Bears Trade Jordan Howard to Philadelphia
My Thoughts:
The league had a pass interference problem, more than any other piece of officiating. Bad pass interference calls were destroying the flow of the viewing experience and in many cases deciding game outcomes. That issue reached its peak in the NFC title game on the other side, with a no-calling putting the Rams in the Super Bowl.
Will this rule change – allowing PI to be challenged – extend games? Who cares? I can handle football games being 5 minutes longer if the calls are right. (And the networks could cut down commercials with ease and nobody would notice.) Will this rule change open the floodgates to challenging all penalties? No. Challenging a hold or a shift or something menial will be as difficult to overturn as challenging a spot. And if they allowing roughing the passer to be challenged, they’d be smart.
Just check out how video replay is working in the Premiere League. They’re getting calls right. It’s wonky, yes. Nobody is quite sure how to deal with the change in flow. But they’re getting calls right. That’s all that matters.
You should read all of Adam Jahns’ excellent conversation with Ted Phillips. But here’s a passage that shows why Ted is good at his job and has been instrumental in bringing these Bears back:
As Pace explained the positives — from Mack’s age to him playing a “need” position to his lack of baggage — Phillips said that trading for him started to make too much sense.
“I don’t need to have four committee meetings and let’s discuss it all,” Phillips said. “That’s why you have to have the right people in place.
“You have to be decisive. It wasn’t a long, drawn-out, lengthy discussion. Once I understood it all — because [Pace] never leaves a stone unturned, he’s very thorough — and when I hear it all, it’s, ‘Go get him.’ ”
And Pace did.
Jahns will be joining me for an extended conversation (podcast) in the coming week.
What better time for the Chicago Bears to reestablish their dominance with their oldest rivals than the opener of the 2019 season?
On Monday, the NFL officially announced the opening of the 2019 season, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the league with the Chicago Bears hosting the Green Bay Packers.
The Bears have a target on their backs throughout the 2019 offseason and the Packers are making the biggest surge. With a spending spree that included two pass rushers, a new starting guard and, of course, Adrian Amos, the Packers have already attacked some of their biggest weaknesses. With two first round picks and 10 selections overall in the draft next month, it isn’t hard to see a scenario in which their roster looks almost nothing like the sorry group they trotted out last year. All of that, of course, will go around quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
The Packers are trying to do what the Bears just did and the Rams did two years ago by winning their division in the first year of a new regime.
The Bears simply can’t let that happen.
Last year, Data Entry looked at wide receivers who found success in coach Matt Nagy’s offense in Kansas City and identified physical traits they all shared. When examining their Combine performance, all typically excelled at three drills:
Receivers who were targeted for that offense usually hit at least 2 of those 3 thresholds, with many of them hitting all 3. And this seemed to hold true in Chicago, as Allen Robinson, Anthony Miller, and Taylor Gabriel all hit at least 2 of 3 (it’s worth noting that Javon Wims hit 0 of 3, though a 7th round pick is far less of an investment than was put into the players listed above).
Though the Bears have far less of a need at the position this year than they did in 2018, it’s still not out of the realm of possibility they invest a later pick in somebody to improve positional depth, so let’s look to see who from this year’s crop matches the physical profile. As always, these test results are not a way to say how good or bad a wide receiver will be, but simply if they match the physical characteristics of previous players who have excelled in this offense.
There were 42 wide receivers who did tests at the Combine, and 17 of them hit all three thresholds. They are shown in the table below.
A few thoughts on this group:
2019 will be a different year for me on Twitter.
No more insulting David Haugh’s inability to produce an interesting paragraph. No more attacking Pro Football Focus’ misinformed player grades. No more fights with Greg Gabriel, especially after he’s engaged his evening Tito’s and tonic.
Twitter brings out the worst instincts in me as a writer and person. And I’m just gonna go back to ten years ago when only booze did that.
With that states, here are my five rules for social media, sports department.
Games are emotional events. And social media is no place to be when your emotions are revvin’ to seven. You’ll argue about things that don’t necessitate argument. You’ll allow a run call on third-and-one in the first quarter to enrage you, not understanding it’s setting up a beautifully-designed, play-action screen in the fourth, two hours later. You’ll end up making ridiculous (and wrong) proclamations that become featured by @OldTakesExposed or some feed like that.
In-game commentary is commentary without perspective. Commentary without perspective is often, if not exclusively, useless.
…because you don’t know a lot.
I have watched all-but-one Chicago Bears game since 2001.
I watch more than 100 NFL games a season. Way more. Not a point of pride. Just a fact.
A lot of games I watch multiple times. Often with All-22 tape. Sometimes in slow motion. Because I wake up at 4 AM.
And I have no idea what constitutes good guard play. Sure, I can see it when Kyle Long pancakes a guy or pulls outside and makes an important block downfield. But down-for-down I don’t know the assignments and am completely incapable of evaluating overall performance. That doesn’t just go for guards. It goes for safeties too. And a lot of linebacker stuff. And interior DL. And a majority of folks on specials.
I don’t know. And you don’t either. Admitting that fact is comforting.
The Bears have made a number of moves in free agency, and I want to use some advanced statistics to weigh in on their likely role on the roster and value to the team. We looked at the offense yesterday, and now will move to the defense, where the Bears will be replacing two starters.
Nickelback Bryce Callahan followed Vic Fangio to the Broncos, and the Bears replaced him with Buster Skrine, who was a bit cheaper ($5.5 million/year vs. $7 million/year) and has been a bit healthier (5 games missed vs. 12 games missed in last 3 years). According to The Quant Edge, both players have spent the majority of their time over the last three years at nickel, though Skrine has spent a bit more (roughly 30%, compared to 15%) playing outside.
The table below uses data from The Quant Edge to show how effective each player has been in coverage. In order to increase sample sizes, I looked at Skrine and Callahan cumulatively from 2016-18 (I’ll note this actually helped Callahan and hurt Skrine, lest I be accused of trying to skew the numbers in the Bears’ favor), and for context compared them to averaged 2018 stats from five other nickelbacks who are widely viewed as being quality players: Chris Harris, Aaron Colvin, Tavon Young, Nickell Robey-Coleman, and Justin Coleman.
Based on this data, it is pretty clear to see that Skrine is a downgrade from Callahan, but that is not to say he’s a bad player. Skrine gets targeted more frequently than other nickel CBs, but holds up to the targeting quite well. The only thing that really jumps out poorly there is the TD:INT ratio. Like Callahan, Skrine doesn’t really get many interceptions, and he has given up more scores than you would like to see.
The Bears have made a number of moves in free agency, and I want to use some statistics to weigh in on their likely role on the roster / value to the team. Let’s start with a look at the offense.
Davis has just 238 carries in 4 seasons so it was a little surprising to see the Bears move so quickly to sign him at the start of free agency. But a closer look reveals why they did so.
A few weeks ago I identified the typical physical profile of a running back in this offense, and Davis fits the bill, as you can see in the table below. Thresholds that he failed to hit are highlighted in red.
Davis matches the profile of backs who are usually targeted for this offense. He’s short but well built and has solid acceleration (as evidenced by the first 10 yards of the 40-yard dash) and explosion (as evidenced by the jumps). This doesn’t mean he’ll magically be a stud here after being a role player in San Francisco and Seattle, but it explains a little bit about why he was on the Bears’ radar.
Another way Davis fits is in terms of his skill set. Running backs in this offense are asked to do two things: run between the tackles and catch the ball out of the backfield. The table below shows how effective Davis was doing those compared to Jordan Howard in 2018, with both compared to Kareem Hunt as an ideal (on-field) back for this system. I highlighted cells in red when one running back stood out from the other two in a bad way, and green when one running back stood out in a good way.
A few thoughts:
When the Bears signed HaHa Clinton-Dix for roughly a third of what the Packers paid Adrian Amos, it was a great example of how teams on top stay on top.
Amos’ biggest fans have been the folks at Pro Football Focus. Through their various platforms, PFF raved about the Packers signing Amos and making him one of the ten highest-paid safeties in the league. But even they would have to admit there isn’t a very big difference between Amos and Clinton-Dix. The latter finished eighth in their silly ranking system last year and was their third-highest-ranked safety available in free agency.
While it’s safe to say nobody likes Amos more than PFF, it’s also safe to say they also quite like HHCD.
PFF doesn’t actually know how to grade safety play — or any other position, for that matter — so those grades are worthless. But, if they — the group that likes Amos more than anyone — think paying $9 million per year for him was a great move, what do they think of the Bears paying a player who is only slightly weaker $3.5 million?
We’d know, but PFF has been oddly quiet about the HHCD signing.
The Bears were really good in 2018, and are poised to be good for the next few years. The man responsible for that turnaround is Ryan Pace. He has used a combination of draft picks and free agents to assemble nearly the entirety of one of the most talented rosters in football.
But somehow Pace doesn’t get his due as one of the best general managers in the NFL, largely because he got a lot of bad press early on as he oversaw three necessary losing seasons to overhaul one of the oldest and worst rosters in the league. But I’m here to fix that today by highlighting just how good he’s been at the most important part of a GM’s job: drafting.
The premise of this study is simple enough: try to find a way to quantify how well teams have drafted since 2015. Of course, that’s easier said than done, because how do you quantify a draft? There is no one perfect metric to measure the success of a draft pick, so instead I used a bunch, hoping that they would combine overall to give us a clearer picture of draft success.
Here are the metrics I used, with a quick explainer for each:
Total data for every team (from Pro Football Reference) can be viewed below, with the teams placed in alphabetical order and average values for each metric on the bottom row.
