Under Ryan Pace, the Bears have always tried to give themselves multiple options on draft weekend by filling roster holes in free agency. That approach held true earlier this week as the team signed two veteran options at running back. Mike Davis isn’t a household name. Most probably wouldn’t consider Cordarrelle Patterson a running back. But the two men give the Bears needed flexibility at a pivotal position.

In an ideal world, the Bears would’ve replaced Jordan Howard and Taquan Mizzell with one player – an all-purpose back who can pound between the tackles and beat linebackers in the passing game. They still might find that guy in the draft, but now, with these acquisitions, they don’t have to.

Davis is a stocky runner with a low center of gravity. He can work between the tackles and bounce runs outside, a trait that makes him a much better fit for this running scheme than Howard. Davis also is a capable receiver, which could help him stay on the field.

But Davis didn’t sign a contract that guaranteed he’d be the starter or even get a majority of the snaps. He signed a contract to compete. Who he’s competing with remains to be seen.

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Cordarrelle Patterson, WR/RB/KR

• The Bears needed someone to be their kick returner. Yes, the position has been devalued in recent years but no team was worse returning the kickoff in 2018 than the Bears. They were THIRTEEN yards worse than the league’s best kickoff return average. That’s astronomical.
• Patterson is a toy on offense. He’ll run some jet sweeps. He’s run some deep stuff. He can even spell the tailbacks. He’s the kind of player that presents match-up problems for the opposing defensive coordinator.
• This is a player you add when you think you’re close to winning a title. This is a “final piece” type move. This is a move designed to get a big third down in a division game in December.

Buster Skrine, CB

• From Adam Jahns on Twitter: “Matt Nagy in October on nickel back Buster Skrine, who is now expected to be signed: “He’s one of the better nickels in this league, if not the best. I mean, he’s good. He’s a good nickel in there.”
• Skrine commits penalties because – like Prince Amukamara – he plays with his hands. But having watched a ton of Jets football (every one of their games) many of Skrine’s penalties are committed when he’s asked to cover for too long. The Jets had no pass rush for two years. It happened a lot. It won’t in Chicago.
• His greatest value in a Chuck Pagano defense might be his ability to get to the quarterback from the slot.

Mike Davis, RB

• He’s not Taquan Mizzell

Bears fans are in unfamiliar territory.

For the first time in a long time, they are in position to lose more than they gain in free agency. And it’ll be that way the next few years. This is a good thing, as it means the Bears have finally been drafting well and now have enough talent that they can’t afford to keep everybody.

With that in mind, it’s time to pay attention to compensatory draft picks, a confusing program the NFL runs to reward teams like the Bears that lose talented players in free agency. The general idea here is teams who lose more valuable free agents than they bring in get additional draft picks in the following draft. So the Bears could be looking at compensatory picks in 2020 based on what happens this month with Adrian Amos, Bryce Callahan, and Aaron Lynch.

The Bears haven’t had a compensatory pick since 2009 so it’s understandable if many Bears fans aren’t super familiar with how they work. The exact NFL formula for them is a secret, but some people have done really good work tracking them over the years and figuring the general process out. If you’re really interested, here’s the best detailed breakdown I could find, but for now I’m going to give a primer and go over the basics.

Where The Picks Are

For the very basics, let’s start with where compensatory picks fall in the draft. Nobody is getting an extra 1st round pick based on losing a valuable free agent, so don’t hold your breath there.

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A Note on This Site Moving Forward

Many of you have noticed that the family of DBB has grown substantially in recent times. There are many reasons for this but primary among them is this: these guys are good. Andrew’s fiery columns change the tone around here. Wood’s data-driven analysis is not only unique to this blog but unique to the entirety of the Bears-writing landscape. And now Bill Zimmerman, a professional in the sports radio business, is going to provide expert podcasts.

But I’m not going anywhere, folks. Because when the fans of the Chicago Bears are gearing up for a huge division tilt late in the season, SOMEONE has to provide a silly limerick at the top of their game preview.

Tweet of the Week

A Message from Alex Trebek: pic.twitter.com/LbxcIyeTCF

— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) March 6, 2019

Video of the Week

This might be my favorite Trebek sequence in the history of Jeopardy. And I’ve watched more hours of Jeopardy than any other TV program by a wide margin. (It’s football, so watch it.)

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Bill speaks with Jim Miller on:

• Mitch Trubisky’s development and what he should work on for next season.
• Jordan Howard’s struggles and if he’ll be moved.
• Review of the NFL Combine with some draft names to watch for the Bears at running back and in the secondary.
• Preview of NFL free agency and what the Bears should do.  Kyler Murray vs Josh Rosen vs Dwayne Haskins…who would he take?
• Plus, Bill’s thoughts on Amos, Callahan, the running game and all.

Bill Zimmerman is going to be DBB’s podcast guy moving forward through 2019. I’ll still have the occasional conversation with Adam Jahns (and record them) and force Reverend Dave’s bullshit upon you. But ultimately, I’m going back to writing and editing and letting a broadcast professional handle the broadcasting.

Bill is the Executive Producer of Mad Dog Radio at SiriusXM. And he’s good at this. Here is his excellent work from Super Bowl week with Mitch Trubisky, Akiem Hicks, Allen Robinson and Trey Burton.

(And the logo on the podcast will be changing moving forward.)

By Andrew Link

In part 2 of this crossover series (that nobody asked for), Johnathan Wood and I will take you on a journey of expectations for the third-year Bears quarterback. As discussed in part 1, Mitch Trubisky has struggled with the deep ball. There were a myriad of reasons why but the gist of it is this: Trubisky was below league average, threw almost as many deep passes as anyone in the NFL, and for this offense to take a leap in 2019, that particular portion of the game needs to improve.

Esteemed data man Johnathan Wood has come up with some theories of his own and you can read about those here. And I urge everyone to go and read the full article at Da Bears Blog. But for the sake of simplicity, I will take a few excerpts from said article and share those with you all.

To approach this from a statistics perspective, I used the Pro Football Reference Game Play Finder to break up raw passing statistics into deep (15+ yards down the field) and short (<15 yards past the line of scrimmage). I looked at 19 quarterbacks who were starters in 2018 and had been playing consistently for at least 4 years (full data here). I’ll note that data for deep passes only goes back through 2008, so that’s as far back as I was able to go for QBs who have played longer than that.

Here’s what I found: while some quarterbacks are certainly better deep passers than others, the amount of year-to-year variability for each quarterback is greater for deep passes than short passes. That can be measured through the standard deviation for each quarterback, which expresses how much they vary from year to year in a given statistic (bigger number = more fluctuation). I found this for each quarterback for the main passing statistics, both short and deep, and then averaged them together for all 19 quarterbacks in each category. The results can be seen in the table below.

Pay particular attention to the ratio. That’s a rough measure of how much more variable deep passing statistics are to short ones for a given quarterback from year to year. Yards per attempt and interception percentage are both more than 4 times as variable for deep passes as short ones. That is excellent news for Bears fans, given Mitchell Trubisky’s high interception rate on deep passes in 2018.

I found this to be interesting. This makes sense to a point. Surely throwing the ball deep is going to have some level of pure luck, and as you will see in the videos, there is certainly an element of luck to it. It also makes sense that the deeper the throw, the farther off-target misthrown balls will be. Imagine being able to hit your driver 320 yards and being off by a few degrees. A much larger margin of error than say, someone who hits their 3 wood 230 yards.

Worthy Adversaries

But luck can’t be everything, can it? There has to be more to it than that. I decided to look at some of the other quarterbacks in the league to see what I can key on as areas of improvement for Trubisky as he heads into his 2nd year under head coach and playcaller Matt Nagy. I scoured the tape of some of the best deep ball artists in the NFL: Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and Russell Wilson.

Disclaimer: This second part took so long to produce because I became violently ill after watching so many plays of Aaron Rodgers wearing those horrible yellow uniforms. I am feeling better now, thanks for asking.

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This is part of a series of collaborations between film guru Andrew Link of Windy City Gridiron and stats guy Johnathan Wood of DaBearsBlog. We’re excited to be working together to bring fans of both sites great content by combining our approaches.

Last time, we identified deep passes as the main thing Mitchell Trubisky struggled with in 2018, and broke down film to see why that happened. Despite making up less than 25% of his pass attempts, 75% of Trubisky’s interceptions came on deep balls, and his completion percentage on those throws was well below the league average as he missed a lot of open targets.

This week, we want to again use stats and film to see why that may or may not improve going forward.

Highly Variable

To approach this from a statistics perspective, I used the Pro Football Reference Game Play Finder to break up raw passing statistics into:

• Deep (15+ yards down the field)
• Short (<15 yards past the line of scrimmage)

I looked at 19 quarterbacks who were starters in 2018 and had been playing consistently for at least 4 years (full data here). I’ll note that data for deep passes only goes back through 2008, so that’s as far back as I was able to go for QBs who have played longer than that.

Here’s what I found: while some quarterbacks are certainly better deep passers than others, the amount of year-to-year variability for each quarterback is greater for deep passes than short passes. That can be measured through the standard deviation for each quarterback, which expresses how much they vary from year to year in a given statistic (bigger number = more fluctuation). I found this for each quarterback for the main passing statistics, both short and deep, and then averaged them for all 19 quarterbacks in each category. The results can be seen in the table below.

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As NFL teams leave the Combine in Indianapolis, the NFL offseason is about to ramp up. A brief timeline of what’s happening in the next two months:

• Now: teams manage their current roster, finishing up cutting and re-signing their own players to make sure they’re under the salary cap before…
• March 13: free agency begins. Teams must stay under the cap at this point, and they can officially sign players from other teams who are not under contract.
• April 25-27: NFL draft.

Since we are just a few weeks away from the six-week period that features the main roster improvement time of the offseason, it’s a good time to take stock of where the Bears are at.

Current Roster

Let’s start by looking at players they already have under contract. A rough depth chart for that is shown below; players who have not played meaningfully in the NFL are not included. I should also note that I included the Bears’ 4 exclusive rights free agents, because those players are all but under contract unless the Bears decide not to sign them (equivalent to cutting a player currently under contract).

Areas to Improve

Now let’s take a closer look at that roster to see what areas need to be cleaned up, ranked roughly from most-to-least pressing.

• Nickel cornerback. Sherrick McManis filled in admirably after Bryce Callahan got hurt last year, but he’s a 31 year old career special teamer for a reason. I’d feel much better about this position group, both in terms of starters and depth, if a new starter at nickel was signed and McManis slots in to a backup role next to Kevin Toliver.

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