Strong in the trenches,
with stars along the outside.
Philly, built to win.
A Haiku for the Philadelphia Eagles
Bears targets today:
Kmet 5
Pettis 4
Webster 3
Montgomery 3
VJJ 2
Pringle 2
ESB 1
Ebner 1Fields: 67% completion, 7.2 yards/attempt, 2 TD, 0 INT, 120 passer rating. Oh yeah, 95 rushing yards too.
FWIW, PHI came into the game allowing 61% completion, 6.1 yds/att, 16 TD/15 INT
— Johnathan Wood (@Johnathan_Wood1) December 18, 2022
On this special Wildcard Weekend edition of DaBearsPod:
“Playoffs? You’re talking about…playoffs?”
-Jim Mora
“Yes.”
-Me
I always like the Chicago Bears…
…and I’m no longer going to deny what I’m seeing with my eyes. This is a very, very good Bears team. And they have been absolutely dominant in their building.
Also, this is the last time the Bears will be favored this season, barring the Saints being upset in the divisional round. A win Sunday puts something of a exclamation point on the regular season success.
The shepherd wears a visor,
and walks within the cool, charming breezes of the lake.
His flock are bears,
and with a tap of his crook on the wintry terrain,
and a rapturous “BOOM”,
he calls upon them to defend their hallowed home from feathered foes.
And in the placid peace of victory, the shepherd sleeps.
There’s been a good deal of talk this offseason about how the Bears will model their offense after the Kansas City Chiefs, which makes sense given that new head coach Matt Nagy spent his last several years in Kansas City learning from Andy Reid.
But I think Chicago’s offense will end up looking more similar to what Philadelphia has run the last two years under Doug Pederson, another branch on the Reid coaching tree. Even though both offenses are similar, there are some subtle yet important differences that are worth looking at. So today I want to start by looking at personnel to see which one Chicago matches better, and then I’ll compare and contrast offensive styles.
Kansas City’s offense was built around three main producers: running back Kareem Hunt, wide receiver Tyreek Hill, and tight end Travis Kelce. Those three combined for 4,069 of Kansas City’s 6,007 yards from scrimmage, meaning they were about 2/3 of the offense.
Quite frankly, the Bears just aren’t built to be that reliant on a small number of players. Outside of Jordan Howard and Allen Robinson, nobody has been a high-volume producer, and even Robinson has only hit 1,000 yards in a season once in his four years.
The series continues…
So much of the credit for the Eagles success has gone to their offensive coaching staff, but they also have one of the five best defenses in the league. A defense that harassed Case Keenum again and again. I have a strong dislike for Jim Schwartz and the constant sour puss face he has on. The guy threw a fit because Jim Harbaugh shook his hand too hard. But he built a bully defense and they are fun to watch.
Say what you will about Keenum, but the Vikings offense was legitimately good this year. And Schwartz’s defense just pushed them around.
The Bears hope they have this same formula with Vic Fangio and they may be right. Fangio built defenses that pushed good offenses around in the playoffs. The 2017 Bears defense was better than the 2016 Eagles defense so it isn’t unreasonable to think they could have a similar leap into the top five. Especially if…
The Bears had one of the best pass rushes in the league in 2017. I don’t care. Add more guys who can get the quarterback.
The Eagles didn’t need to improve their defensive line after the 2016 season because they were certainly good enough. Then they added Timmy Jernigan, Chris Long and Derek Barnett. Jernigan helped them completely shut down the Vikings run game while Long and Barnett both help create takeaways.
The following is the beginning of a series breaking down what the Bears can learn from the two Super Bowl teams. Andrew will take on the Philadelphia Eagles. Emily will handle the Pats.
Nick Foles isn’t great. He probably isn’t even good; at least not good enough to be a starting quarterback in the league. But prior to Sunday’s game, he showed the ability to have some success in the NFL. That was key.
Foles was calm and able to make big throws under pressure against the Vikings. While there’s no arguing he had a lot of help (more on that later), his success shouldn’t be a complete shock because we’ve seen him play well in a similar situation. His career playoff passer rating is now 116.1 and he hasn’t thrown an interception in any of his 96 attempts.
Really, this is a lesson the Bears should already know. They have had potential Super Bowl seasons derailed by incompetent backups more than probably any other team over the last three decades. Had they had a competent backup quarterback in either 2010 or 2011, Lovie Smith might still be the coach. (I might never forgive them for allowing Todd Collins to enter the NFC Championship Game.)
What I’d look for is a player who has starting experience and has had success. You know who fits the bill land might be really interesting: Mark Sanchez.
In his rookie season, Mitch Trubisky got to play 12 games and throw the ball 330 times. In those 330 attempts, he threw 7 interceptions, which is actually pretty good. That rate – an interception on 2.1% of his throws – was 12th best in the NFL among qualified passers, ahead of established veterans like Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger, and Aaron Rodgers.
As that list above shows, there’s more to being a good quarterback than simply not throwing interceptions. But avoiding interceptions is an important part of a quarterback’s job; in no small part because they can be game-changing plays that make it a lot harder to win.
But not all interceptions are created equal. Sometimes it’s the quarterback’s fault, sometimes it’s on the wide receiver, and sometimes it’s hard to tell. In general, I think you can group them all into one of four categories:
The first two are both the fault of the quarterback, though in very different ways. The third one makes it pretty much impossible for us to assign fault. The last one is the fault of the target.
Well that was ugly. This one felt like a few drubbings the 2014 Bears received after the Bears had quit on Marc Trestman. The John Fox era is officially over, though we almost certainly still have to endure 5 more games before it becomes official. Hopefully those games aren’t all this ugly.
The Bears were never going to win on the road against the best team in the NFL, but they looked completely unprepared in every possible way. They picked up penalties, had zero creativity or imagination anywhere, and were generally outschemed, outcoached, and out-executed.
I’m not going to focus much on coaching, because this staff is obviously finished, but one particular atrocity deserves special attention. Facing 3rd and 17 from their own 1 yard line, the Bears called time out to save half a yard from a delay of game penalty. That’s bad enough, but the worst is the offense had only 10 men on the field after an injury time out gave them more than 2 minutes to prepare. That’s a team with comically inept coaching.
I’m going to focus most of my specific observations on the first half, because quite honestly I didn’t pay as much attention after that. The 24-0 halftime deficit meant the game was over by then anyway (honestly, it was over well before halftime).
