Prediction Two

Eddie Goldman will make the Pro Bowl.

Why?

• Goldman is the most underrated player on this roster because he plays one of the game’s least flashy positions. It is difficult for monstrous blocker eaters to make the Pro Bowl or win awards because they don’t light up the stat sheet. So a secondary part of this prediction is Goldman will get to 7 sacks on the season, just 1.5 shy of his career total.
• The league slept on Akiem Hicks a year ago. That won’t be the case in 2018 so it shouldn’t be surprising if opposing offensive coordinators scheme Hicks out of games. Chicago’s lack of rush prowess off the edge should make this a forgone conclusion. Goldman will have the opportunity to dominate.
• Nose tackles take time to hit their stride in the NFL. It took until his fifth season in the league for Haloti Ngata to mount a five-sack campaign. He went on to mount three straight, elevating his status in the league dramatically. It’ll only take Goldman until his fourth season to start climbing the league’s respect ladder.

Skipping the 50 Bold Predictions column this year. Too much work for too little payoff. Instead this space will be focused on predictions for this vintage of the Chicago Bears over the coming days.

Prediction One

Trey Burton will break Martellus Bennett’s single-season catch record for a TE by catching 92 passes.

Why?

• The Andy Reid / Doug Pederson / Matt Nagy offense is often referred to as tight end heavy but that’s also been due to a string of terrific tight ends coming through their systems. Burton has spent time in this system, Nagy knows what he’s getting and Mitch Trubisky will rely on the tight end heavily in his first year navigating a professional offense.
• No player had excited this coaching staff more than Adam Shaheen. I’d been hearing glowing things about him since the spring and he was poised for a monster year, especially in the red zone. Shaheen’s absence – which I believe will be substantial – should provide even more opportunities for Burton.
• Burton can block. He can block quite well. Which means he’ll stay in the game for short-yardage and goal line situations. It means he’ll not only stand up outside but he’ll also play off the tackle. More opportunities.

Season line: 92 catches, 1,118 yards, 7 touchdowns.

[Editor’s note: Yep, allowing a fantasy column.]

For the first time since fantasy football became truly popular, the Chicago Bears actually have some interesting players.

The Bears have had players who have been highly drafted before, but there was never any debate about them. You wanted Matt Forte, Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery and Martellus Bennett. It was pretty easy. This year there is actually a debate about which Bears to take and when.

Below is a short guide for how you should fill your fantasy roster with Bears:

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There was a time, when I was a younger man, I would have taken David “Blue Moon” Haugh’s latest exercise in journalistic futility and dissected every single sentence, right down to the incorrect placement of punctuation. I would have shown you that not only was the work devoid of intellectual competence, but also another shining example of why it’s not a wise idea to hire someone for a writer’s position who isn’t good at writing. Haugh’s greatest crime is not his transparent attempts to write his blowhard nonsense into a daily spot on Around the Horn. No, his greatest crime is against the English language itself. That the same newspaper can employ both Blue Moon and the great Rick “Drinks Like an Actual Man” Pearson blows my fucking mind daily.

But I am not that younger man. If you haven’t read Haugh’s take on head coach Matt Nagy’s decision to bench his starters for the team’s fourth practice game, don’t. There will be no link provided here and don’t waste a valuable minute of your life searching it out. Instead, read a few chapters of John McCain’s wonderful book Faith of My Fathers or Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues or some classic Royko columns being run in the Sun-Times. Hell, just read anything else.

What Matt Nagy achieved this weekend, in a practice game, was somewhat extraordinary.

Forget the result. The result means nothing. Nobody in their right mind believes the second units of the Chicago Bears are better than the first units of the Kansas City Chiefs, a playoff team a year ago. Nobody in their right mind believes Chase Daniel is a rare combination of Joe Montana’s accuracy and Steve Young’s elusiveness. Nobody in their right mind believes anything they see on the preseason field, except Denny Green of course, but was he ever in his right mind?

So what mattered?

Team Building

While Dan Pompei believed Nagy’s decision to rest players sent “the wrong message” and was an example of coaching “scared”, the sideline reflected the exact opposite.

Mitch Trubisky was the game’s loudest cheerleader, especially when it came to the play of his backup. The starters erupted in support of Kevin White’s first touchdown in a Bears uniform. Players like Danny Trevathan and Tarik Cohen were seen rushing to greet their teammates as they came off the field from a successful drive. These guys were engaged and excited. Why?

Because NFL starters, especially veterans, don’t want to play in these games. They don’t want to risk their long-term financial security in physical contests that count neither in the standings nor in the stat column that ultimately determines how many zeroes are on their paychecks.

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LAKE FOREST, IL – MAY 16: Chicago Bears wide receiver Marlon Brown (81) participates during the Bears OTA session on May 16, 2018 at Halas Hall, in Lake Forest, IL. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire)

Twitter exploded with the news that Matt Nagy was putting his entire roster on the bench. Hell, even Josh Bellamy got the afternoon off. But who types primarily with his middle fingers and is happier than a clam about the news? This guy.

• Matt Nagy’s decision to sit the bulk of his starting lineup isn’t bold or brilliant. It’s practical. He’d rather his first units be a little bit rusty on opening night than be without any of their best players. Even this idea is kind of kooky because the Bears are still fifteen days from their first real game. How could 25 snaps in the preseason carryover for half a month? That’s not how football works.
• Why is Nick Kwiatkoski starting? Perhaps because he’s not the starting ILB? Kwik has had a good summer but he’s simply not in the same athletic stratosphere as Roquan Smith. Expect the Bears to spend the next two weeks getting their number one pick ready for Green Bay.
• Marlon Brown’s downfield block was the key to the opening drive Benny Cunningham TD. And it continues Brown’s strong summer. Hate to make everything about Kevin White but it just feels like his relevance is sliding continually as players like Brown show versatility.
• Chase Daniel has really gotten better each time I’ve seen him this preseason. Looks poised. But his legs were damn impressive against Kansas City’s first-team defense.
• Kylie Fitts has found himself one-on-one with the opposing quarterback, in the backfield, several times this preseason. The QB has escaped each time. That Fitts is in position to make big plays is a good thing. That he’s not making will land him on the practice squad. (Update: Later in the game, against some QB I’ve never heard of, Fitts finished a play.)

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Photo: John Rieger, USA TODAY Sports

Tomorrow the preseason ends. After the Bears leave Soldier Field all eyes point to Green Bay and the opener. A few thoughts.

• There’s a laundry list of players that should see extremely limited duty tomorrow but why would the Bears put Kyle Long or Trey Burton out there for a single second? Both players looked in mid-season form against the Broncos and clearly don’t need “these crucial reps”. Long’s injury history would always dictate a cautious approach. Injuries behind Burton on the depth chart make his availability Week One even more essential. Give these boys the weekend off.
• It will be somewhat interesting to see who the Bears start on the edges. Leonard Floyd certainly won’t play. Aaron Lynch is AWOL. The dearth of talent at one of the most important positions in the sport will be wildly on display early in this ball game, especially with Akiem Hicks surely not suiting up again until September 9th. Will the Bears have any capable pass rushers on the field tomorrow?
• Never understood why teams don’t start their backup quarterback in this third practice game. How many opportunities do you have to give your backup experience with the starting OL/skill guys against an opponent’s top defensive unit? Mitch Trubisky entered the 2017 season a month into it and had no relationship with the guys catching his passes. Why not give Chase Daniel – who may be called upon to save a game or even a season – the opportunity to develop some of those relationships?

One day more. And then we finally start discussing real football.

Nobody has yet named this “lowering the helmet” penalty. But soon, most likely on Sunday September 9th, it is going to cost an NFL team a game.

The Edison Park Pirates are going to be driving the football, down 6, late in the fourth quarter. On 4th-and-8 they’re going to complete a seven-yard pass and the tackler, the best safety on the Naperville Nincompoops, is going be flagged for lowering his helmet while tackling with his shoulder. The drive will be extended. The outcome changed. Pirates win. And this flag will be the lead story on every sports radio station in the country Monday morning.

Many have argued the uproar over this penalty is overblown, with only 1.5 flags being thrown for it per game over the first two weeks of the preseason. But the quantity of the calls is not the issue. It’s the egregious nature of the fouls themselves. The NFL has clearly heard the complaints because last Sunday they sent several of their media mouthpieces out to the public with new information.

ESPN’s Dan Graziano:

…NFL is looking at a “probable three-year” adjustment period for the new helmet rule, will continue updating its teaching video for officials, coaches and players. League is going with this, period. Everyone needs to deal.

Graziano went on and on about how it’s perfectly fine to have a rule the league doesn’t know how to legislate in the short-term as long as they figure out how to legislate it down the road. Make sense? Of course it doesn’t make sense. Football player Richard Sherman responded:

There is no “make adjustment” to the way you tackle. Even in a perfect form tackle the body is led by the head. The rule is idiotic And should be dismissed immediately. When you watch rugby players tackle they are still lead by their head.

The NFL invented this rule for one reason: they are desperate to show the world their sport is NOT gladiators in the arena, with spectators marveling at the spectacle and not particularly caring about the health and safety of the combatants. They must give the appearance of caring about “player safety”.

It is yet another example of Roger Goodell, the worst commissioner in professional sports, leading this sport down a dirt road to nowhere. Great commissioners are defined by how forward-thinking they are, how they can see what’s coming for their sports 2-3 years before it happens. They are also judged by how they handle controversies, on and off the playing surface. In both regards, Goodell is a remarkable failure.

Just look at the breadth of his incompetence.

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While fans debate far-fetched trade scenarios for former first-round picks like Khalil Mack, Dante Fowler and Shane Ray, the player they’re most likely going to need to pick up the slack is a former undrafted rookie free agent with just two career sacks.

Everything that happens in the preseason has to come with the caveat that it is just preseason, but it was hard to ignore Roy Robertson-Harris fork-lifting a pretty good guard in Ronald Leary before discarding him and sacking Case Keenum. It wasn’t the first time we’ve seen such a move by Robertson-Harris and there figures to be plenty more to come.

According to NFL Game Statistics and Information System, Robertson-Harris is second amongst all NFL players this preseason with 3.5 sacks and 6 quarterback hits. It  should be noted that Robertson-Harris has played quite a few snaps and not always against starters.

Still, he’s doing all they can ask, consistently getting pressure regardless of who is lining up against him. And he’s doing it while playing a position that we don’t usually see pass rushers play.

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