The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
This coaching staff, through eight games, has not been good. Here are the questions that should be asked when issuing a grade:
(1) Are they getting the most out of their offensive talent?
Absolutely not.
(2) Are they getting the most out of their defensive talent?
No, their deployment of linebackers has been misguided. There’s nothing they can do with the secondary.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
Special teams must be taken element for element…
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
Shea McClellin had a breakout game and broke his hand in practice the following week.
Jon Bostic had a breakout game and his back decided it had enough.
Darryl Sharpton had a breakout game and has been relegated to situational defense since for some reason.
Lance Briggs can’t stay on the field. D.J. Williams is a useful if unspectacular player in the middle. Khaseem Greene struggles as the Bears can’t find a position for him and the sample size is far too small to evaluate Christian Jones.
The unit as a whole deserves credit for helping to improve last year’s porous run defense and some blame for their struggles in coverage. But when a team has found themselves starting their fourth, fifth and sixth linebackers in a game how fair an evaluation can one actually provide?
Note: The Bears won’t do this but they should go full youth movement at the position over the second half of the season. Sit D.J. Williams. Sit Lance Briggs. Find out what you have in a combination of Sharpton, Bostic, Jones. Move McClellin around and see where, if anywhere, he can be most productive. Bears have eight games to learn what they have at linebacker for the next several years. To misuse that time would be a terrible mistake.
Keep reading to learn how bad the secondary has been!
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:
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
This is a tale of two units.
At defensive tackle the Bears have a pair of excellent starters. If Jay Ratliff did not miss time with a concussion who knows how productive a campaign he could be enjoying. But his performance in the first half against the Miami Dolphins was one of the most dominant I’ve seen by a defensive tackle in years. Stephen Paea has endured (and I’m sure it’s pained him) endless criticism on this page alone over the duration of his career but this year he’s been week-in and week-out the Bears most reliable and impacting defensive lineman.
It also seems Phil Emery found two solid tackles in the draft. Both Ego Ferguson and Will Sutton, when they’ve gotten on the field, have jumped off the screen and made plays. Are they going to be every down starters in the years to come? I wouldn’t bet against it.
Evidence the defensive tackles have been the Bears most improved unit? A year ago the Bears ranked 32nd in the league against the run allowing 161.4 yards per game. This year they are ranked 13th, allowing only 110.1 per. That is a massive turnaround and it sure can’t be credited to what’s happening behind them.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
Here is what we expected from the offensive line coming into the 2014 season: Bushrod, Slauson, Garza, Long, Mills. The sturdiness and dependability of these five men in 2013 was a key to the club’s offensive resurgence. Yes, Mills was a weaker link but Trestman and Kromer protected him brilliantly with a combination of actual tight ends and Even Britton lined up as a de facto tight end.
It is hard to judge this group on eight games of odd configurations. Bushrod missed time and was replaced by a player (Ola) with no business playing left tackle in the NFL. Slauson will have a lost season and is, in my opinion, the Bears best offensive lineman. Garza missed a ton and while the transition to de la Puente felt seamless, the Bears certainly missed his comfort and leadership along the line. Mills has continued to struggle but injury has not allowed the Bears to provide the protection of a year ago.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
The biggest issue with grading this group? Once Forte is taken out of the mix there are only three players who can even receive a grade.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
If the Chicago Bears were 5-3 instead of 3-5 there would be pronounced, serious support for Matt Forte as the league’s most valuable player. He’s second in the league in receptions. He’s got over 1,000 yards from scrimmage. He’s got 6 touchdowns. Most importantly he has put the Bears offense on his back. They are the twentieth ranked scoring offense in the league. Without him they would probably be dead last…by a wide margin.
The following is part of a series of position-by-position breakdowns at the halftime point of the 2014 season.
The most controversial, frustrating and enigmatic player on the Bears roster has been controversial, frustrating an enigmatic. If one just looked at his numbers, one would be impressed as Cutler is well on-pace to record the greatest quarterbacking season in the history of the organization. (On pace stats are silly but Cutler’s would be 67.2%-almost 4,200 yards-34 touchdowns-16 interceptions-95.8 rating.) But he’s turned the ball over far too much, especially losing fumbles with poor ball security, and his interceptions at the ends of the Buffalo and Carolina games were crippling.
Worst of all is Cutler seems lost in the offense. The constant stream of useless flat routes don’t play to his strengths. The quick-drop, quick-release approach that defined Marc Trestman’s Raiders unit under Rich Gannon have been replaced by the all-too-common Cutler stands in the pocket for a few moments and flings the ball into coverage. And how many times has Cutler sent a pass into a space, expecting a receiver to be there and been intercepted? If it were not for the reliability of Matt Forte one would not be remiss to wonder if this offense would score any points at all.
It was infuriating to watch the Bears play the Dolphins a week ago. They lacked passion at Soldier Field that Sunday. They lacked guts. There is no more difficult experience for a sports fan than believing you – with a wing-sauce soaked beard and Guinness-foamed mustache – care more about the outcome of your team’s contest than the team itself. (This is the case far more often than fans know.)
There was nothing infuriating about yesterday’s embarrassment at Foxboro. It is impossible to be angry about a result so predictable. The Bears coaching staff was shown just how far they are from being able to compete mentally with the elite coaching staffs in the sport. The Bears players, especially their stars, were shown how stars are meant to perform on the grand stage of the NFL Sunday. The Bears general manager was forced to sit through another sixty minutes of his prized free agents, $15M of defensive end this season, donned their invisibility cloaks for the eighth consecutive week. Lamarr Houston removed his cloak just long enough to put the punctuation mark on this shambolic sentence.
The Bears right now are the most lethal combination in sports. They have star players not performing to their potential and a coaching staff unable to elevate the play of lesser talent. Calling them mediocre would be an insult to mediocrity.
