One of the strangest games of this NFL season. A myriad of thoughts.

• Dan Bailey didn’t just miss three field goals and an extra point. He missed the four kicks by a combined hundred yards. This looked like Chuck Knoblauch throwing to first base. Kevin Na not being able to “pull the trigger” at TPC Sawgrass. Mike Zimmer was quoted postgame, “If you guys want me to fire guys for making a mistake here or there, we wouldn’t have any players.” So it seems Bailey will kick again Sunday. And that’s a win for the Bears.
• Bailey’s missed kicks were essential. Five minutes into the second quarter, the Vikings were dominating the game and had almost nothing to show for it. What should have been a 10-0 lead was a 6-0 lead and it took only one perfectly-thrown Tom Brady pass to Scottie Miller to erase that lead.
• There’s no reason to write about Dalvin Cook and Justin Jefferson. They are the two best players on this team and stopping this offense starts with them. But they’ve added a few wrinkles.
  • Irv Smith Jr. was brilliant versus Tampa. He was actually better than his stats because there wasn’t an easy catch in the four he made. Cousins is clearly looking to him as the safety valve option.
  • Seems Gary Kubiak is starting to move to more two-back sets, with C.J. Ham at fullback. And Ham is becoming a weapon in the passing game from that position.
  • Kirk Cousins had five carries for 41 yards against Tampa. But the Vikings actually called a draw for him on 3rd and short and a few times he didn’t wait for the play to breakdown. He just took off. Cousins ain’t gonna be confused for Lamar Jackson any day soon, but his legs are becoming a significant asset for the Vikings.

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The Vikings were allowing 412 yards per game this season.

The Bears had 149.

The Vikings were allowing 29.3 points per game.

The Bears offense scored 6.

Pathetic.

FOCO is giving away the product above (full description available HERE) to the winner of tonight’s contest. It’s going to be a super cold winter across the country and having a hoodie that doubles as a mask will help.

So what is tonight’s contest? Guess the total yards COMBINED for Allen Robinson, Anthony Miller and Darnell Mooney receiving. (Receiving only.) For context, their totals over the last three games are 183, 229 and 130. So a wide range is possible.

As always the rules:

• Guess must be made in the comments section below.
• Guess must be made in an isolated comment.
  • Do not make the guess in the body of a longer comment. Do not make the guess in the thread of another discussion. I’m not going searching for your guess.
• Pay attention! Once someone guesses 169, 169 is dead. If you repeat 169, you’re guess is void.

Good luck! On to the remainder of the game preview!

On Matt Nagy Giving Up Play-Calling

As was broken in the comments section last week, Matt Nagy won’t be calling the plays tonight. It was the only move for him to make and it’s overdue.

Will this move fix the offense? Of course not. But when your offense is performing at a level this low, you have to empty the trunk and bring out the gimp. No move is too dramatic. If changing the play-caller means even two or three extra first downs a game, you do it.

Nagy didn’t want to . I get it. “I love it” he said repeatedly about calling plays. We take this game so seriously sometimes that we forget it’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun for EVERYBODY involved. Nagy just relinquished the part of the game he loves most. That ain’t easy.

And as much as I fell this move was belated, it should still be applauded. A mature head coach is benching his stubborn offensive coordinator.

Haiku

Calling plays no more,

Nagy paces the sideline.

His headset, on mute.

Bears on the Hot Seat

Offense. Allen Robinson. There’s no doubting that Robinson is this club’s number one receiver but he is looking for Michael Thomas money. Is it too much to ask for him to win 50/50 balls? Is it too much to ask for him dominate an inferior opponent? The Bears don’t need 4-for-70 from ARob tonight. They need 11-for-140. And they need that production to occur while the game is still being contested, not in garbage time. You can blame the quarterback play all you want but great receivers elevate mediocre quarterbacks. Is Robinson a great receiver?

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Normally, these kinds of thoughts would be relegated to the Twitter feed once the season begins but this season is unique. With no good camp reporting anywhere, and no preseason fake games to look at it, the last five days were the first opportunity to see these 32 teams in any realistic way. So having caught at least condensed game versions of every team, some thoughts.

NFC North.

A week ago, these were the odds to win the NFC North: Vikings +160, Packers +180, Bears +380, Lions +550.

Today, these are the odds: Packers +110, Vikings +260, Bears +300, Lions +900.

These odds didn’t move because of the lunacy of Bears/Lions. They moved because Aaron Rodgers was the best player in the league Week One and the Vikings defense didn’t look like they’d practiced this summer.  (The gap closure between the Vikings and Bears is sizable for one week.) Pay no attention to the final score of the game (43-34). The Packers led 30-10 going into the fourth quarter and called off the dogs. Oh, and they scored two more touchdowns without the dogs. If Rodgers needed 60 Sunday, he could have gotten it.

NFC East.

The story in this division was a tale of two lines. Washington has a terrific collection of DL talent but it’s clear Carson Wentz and the Eagles won’t survive with their makeshift OL. Wentz was a sitting duck, sacked 8 times, and flustered throughout.

Sometimes coaches get enamored with this “next man up” bullshit and that’s clearly what happened with Doug Pederson. “Next man up” is fun to say but teams don’t have the economic freedom to create the depth necessary to execute it. The Eagles don’t have good players on their OL right now and their scheme relies upon having one of the best lines in the game. They need to embrace what’s actually happening, and change the scheme.

(The Cowboys changed coaches and looked exactly the same.)

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It could be argued that no NFC North team improved as much as the Chicago Bears this off-season. Whether they can reclaim their spot on top of the NFC North is still a major question.

Starting today with the offense, here is how the Bears stack up with the rest of the division.

Quarterback

1. Minnesota

2. Green Bay

3. Detroit

4. Chicago

Analysis: It is impossible to rank Chicago’s quarterback — whether it be Trubisky or Foles — ahead of the others in the NFC North.

The big knock on Cousins has been his performance in big games, but he seemed to disprove that last year with a road playoff win over New Orleans. Rodgers is coming off of one of the worst seasons of his career and is 36 years old. He hasn’t sniffed his career passer rating of 102.4 in three years and has finished with passer ratings below 98 in four of the last five years. (While many have blamed his relative lack of production on a poor supporting cast, Green Bay’s front office clearly doesn’t agree as the only position they invested a major asset into this off-season was quarterback.) And despite Detroit’s constant attempts to ruin him, Stafford is right there with the other two, although a back injury makes him a bit of a question mark heading into the 2020 season.

Bears don’t have quarterbacks of this caliber.

Running Back

1. Minnesota

2. Green Bay

3. Chicago

4. Detroit

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Four games. I’ll give you a bet for each. (All odds courtesy of DraftKing Sportsbook.)

Saturday 3:35 PM Central

Bills at Texans (-2.5)

Over/Under 44

My heart is all-in for the boys from 716 but Josh Allen, facing a good pass rush, on the road, terrifies me. Look for Allen to use his legs a bunch in this one but I still don’t see Buffalo producing enough offense. If this line were a point higher, I’d go the other way. Begrudging Bet: Houston -2.5. 

Saturday 7:15 PM Central

Titans at Patriots (-5)

Over/Under 44

Bill Belichick will go into this game with a one-track mind. If the Patriots stop Derrick Henry, they win. But Henry has quietly become the best back in football and New England struggles upfront against these bruising-type runners. I don’t know if Tennessee wins this game but I like them to keep it close. Bet: Tennessee +5.

Sunday 12:05 PM Central

Vikings at Saints (-8)

Over/Under 50

I thought the Saints were in the best team in football in 2017. They lost in the playoffs on a ridiculous play.

I thought the Saints were the best team in football in 2018. They lost in the playoffs on a ridiculous call.

I think the Saints are the best team in football in 2019. They’re not losing to Kirk Cousins. Bet: New Orleans -8.

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We’re just over a quarter of the way through the 2019 season, and the bye week makes it the perfect time to assess where the Bears stand, both as an individual unit and in relation to the rest of the NFC North.

Rivals:

Green Bay Packers

Right now the Packers are the top team in the NFC North. They’re currently 4-1, and 2-0 in the division. Most likely they beat the Lions on Monday and become 3-0, which would be a boon to their playoff hopes. They also have the second easiest remaining schedule in the division.

Both the defense and run game have improved for the Packers, and much of the tension that hung in the air during the end of Mike McCarthy’s tenure seems to have dissipated under LaFleur (despite initial reports that he and Rodgers were clashing). Rodgers isn’t putting up his usual numbers quite yet, but as long as they’re winning, he seems perfectly content with that.

It’s early and a lot can still happen, but it’s quite possible that Week 15 in Green Bay could hold even more significance than usual in the Bears-Packers storied rivalry.

Detroit Lions

The thing about the Lions is, they’re actually kind of good. They’re also still the Lions.

They could very easily be 4-0 right now instead of 2-1-1. They blew a significant fourth quarter lead against the Arizona Cardinals in their season opener that ended in a tie, and they kept pace with Mahomes and the Chiefs right up until the very end of their Week 4 matchup.

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Normally this space, at this time, features what I call “rapid fire”. Because I insist on having new content by the time Chicago wakes up, which I arbitrarily deem to take place at 5 AM CT, “rapid fire” lets me pile a bunch of random thoughts, with absolutely zero structure, onto the blog. I don’t promote it on Twitter. I’m not particularly proud of it. It’s basically twelve or thirteen bullet-pointed Tweets. It’s not filler. But it’s close.

Yesterday’s performance by the Chicago Bears requires more than a mailed-in Monday. Because yesterday’s performance by the Chicago Bears was about a championship caliber team delivering a championship caliber performance in the face of adversity. Their defensive battery – Akiem Hicks and Roquan Smith – were not on the field. Their young quarterback was out for the game (and seemingly far longer) before most of the Soldier Field faithful got to their seats. They had every excuse Sunday to lose. And instead they did what we have come to expect in this new Matt Nagy era: they dominated their opponent.

It’d be easy to write about Khalil Mack today. He’s the most explosive defensive player in a Bears uniform in my lifetime. (Did the Raiders trade him to the Bears…on purpose?)

It’d be even easier to write about the The Two Nicks, Williams and Kwiatkoski. These supposed depth pieces looked like All Pros.

It’d be even easier than that to write about Chase Daniel, a journeyman backup many fans wanted cut this summer because he failed to develop rapport with Tanner Gentry in fake games. Yesterday he recorded a 101.4 passer rating against one of the league’s best defenses. (And yes, this was slightly higher than Aaron Rodgers fared a few weeks back.) Did he have to do much? No. Did he do exactly enough? Yes.

[Check out Peter King’s excellent post-game conversation with Daniel HERE.]

Many thought the Minnesota Vikings would win yesterday and assert themselves in the NFC North. Even those who picked the Bears had a difficult time seeing the contest as anything but a tight one. There were five individuals picking this game in the Sun-Times sports section. Three had the game 13-10. One had the game 15-12. One had a shootout at 21-20. Five picks with an average differential of 2.6 points.

The game was decided by ten and it didn’t feel anywhere near that close.

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