BearFan PHX

lol

I was just watching an epidsoe of 1920 Football Drive from last year, and I remembered this chart that got caught on camera. I remember we all talked about it, and myself included. It looks so different now a year later. The three Bears top "A Score" (athletic score) were Justin Fields, Chase Claypool and Velus Jones Jr. Two are gone and one is competing for WR5. You always need to draft football players, not athletes. Thankfully, Poles seems to get that right a lot, so maybe this A score isnt the most important component of their decision making. Anyway, I laughed when I saw it, and thought you guys might too.

They surely saw the explosion in his lower body from his vertical, broad jump and 3 cone, and his upper body strength has been obvious to everyone the whole time. But youll recall a lot of pundits and football people at the time saying he was a NT or 1T and not fast enough off of the ball to be a real 3T. And there are not a lot of examples of players who went from slow off the ball to having a fast trigger. But obviously, Dexter had that in him, so of course youre right, because by about week 8 or so last year he was getting off with the rest of the line. So Im just saying the staff did a great job of uncovering someone for a 3T who was not obviously going to be that kind of player. I dont think a lot of people ever saw him being this agile, and i think that's a big win for the scouting staff. And in general this staff has done a great job of finding hidden value in later picks and UDFA that average teams might have missed. For example, if other teams knew that he would look like he did in December of last year coming off the ball, back in March of last year, he would have certainly been drafted higher. So Im giving a point to the Bears staff for the win.

totally agree, but from who he was in college, I think most would have projected him as a NT / 1T, That they saw a 3T in him was impressive I think. And wholesale change rarely happens like that? From slow and strong to fast, agile and disruptive.

of course, yes, but it is very rare that a player changes so much. Most cant. For example, you dont take a regular guy off of the streeet who runs a 5.5 second 40 yard dash and turn him into an NFL cornerback. Im saying this transformation is really rare, and Im impressed that our scouts could see past what he was to what he could be - thats not normal.

totally agree. Since you posted that article ive watched some film on him, and he is probably a 5th or 6th round pick we stole as an UDFA. As I was watching film from the senior bowl, I saw more Tvondre Sweat, and damn that guy is a bowling ball.

This is true, but even when he came here at first he was still very slow off the ball, due to having never trained to be a one gapper in college. Im saying, it wasnt easy for our scouts to see past that, and confidently know how far he would be able to develop, but they did, and thats really hard to do and amazing,.

When we drafted Dexter, I thought he would play NT/1T at best, and had a really slow get off. Then, each game for the first half of the season, his get off got quicker until by about week 7 or 8 he was right there with the rest of the line. Now he's transformed his body, and he looks like he is poised to cause havoc from the 3T spot. I had originally thought that was a huge reach and he would never be more than a big bodied run stuffing NT. But you gotta give it to our scouts. It's one thing to see what a player can do and draft him, but quite another to be able to project so far away from who the player currently is on to what he can become and then train him up into that. It is perhaps the brightest sign that this front office knows what they are doing. It is certainly the most foggy read I've seen them make correctly to date. Extremely impressive. I mean, it's not that hard to see who Caleb and Odunze are. They show it on tape, they have tons of obvious potential. But to see a quick and active 3T in Dexter who was a slow two gapper, and see it come to fruition is truly amazing.

good point re: the extra game

a dominant punter is like a 12th man on defense. he gives us a couple more sets of downs to gamble with, and if you get those gambles right, you put the opposing offense behind the chains and then you can tee off, and get the ball back - with an increased field position of course because your punter out punts their punter. End result - Caleb starts drives on his own 40 more often than his own 5.

yeah we seem to have a few interesting UDFAs - gotta love our scouting department, and I suppose the word is on the street we are a team you want to choose to be on EDIT - I read the article, doesnt hurt that we paid him well either LOL

I just watched the Roku channels NFL Draft show "The Pick is in 2024" - it was a lot of what we already knew, but there were a few facts settled. 1) Poles was going to look to trade down out of pick 9 if Odunze went to Atlanta 2) Poles set his staff into groups to argue for WR, DL or OT with the #9 pick, so we now know he absolutely is interested in replacing Braxton Jones. 3) Williams excitedly says "we got our guy!" when he finds out that the pick is in and going to be Odunze. I love that he was so excited, and that he uses the term "our" just an hour or so after being drafted himself. ANd he seems to have known, or guessed, that the team wanted Odunze. Seems like he felt that was a good possibility all along. 4) Poles checked with Atlanta about a swapping pick 9 and next years 4th for pick 8. I dont know why Atlanta didnt hop all over that knowing we werent going to take Penix of course after taking Williams. i suppose we never formally made the offer, but he did check in earlier and those were the terms. Cool stuff.

great info! I dunno if Caleb will hit the ground running or have some setbacks, which could affect his ranking here, but the fact that it even seems reasonable that he could have a top 5 rookie season ever is a great sign as to how we feel about him, and the roster around him.

and remember no team's roster is ever perfect or complete. Look at the Chiefs awful OL this year for example. What it comes down to is a QB, someone to catch the ball, and a defense to stop the other QB. From that point of view we are in great shape. The QB has amazing potential, but is young. Thats gonna be good to start and get better over time. As for someone to catch the ball we have an embarrassment of riches. And the defense is pretty good, although we really do still need another pass rusher, and for Dexter or someone to collapse the pocket from the middle. Our window is either open, or about to. After all these years, and having to root for players that just werent good enough - thank the football gods. P.S. Obviously every position is important. Football is the ultimate team game. And if you have decent players around, that helps, and awful players can sink you, but most (all?) super bowl winning teams had superstars and also not so great players on their rosters. No roster is ever perfect, and if you have a great QB, someone to catch the ball and a defense, you can build around that.

I think Davis is extremely talented. Im not sure if his heart is in it or not though. Im willing to overlook last year, but Im surprised he hasnt been in training camp much. Then again big guys who are vets often want to skip the summer workouts. Im gonna look at him with an open mind this year because of his potential, but if he isnt all in, or Jenkins gets injured, we will be really glad to have Bates on the team, and Bates may well beat one of them out for a starting spot on merit alone too.

So if PFF is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, does that make them kind of OK? I would argue it makes them unreliable and therefore useless. Imagine a test for cancer that gets it right 70% of the time. 30% of tests either fail to detect cancer, or detects cancer where there is none. Would we say that it's a pretty helpful tool? I would say it isn't helpful at all, because even if your test is one of the 70% of times they got it right, you're still wondering whether you can trust it, so it's pretty much never helpful then. PFF has some weird grading rules too. If an OT completely ignores the DE he is supposed to block, and gives up a sack, and instead incorrectly double teams the DT, PFF calls that a successful block, and does not assign responsibility for the sack to that player. So it may measure how well you block the man you engage with, but it does an extremely poor job of measuring your effectiveness as a player. Dont forget, PFF tried to tell us Leno was one of the best OTs in the league! So is PFF ALWAYS wrong? Nope. They are at best random. Which is worse, because if they are always wrong, you can just invert the findings and have usable data - but randomly wrong is like the cancer test above - totally useless.

totally agree. I think Bates was brought in to play center OR to replace Davis OR Jenkins if they dont show up for whatever reason, laziness, or injury or even if he just beats them out. I do think that PFF grades, especially on lineman, are atrocious and untrustworthy, but I also think your point is correct even without the PFF portion.

I agree with all of this, especially the running backs and Pettis. Well if it doesnt become a major source of scoring or massive field position changes, then it will be fine. If it lessens injuries so much the better.I'd almost just assume have everyone start on their own 20, but kick returns are exciting, and as long as big ones dont become excessively more likely, then it's just swapping one procedure for another and that's cool. And if it does change the game, then I hope we all are against it then? Ha! Well that was a HUGE change. I hope football doesn't change fundamentally as a result of this new thing. I think, like you do, that it probably wont, so cool. No of course. Hester did it because he was an incredible returner. There will always be those rare players who can take over a game from positions you dont expect. Like Troy Palamalu, or Deion Sanders or, like you say Devin Hester. And that's why he's in the Hall Of Fame. Having HOF caliber players succeed within the rules is awesome and part of football. My concern would be if a rule change makes a bunch of average returners get easy touchdowns with some random distribution. Like having each team pick a number between 1 and 30, and if they guess right, they get a free 7 points, Id be against something that worked like that, but never against greatness. But most of all, and Im sure you will agree, I want to see the Bears on the good side of succeeding with these new rules, or any rules whatever they are.

and that doesnt count all the preseason fumbles weve seen from Jones. I also think that Jones makes a lot of dumb mistakes too. But Pixote is right too, that Carter is no world beater. I think they battle it out for WR5 until we can get someone better - maybe next year. But neither one is very good.

Well hes surely not competing for WR1, WR2, WR3 or WR4. So youre right hes no pro bowler. But the question is between him and Velus Jones Jr. for WR5. Carter just turned 31, Jones just turned 27 Carter ran a 4.44 40, and Jones ran a 4.31. As a WR, Carter has 108 receptions for 1259 yards and 6 TDs. As a WR, Velus has 11 receptions for 127 yards and 1 TD. Carter's best WR season was 2022 when he had 46 receptions for 538 yards and 3 TD. Jones' best WR season was 2022 also when he had 7 receptions for 107 yards and 1 TD. neither is a WR3 even for sure. As a kick returner: Carter has 118 returns for an average of 22.4 yards and 3 fumbles and 1 TD (2.5% fumble percentage) Jones has 38 returns for an average of 27.4 yards and 0 fumbles and 0 TD (0% fumble percentage) as a punt returner: Carter has 132 returns for an average of 9.8 yards and 11 fumbles and 0 TD (8.3% fumble percentage) Jones has 5 returns for an average of 7 yards and 2 fumbles and 0 TD (40% fumble percentage) And we remember a lot of Velus fumbles in preseason too. Neither one looks that impressive. Carter has the clear edge on punts, and then Velus has a slight statistical edge on kick returns. Maybe they'll put them both back there.

Deandre Carter is also 30 years old. That tells me Poles thinks the window is open now. That tells me he will pick up another DE this year.

its hard to play QBs like they are in the top 3 in the league when they arent. And thats the game. Pretty soon, itll be all rookies, and the very few QBs that really are worth their $ will win all the superbowls. I think we might have one.

He's fast too, so this may be competition for Velus' roster spot.

thanks for the update.

I agree that any more major acquisitions would be in the trenches. We are stocked everywhere else. I think it could come in two ways: 1) an excellent player who fits the long term plan on a 4 year deal 2) an aging vet who can fill in until Booker ascends, and/or we draft another DE - kind of like Keenan Allen for the WRs until Odunze is fully ready. For #1, it would have to be a top notch player. Not sure who would be available to fit that, but Poles has surprised us before. This could happen at the trade deadline, if as you say, we are on our way to the playoffs, having won enough games in September and October. For #2, there are lots of options still around. We could well pick one up cheap before the season starts if Poles thinks they are better than Dom Rob.