It’s no secret that I’ve blamed quarterback Mitchell Trubisky for the lion’s share of Chicago’s offensive shortcomings in 2019, while pointing out contributing factors elsewhere: tight end, run blocking, Tarik Cohen…etc. But I truly believe that a competent quarterback would have put the Bears in the playoffs in 2019.

However, it’s important not to get too fixated on one issue and ignore other problems. So today I want to look at offensive issues from 2019 that have absolutely nothing to do with Mitchell Trubisky, but instead are due to what I believe to be poor coaching decisions regarding personnel usage.

Personnel Predictability

How predictable was Chicago’s offense when several of their key players were on or off the field?

The table below shows changes in run percentage when skill position guys who played between 35-65% of the snaps were in the game vs. on the sideline.

• On the high end, that excludes players who almost never leave the field (Allen Robinson played over 93% of offensive snaps in 2019) because their “off field” splits would be too small to be worth considering.
• On the low end, it excludes situational players who often only come in for situations where a run or pass is expected (ie the 4th WR in a 4 WR set for 3rd and long, or the 2nd TE in a short-yardage set).

Instead, I want to look at how the Bears deployed their key skill position players as they rotated through in a game.

(Note: This data is pulled from the NFL Game Statistics and Information System, which includes sacks and QB scrambles as passing plays.)

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It was a year of cinema seemingly created just for me.

My home state hero Bruce Springsteen showed up twice, in his autobiographical concert film Western Stars and the so-saccharine-it-gave-me-adult-onset-diabetes Blinded By the Light.

My literary idol Stephen Sondheim showed up three times. Daniel Craig sang “Losing My Mind” from Follies in Knives Out, Joaquin Phoenix sang “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music in Joker and Adam Driver delivered one of the great scenes, a fully-formed “Being Alive” from Company, with the dialogue interludes, in Marriage Story. (The latter was juxtaposed with Scarlett Johansson, Merritt Wever and Julie Hagerty’s rousing “You Can Drive a Person Crazy” from that same Sondheim show.)

Four of my favorite filmmakers – Errol Morris, Alex Gibney, Pedro Almodovar and Mike Leigh – released new works. (The special treat of the year was getting to see both Morris and Gibney at Film Forum Q&A sessions in NYC.) Only Gibney’s Citizen K failed to crack the list below.

Oh, and they made a documentary about Fiddler on the Roof – my choice for the greatest piece of American dramatic literature. (And it was just lovely. But I ruled it out of any year-end list due to its unfair advantage. It’s probably the 2019 film I’ll watch the most in my lifetime.)

What follows is my year-end piece in two parts. First, how the acting Oscar nominations would have looked if I did the nominating. Second, my ten best films of the year.

You will find no mention of Joker anywhere because Joker is the winner of the Bohemian Rhapsody Award, given to the film that will make me slightly ill with ever Oscar victory. Joker is trash cinema. Obvious. Easy. Freshman year of film school derivative. “Teacher, look! I saw King of Comedy for the first time! And I made my own! But it’s about an actual clown and DeNiro changed parts!”

[Note: There were three films I did not manage to get to that could have been relevant here. So my apologies to Les Miserables, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Varda by Agnes. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. I saw The Dead Don’t Die. I sat through The Souvenir. I did Atlantics and Monos – two terrific films – on one Sunday afternoon. Then I went drinking.]

The Performances

Best Actor

• Adam Driver, Marriage Story
• Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell
• Antonio Banderas, Pain & Glory
• Mark Ruffalo, Dark Waters
• George MacKay, 1917

Best Actress

• Lupita Nyong’o, Us
• Renee Zellwegger, Judy
• Awkwafina, The Farewell
• Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
• Alfre Woodard, Clemency

Best Supporting Actor

• Joe Pesci, The Irishman
• Tracy Letts, Ford vs. Ferrari
• Jonathan Majors, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
• James Saito, Always Be My Maybe
• Sam Rockwell, Richard Jewell

Best Supporting Actress

• Scarlett Johansson, JoJo Rabbit
• Billie Lourd, Booksmart
• Idina Menzel, Uncut Gems
• Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
• Cho Yeo-jeong, Parasite

The Films

#10. Pain & Glory / Peterloo (tie)

Two masters of cinema, Almodovar and Leigh. Two films that perfectly slide into their brilliant canons.

Peterloo is unlike anything Leigh has made before. A filmmaker who has specialized in the small moments, the quiet conversations, has made something decidedly epic, about big speeches and big ideas. And he’s managed to do so without losing the intimacy that has come to define his work. (Many folks share a certain amount of my film taste. But the inner circle all love Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy.)

Pain & Glory is all intimacy. And memory. And color. And beauty. This is Almodovar at his most autobiographical and Antonio Banderas’ performance as Almodovar (with a fake name) is the best work done on screen this year.

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Maciej Kasperowicz is one of the Josie Woods/Chicago Bears east pole crew and while we often do not agree on particular movies (which, like, who cares), his opinions are often inspired. (He’s the only person I can text about Macedonian documentaries.) He sees EVERYTHING and I’m thrilled to share his look at the films of 2019 here today.

Movies are mostly good, okay?

Or I should say that if you’re not forced to watch movies for work (or a crippling desire to have opinions on the Oscars) and do some modicum of research before going the theater or pressing play, the large majority of movies you see will probably be enjoyable. So I was thrilled when my friend Jeff asked me write a few hundred words here about the movies of 2019, many of which I loved and am excited to share with you.

Before we get to that, however, I do believe Jeff would like me to talk a bit about JoJo Rabbit, a movie I don’t like. There exists a world in which I went into JoJo Rabbit before hearing it described (by its own advertising) as an “anti-hate satire,” mildly excited to see a Taika Waititi movie. Afterwards, I might have just thought the humor didn’t work for me (hell, the guy next to me in the theater thought it was hilarious). But “an anti-hate satire?” I hate it. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the worst stereotypes of Hollywood: self-congratulatory, ineffectual, meaningless. It’s a rejection of any political reality for the safest stance you could possibly take. Who wouldn’t be anti-hate? Even Joker, which in many ways I dislike even more, has the guts to be anti-austerity.  

I think Jeff might want me to talk about Richard Jewell too but, man. For a movie about the press dragging someone’s name through the dirt to drag a dead journalist’s name through the dirt, that’s some shit, huh? (It’s also, aside from Sam Rockwell’s normcore conspiracy cargo shorts and I guess the big Kathy Bates speech, an extremely boring movie).

Anyways, most movies are good, and two especially good ones this year were Mati Diop’s Atlantics and Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. I mention them together because they were somehow shot by the same cinematographer, Claire Mathon, in what surely has to be one of my favorite one-two same-year punches for a cinematographer in movie history. It’s especially impressive considering how different the movies look from each other. Atlantics leaves you with ghostly visions of laser-filled beach-side bars in Senegal, while Portrait is full of  painterly French landscapes. They’re both set against the backgrounds of remote oppression (patriarchy in the case of Portrait; global capitalism, and, yes, also patriarchy, in the case of Atlantics) and they’re both beautifully haunted love stories. Atlantics is on Netflix, and Portrait comes back to theaters this month after a brief qualifying run in December. They’re both extremely worth your time.

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There are two lessons to be learned from the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory.

(1)A great quarterback is the ultimate trump card.

(2) Sometimes it takes a while to find that guy.

Kansas City’s start with Andy Reid was similar to Chicago’s with Matt Nagy. Both exceeded expectations with a playoff appearance in the first year then disappointed the next year. Through two seasons, Andy Reid was 20-12 with Kansas City, the same mark Nagy has with the Bears.

What followed for Kansas City was a number of seasons in which they were quasi-contenders with records of 11-5 and 12-4, thanks largely to their top-10 defense.

While Reid was trying to get whatever he could out of the offense, their defense ranked fifth, second, third and seventh in points allowed his first four years. They were also top 10 in yardage two of those seasons and top 10 in takeaways three times. Even in 2017, when KC’s defense dropped to 15th in scoring and 28th in yards allowed, they were seventh in takeaways and eighth in takeaways in 2018 as their offense exploded.

While much of the focus is on fixing the Bears offense, the reality is their defense is still the key to winning in 2020 and they must buy more time for the offense to get right.

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I’ve been working my way through the Bears’ 2019 performance to see what changed from 2018 that caused them to slip from 12-4 to 8-8. Today, I want to look at explosive plays, which I found last season have a strong correlation to overall offensive performance.

There are a variety of definitions for explosive plays depending on who you ask, so I want to clarify I’m using parameters laid out by ESPN NFL Matchup, which counts any run that gains 15+ yards or pass that gains 20+ yards as explosive. Let’s start with a preliminary look at how the Bears did in 2019 relative to the rest of the NFL. All data is from Pro Football Reference, with explosive play information coming from the Game Play Finder. Pass percentages were calculated including sacks and pass attempts as pass plays.

That’s ugly.

If you want to compare to 2018, the Bears slipped across the board. They had 71 explosive plays in 2018, with explosive rates of 7% overall, 5.3% on runs, and 8.4% on passes. All of those numbers in 2018 were slightly below average, ranging from 18th to 21st in the league, while they are all bottom 2 in 2019.

So what happened to cause such a slump? Like I’ve done when evaluating both the running and passing games, I want to break down what it looks like for individual Bears players and/or position groups from season to season. That information is shown in the table below, with all cells formatted by 2018 / 2019 data. (I’ll note the pass rates are a bit higher for pass catchers than QBs because they are only out of targets and exclude sacks and throwaways.)

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Today, DBB is content free as we pause to celebrate the champions of the 2019 NFL season. We’ll return tomorrow.

You don’t have to wager a ton of money to have fun gambling on the Super Bowl. But the trick is to space out the bets across the game. That way, even if the game’s a bore, and many of them are, you’ll have something to keep you interested throughout. Here are five bets, all courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook.

Bet #1 -Coin Toss: Heads & Kansas City Chiefs (+255)

Why the hell not? (And this bet could be over before they even flip the coin!)

Bet #2 -Patrick Mahomes to Score TD & Chiefs Win (+650)

His running has started changing games because defenses are so afraid of his arm. The pressure from the Niners will be there so I expect Mahomes to take off more than usual. (And I’m all-in on Andy Reid winning this game.)

Bet #3 – George Kittle to Score a TD (+125)

Once Steve Spagnuolo and the Chiefs defense settles into this game, Jimmy G will be under pressure. That means he’ll be forced to get the ball out quickly and that means Kittle. Also, if this game gets away from San Francisco, I could see Kittle catching a million balls underneath deep coverage in garbage time.

Bet #4 -San Francisco to Win the First Quarter (+148)

The Chiefs don’t even wake up in these games until they’re down double digits.

Bet #5 -Total Over 54 Points (-110)

Who the hell roots for low-scoring Super Bowls? These games are only fun when there’s scoring. They’re not football games. They’re television shows. And television shows require action, especially because the experience always feels interminable. (The halftime show just never ends and it’s never good.) This game feels like it’s going to be way closer to Eagles/Patriots than Rams/Patriots.

If I’ve learned anything as a Bears fan these past few years, it’s the importance of choosing Patrick Mahomes.

The most important position in football, and arguably all of sports, is quarterback. A great one can lift an average team to considerable heights, while a bad one can bog down an otherwise elite squad in mediocrity.

Neither the San Francisco 49ers nor the Kansas City Chiefs have a bad quarterback, but only one team has a great one, and Patrick Mahomes gives the Chiefs the edge in Sunday’s Super Bowl match-up.

I expect the game to be a close one. The Niners are a very good team, with a dominant defense and strong run game. They should be able to limit some of the explosiveness of Kansas City’s offense. They breezed through their first two playoff games en route to the Super Bowl, however both the Vikings and Packers were better on paper than they ever were on the field.

In comparison the Chiefs had a more tumultuous path, going down 24-0 to Houston before scoring 28 unanswered points in the second quarter, and never looking back. And while it’s probably true the Chiefs caught a break in getting to play the Titans at home instead of traveling to Baltimore like initially predicted, you have to respect how they were able to completely neutralize Derrick Henry and the Titans’ versatile offense in ways that neither the Patriots or the Ravens could.

Kansas City’s defense isn’t as good as San Francisco’s, but they can get the job done, and I think they will benefit from a mistake or two by Garoppolo. The moment will get to him. He’s not a bad quarterback, by any means, but he’s not a star. He’s not Mahomes.

Mahomes is extraordinary. Gunslinger. Escape artist. Pleasure to watch. It’s possible he has an off day, because even the best do. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Take the Chiefs.

I’m very excited for this Super Bowl matchup between two of the best teams in the NFL. Here’s what I’ll be watching for on Sunday night.

When Kansas City Has the Ball

• I can’t wait to see Patrick Mahomes vs. San Francisco’s defense. The NFL’s best QB against the NFL’s best front 7. How can you not love that?
• San Francisco has played 4 games against the top 10 QBs in passer rating this year (Wilson 2x, Lamar Jackson, Drew Brees). 3 of the 4 averaged less than 7 yards per attempt, threw 2 or fewer TDs, and led their team to 27 or fewer points. San Francisco’s defense is really good.
• The 4th was Drew Brees, who averaged 8.7 yards/attempt, threw 5 TD, and put up 46 points. What did Brees do differently? He got rid of the ball before he could get hit. His average time to throw was 2.45 seconds, which was faster than any QB in the NFL as a whole this year (the other 3 were all over 2.7 seconds). As a result, Brees didn’t get sacked. This meant that he had to throw the ball short, with his average completion traveling only 5.1 yards past the line of scrimmage. Instead, he relied on his pass catchers to pick up yards after the catch, and they responded with an average of 6.9 YAC.
• Patrick Mahomes generally doesn’t get the ball out super fast; his average time to throw this year was 2.82 seconds, and it was 2.91 seconds in 2018. Yet he’s had 5 games in his career where the ball has come out in under 2.6 seconds, and his results there have been remarkable: 73% completion, 10.2 yards/attempt, 19 TD, 0 INT, and only 6 sacks on 198 dropbacks. His team has averaged 35 points per game in those contests too. If you want to get even pickier, he’s had 2 games getting the ball out in under 2.5 seconds: 79% completion, 11.5 yards/attempt, 9 TD, 0 INT, 1 sack. He’s capable of getting the ball out quickly and effectively, even if it’s not his preferred style.

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