The panther rises.

Born in the City of Love

(Brotherly, that is)

The “Justin debate”

Rages across the socials.

Silence is coming.

Expectations rise,

in a weakened division

Believe in these Bears.

This is the slowest period of the NFL season, and it’s a welcome respite from what has become a ten-month onslaught of content. Here are some links for a nice spring Friday.

• NBC SPORTS: A.Q. Shipley is a huge fan of Darnell Wright, and there’s one big reason why: attitude.
• BIGGS: There’s not a ton of news in this Brad Biggs Q&A with Gervon Dexter, but it’s interesting nevertheless.
• You know it’s a slow news cycle when Roschon Johnson wearing a Bears sweater last year at Texas warrants a stand-alone “news” story.
• ACTUAL BEAR NEWS: Sometimes the headline does all the work for you. “Bear spotted with waders in mouth may have eaten angler” is one of those headlines. (Spoiler alert: The bear ate the angler.)
• ARLINGTON HEIGHTS.
  • If the Bears want their project in the burbs to come to fruition, it’s going to need legislative support. That legislative support is not going to happen in this session, per Larry Hawley.
  • The Sun-Times is suggesting that, perhaps, the Bears don’t have the political support they need.
• Interested in reading about the NFL’s Marxist economic paradox? Here is my literary review of Michael Oriard’s terrific Brand NFL: Making and Selling America’s Favorite Sport. Brand NFL Literary Review_Final
• HOGE & JAHNS: I didn’t realize these guys were even putting their podcast on YouTube, because I don’t notice a lot of things. Here is their schedule release reaction.

Criticism of Ryan Poles’ first year is arguably warranted. Not only did he construct the worst team in the league, but the Bears didn’t come away with a clear answer on if Justin Fields is the franchise quarterback. This offseason, however, should remedy both issues. The key will be two Poles evaluations: Fields and head Matt Eberflus. The good news is there’s reason for optimism in both cases.

From Weeks 4 to 16, Fields was 10th amongst quarterbacks in EPA per play. While that takes into account his rushing totals, why wouldn’t one take that into account? In that time span, Fields had a passer rating of 95, while putting up per game averages that would equate to more than 4,300 total yards and 33 touchdowns. It doesn’t really matter how he got the yards and touchdowns; it all counts the same.

25 was an all pro return man. Fields broke his ankles before blowing past the rest of the defense for a long TD run.

I know discounting this and looking solely at passing volume numbers is the current trend, but…man… pic.twitter.com/0yi2N7c3WG

— Andrew Dannehy (@ADannehy) May 16, 2023

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Protection improvements, as well as the addition of DJ Moore, should help Fields as a passer. And while fans may have to accept that Fields is unlikely to ever become Patrick Mahomes from the pocket, he has shown enough to think he can be along the lines of Jalen Hurts.

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It is an incredibly silly exercise to project wins and losses when a schedule is released but that doesn’t stop the whole of social media from doing just that. Here are some thoughts on the schedule overall.

• The bye comes at the perfect point in the season for a young team. They will be off the first week in December and follow that break with three of their final five at home, against Detroit, Arizona and Atlanta. If Chicago Bears want to build momentum for the 2024 season, a season where they should be expected to compete for January football, the schedule makers did them serious favors.
• Realistically, the Bears would be in position to have a successful 2023 campaign if they’re hovering around .500 at their bye.
• It *looks like* DBB will be eschewing our love for the New York City Marathon and venturing to New Orleans for Bears at Saints on November 5th. We could be hosting a fan meet-up somewhere OUTSIDE of the Quarter so stay tuned. (This will most likely be at The Beaded Oak in the Garden District.)
• Still want to see the league move away from these divisional matchups in the opening weeks. With so little contact all summer and nobody playing the practice games, it makes no sense to have games that matter so much so early. Start the season with a month of non-conference games.
• When is the last time the team with the first pick in the draft had four primetime games the following season? If the Chicago Bears were ever a consistently good club, they’d have double digit games in front of a national audience.
• The Thursday Night Football structure is…interesting. They’ll play Washington (without a quarterback) and Carolina (with a tiny quarterback) on short weeks, and then have mini byes before divisional matchups with Minnesota and Detroit. It’s odd but I think the Bears probably like how this shook out.
• For weeks, after Chiefs/Bears in Germany was leaked, I stressed that I didn’t believe the report. Why? I was told by someone who knows that Kansas City received numerous complaints from their local hospitality partners about the potential loss of the Chicago tourist horde. Folks don’t understand how important these relationships are in the smaller markets. New York, Chicago, New Orleans don’t care. They don’t need tourists. Kansas City is a football destination, and it is no coincidence that they are playing Miami – with one of the notoriously invisible fan bases in the league – in Frankfurt.
• I’m breaking the schedule into the following sections and will use these as evaluative check points during the season. You’ll notice the third section is short but I’m structuring this around moments in the season where the Bears will be able to self-evaluate and make adjustments.
  • Section I: home Packers, at Bucs, at Chiefs, home Broncos, at Commanders (TNF)
  • Section II: home Vikings, home Raiders, at Chargers, at Saints, home Panthers (TNF)
  • Section III: at Lions, at Vikings (MNF), Bye
  • Section IV: home Lions, at Browns, home Cardinals, home Falcons, at Packers

We asked people on Broadway to help us with our 2023 schedule release.

: 2023 Schedule Release on @nflnetwork pic.twitter.com/31LsUUDn3O

— Tennessee Titans (@Titans) May 12, 2023

Today is the last of eight articles taking a closer look at Justin Fields’ 2022 season.

• Part 1: Comparison to rookie season and growth throughout 2022
• Part 2: Where and how effectively Fields threw the ball.
• Part 3: How Fields did on different types of plays (play action, quick vs. slow developing).
• Part 4: How often Fields was under pressure, and who was to blame.
• Part 5: How Fields performed under pressure.
• Part 6: How efficiently Fields produced explosive plays.
• Part 7: How Fields did against man and zone.
• Part 8: Fields’ future outlook.

Lessons Learned

Let’s start with a brief recap of some of the main takeaways from the series so far:

• Fields experienced moderate growth as a passer from his rookie season but did not make “the leap” that you typically see from great quarterbacks in year two.
• Fields shows very clear strengths (throwing the ball deep, running) and weaknesses (short, quick passes and taking too many sacks). This leads to plenty of big plays but also far too many negative ones.
• Evaluating Fields becomes difficult due to the poor supporting cast around him.
  • This especially showed up with the offensive line in the pressure data. Fields is always going to be a quarterback who holds the ball for a bit longer than most, meaning that he is particularly dependent on a quality offensive line to make that style work.
  • This showed up most clearly with the pass catchers when looking at how bad Chicago’s non-Mooney WRs were against man coverage. Nobody else was able to get open, and Chicago’s entire offense suffered as a result.

Year Three Growth

Now let’s look at how Fields compares to a trio of recent QBs who had year three breakouts: Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, and Josh Allen. The table below shows their statistics in year two vs. year three of their careers, and Justin Fields’ data for year two in 2022.

A few thoughts:

• Looking at the other three QBs, I don’t think Tua Tagovailoa is a very good comparison. He doesn’t use his legs much and is generally a shorter passer with a high completion percentage. His year three breakout was driven by a new coach/offense and pushing the ball deeper (his average target depth increased from 7.0 yards to 9.6 yards), and none of that is related to Fields.
• Hurts and Allen, on the other hand, are pretty similar stylistically to Fields in that they hold the ball longer and push the ball down the field, which generally results in a lower completion percentage. Their year two stats line up pretty well with Fields’, with the exception of Fields being sacked significantly more.
  • Improvement for both in year three coincided with them taking more of the easy stuff. According to PFF, Allen and Hurts both increased their rate of short throws (54% to 58% for Allen, 52% to 61% for Hurts) and decreased their deep shots (15% to 13% for Allen, 16% to 13% for Hurts). They didn’t completely change their play style but became a bit more willing to take the easy yards underneath, which helped them complete more passes, gain more yards per attempt, and avoid more interceptions. Fields had a similar year 2 passing profile (55% passes behind the line or short, 16% deep), and he should look to make those same changes in 2023.
  • Hurts and Allen both saw their rushing efficiency decrease in year three compared to year two, which is also a reasonable expectation for Fields after his rushing came close to setting NFL records last year. This study found that running QBs often see passing efficiency improve in year three, and that these QBs become less dependent on needing to use their legs as they become more effective through the air.

Read More …

Today is the seventh of eight articles taking a closer look at Justin Fields’ 2022 season.

• Part 1: Comparison to rookie season and growth throughout 2022
• Part 2: Where and how effectively Fields threw the ball.
• Part 3: How Fields did on different types of plays (play action, quick vs. slow developing).
• Part 4: How often Fields was under pressure, and who was to blame.
• Part 5: How Fields performed under pressure.
• Part 6: How efficiently Fields produced explosive plays.
• Part 7: How Fields did against man and zone.
• Part 8: Fields’ future outlook.

All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted, and Fields’ stats are only from week 5 on, as was explained in part one of this series.

General Overview

Let’s start with a general look at how Fields performed against man and zone coverage in 2022.

Before we get into the data, a quick caveat: PFF doesn’t publicly show this data by QB, but instead by pass catcher. I manually compiled it team by team to do comparisons, but it doesn’t include all throws. This accounts for roughly 90% of Fields’ total pass attempts. For the Bears, this data is only for the 11 games Fields started and played the majority of from Week 5 on.

With that said, the table below shows how Fields fared throwing against both man and zone compared to the NFL average (I couldn’t do the usual NFL high/medium/low since this wasn’t split up by QB). YBC = yards before catch, YAC = yards after catch.

A few thoughts:

• First, the Bears saw a bit more zone coverage than was typical in the NFL last year. That makes sense given Fields’ running abilities, as zone will leave more defenders watching the QB and able to flow to the ball if he takes off.
• Looking at the NFL averages, you can see that zone coverages generally give up more completions and yards per attempt but allow fewer touchdowns and result in more interceptions.
  • That was especially true for Fields, who threw more interceptions than touchdowns against zone but picked up an obscene touchdown rate against man coverage. I am going to tentatively credit the touchdowns to a good play caller who was able to scheme players open in the red zone, considering the struggles elsewhere against man coverage.
• In terms of gaining yards efficiently, Fields’ yards/attempt mark was generally a bit better than typical against zone and a bit worse than typical against man.
  • The zone efficiency was largely driven by pushing the ball downfield, as his yards before catch mark was about 1.5 higher than the NFL average.
  • In man coverage, Fields’ average completion was actually shorter than the NFL average, which is a bit surprising considering Fields likes to throw the ball deep quite a bit. I would guess that speaks to Fields’ targets having trouble getting open down the field against man coverage, which would force more checkdowns.

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