BearFan2000

The thought of draft position was in the back of my mind watching the game (and frankly has been on my mind for awhile now). When we won I did think about us winning a meaningless game that likely will hurt draft position, but, at the end of the day we'll draft where we draft. We want to see a culture of winning in Chicago, for the guys who will still be on the team next year under the new regime wins do help. There are guys out there still fighting despite all the negatives swirling around the team those guys are showing they have value to either stick around with the team or auditioning for their next stop in their careers. I don't want to get too caught up in draft position and at my core I don't like tanking for position as it's not the mentality you want to have. Doesn't mean I won't keep an eye our potential draft position but it's not going to make me root for a loss. One thing to keep in mind is wherever we do draft, it won't be Pace making the picks, I just hope that whoever is can turn our draft capitol situation around and draft better so we don't have to have so many bad contracts and overspend to fill holes created by bad drafting. That said I do think Pace has improved over the years in the draft and has done well finding some gems mid draft and later. But we need to get out of this cycle of giving away early draft capitol and constantly borrowing from the future to patch the present.

Seeing the way the Lion's players are still fighting hard even the way their season has gone win/loss wise tells me they may have found a coach who can turn that team around. They've been in nearly every game, but just have come up short. There have been some bad Detroit teams who at this point have given up. This team hasn't.

Let's face it Nagy has never been the most up front coach. But, at this point he knows he's gone, has to know, he looks, and sounds checked out. Can't say I blame him on some level, when you know your cooked and nothing will change that inevitable firing your heart and mind isn't in it any longer. His players know he's on the way out which is partly why the locker room is more and more dysfunctional. I'm sure there's guys in the locker room who support Nagy, and guys who would put him on a bus to nowhere. Some players are still fighting out there, while others have clearly mailed it in and are making business decisions. The writing's been on the wall most of the season if not sooner. We are dealing with what most of us knew we'd be dealing with when they failed to pull the plug last offseason and kept everyone around for one more year. All that did was set the team in a holding pattern of circling the drain. I do hope the rumblings of Teddy moving away from football operations, and we do see a restructure of the front office and finally get real football minds in place to turn this franchise around. A shake up is needed beyond HC/GM.

Fields is the key, and will also be a player that makes the Bears HC job attractive. There is much debate over which method is best hiring a HC who is just the CEO, and focusing on great OC and DC's to shape your offense and defense. Or getting a HC who has a large role in either the offense or the defense. There's reasons for and against each situation. If your offense or defense is hot mainly because of the coordinator, they will get plucked away, and the best ones often have HC aspirations anyway. Having an offensive or defensive specialized HC if successful does protect that side of the ball where his expertise lies, but can lead to the issue where HC is no longer just a head coach and focuses too much on one side or the other and in our case does neither fully well. Nagy would benefit more from just focusing on being the CEO/head coach rather than call plays on offense, he just can't help himself but to keep his hand in that cookie jar to the detriment of the team and himself he thinks too highly of himself as an offensive minded coach. That's where regardless of the approach you go to whether it's HC is head coach and Coordinators run their side, or HC is HC/OC or HC/DC. The success or failure always comes back to finding the right person to run the team. They were talking about this the other day on the radio, and you can look at Belichick in NE. He is a defensive minded coach who's heavily involved In the defense, but, he's doesn't ignore the offense even though he's had solid play calling from his OC's he has the ability to translate/reverse engineer his defensive knowledge to aid his offensive players to teach them how to attack defense, and what makes various defenses vulnerable. They also talked about (and agree) there are some coach who are just head and shoulders above the rest and they are special and rare. The easy thing to want to do is follow this coach or that coach's coaching tree, hoping one of the branches is as strong as the trunk. Sometimes these coaches from a respective tree show promise early and fizzle. Some of them pan out. What we need to look for first and foremost is a HC who can game plan, and adapt to the talent he has on his roster. You want a coach that is versatile in style not stubborn, thick headed, or smartest man in the room types. NFL defenses will always adapt to stop what's working, you need to be able to adjust with them, be able to add wrinkles, keep things fresh and stay a step ahead. Belichick has been a master at evolving his team's style as his roster evolves. In game management and adjustments are critical as well. Too often under Nagy we've entered a game looking completely unprepared, and rarely if ever do we adjust in game. Or we'll look good early but once the game goes off script the wheels fall off. I think it's also very important to have defined roles/boundaries within the staff. We have chaos on offense because Naggy want's to have control over play calling, gives it up to Laser, takes credit when Laser's offense has success, then will at times take over, to where you never know who's driving the car on offense, and I'm sure that has to be frustrating to the players not knowing who to listen to. Naggy lacks the self awareness to realize his plays don't work with any consistency and that he should have handed off play calling duties to a full time OC, whether that's Laser or someone else. You can still be heavily involved in the offensive meetings and such but when your play calling is not working be man enough to admit it and do what's best for the team rather than your ego. I do tend to prefer a HC have a specialization in one side or the other or even a former ST guy who's worked with both offensive and defensive players. Specializations do tend to protect a strong offense or strong defense, with Fields I'd tend to prefer an offensive minded coach, but I want one who will be involved in both sides of the ball, but at the same time will trust his coordinators and position coaches and not meddle and blur the lines of what the staffs roles are. Players need to have a leader, who's in charge, doesn't have to be a tyrant, but you know he's at the top of the command chain, but he trusts the coaches under him to do their jobs.

R. Smith will be a good chunk of change when we extend him, and we should do so. I'd rather deal Mack, Jackson, and Trevathan, and use the money saved towards paying Roquan, and trying to keep Quinn (never thought I'd say that after last year's version of Quinn). Quinn has earned the chance to stick around. Mack gives flashes, and he's looked far more like himself this season when he was healthy which has been less and less often. I think our highest priority in the draft should be CB and WR. Having a true stud #1 WR is probably not a realistic hope for next year. But an offense can be as successful with multiple solid #2 types and in some ways it's better to have multiple solid #2's and some solid #3's than having a stud #1 and a collection of Meh behind him where defenses will shut him down and make you one dimensional. Having multiple quality weapons at the WR/TE position spreads the D out more and they can't just focus on one player. Let AROB go, draft one or two quality #2's with high end potential, add some vets and call it a day. Perhaps 2023 draft will give us a shot at a stud #1 to add to a solid WR group from 2022. The line does need addressed, I feel like our interior is where our line's strength is, so we need to figure out our LT & RT going forward. I feel like the group we have we can field a solid RG, C, LG. As always finding the bookends to the line is the biggest challenge. With the games remaining we need to see if Jenkins can develop at either tackle spot. Borom has shown some promise as well. Haven't done much looking at potential draft prospects at either LT or RT in the 2022 draft. Figuring this out though is going to be the key regardless of who's coaching next year. But whoever it is will impact which pieces get moved where. Looking ahead, I'm trying to remember if we have given up any 2023 draft capitol at this point yet. It would be nice to go into a draft for once with a full slate of picks. We keep borrowing from the future to try and patch the present, and we need to stop that. If Pace survives the offseason I hope that means sweaty teddy is gone and Pace moves into his role and we get a new GM, who'll bring in the next coach, etc. I think the Phillips role would better suit Pace, and I do think our scouting team has done a good job, and Pace has show an improved eye for talent, which would be a big upgrade over Phillips who's just a bean counter where as Pace could grow nicely into that position. It'd still allow him to provide input to the GM in a way that we don't have now.

If Jenkins is able to work his way into more reps and can become the player we hoped when we took him, and Borom pans out as well, this could be looked back at as a key draft for the future of the team. Whether or not Pace hangs on or gets chopped with Naggy, there are for sure some pieces to build on that should be enticing to a potential HC candidate and even coordinators. While Pace trades up more than I'd like, I can't deny his drafts especially the last couple years or so have had some nice finds. He'll never shake the move to give up a ton to move up 1 spot to take Mitch when in all likelihood he'd have been there at 3. That will probably be the move that defines him if he's indeed released this offseason. Whoever is making the moves beyond this season and whoever we get to coach has some good potential, just need to clean up the dead weight and fine tune the roster. It's an opportunity that should be very attractive since the team doesn't need a full ground up rebuild.

Very cool, always like Mitch as a person, wish him all the best. Shame things didn't work out for him in Chicago. Maybe he'll get another shot somewhere to start.

Thank you for all the congrats and well wishes. Dad is doing well, the wife is ready be done being pregnant. But it's been a fairly smooth pregnancy all together. If baby grows up to be a Packer fan though she might get disowned lol. j/k. She'll be our first grand parents are already looking forward to spoiling her. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and have a safe and happy Christmas and New Years! Can't believe we are in the final stretch of 2021.

Happy thanksgiving to everyone here. We have much to be thankful for especially this year. This past Tuesday my Dad had a heart attack, and his recovery’s has gone so well that he was able to celebrate Thanksgiving with us today. And my wife and I are about 6 weeks away from welcoming a new Bears fan. Maybe by the time she’s old enough the Bears will be good again. Wishing everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

What happened to Fields, I have no way of watching the game (stuck with the queens vs pukers). Just saw on game cast Fields got hurt?

Sadly admitting fault and steps taken to ensure it won't continue to be a regular thing are two entirely different things. The NFL will screw you and will only admit fault after the fact but nothing ever changes. Fields should also be as protected as other QB's in the league. Tired of seeing him hit late, and hit after he slides with no call, look at the Baltimore game Thursday night defender barely breathes on Jackson and there's a flag. For as long as I can remember the league has allowed our QB's to get killed and only once in a while throwing a flag.

The sad stat in that is that completing 7 passes of 15 yards or more in a single game hasn't happened in over 15 years.

I'm hoping they do give him the extra week hold his return till after the bye. Herbert has shown he can hold down the fort in Monty's stead, no sense in risking brining him back early if you can afford to wait. I do look forward to the 1-2 punch, they can both be explosive in different ways. Herbert can be the lightning to Monty's thunder.

I don't think it's worth exposing Fields to him. The dude literally threw his QB under the bus behind his back on social media. All the talent in the world but he is a cancer, we've got enough issues without adding him.

Part of the reason they only have two playmakers on offense apart from him is his huge 10 year extension they signed him to that will limit what they can do adding talent around him. Injuries have really hurt their run game, but the blocking also isn't what it once was. Their defense is suspect at best, and NFL teams have figured out Reid's system to an extent. Though like you said take out Hill and Kelcie (who's having a bad stretch himself) and voila your team is struggling to manufacture points. And you're more prone to taking risks as your chasing points. Another factor I think is Mahomes has been so reliant on trick throws, and finding WRs running loose in the secondary for easy completions. When you be come reliant on that and the WR's aren't open by a country mile anymore and the trick throws, and risky throws are no longer working you have to try to play more traditionally and as Alaskan pointed out he's struggling with even more traditional throws. At some point it catches up to you and he's showing signs of becoming the boom or bust type QB that he was tagged as pre-draft. He can look like a world beater one week and then pedestrian at best the next. Kinda like when we had good Rex vs bad Rex. For Mahomes I think this is a critical point in his career, can he develop to the point where he can succeed whether the trick plays are working or not. That's the role of a Franchise QB. The longer he's in the league the more he's going to realize that you can only get by on athletic ability and luck so long and at some point you need to develop new skills, and improve others in order to play smarter. He's definitely capable of doing that.

how I ironic is that it takes covid to ensure Nagy has nothing to do with play calling

hard to develop or show progress when you're not given protection and taking a beating every down. At the rate we're going Fields may not physically survive the season.

This team doesn't belong in the playoffs plain and simple. If we got to the post season I want it to be because we deserve to be there, earned it, and have a shot at making some noise or competing. If we some how luck our way in like we did last year we'll be 1 and done like last year. I couldn't even stomach watching all of yesterday's game do we really want to see that kind of performance in a playoff game we have no business being in? Besides the point that to luck into that we would need to have some sort of win streak to pull it off, which to the McCaskey's may look like "progress" and we may get stuck with these clowns for yet another season of mediocrity.

If we're talking interim Head Coach should the Bears possess the kahunas to fire Nagy in season, you're only options for interim are in house. No one worth anything from the outside will come in knowing it's likely going to get blown up in the offseason, to be the HC of a failing team for a short stint is not something any self respecting coach wants on their resume. So names like Desai, Pettin, etc. are the short list if Nagy is removed in season. And while we have to consider what's best for Justin and his development. We're between a rock and a hard place. Stay the course and keep the current pieces in place and get Fields killed cause we don't believe in doing all we can to protect him. If we axe Naggy and promote within we're taking a risk. It's clear watching the players that Nagy's lost the team, they look defeated and uninterested. I didn't even bother watching the second half beyond the first two possessions as I just could no longer watch. As a fan my hope each week of rooting for my Bears has devolved into hoping they don't embarrass themselves in this weeks loss. last two weeks they've done just that.

what's sad is this game is only half over, question is do I even watch the second half or do something more productive with my time...

The only bright spot so far is the same bright spot from last week. Been impressed with Herbert filling in for Monty. The kid has good vision and speed in change of direction.

can we just leave Nagy in Tampa when team flies back to Chicago?

just keeps getting worse

Your torturing yourself

Kmet drops a first down, drive stalls... This game could be over well before halftime.