BearFan PHX

good point, theres also that mid tier oscillation of strength of schedule, youre 6-11, so you get an easy schedule, you go 11-6 and then get a tough schedule, and then regress to 6 wins again - BOY have the Bears been on THAT cycle. That the Lions progress as the schedule gets tougher does definitely show they are rising. Im not convinced they are really in the top 4 teams in the league, but they are surely in the top 8, maybe even 5 or 6. If they keep moving forward next year, then Campbell is a good coach for sure. But right now, I see Goff, the OC and Hutchinson as the primary reasons. I do think Campbell is probably a great motivator - I love his fiery attitude. But I dunno if he is a master strategy guy or not? They seriously might be in the superbowl this year if they had bought into taking FGs on 4th down instead of going for it.

I totally agree. I think the Lions OC is fantastic. The opening drive was like a magic show and the 49ers were always looking the wrong way. But similarly, the 49ers made amazing halftime adjustments, and ended up outcoaching the Lions. After halftime the Niners defense seemed to have Goffs number and they clamped down on the run game. So similar to how we have an opening script for Justin that looks better than the rest of the game, the Lions had a plan that got them a 24-7 halftime lead. But then it wasnt the week leading up planning but in game adjustments where the Niners coaching staff took control. Im not saying Campbell is nothing, he's a very dynamic guy who amps up the players for sure. But he made some situational football mistakes that may have been the difference in the game, like going for it on 4th down instead of taking the FG. But i give more coaching credit to the Lions OC, and Goff. And for people making parallels to Campbell with Eberflus, it's all the same mistakes but without the huge magnetic personality Campbell has. You're also right about the role luck played. It is always is a factor, but hopefully you have coaches that can create some tricky stuff to balance that out too?

for sure. plus there was no pass rush the first half of the season, and Stevenson was a rookie! There is every reason to believe that this defense will be excellent next year, and if you add more on the DL and a new FS, we could be special. And we still need to complement that with an offense that can score points!

It's an interesting problem, and in some ways it's THE interesting problem. I think there is enough chaos in the way it's all set up that while the very best teams rise, and the worst teams fall, there's a whole middle area that churns in the noise of "any given sunday" So a 3-14 team isn't gonna go far into the playoffs, and the Chiefs are always gonna be there in the playoffs, and usually in the Championship game that there is enough chaos in the whole system that a team like ours could be 6-11 or 11-6 even if we are at the same skill level. The Lovie team that went to the Superbowl was like that. They weren't a Superbowl caliber team per se, but the defense was good enough and a couple things went our way and boom there we were. No way we were beating the Colts though, even with Hester spotting a 7 point handicap by returning the opening kickoff. But there are a couple of teams every year that are GOOD. They are gonna bully their way into the playoffs and win. Chaos happens, and they might not make the Super Bowl every year, but they are gonna be in it at the end. Brady took the Pats to 9 superbowls, but he also took them to 13 AFC championship games, including EVERY single one between 2012 and 2019. So cream rises, but there is enough noise that the best team sometimes loses in the Championship game. And somehow the Bears get there only to lose to an actual dominant team. So that's what I'm thinking about the Lions. They were good, and Goff is a pretty good QB. They had a pass rush, and the ball bounced their way a few times. They were like Lovie's Bears. Good, but no ones SB favorite. So if they win at least 11 games next year, I'll say that Campbell is a good coach. But if they go 9-7 or worse, I'll think it was the roster and some luck. So I guess you need that top 5 QB, a surrounding roster to at least some degree, and a coach to pull some magic tricks to give you an edge from being one of the top 4 to being the one holding the trophy at the end. It's chaotic, so some years youll miss out, but if you dont have those three things, then really youre not in the actual game at all. And I suppose this philosophy is what drives me to want to move on from middle or decent coaches and QBs. i feel like until you have exceptional people at those two positions, youre just in the race, but not in the actual hunt to win it? I mean, we beat the Lions. So what does that mean? That the Lions really are a Superbowl team and so are we? Or that the Bears are somewhere in the top teams between 12th to 16th best, and hoping for a breeze of luck to get us to the divisional round? This is why incremental progress isnt actually a sign of becoming dominant. Once you get past the average, youre at the mercy of the winds of luck, and when you get a 10 win season you think youre on the way, and when you win 6 you fire the guy, but neither understands the deeper path to being truly dominant?

yeah and its funny, one of the knocks on Edmunds was that he didnt make INTs. For me, if a LB can take away the deep middle and knock passes down, that's good enough. I mean, I love INTs, but if he can do the Urlacher thing, that's valuable too. And then here he comes getting 4 this year. And he's only 25. Like Kmet, I think Edmunds best play is still ahead of him.

Edmunds value to this defense may not be easily apparent. The Cover 2 system (not just the coverage type, but the gap assignments) tend to funnel all the tackles to the WLB, in this case Edwards. As Edmunds makes good reads and fills his gap, the runners bounce outside where Edwards cleans them up, and was a top tackler in the league. The same thing happened on running plays with Urlacher funneling to Briggs. The difference is on pass plays in the Tampa 2, Urlacher got major depth. He was able to use his speed and length to shut down the deep middle seam, which is one of the three places where you attack a Cover 2. The others being on the sides past the press corner, and in front of, or if you can beat them, behind the safety. Eberflus doesnt use Edmunds that way. I truly think Poles thought that was how Edmunds would be used when he praised his length.

its because Eberflus isnt using him the way Lovie used Urlacher. The difference between the cover 2 Eberflus runs and the Tampa 2 Lovie ran.

no. it showed what this ONE 7th round pick can do. 99% of 7th round picks cant ever do that.

thats my point. but you missed it. I just want to win. But Justin isnt gonna get us there. So I really hope we dont keep him. Then we can win, and i cant prove that i was "right" that we wouldnt have won with him, because he wasnt here to prove it.

thank you! I appreciate that more than you might imagine.

all that needs to be said is that if we all just treat each other with respect going forward, we wont have any issues. That should be easy enough to do. We dont have to hash this one out, we can just move past it. I am happy to shake your hand, or anyone here with the one obvious exception, and it aint Grizz I'll add this, ever since my fight to end years of crap from one individual, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of negative stuff on here. I knew that would happen of course, but it was preferable to being submissive and taking it, no matter how polite I had tried to be. Im not trying to bring it up again, but to talk about the pushback on me since then. I get it pretty much daily from a lot of different sides, and it's no fun. In finally smacking my bully in the mouth, I got a reputation as a jerk. And Ive had to live with the reaction, and be tough. So if i am on the defense, that's why. I freely criticize peoples logic, stats and facts. I could call an argument dumb. But i dont call peoples opinions dumb, we are all entitled to them, and thats what sports debate is all about. I'd like to get back to debating the Bears, and Id VERY much like for people not to have such a negative view of me. But there inst much i can do about it. I will just say, that i am a very nice guy in real life. Anyone that knows me would say it. And Im a natural leader in most social groups Im in. On occasion (in the real world not here) someone will be jealous, and if they attack me by whatever means, I generally defeat them. Usually thats some kind of social attack, or lies or whatever. Im very nice, but Im no ones b*tch. Since this is a football board, I suspect there are a lot of people like that here. Former players, men who are leaders and alpha types. I dont think any of you would have accepted what I finally stopped being polite about and set straight a couple months ago. But I hope we would each respect eachother for standing up for ourselves too. I dont consider myself better than anyone here, or above anyone. Like a team full of alphas, everyone is legit. So hopefully, we can ALL drop the hostility, and judgement, and I can stop feeling defensive, and we can all just have a good time here. I hope that helps explain where Im at, and how its been for me since I smacked my bully back. Thanks for reading this far to anyone that did.

dont be a dick. if you want to man up on me, win an argument on the merits not this playground childish crap. If you cant beat me that way, dont be a baby. The comment you described as him "teabagging" was said to me, so if youre a real man, stand behind what you say and dont go dodging like a little kid. I have had it from all sides here because I dont want to keep Justin. Youre gonna have to deal with people disagreeing with you. And also because of the years that one member spent saying things that were really out of line to me. Im sorry you dont think I am worthy to defend myself, but I am. Youd expect a certain amount of personal respect as a man, so me too. All we have to do is debate with mutual respect for each others opinions, and we can criticize each others facts, logic and statistics. Believe me, Im not interested in teabagging you back. Sorry. was that antagonistic? Is it allowed from me or only people criticizing me? Thought so. P.S. Grizz and I seem to be getting along fine. So can we if you just act with regular personal respect. That's all Im asking for / insisting on.

agree, you dont need to wait until the last minute of the last year of someones contract to know if you got it right or not. two years is a lot of time to see stuff and evaluate.

Wow, GREAT playcalling on the Lions' opening drive, and David Montgomery is still a stud.

Look, if your point is that we troll each other here, then dont get butt hurt if I say someone is trolling. I'm trying to take everything at face value to be polite, not because I'm stupid. Pretending to be stupid to troll someone is hardly a mic drop for intelligence is it? But ask yourself, if someone tried to "teabag" you, how would you react? What if someone implied that someone else teabagged you? And if I react that way now since youve made it clear, are you gonna act like I'm all out of line? I bet if someone put their testicles on your chin youd knock the shit out of them, right? So please dont imply thats what he did to me. Or if you do, then dont be surprised if someone gets punched ("rhetorically" of course). You cant have it both ways. I think it'd be best if we just act like adults here. Whadda ya say?

lol but adam was saying (with some tongue in cheek Im sure) that the decision on Justin is affected by this game today. I will say this - we see how Lamar's heroball doesnt beat a great professional football team. Even though we are just climbing the ladder and only on the cusp of the playoffs, we should still be building a team that is set up to eventually take on the great teams, or theres no point. we should not be putting our eggs into the hero ball basket - even if the hero is Caleb Williams!

I agree with your first point. The second one is hilarious to me - your analysis of Jackson's performance today makes sense too. What has me laughing, and I suspect you wrote it with a grin, is the idea that we are still waiting for one more game to see if Fields can make it, and he isnt even playing in them anymore LOL I agree though, that Jackson is unable to use the broken plays to beat a quality team as easily as Mahomes can beat a quality team in structure, does tell you something about how freelancing works when you get to the higher levels. You need to be able to do it and do it well, but you cant base your offense on it. Otherwise, why even have plays? Oh and the only big plays Jackson has made today were actually made from the pocket in structure, even if not in tempo.

Justin is great off script no doubt, but unlike Mahomes and Jackson, he cant play within the script. You can say that coaching would fix it, but of course weve seen tons of QBs fail in the NFL, and coaching didnt save them. In fact Fields had regressed this year, and was winless when he said he thought he was getting too much coaching, or at least that it was in his head too much. even the best college QBs are not ready for the NFL. They have to grow. The biggest issue with scouting rookie QBs is how much they will improve and how fast. And one of the biggest issues is how well they take coaching. For example, this is my biggest concern with Caleb Williams. Some resist it out of ego or whatever. Fields seems to be a hard worker with a genuinely open attitude. It doesnt look like he's consciously fighting the coaching or anything like that. But for whatever reason, the light hasnt come on for him. For people in Fields' position, with Field's obvious physical talent, they dont fall out of the league. They always get one more offense, with one more new coach, and almost always at a new team. Most do not succeed there either, but some do. Someone will make a trade offer for Fields, but it wont be for multiple first round picks, and only Mel Kiper thinks it will be even a single first round pick. So that will show us what the league thinks about Fields right now too.

no doubt. And all punters are important, but if youre going to play a possession complementary type of football where you only score 20 points but eat a lot of clock doing it and play field position over multiple possessions, for example Tony Dungy style, then the punter becomes that much more important for sure! I mean, when your nickname is "Punt God" how bad can you be? LOL

and credit it as well LOL

they didnt play as hard as either of the two teams that are playing today did, during our regular season is what I said, followed by a disclaimer that of course this is the playoffs. You need to read the whole sentences to understand what I mean. It's as if i said "I don't like spaghetti when it falls on the floor and stains the rug, but it is a good low cost easy to make weekday meal" and all you hear is "I dont like spaghetti" so if you want to understand me, or debate what Im saying, you kind of have to read what Im saying and all the context too before you cherry pick sentences out of context to create the illusion of something I never meant. Are you saying they players on most other NFL teams this year didnt play as hard as our defense did? Cuz if youre not saying that, then Flus didnt accomplish anything in that realm. And I think players on a lot of teams played hard for their coaches. What did Eberflus do that was special? Not good, but special? Like top 5 coach special? Because if he isnt that, we should keep looking for someone who is. Think Harbaugh is gonna be a better coach than Eberflus? I do.

not because of who I am a fan of. Just because we are ALL gonna be pissed at the end of next season if they do that. And getting to say "I told you so" is not going to be anywhere near worth the chance and time we squandered and the team we could have become. Im not for or against people on the team. Thats what you keep misunderstanding. I dont hate Justin Fields. I WANTED him to be awesome. But I am a fan of the team, not individual players, and I want the TEAM to win. So when players or coaches show me they are not great, even if theyre OK, I want them to be replaced by new players and coaches who are great. I'm not willing to sacrifice the team and season(s) just to be fair to a player or coach. They are employees, not customers.

LOL rhetorical arguments are just opinions and are welcome here! you're thinking of anecdotal evidence. I agree that we arent in the locker room too. I can say I dont see any innovative schemes from our defense, just hard working players who have talent. Some say that he kept the team together during a storm, but if we hadnt lost those 3 games (and others!) we'd be at least 10 - 7, and its not hard to get players to play hard when you arent IN a storm. So its kind of like saving someones life with CPR after youre the one that stabbed them? I truly dont see anything Eberflus does that's special. But as I've said, I dont think he will continue to be an active impediment to winning. I hope the new DC will push back on prevents too early and argue to let the players play a little tighter int heir coverages. If you're watching the game today, you see what really playing hard looks like, and I never saw anything like that kind of intensity from our team, admittedly in the regular season, but this is supposed to be Eberflus' strength. Also, you see how much tighter the coverages are today than we ever see in Chicago. Oh and to your point about Lovie, we did see high intensity from that D, and innovation in how deep they had Urlacher in that Tampa 2. Plus the team culture preached takeaways in a way that you could see the players were always working for them. So those are some outward things you could see on the field. But we didnt go into early prevents and give games away on Lovie's teams, and he handled the clock, situational football and 4th downs much better. And he never kept the best players off the field when they were rested just to give the rotations "fair" minutes.

Flus called the same 6 or 8 vanilla plays that every team calls: cover 2, cover 3, quarters, cover 2 man under, a couple regular blitzes, prevent. Nothing inventive. His main contribution was to tell the DBs and LBs to cover soft and keep everything in front of them. Every defensive coordinator in the league and all their assistants could do that. The players were the ones who did it - to the point of Poles being responsible, not Eberflus. Flus was the one who: sat Sweat so all players had equal playing time (what?!) went for it on 4th and 1 when a FG would have won the game vs the Packers got the defense into a prevent way too early in three different games we have over a 95% chance of winning and lost them all. Had his coverages adjusted to super soft. He personally lost 1/4 of the games this season for us, games we would have won otherwise if he had just gone to the bathroom for the 4th quarter. Defensive players have definitely shown growth this year. I credit Poles for drafting them, and position coaches for their growth. Tell me specifically what Eberflus actually did that was innovative or gave us an edge in winning games? He wasnt a good head coach situationally. He wasnt a good DC for the reasons I already listed. Can you keep a guy as head coach because he was possibly good as defensive quality control assistant?!

sure. all those lies about him mean nothing. If Hightower thinks he can kick, and by all accounts he is special, then absolutely!