BearFan PHX

Hey Browns? Remember when you sacked Fields so many times in his first NFL action? how's it feel Flacco?

Jones dont fumble

yeah, and salary cap considerations in effect, if youre a surround the QB with talent guy, then that goes with the draft a rookie QB scenario. Rodgers lost Adams, Mahomes lost Hill etc. And I fully admit if youve got a league beating QB, you pay him, but it does cost you other players around him.

oooh almost another Flacco INT

and he's only 175 pounds too.

sometimes there is other delay too, and he does seem to be doing better with that, but yes the pat has to go. And I realize that asking a QB to consciously think about stuff like that during the season is a distraction. But they should have gotten rid of it in the preseason.

they do it ALL the time, on the bubble screens too. WHY Put in the 6' 5" guy you brought up from the PS last week.

Ii think Getsy keeps asking Mooney to be the blockers at the point of attack, and it's a huge mistake. That 4th down run by Fields would have worked with pretty much any other receiver chipping the defender.

Fields has had a few quicker reads in this game too. Thats nice to see. Even on the incompletion to Moore, he made a faster decision. Now he needs to eliminate that pat of the ball before he throws it. It tells the DBs to break on the ball, and makes the ball a half a second later. I do see growth from Fields in the last two games. But there is more to fix before I can buy into him.

lol right?

Stevenson!!!!! way to go!!!!! WOW!!!!!! HUGE!!!!! That was a touchdown! WOw!!!! THAT was a superman play. Incredible.

Oh come ON Taylor!!! You arent fast - you were brought here for ONE reason - to cleanly catch punts even with limited return ability. UGH.

yeah. I like to think of it like a stone archway. if it needs 9 stones to hold up, you can 8 of them in place, but if you remove the brace, the whole thing collapses. But add that last stone, so they all rest on each other, and its stable. Our defensive roster has been getting better, but until we had a pass rush, you couldnt see it. Now with that last stone in place, the whole thing clicks. Football IS the ultimate team sport!

yeah no kidding. I never understood criticizing that pickup. Also, apparently they had Chase Young on the trading block and not Sweat, so Poles did an amazing job shaking him free at the last minute too.

yeah, and imagine when we add another edge player to the mix. we are definitely ascending, and the window is opening for us.

Flacco sacked again! HA! I once spent an afternoon with Drew Brees, and another afternoon with Joe Flacco. In both cases, it was a couple days after they'd won the Super Bowl. Brees is the nicest guy ever. Flacco is a total jerk. Love to see Flacco getting hit.

agree with all of this!

we are mostly agreeing. I just dont think tagging him and trading works, because if Fields is good, we lose him, and if hes not the trade isnt worth much. I just think we functionally have to decide if we are in or out by May. And I think that's the intention of the 5th year option in the first place - to force teams out of the middle ground.

I agree with this. I chose #5 to represent it, but I think we might mostly agree.

Maybe it's easier to lay it out this way: The two scenarios that would hurt the Bears are: 1) Fields becomes a fully dimensional QB and we fail to keep him 2) Fields never becomes the man, and we lose too much to keep him around In #1, we still have the mitigating factor of whoever our new QB is becoming great also. If you take a high first round QB with one of our picks this year, then you do buy a 4th year to look at Fields, but you increase the chance of losing him anyway without the 5th year option being exercised. So all Im saying, is that we kinda have to make a decision on which of those we think is going to happen before May, and functionally before the draft this year. I dont think Poles can tread water here, but either actual decision on Fields is possible. For me, I would pass on him, but going all in on him is also a coherent strategy. It's the middle ground I'm arguing against as an actual possibility that would work.

Pix, Im not mad at you at all. I respect you, and weve known each other here a long time. I thought we were debating scenarios, but I didnt detect anything personal here at all.

Here's something we can all agree on - Patrick sucks.

this is true if Fields doesnt ball out. But we arent trying to protect ourselves against that scenario. The idea is if you think hes the man you take the 5th year option and then extend him before or during year 5. If you think he isnt the man, you trade him now. If you want to wait and see and he turns out to be: 1) Bad - then no problem not taking the 5th year option 2) middle - then who wants to keep him? 3) great - then you missed the chance to lock him up

hes already played his 5th season tho? He is a free agent now.

no FG attempt?!! wtf