

It’s one thing to say what needs to be done.  Doing it is a different challenge. But somehow, some way, Jay Cutler needs to improve his mechanics and Chicago’s offense needs to avoid the miscommunications leading to turnovers that have plagued them through the first half of the season.

Embrace the mediocrity, Bears fans.

You might as well do it now, because the Chicago Bears certainly did this week.

Coming off an embarrassing blowout loss at home to their hated division rival, a good team goes out and finds a way to win the following week.  It doesn’t have to be spectacular, but it has to be effective.  Whatever it takes, good teams find a way to get it done.

The Chicago Bears proved this week that they are not a good team.  Instead of finding a way to win by any means necessary, they had a game handed to them and found ways to lose it.  So it’s high time that Bears fans universally acknowledge exactly what their favorite team is: mediocre.

Underachieving

On paper, this should not be the case.   Chicago has the talent to be one of the best offenses in the league, which-coupled with an acceptable defense- should be enough to win a lot of games and propel them to they playoffs.

But games are not won on paper, and the Bears have proven through 5 weeks the peril of preseason paper analysis.  The defense has mostly been about as expected so far, but the offense is not living up to its status as the highest paid unit in the NFL.

Familiar script

Both sides of the ball seem to be plagued by the same dumb mistakes over and over.  A missed assignment here, a lazy effort there, a careless mistake costing the team at the worst possible time.  These same errors keep repeating themselves time and time again, leading to a talented but inconsistent team that is the very definition of mediocre.

Perhaps worst of all is the seeming lack of leadership and attitude emanating from the Bears.  Players don’t seem to care when they mess up, and nobody steps forward in a crisis to stop the bleeding and get things sorted out.

Now perhaps things can get better.  The Bears have Been besieged by injuries so fast this year, and getting healthier should certainly help some.  But all the talent in the world won’t make any difference until this team finds an identity and leaders who can hold them accountable.

Hope is not lost

Bears fans looking for hope need only glance north a few miles to Evanston, where Northwestern’s football team seemed headed for a lost season just two weeks ago before finding an identity , beginning to play with an edge, and reeling off two impressive victories.

It can be done, but the first step is admitting a problem.  Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald did just that before helping turn his team’s season around.  I will be watching Chicago’s leaders-Marc Trestman, Jay Cutler, and Brandon Marshall-very carefully this week to look for similar acknowledgement from them.

It is certainly possible that the Bears scan still turn their season around, but right now I look at them and see a whole bunch of mediocrity.  They will beat some teams based simply on having more talent than them, lose some games they should win, lose to most good teams they face, and end up right around 8-8 again.

Embrace the mediocrity, Bears fans.

Longtime Chicago cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman was placed on season-ending injured reserve this week after he tore his triceps against San Francisco this past Sunday.  This marks the second season in a row Tillman’s season ended early due to the injury.  With two straight injury-shortened seasons and a contract that expires at the end of the season, this seems to be the end of the road for the 33 year old cornerback, though Tillman has vowed his career is not yet finished.

If Tillman has indeed reached the end of his career, he has nothing to be ashamed of.  The 2003 2nd round pick has played 12 years, all for the Bears, and generally played at a very high level.  He reached two Pro Bowls (2011 and 2012), was named a 1st team All-Pro once (2012), and holds franchise records for defensive touchdowns (9), interception return yards (675), interceptions returned for touchdowns (8), and forced fumbles (38).  Tillman also owns the franchise forced fumbles record for a single season (10, tied for NFL record) and single game (4, NFL record).

Canton worthy?

There is little doubt that Tillman is the greatest cornerback the Chicago Bears have ever had, which is no small feat considering the illustrious defensive history of the franchise, but a more interesting question posed to me by Lorin Cox was this: does Charles Tillman belong in the Hall of Fame?

This is a difficult question to answer as there are a number of factors that go into a player’s Hall of Fame candidacy.  Let’s start with a look at the numbers, which were kindly provided by Lorin. The table below compares Tillman’s vital statistics to those of several recent defensive backs who were inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well as two active players who will undoubtedly go into the Hall of Fame after they are done.  Note that all of the above statistics about Tillman’s franchise records above are from the official Wikipedia page listing Chicago Bears records. These may differ slightly from the stats listed in the table below, which are from Pro Football Reference.

Looking at these numbers, two things stand out. First, if this is indeed the end of Tillman’s career, he did not play for as long as most of his compatriots. This will hurt his volume numbers some and may damage his Hall candidacy.  Second, Tillman’s numbers absolutely stack up, even on a volume basis.  He has more tackles and defensive touchdowns than three of the other seven players and has forced more turnovers than four of them.  His forced fumbles stand out well ahead of the group, thanks largely to his signature “Peanut Punch.”  If there is one place where Tillman is clearly lacking, it is in interceptions; his 36 falls well short of the rest.

When you look at per-season numbers, however, Tillman’s case begins to look even better, as you can clearly see in the table below.  His 3.27 interceptions per season fits in nicely, and his forced fumbles per season dwarfs everybody else.  Tillman rates well against his peers in both tackles per season (2nd) and turnovers per season (first by a mile).

More than just numbers

Of course, there are many more factors to consider than just numbers when evaluating a player for the Hall of Fame, especially for defensive players who are not pass rushers, as statistics often fail to accurately reflect their play.  We’ll start with the areas where Tillman excels before moving on to where he might struggle.

The 50 media members who vote for the Hall of Fame often take off-field actions into account, and Tillman’s sparkling record there can only help his cause.  Tillman was named the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2013 and has a long history of charity work and community involvement in Chicago.  He seems like a genuinely nice guy who everybody likes and respects, which can go a long way in the voting room.

Tillman also has a well-publicized signature play, the Peanut Punch.  This has increased his national profile and should help him get votes as well.  The Hall of Fame is partially about telling the story of the NFL, and being well known for something that coaches now try to teach their players helps make it easier to consider you an important part of that story.

But there is one essential area where Tillman is very lacking that I think will ultimately keep him out of the Hall of Fame.  Tillman has simply not garnered enough national awards for his play.  He has only been to two Pro Bowls and was only named an All Pro-1st or 2nd team-once.  It will be extremely hard for the national media to convince themselves that Tillman was one of the best players of his generation when he was only considered one of the best four players at his position one time in his entire career.  If he had been voted to a bunch of Pro Bowls, that might help overcome the lack of All Pro nominations, but alas, that did not happen.  It seems kind of silly that a popularity contest based on fan voting would be a factor in determining who is worthy of the Hall of Fame, but that does indeed appear to be the case.

Hall of Very Good

Now that I’ve told you that I don’t think Tillman will make the Hall of Fame, I’m sure some people are wondering if I think he should.  I’m sorry to say that, when looking at things objectively, I don’t.  Tillman was a very good player for a very long time, but I don’t think he was consistently great.  Therefore, I don’t think Tillman belongs in the Hall of Fame, as much as it pains me to say it.  To me, Tillman is the definition of a guy who belongs in the Hall of Very Good, a term I believe was coined by Peter King (though I cannot find a source to confirm this).  He was a very good player and a great man, but is just not quite at the caliber of somebody who deserves to be immortalized in the Hall of Fame.

So here we are.  It is painfully obvious that you cannot win in the NFL without a good quarterback.  It is equally apparent that, if you find that quarterback, you are eventually going to need to pay him a lot of money to stick around.

If you pay your quarterback too much money, it can hamper your ability to build a good team around him (a must for a championship winning team), leaving you with a good team that will be consistently competitive but probably come short of winning a title as teams with comparable quarterbacks playing on much cheaper deals are able to pass you by (before they have to pay their guy as well).

You have to think that there is some sort of tipping point where teams would be better off dumping a high-priced veteran and taking their chances in the draft, and the rapid recent inflation of quarterback contracts may make it that we are passed that point.  But it will take more time to really know for sure.  To date, no quarterback has won a Super Bowl on a contract averaging more than $16.5 million per year, but the first contract exceeding that didn’t come until two or three years ago, so that’s a very small sample size.

Differentiation at the top

Of course, one other thing you have to consider here is that there is a difference between quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees and guys like Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Jay Cutler, and Tony Romo.  All have similar contracts paying them massive amounts of money, but the second group needs better talent around them to perform at a high level (and will still likely not reach the same level as the first group on a consistent basis).

You can build a championship team around Romo, Cutler, Flacco, or Ryan, but I am not sure if you can do so while paying them that much money.  This will be an issue for teams like Seattle, San Francisco, and Carolina in upcoming years; their quarterbacks will be due for new contracts and go from being underpaid to overpaid, forcing the teams to let some of the talent around them leave because they can no longer afford to pay them.

Let’s look one more time at the groups of teams based on quarterback situation and how they performed in 2013.  One twist this time: I’m splitting the thirteen teams with established veteran quarterbacks into the four elite quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees) and the other nine.  Let’s see how the data looks.

Well that’s interesting.  Paying established non-elite veteran quarterbacks  big money, at least this year, didn’t seem to pay off.  Teams with those guys actually fared slightly worse, by and large, than teams with slightly worse but significantly cheaper quarterbacks.  Consider that the group that might be looking for new quarterbacks this offseason-Cincinnati, St. Louis, Tennessee, and Arizona-paid their starting quarterbacks an average of just under $5.4 million in 2013, while the nine teams with non-elite quarterbacks on veteran contracts-Atlanta, Detroit, New York Giants, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, and San Diego-paid their quarterbacks an average of $12.6 million.

This is only one year and is a small sample size, but it certainly suggests that paying a non-elite quarterback big money (which every one of those nine teams except Kansas City has done) is not a recipe for success.  Those teams were worse on average in wins than the teams with unsettled quarterback situations going forward, put roughly the same proportion of teams in the playoffs (two out of nine compared to one out of four), and neither group found much playoff success (combined 1-3 playoff record, with the one win coming when San Diego beat Cincinnati, so one of the teams in these groups had to win).

Paying your elite quarterback, meanwhile, appears to be an investment well worth making.  Elite quarterbacks got paid big money-an average of $15.2 million in 2013-but delivered.  All four of them made the playoffs, three of them won at least one playoff game, and one of them will be playing in the Super Bowl.  The performance of elite quarterbacks, in fact, is nearly identical to that of established quarterbacks on rookie contracts, which will be something interesting to monitor in future years.

Looking ahead

One way or another, we will see in the next several years just how intelligent the recent quarterback salary inflation is.  The early results suggest big contracts for non-elite quarterbacks will come back to haunt their teams, but it is too early to say for sure. If teams can continue to win consistently after giving quarterbacks big money, the salaries should only continue to grow.

But what if new teams like Seattle and San Francisco keep cropping up for two or three year runs when they find a good young quarterback who is extremely cheap and are able to contend by using that extra money to put a great team around them?  What if recent large contracts handed out to second-tier quarterbacks (and ones soon to be given out to guys coming off rookie deals) end up hurting teams more than they help?

It’s all about the quarterback in the NFL, but the next five to ten years should help illuminate just how much a good quarterback is worth.