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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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are favored over the Chicago Bears by anywhere from 12 to 13.5 points, depending on the sportsbook of your choice. But this is not an unwinnable game for the Bears. There’s a path. Will they take it?

[Note. This space will operate like Robert Quinn’s positive Covid test on Monday will keep him out of this game.]

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Split Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Offense:

• Abandon the run.
  • This is a team that salivates at the thought of an opponent running the ball on first and second down. It allows their pass rush can tee off on third and their terrible secondary to take a deep breath. The teams that have had offensive production against them have taken the opposite approach.
    • When the Cowboys scored 29, Zeke and Pollard totaled 14 carries. Dak Prescott threw for over 400 yards and 3 touchdowns.
    • Sony Michel was given 20 carries by the Rams against the Bucs and totaled 67 yards. (The Rams had a pretty significant lead in this game.) Matthew Stafford threw for 343 yards and 4 touchdowns.
    • This is a game where Marquise Goodwin and Damiere Byrd should log snaps and see targets. And it would be a nice opportunity to throw the football to Jimmy Graham a few times.
  • Jalen Hurts was terrible throwing the ball against Tampa but his legs became a serious weapon as the game progressed. This is another reason to run this game plan through Fields. When it’s not there, let him run. His legs might be their only productive option on the ground.
  • It would also be nice to see Fields with the ability to throw the football away on an EARLY down. On third downs, he’s trying to force the issue to keep the chains moving. But on first down he should be far more willing to fling a ball into the sixth row if there’s nothing available downfield.

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Hit Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Defense:

• Pressure up the gut.
  • There’s no reason to belabor the point. Tom Brady has been playing in the NFL since the 80s and people have been writing the same stuff since the 80s. The only way to make him uncomfortable is to get him off his spot; pressure him up the middle. This will be far more difficult without Quinn.
• Tackle the quick toss.
  • Brady’s been as accurate as any quarterback in the league this season and he has brilliant short-yardage options in Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, Leonard Fournette, Gio Bernard, etc. If the Bears continue to tackle as they have, especially at the safety position, it’s hard to imagine the Bucs not going 70 yards for a score on what looks like an innocuous 5-6 yard slant.
• Take one away with JJ.
  • Sean Desai has a difficult decision to make with Jaylon Johnson. Where does he deploy him? If he chooses to take one receiver away, that receiver should be Evans. Godwin and Brown do more of their work underneath the defense. Evans is the homerun hitter. Preventing the homerun might be the key to keeping this game competitive.

There has been and will continue to be a great deal of talk about how the Bears need to add at least one stud wide receiver to their roster this off-season. Everybody wants a Julio Jones or Antonio Brown, with good reason, and the Bears are in desperate need of an upgrade in talent at the position after a season in which they finished last in the NFL in both passing yards and touchdowns, 25th in yards per attempt, and 26th in passer rating.

The Bears are going to add more talent at WR. But what exactly do they need? Should they look for one great player, two good players, or three plus capable players?

In an attempt to answer this question, I looked at how top passing offenses split their production among targets in recent years. After all, that’s the ultimate goal for the Bears, right? They want to become one of the top passing offenses in the NFL.

Accordingly, I looked at top 10 passing teams according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA for each of 2015, 2016, and 2017 and tracked how many receiving yards each of their top 5 leaders in that category had for the season. While this DVOA stat is not a perfect metric, it is an attempt to measure the efficiency of a passing attack instead of volume, which you would get from just looking at passing yards. The full list can be seen here.

No Clear Pattern

The first thing that jumps out is that there is no single defined way to have a top 10 passing offense. Some teams did it with one clear stud and a bunch of secondary weapons. Others had two dominant targets. Some had no clear dominant target at all.

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