We’ve reached the “moral victory” part of the season. So that begs the question…

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago. 

Bears.

Thoughts: Commanders vs. Titans

This was a tough watch, but it provided something of a preview for Thursday night. Here are some things that stood out.

• Washington’s center Nick Barton had a nightmare, rolling several shotgun snaps to the feet of Carson Wentz. He also hit the motion man once. How are those mistakes still happening in the fifth week of the season?
• Both Washington and Tennessee consistently buried themselves beyond the chains with penalties and that allowed both pass rushes to essentially control the action. If the Bears find themselves in obvious passing situations, the Commanders will find themselves in the backfield quite a bit.
• While I have been as critical of Wentz as anyone, he threw a gorgeous deep ball in this game. He still makes 3-5 throws a game that make no logical sense but his touch down the field was there Sunday.
• Derrick Henry earned every yard against the Washington defense. It takes hard running to find success against this group. (Generally came away impressed with the unit from the TV broadcast tape.)
• Curtis Samuel is hell to deal with right now, and it’ll be surprising if the Bears don’t struggle containing him on third down.

Three Stats with Potential Value

• This is the first matchup for the Bears where the two teams have a significant gap in turnover differential. The Bears are at 0. The Commanders are at -7. If the Bears win the turnover battle, they’ll win this game.
• The Commanders allow opposing QBs a passer rating of 103.7. Justin Fields is going to have another opportunity for success in that category because Washington will gladly allow him the underneath completions to protect against the deep shot. Fields needs to take them.
• The most boring stat you’ll ever read: both the Bears and Commanders have a season-long punt return of 19 yards.

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I like Ron Rivera.

I root for Ron Rivera.

I greatly respect Ron Rivera as a human being and a leader of men.

But my respect for Ron Rivera as the CEO of a professional football team no longer exists.

Because there is no possible rationale for giving up ANYTHING, let alone MULTIPLE third round draft picks, to acquire Carson Wentz as your starting quarterback. Carson Wentz, whose signature play has become flipping the ball casually to defenders on his own goal line. Carson Wentz, who two franchises, in two years, have been desperate to ship to Anywhere That’ll Take Him, USA.

I give you three tweets from Chris Trapasso of CBS Sports:

Text from a friend: “Lol why do ppl keep trading for Wentz”

I have no clue

— Chris Trapasso (@ChrisTrapasso) March 9, 2022

Carson Wentz was pretty good in ’17. But him going No. 2 overall in ’16 is an integral part in his maintain reputation as a player *some* teams believe is capable of being a high-level QB, despite much evidence suggesting the contrary.

Draft position matters, for many reasons.

— Chris Trapasso (@ChrisTrapasso) March 9, 2022

15-minute cool off period is over for me seeing the Wentz news, and I still can’t believe it

— Chris Trapasso (@ChrisTrapasso) March 9, 2022

There is enough data around this league to prove unequivocally that NFL teams are not run by competent individuals. And NFL personnel departments are nothing more than a collection of football junkies doing educated guesswork. There is no longer reason to show deference to these individuals because moves like this one for Wentz prove they simply don’t know what they are doing. Rivera has been in the league 40 years. His personnel department have 60 years or more of experience. How on earth could they have reached this inept conclusion?

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The Bears may not be playing meaningful games down the stretch, but it seems that just about every other game has some relevance.

• Another big Colts game, another big Colts loss. And once again, it rests squarely on the shoulders of Carson Wentz, an awful player who cost the team, and their much-ballyhooed GM, a first-round pick. But if you’re hoping to find a national journalist critical of Chris Ballard, good luck. It won’t happen. Ballard is a good talent evaluator and he’s built a good roster. But he’s saddled that roster with a total liability at the most important position in sports and that gives the club a definitive ceiling.
• Giving interim coaches the full-time gig rarely works but Rich Bisaccia is making a good case in Vegas. That team has been laden with adversity, and they just keep winning. Ed Graney’s lede in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “The man has gone from not understanding how to operate a headset to making the most important decision of a Raiders season. Rich Bisaccia sure is taking this whole interim head coach label to another level. Someone alert Hollywood. The Raiders are one win from needing a screenplay.” 
  • The job Bisaccia is doing has some Bruce Arians in Indy vibes. The Jags, Bears, etc. should all add him to their interview list.
• A famous coach maxim was always “you can’t coach accuracy at quarterback”. Well, the Eagles should spend the off-season trying to do it. Because Jalen Hurts has every intangible you’d want at the position. But man, he couldn’t hit a strip club in Tampa.
• Joe Judge gave a nearly 12-minute answer at his postgame presser, attempting to defend his record with the Giants. Something happens to these New England assistants. They seem to think they have something to do with the program’s success. They don’t. (Except one. See two points below.)
• People who care about Antonio Brown need to get him help. This kind of behavior is headed towards a tragic end. He’s not well and he needs treatment.
• The difference between Mac Jones and the other rookies (Wilson, Lawrence, Fields) is coaching. The latter three have been out there fending for themselves. Jones is executing a meticulously detailed game plan that fits his game to perfection. Josh McDaniels has been the assistant coach of the year in the NFL.

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The carousel.

While many are expecting the 2021 offseason to be a busy one when it comes to quarterback movement, it’s worth wondering if the current pause in the carousel just might be permanent and if the Chicago Bears need to find their guy soon.

The pause is because of Deshaun Watson.

While he has requested a trade and, reportedly, insists he won’t play for the Houston Texans anymore, the Texans are still without a real good reason to trade him. Perhaps refusing to trade Watson would look bad for Houston but in the long run, if they refuse to move him, Watson will have to either show up or retire. The latter option would likely mean repaying some of his signing bonus. All signs point to Houston not budging, at least for the foreseeable future.

If Watson isn’t moved soon, Derek Carr surely won’t be. The Raiders would be idiotic to move Carr without a surefire upgrade in place and it certainly appears they don’t see Marcus Mariota as that upgrade. The 49ers are also likely to stand pat with Jimmy G, though the latter likely wouldn’t be seen as a surefire starting option anyway, given his injury history.

You can bet Russell Wilson won’t be traded and the Packers have insisted they won’t move Aaron Rodgers. (He wouldn’t be available to the Bears anyway, but could cause another domino to fall.)

So, where does that leave teams like the Bears and the Colts?

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Assuming the trade compensation is fair, would you want to see Carson Wentz starting for the Bears in September?

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) February 9, 2021

Two thoughts:

• Ten or eleven points is nothing to sneeze at. It’s hard to get that kind of majority in a Twitter poll on ANYTHING these days.
• “Fair” is the important word in the poll. Fans seem to be okay with the Bears giving Wentz the second chance he deserves, but they don’t believe that second chance should come at significant risk to the team.

(1) Are the Bears interested? Yes. But they are not interested at any of the rumored prices. Philly has not been offered a first rounder by ANY team and has not received a formal offer from the Bears AT ALL.

(2) Philly’s play here was simple. They decided to use Adam Schefter to pretend a deal was imminent and then use some of their local media to float potential packages. (The one that had the Bears giving up a first AND Tarik Cohen – who is far better than Wentz – was my favorite.) They had hoped this would create a bidding war between interested parties. It achieved the opposite.

(3) Would Wentz be an upgrade at QB for the Bears? That’s not a guarantee. And because it’s not a guarantee the Bears have to value him accordingly. If they ultimately consider a first rounder, a second or third has to return. There is no way to argue 2020 Wentz is worth even that much. The Bears, or Colts, would still be paying for the player that was, not the player that currently is.

You hear coaches saying it, and it is so true: except for the occasional turnover, defenses don’t stop offenses late in these games anymore. Offense wins almost all the time.

— Mike Francesa (@MikeFrancesa) November 23, 2020

(1) Colts came into the week as the league’s top-ranked defense. Chiefs came into the week as the favorite to win the Super Bowl. Both teams allowed 31 points. Both teams won. The above Tweet from Mike Francesa mirrors something Gil Brandt Tweeted not so long ago and something I’ve been harping on this season. The days of building a team around the defense are over. You have to build a team that can score seven points with a minute remaining. Explosive players. Speed. Oh and someone who can accurately throw the football to explosive players with speed.

Monday Night Football’s game between two top 5 defenses should have cemented this idea.

(2) Just marvel at what the Steelers have done. This was a team defined by running the ball and playing defense for fifty years. They still do the latter well, drafting consistently good players on that side of the ball. But they saw how the league was changing and completely shifted their offensive philosophy. And year-after-year they’ve added more weapons, and more speed on the outside. Smith-Schuster. Washington. Diontae. Ray-Ray. Claypool. They’ve adapted to the modern game. And they have the quarterback.

(3) Carson Wentz is broken. His mechanics have gotten shaky. His internal clock is way off. Sometimes he rushes throws because of phantom pressure. Sometimes he holds onto the ball for an eternity. Is it fixable? Probably. But one has to believe Doug Pederson is considering more than just a Jalen Hurts package. Can Hurts possibly be worse than this?

(4) Everyone needs to stop with their anti-NFC East nonsense. We have divisions. You win the division, you get into the tournament. That’s the sport. And for those who don’t know, the NFC East carried the league’s ratings water for about twenty years. This was the best division in the sport for a long, long time. They’re having a down year. But I’m going to seriously enjoy watching this play out. (And I think it may be decided on the field, Week 17, when the Giants and Cowboys meet.)

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The season has been over more than a week so I thought I’d throw a bunch of thoughts on the entire league into one semi-coherent post.

(1) It was a bad season for the NFL and it all stems from mismanagement at the top. The fallout from injuries/head trauma, player protests, rules issues…etc. were manageable and fixable. But Roger Goodell once again showed himself to be the most flaccidly ineffective commissioner in the history of professional sports.

(2) The “catch rule” has been the mostly thoroughly debated issue in the NFL and the Super Bowl seemed to be a turning point for its legislation, with two touchdowns actually being ruled touchdowns. (This despite the utter confusion of the commentary box, where Michaels and Collinsworth acted like they were asked to call a three-day test cricket match on forty minutes notice.) Possession. Two feet down. That’s it. If you have possession of the ball and two feet on the ground, you have caught the ball. For the first time in a long time, it feels the NFL is headed back in that direction.

(3) Ryan Pace took over the GM job in Chicago prior to the 2014 season.

• His first year? Low expectations.
• His second year? Three quarterbacks played, one of whom was benched for C.J. Beathard in 2017 and another didn’t approach an active roster.
• Year three featured the drafting a quarterback with the second pick and nobody should put win/loss expectation on a rookie quarterback.

Now we enter year four. Pace has his coach. Pace has his QB. And if the latter stays healthy, the Bears should be expected to win games in 2018.

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• Nobody on earth could convince me Carson Wentz wants the Eagles to win this game. How could he? He’s a human being with human emotions. If Nick Foles wins the first Super Bowl in Eagles history, what does Wentz do to follow that? He could win 12 games a year for the next five seasons but without the ring, he’ll never reach the historical level of Foles in Philadelphia. When Jeff Hostetler beat the Bills, Phil Simms had already won a title for the Giants and established them as his team. Wentz has established his potential. Foles can establish his legacy.
• Is there a dumber debate than Tom Brady vs. Michael Jordan; currently being argued on every conceivable sports media platform? Here’s my answer: Brady would beat Jordan at playing quarterback but Jordan would destroy Brady at basketball. (Pete Weber would kick the shit out of both of them at the local lanes.)

Food for thought: Brady finished 3rd in passing (102.8), but 16th in 3rd-down passing (84.2). Six of his 8 INTs were on 3rd down. His 57.9 3D completion percentage was his lowest since 2011. Eagles had 65.7 3D opponent passer rating this season.

— Paul Domowitch (@pdomo) January 29, 2018

• Rob Gronkowski’s line: 8 catches, 157 yards, 2 touchdowns. Why? Because when the Patriots get in tough spots against tough defenses they overly rely on Gronk to simply manhandle whomever is asked to cover him. That will happen Sunday.
• This year has been bizarre…and bad. And that kind of year deserves the phrase “Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles”.

Philadelphia Eagles 26

New England Patriots 24

Former Bears coach Lovie Smith always talked about breaking the NFL season down into quarters, which splits a 16-game season into 4-game sample sizes. I’ve always thought that was a good way to look at it, as grouping four games together helps smooth some of the statistical noise of individual good or bad games.

With that in mind, I want to track Mitchell Trubisky’s rookie season through the quarters lens. Trubisky sat out the first quarter of the season, but took every offensive snap for each of the last three quarters. Let’s see how he progressed through those.

Usage

First, I want to point out that Trubisky was tasked with doing more in each quarter.

In his first 4 games, Trubisky had the ball in his hands on only 26.5 plays per game. Coaches tried to minimize what he had to do, which was why more plays featured handoffs and fewer featured him ending the play with a pass attempt, sack, or run.

In Trubisky’s 5th-8th games, that number increased to 34.3 plays per game, and it took another jump to 39.8 plays per game in the last four games.

For the 32 qualified passers in the NFL this year (224 or more pass attempts), the mean and median were both 38.2 pass attempts, meaning Trubisky was being given as much responsibility (in terms of plays per game) as an average quarterback by the end of the season. This clearly shows that coaches were willing to put more responsibility on Trubisky’s shoulders as the season wore on, which is a good sign.

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