Defensive Tackle Market Will Be Interesting.

The market took am initial hit when the Washington Commanders placed the franchise tag on Daron Payne. But a bigger shock came when a warrant was issued for the arrest of Georgia star Jalen Carter. The number of impact guys is dwindling but there are still a lot of interesting names.

• Javon Hargrave is probably the best player available, but the Bears might not be interested in giving a large contract to a seven-year veteran who just turned 30 years old.
• Dre’mont Jones – 26 when the next season begins – has been playing in Denver’s 3-4 since coming into the league in 2019 but could thrive switching to a scheme that allows him to shoot the gap every play.
• Zach Allen, who will also be 26, has been a defensive end in his career, but could benefit from a move inside.
• Without question the most interesting potential option is Northwestern’s Adetomiwa Adebawore. While the Wildcats moved him around the line of scrimmage, Adebawore showed burst inside at the Senior Bowl and lit up the combine with a 4.49-second 40-yard dash (1.61 10-yard split) and a 37.5-inch vertical, while weighting 282 pounds with arms that are about 34 inches long.

Looking for an Edge.

While the Bears will have a ton of interesting options on the interior of their defensive line, the edge market might not be as strong as once thought.

For starters, the free agent market has very few adequate options. And while Will Anderson is the consensus best player in the draft, the Bears probably won’t be able to draft him if they trade back.

In Matt Eberflus’ time as a defensive coordinator and head coach, his teams have exclusively drafted ends who have weighed at least 250 pounds with at least 33-inch arms and a 35-inch vertical jump. The only defensive ends to jump 35 inches with the aforementioned size and length were Pittsburgh’s Habakkuk Baldonado, Missouri’s Isaiah McGuire, Louisville’s Yaya Diaby and Adebawore, who the Bears could see as a tackle.

The Pro Day circuit will be interesting to watch here. There were a number of players — like Iowa’s Lukas Van Ness — who showed very good all-around athleticism but didn’t jump well. The NFL changed the combine workouts around again this year, so it’s possible that the jumps were impacted by that.

Otherwise, the Bears might be scrambling to revamp their defensive line, especially on the outside.

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The Bears have had the ball with a chance to win three times in the last five weeks and have fallen short every time. But anybody suggesting that means the young quarterback is incapable of leading the team to wins in those situations is misguided. There is no question that at some point the Bears and Justin Fields have to come through with game-winning scores. There is also no question that can develop with experience.

Turn back the clock a handful of years and you’ll see that in Aaron Rodgers’ first season as the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, the team went 1-7 in one-score games. Worse yet, they had chances to win most of those games only to fall short.

On Oct. 5, 2008, the Packers had the ball trailing 20-17 against Atlanta with about seven minutes left only for Rodgers to throw an interception. Atlanta went on to score a touchdown and won 27-14. Less than a month later, the Packers had the ball with a chance to break a 16-16 tie but punted. Tennessee missed the game-winning field goal in regulation, only to make it in overtime.

On Nov. 30, the Packers had the ball, trailing Carolina by four before a Rodgers interception. They were tied with Houston the next week but had to punt and the Texans won the game on the next possession. It became three straight weeks in which Rodgers failed to deliver as they had the ball trailing 20-16 before a Jacksonville Jaguars interception essentially ended the game.

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We are entering the seventh week of the season and it’s an opportunity to take stock of the league. It might be the strangest beginning to a season in recent memory.

• MVP: He’s averaging 330 yards passing per game. His TD/INT is 17/4. His passer rating is 109.1. His team is 5-1. Josh Allen is already +150 to win the MVP and I recommend betting him now because in a few weeks the bet might be off the board. The best team in the league also has the league’s best player.
• Coach of the Year: Brian Daboll has done a wonderful job reinventing the culture in New Jersey, but their wins have been mostly smoke and mirrors. What Arthur Smith has done through six weeks in Atlanta is a legitimate revelation. The Falcons are 3-3, in first place in the NFC South, and they’ve actually been better than that. Their three losses are by a point, four points and a ridiculous roughing the passer penalty that deprived them the opportunity to beat Tom Brady. But even more importantly, Atlanta is one of the most entertaining teams in the league and that’s because of Smith’s offense.
• When one watches the Packers, there is a bizarre trend. About five times a game, Aaron Rodgers just floats a ball deep down the field into double and triple coverage. The pass has almost zero chance of being completed but he doesn’t seem to mind. It’s as if he’s trying to prove a point as opposed to get a first down. Green Bay letting Davante Adams leave town is proving to be one of the worst personnel decisions a contender has made in recent memory.
• The Raiders are good. They just don’t win.
• The Vikings are not. But they don’t lose.
• Are the Eagles a bit overrated at 6-0? Probably. Their games share a theme: get out to a big lead and hang on for dear life. But man, looking at their 11 remaining games, they’re unlikely to be underdogs a single time. Does that mean they’ll go undefeated? No. But they are headed to 13-14 wins minimum and the top seed in the conference.

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If you are hoping, for the first time in your life, to see a Chicago Bears team air it out, the 2022 edition is unlikely to fulfill those desires. But there does exist an offensive recipe for this vintage to succeed and it was almost on full display Sunday. The defense will fly to the football. The offense will generate big plays in the passing game. The Bears will run it a ton. They did two of three successfully against San Francisco and laid the groundwork for the rest of the season, monsoon or not.

With a defensive head coach, the defense is probably going to remain the straw that stirs the drink. While that may bring a collective groan from Bears fans, it shouldn’t. If they can run the ball and Justin Fields can keep making big plays, they will be competitive each week. But perhaps the most interesting part of the postgame reaction, though, was Matt Eberflus saying flat out that the team needs to be better.

There were a number of blown coverages that Aaron Rodgers is going to take advantage of in Week Two, assuming his receivers catch the football.

Fields put the team on his back at times, but he also had one horrible interception and barely avoided a couple more – including on his first pass attempt of the game, a screen in which the ball was thrown high with several Niner defenders closing in. He has to learn from those mistakes in a way past young Bears quarterbacks haven’t.

While it was Flus’ first win, the coach wasn’t puffing a victory cigar. He has an eye on next week and the future of the team. We’ll see what’s cooking for the rest of 2022. The recipe looks simple enough.

Herbert v. Montgomery

The hottest take to come from Sunday’s game was that Khalil Herbert is better than David Montgomery. That is a conversation that has more layers than their yards per carry averages though.

There is no question that Herbert was better running with the ball on Sunday. He was decisive and got whatever yardage was available. Montgomery seemed to have a difficult time finding the line of scrimmage at times.

But there is another factor. While NFL GSIS shows Herbert as having the most positive influence on the Bears running game, he was the biggest negative in the passing game. Herbert’s struggles in that regard aren’t just about catching passes. He has also had issues as a blocker.

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While fans have celebrated the offensive scheme change the Chicago Bears have implemented, count Aaron Rodgers as one who thinks it is a downgrade. In a somewhat recent interview with Pardon My Take, Rodgers went on a tangent about how the West Coast offense — which the Bears ran under Matt Nagy — is better than the scheme Luke Getsy is bringing from Green Bay.

“This scheme has flaws,” Rodgers said. “I grew up in the West Coast offense, which I think is the most beautiful offense ever created. It’s about timing and rhythm and balance and everything makes sense protection wise. You know where your hots are, you know where your eyes are going every single time, you know how the concepts fit together.”

Rodgers was drafted by Mike Sherman, who ran a variation of the West Coast he learned from Mike Holmgren. Mike McCarthy then took over, bringing a version that he learned from one of the scheme’s originators, Paul Hackett. Rodgers offered many complaints about the Shanahan-style outside zone scheme implemented by Matt LaFluer, when he was hired in 2019.

“This is a schematic offense. That (West Coast) was not a schematic offense. That was built on timing and precision and rhythm and guys being in the right spot at the right time and putting the ball on the proper number,” Rodgers said. “(It is) predicated on winning one-on-one matchups and being accurate throwing the football.”

Roughly translated, it sounds like Rodgers prefers the West Coast because it’s more about Jimmy’s and Joe’s than X’s and O’s. He probably has a point.

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There once was a guy in Green Bay

Whose family had cast him astray

Though not enough rings,

ample drama he brings

‘til inevitably deciding to stay.

All that remains for the 2021 Chicago Bears are the decision on Ryan Pace and the firing of Matt Nagy. Dissecting these individual games just seems like a pointless enterprise. So, after a few days of watching the rest of the league, here are some thoughts on those games, and perhaps some lessons the Bears can learn (but not really).

• Justin Herbert’s numbers don’t reflect how bad he was Sunday in Houston. And that’s not an uncommon occurrence this season. He’s had 5-6 flat out poor performances and it’s a reminder that becoming a great QB in this league takes time and even immense talents like this face road blocks.
  • Side note: Lovie Smith coached a brilliant game against the Chargers.
• Josh Allen was as good against New England as a QB can be and if his receivers caught the football consistently the Bills would have won by 30. Buffalo is going win their final two games and be a team to reckon with in the tournament.
• Nobody compiles more hollow statistics than Kirk Cousins. And Justin Jefferson has had enough, questioning just about every aspect of the organization postgame. The Vikings should listen to him because he’s one of the best players in the league and his statements are the statements of leaders.
• How are the Rams not worried about the Matthew Stafford Experiment? Stafford’s season-long numbers are solid but he’s now prone to these blowup games where he looks like a third stringer. Does anybody trust him to win multiple playoff games?
• The Giants are under the spell of Joe Judge and, while I understand their reluctance to fire another coach, they are making a mistake by not doing it. His postgame press conferences have been the most embarrassing I can remember, continually claiming progress that no one on earth by he can see. Judge was handpicked for this gig by Bill Belichick, but Belichick has proven an inability to produce the kind of coaching tree that many legendary coaches produce. The Giants are lucky Mike Francesa no longer has the country’s most prominent sports radio platform.
• The initial three frontrunners for the Jags head coaching gig – Doug Pederson, Jim Caldwell, Byron Leftwich – are the right guys. And while it might not be conventional, the team should have each meet with Trevor Lawrence before making the decision. That relationship could define the franchise for the next decade and Lawrence knows more about offensive football than the team’s owners.
• I am not a Bill Simmons guy (generally) but his Monday “Guess the Lines” podcasts with Cousin Sal have been excellent this year. Kyle Shanahan’s record, Michele Tafoya’s sabbatical, Kyle Murray as the new Mr. October, the Vegas Raiders as Michael Myers, etc. It’s also a nice way to recap an NFL Sunday if you’re not interested in the excruciating (and frankly, boring) detail of Robert Mays and The Athletic pod.
  • On the latter podcast, I just don’t understand the approach. It is Monday morning. At that stage, most of us have watched MAYBE three games. When Mays and Nate Tice are breaking down specific plays in Bengals/Ravens, I have no frame of reference. Thus, the discussion isn’t interesting. People want the specific details when it comes to the teams they follow. Do they want that across the league? I sure don’t.

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If your instinct is to doubt Justin Fields after this game, keep in mind he went on the road with two rookie OTs, was pressured on 54.3% of his dropbacks, played through a ribs injury that caused him pain on every throw & needed X-rays on his non-throwing hand after the game.

— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) December 13, 2021

Late night. More to come later today.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

And the game has significantly more juice with Justin Fields in the starting lineup. The idea of Nick Foles starting at Lambeau Field, in primetime, had some Henry Burris vs. Tampa (2002) vibes.

On Rodgers.

This could be the last time the Bears see Aaron Rodgers in a Green Bay Packers uniform. And it is very difficult to contextualize his tenure with the team. So here are a bunch of thoughts.

• My biggest disappointment is the Bears never fielded a quarterback to go toe-to-toe with him. For all the talk of his “owning” the Bears, look at the opposing quarterbacks he owned. (I own a 2005 Chevy Cavalier with 206k miles on it. I don’t brag about it.) Jay Cutler was his best opposition, and nobody puts Cutler and Rodgers in the same sentence, unless that sentence starts, “If I were to rank quarterbacks by how much I didn’t want to be trapped in an elevator with them, it would go Cutler, Rodgers…”
• There’s an odd symmetry between the regular season careers of Rodgers and Tom Brady, as both dominated weak divisions for the entire careers. But the symmetry ends there. Rodgers’ stats don’t fall in almost any important category in the postseason, except one. He is 135-65-1 in the regular season and 11-9 in the postseason, reaching only one Super Bowl. But is he really to blame for that?
  • His numbers do plummet in the NFC title game. He is 1-4. His TD/INT is 9/8. His rating is 83.7, a good 20 points lower than his regular season and non-title game ratings. If there is a fly in the ointment of his career, it is those games.
• People have tried to assign logic to Rodgers’ desires to leave Green Bay, questioning why he’d want to abandon one of the better rosters in the league. But you can’t apply logic to people as thin-skinned and temperamental as Rodgers. If something the organization did offended him, it is unlikely he’ll ever move on from it. (This is a guy who cut off his entire family over a woman and she was like five women ago.) Rodgers is still on the Packers in 2021 because GB knew they had a title-contending roster this season and they also knew that wouldn’t be true with Jordan Love.

Sondheim at the Cinema

Once again, I’ll be writing more extensively about Sondheim this off-season when content is harder to come by, but I am using these game previews to simply share his work. Sondheim was a cinephile to an intense extent (I know the feeling). He and Anthony Perkins co-wrote the excellent film The Last of Sheila, which you can rent on Amazon or anywhere else you do those things. Here are some other contribution to the world of movies.

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Stavisky (1974)

Sondheim wrote the absolutely lovely score for this underrated Alain Resnais picture.

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Reds (1981)

Sondheim provided the song “Goodbye for Now” for Warren Beatty’s score. It’s a gorgeous melody that stands out dramatically in the film.

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Dick Tracy (1990)

Sondheim won the Academy Award for “Sooner or Later” but I actually think “Back in Business” is the better song. However, I don’t know a Sondheim junkie that doesn’t consider Mandy Patinkin and Madonna’s gorgeous duet of “What Can You Lose” their favorite musical passage in the film.

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It wasn’t a particularly unique affair. The Bears have lost this game to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers plenty of times. If you need additional details beyond which is provided below, search the archives and find all the recaps of those games.

• Justin Fields continues to show signs, and that’s all you are asking for each week from a rookie quarterback. The touchdown drive he led in the fourth quarter, that could easily have been derailed by a nonsense holding penalty on Sam Mustipher, was a thing of beauty.
  • The Bears have to open up this offense for Fields moving forward and that should start Sunday against Tampa. The Bucs have a terrible secondary but are impossible to run against.
  • The clock still has to speed up for Fields. Sunday, his “run clock” was there. When he saw the space, he took it. But he’s still struggling to recognize how fast these pass rushers are. He ain’t playing Rutgers anymore. Once he starts to feel it, and it’ll be soon, he’ll stop taking unnecessary sacks.
• The refs were not to blame for this Bears loss. But they were dreadful.
  • Has an offsides ever been missed before? There are officials literally staring down the line of scrimmage pre-snap.
  • The hold on Mustipher and pass interference on Jaylon Johnson were both nonsense.
  • I still don’t understand the OPI on Green Bay, or how that touchdown catch was originally ruled incomplete. Neither were close calls.
  • Why was Justin Fields’ timeout attempt rejected? I have never seen that before.
• Aaron Rodgers was the best player on the field. Again. And it’s not surprising when the best player on the field wins, especially when that player is a quarterback. That’s the goal for the Justin Fields Chicago Bears. They have to get there.

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