AZ54

I know there is a lot of angst about PFF and there is valid debate about their scoring system. Nonetheless, to be listed among top 10 players in the entire league for Week 5 is a really good sign for our rookie center. Did anyone expect to see Whitehair on a list that has players such as Von Miller, Tom Brady, and ex-Bear Mason Foster? https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-top-10...-week-5-action/

It can simply be that the defense is winning the games for them and they'd rather put more on Decamilhlis' plate than distract Wade from what the D needs to do.

One way or another a QB is headed our way. With all of Chicago hating on Cutler there's no reason he should want to be here. Fox hasn't indicated any reason he wants him here. On the flip side I'm really tired of watching Hoyer's 7yd passes. Defenses don't cover guys like Jeffrey downfield because they know he never looks there. He's going to one read, maybe two at the max on one side of the field. If we're moving on, at the end of the day Hoyer will be cheaper to keep around than Cutler. What I've seen of Kizer he hasn't looked that good either although I don't get to watch many of their games. I will add that I don't like how they often have him throw on the run, he's inaccurate with those passes. When he's in the pocket he often drops passes into tight windows.

I can't say that Barth is any worse than what I saw from Gould last season or during the preseason especially with the missed PATs. Barth has a problem with over-correction. Miss left, come back and miss right. I'd say we lost because of too many penalties on drives especially those in the redzone.

Players I'm looking to see improvement from: Washington: After a good showing last week, can he add more inside pressure this week? Bullard: He hasn't flashed much this year but if he's going to show off that first step quickness this is the week. Kwiatkoski: With Trevathan back will they split snaps between him and Kwit? If he's out there can he continue to progress in his reads. Cam Meredith: What's his ceiling? Jordan Howard: Can he have a repeat performance?

Pace is running the show although I entirely agree that Fox has control over who plays/doesn't play. That is as it should be IMO. This is just reporters starting a storyline to get Fox on the hot seat. I say we keep rolling with the youngsters and it will pay off. I know I'm one of very few that were impressed by our young players last week on both sides of the ball. There's a foundation of good players building on this roster. Plus we have a couple in storage that could become good players with RRH at the top of my list. Everyone wants to say that these guys should be playing well already if they are good. I'm old enough to remember a lot of good players not doing so much in their first or even second season. I could start with Peyton's rookie season where he rushed for a grand total of 679 yds with a 3.5ypc but it's better to stick with the recent era. Charles Tillman was disliked by a lot of Bears fans for a couple years. He was often the subject of posts here about how slow he was, how he had no quickness, couldn't really cover in man, etc. Some of that lasted into the Lovie era. Urlacher did nothing in the first few games of his rookie season to make anyone think he was much more than a bust. In fact there were lots of debates about wasting the 9th overall pick on a safety converting to LB. After he was moved inside the light went on and he never looked back. That's not to imply we have an Urlacher on our roster but there's a need for perspective on allowing young players room to grow and learn. If we hadn't seen positives among these young players (as we didn't with SMC early on) then I'd be much more concerned. Floyd's lack of pass rush is a concern for me that I believe can only improve if his strength improves. Jacoby Glenn's and Bryce Callahan's ability to cover WRs deep down field is not. Jordan Howard's ability to get positive yards even after contact behind the LOS? Whitehair's blocking up front after not practicing at OC all preseason? There are still positions to address, and we'll need some elite players somewhere on the roster to win a Super Bowl, but I feel we're headed in the right direction.

He broke the fibula, not tibia so this is entirely unrelated to last year's injury. He'll be back. Whether it is this season or not depends not just on him but also other injuries with Kyle Fuller being the other likely to return from IR.

I watched a highlight of the game and noticed that on one of the plays where Hoyer did play action to the left and then reverses direction rolling out to the right the blocking scheme appeared to me to be exactly the same as this running play where they talked about the reach block. If a LB is trying to key off what the OG and RB do they are going to bite hard to stop the running play headed to their right side. It's a great fake and I don't recall seeing it before with this roll out (not that I watched that closely). Having this option should slow down the LBs a bit on the run read, which of course makes it easier to get OG on them if it is a running play. Remember in the original link how the Cowboys DE cut across the face of Massie and made the tackle? Now with the QB rolling out behind that RT space the LDE might hesitate before making his move inside. That gives Massie a bit more time to make his run block.

Despite the 0-3 start I've held that I like the young players we have. Injuries have forced some into action sooner than expected with some negative plays as a result. Instead of the flashes of goodness we've seen in the first few weeks this week it was about consistent execution. That's a big step forward for them and getting this first victory will be huge for their confidence. Offense: Kevin White: I've seen comments about waiting to see a breakout game. Not that I disagree with that, but much more than seeing the explosive big plays, which I think are in his future, I wanted to see consistent execution from him. Be where he is supposed to be on time so the QB can reliably throw his way. I think we're seeing that progress in his 6 catches for 55 yards today. Against Dallas it was 6 for 62yds. There are 100yd receiving days in his near future. Cam Meredith: I don't see big play potential in him but he's becoming a reliable chain mover. He has quietly moved ahead of Josh Bellamy and between his performance and Bellamy's nobody misses Marquis Wilson. Jordan Howard: Even when he's contacted at the LOS he gains 2 or 3 yards, sometimes more. He did have some good lanes at times but he made the Oline better today. I like the combination of him as the primary back and Langford's speed as #2. Everyone already knows about Whitehair. Defense: Timu: He's just a better football player than Anderson but he's a step slower than you'd like. I know he missed a couple tackles today but his reads were usually spot on and considering he hasn't seen game action since the preseason he should knock off the tackling rust quickly. While I liked his play I really like the potential we're starting to see with... Kwiatkoski: In his first game action against Dallas he was usually late to his read, and blocked out of the play. I saw progress from him today but I expect coaches will keep the rotation with him and Timu for the near term. Crevon LeBlanc: When Porter went out I didn't notice he was out there. Normally when we've pulled Callahan out of the slot there was an immediate and noticeable drop off. I'll have the watch the game again to see how he did. Callahan: He's turning into a really good player for us. He stepped outside for Porter and blanketed Golden Tait the rest of the game. Keep him healthy. Cornelius Washington: He's a veteran but it's his first season as a 3-4 DE. He's still got a long ways to go learning this job but that sack was nice to see because he earned it by beating his man. On the backend the young safeties played a decent game, as did Glenn. Floyd didn't do anything in pass rush but he was good in coverage. Hopefully his injury isn't too serious. Regardless, the defense with all these young players contributing did not give up a TD and in the NFL that's a damn good day.

Sooner or later this Oline is going to come together. For now we still have individual players doing well in spots: Sitton, Long, and add Whitehair to that list. http://www.windycitygridiron.com/2016/10/1...nfl-draft-class

I agree, Paulsen has been horrible at times. He's had to learn the offense on the fly but still, some of the basic blocking should be better than what he's done. I can't see what the motive is for bringing up Braunecker but hopefully it's not because of more injury news.

Kyle Long and Sitton are too experienced to be making these mistakes. Not all mistakes in the first 3 games are on them but clearly there are numerous issues on the Oline that need to be corrected for this running game to take off. http://bearswire.usatoday.com/2016/09/29/f...gainst-cowboys/

I didn't expect to go anywhere this year but the poor start is still disappointing. I think the D was good until Goldman, Trevathan, and Callahan left the field. The offense hasn't done them any favors at all. In terms of players my biggest disappointment has to be Bobby Massie. I knew he'd struggle in pass protection because he always struggled in pass protection in AZ. I expected he'd be good at run blocking especially lined up next to Kyle Long. That hasn't happened. If Massie doesn't improve very quickly we might be a week or two away from seeing Adams at RT. If the Oline and running game got going we'd be ok with Hoyer. Injuries have certainly impacted us since week 2 and the biggest loss is probably Goldman and Trevathan right behind him. That leaves a big gap up the middle and Will Sutton is not ever going to be a good NT because he gets moved around too much. So you are correct we don't have enough depth but we all knew that going into the offseason. We were a team looking to get decent starters much less better depth players. When I isolate on some of the younger players many seem like they belong on the field but they just have to learn how to play in the NFL. I like that Floyd has held up physically better than I expected on run plays but he's at least a year away from having the strength needed to play OLB, maybe he'll need a couple off-seasons. While we wait to see sack production for now, even with his rookie mistakes, he still offers more in coverage than any of the other options we have at OLB. Whitehair may be the stud of this last draft class and I think he will develop into a very good player for us. Bullard has to learn how to play with better leverage and he does not have the strength needed if he takes a mis-step. Kwiatkoski flashed on a couple plays in the Cowboys backfield but otherwise he easily blocked or lost on assignments. Still I'm glad coaches put him out there and I hope we get to see more of him this week. Jordan Howard has a better feel for the running game than Langford and I think he'll be more productive for us. Each week Kevin White looks more comfortable running his routes. I think his confidence grew last week and you see his emotions. He'll be working to make some more big plays at home this week. There are now players in starting roles that I was hoping wouldn't even be on the roster: OLB/ILB Christian Jones, S Prosinski, and ILB Anderson (he's gone now replaced by Timu who is a better football player but he's slow), and McManis (who is still good on special teams and not good in coverage).

Not a good situation with Carey also out. If Carey doesn't recover this week it will force the teams hand into bringing up another rookie, and then who do they cut to make room on the roster? Or do we go heavy and bring back Lasike?

I've actually never used the All 22. On NFL.com it is called Coaches Film. I have a Game Pass subscription just because it was a cheap add-on to the Direct TV Sunday Ticket, which cost just $100 for my college student to sign up. We stream the game through an Xbox unless it is a network broadcast. The Game Pass has a very good slo-mo feature, and a 10sec back/forward that makes it easy to review a play when you want to see what went right or wrong. All-22 would be best for evaluating QB play.

I still like the young talent we have on our roster and I'm most likely the only one. The roster is by no means complete but I think we have some good building blocks now.

A friend who is a Cowboys fan told me he isn't that impressed with Dak so far. He said he's very inconsistent on long passes (the knock on him in the draft) but that he's good on the short routes. Of course he's also good at scrambling around and that makes up for a lot. His biggest concern was that Prescott is ineffective and often makes bad throws in the red zone. Impossible to tell if our defense will be able to find any advantage in that mix especially with so many players out with injury. We might get lucky in the red zone but Dez Bryant can make up for a lot of inaccuracies on a pass. On the other hand it all likely means Dallas will focus heavily on the run game. My glimmer of hope for this game is that every Cowboy's fan has the name Jordan Howard etched in their mind afterwards and they are wondering why they drafted a RB in Rd 1 when Howard was available on day 3.

Sorry but once again you are the one blaming everything on Cutler, and you are right no veteran QB should ever attempt a pass when a defender is about to tackle him.

When I get to the weekend and I'm emotionally ready I'll go look at the All-22 and see if Langford is missing opportunities. I can't believe that we put Howard in and suddenly we were ripping off 5+ yards a carry. It's a small sample size but he deserves more opportunities.

Because clearly all that is wrong is Cutler's fault... http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/footb...0922-story.html

We need more of this. Good pre-snap read of the play by Howard and I think we'll see more from him next week. http://www.chicagobears.com/multimedia/vid...ea-58ab68e544b9

Barkley is not the answer. If you like short/medium throws and 8 defenders in the box we might as well stick with Hoyer. It is really disappointing that Shaw broke his leg because he looked like a good backup QB for us, and if he had potential to be more we'd be getting a chance to see that now. IMO finding a QB requires one of two things: a) Luck (not necessarily Andrew but that'd be a good answer). Throwing a lot of darts at the board which is what Seattle did in Pete Carroll's first two seasons. Then the luck portion paid off with Russell Wilson. For all their genius is finding Wilson they are the same organization that traded a 3rd Rd pick for Charlie Whitehurst, started Tarvaris Jackson, and said this: "Seattle's front office later stated they had already picked up a potential franchise quarterback in the draft by acquiring Whitehurst with the 2011 pick". NFL history is littered with flameouts and surprises but statistically speaking you will need to use either 1st or 2nd Rd pick to get your QB. A third path is the reclamation project which is what the Cardinals did with Carson Palmer. I think we have to be bold and patient. Bold as in the proposal as Stinger said in his proposed trade for Connor Cook. I like the aggressiveness there but I just don't like Cook. Denver was bold when they went after Peyton Manning and still had Osweiller in the fold. That wasn't a slam dunk either given his recovery from his neck surgery. The patient part requires keeping Cutler around because with a good defense we can win games with him. Once we confirm we have a better option on the roster I'm good with moving on. Maybe locals can keep an eye on this kid: http://jetswire.usatoday.com/2016/08/18/pr...-deshone-kizer/ I expect Lasike back on the 53 once things get better but there are just so many injuries right now that we have to go in this direction.

Before the injuries I felt we were seeing the beginnings of a good defense. It was 3rd quarter and we'd given up 9pts. We still have holes to fill on the D and a lot of players need experience but there is only one way to get for them to get it. The offense OTOH is built to run even all the way out the big WRs who both block well. Yet we can't run the ball. More than anything else that bothers me.

I don't mind the concept as much as I'd rather see us trade for a good QB and not Connor Cook. I think Cutler is here next year unless the wheels fall off completely but he will be looking at his replacement. Until he tore apart his thumb he was not the reason the offense wasn't moving the ball. Unless he is key to run blocking. After the injury it was clear he couldn't throw a football.

The Texans will be the best Dline we face all season, and we had to do that in week 1 with a rookie at Center and a LG who had practiced with the team for 6 days. That said, Massie's weakness blocking on the edge was exposed and we're going to see that from time to time but hopefully with the interior players getting in sync Cutler will be able to step up in the pocket more often.