adam

He requested the 49ers, nothing the Bears could do there. The Bears need to get Mack now. The DLine needs that energy. Mack with Sweat, with Booker rotating in is a pretty solid trio.

Absolutely, Caleb is such an anomaly. Also, his rookie year has really skewed his numbers. btw, he is now #1 in the NFL in QBR thru Week 7 at 79.6. Rookie Year 43.3, 2nd Year 58.2, now 79.6.

EPA/P is basically a wash: Bears Offense vs Seahawks Defense -0.19 at 21.8 pts per game Seahawks Offense vs Bears Defense -0.18 at 22.2 pts per game Considering the Bears stats are without Williams for 3+ games, the Bears should have the slight edge.

SEA is coming in as the 3pt favorites at home, which is an even game on a neutral field. Seattle's defense is stout, but they go about it a different way compared to MIN. SEA blitzes less than 20% of the time, they use 3 Safeties a lot. On offense, everything runs thru JSN who has been targeted 28 times in the last two games combined. This feels like a low scoring game, which means it will be close. I am going 23-20 Bears. As much as SEA looked dominant against KC, I am not sold on them just yet. They are 2-3 in their last 5. They lost to Mariota and the hapless Commanders and to Bo behind the Stix Nix, and barely beat the Chargers. btw, I can't believe it is Week 8 already.

Dayo's cap number probably keeps him around another year, but the other 3 would free up over $50M with about $17M in dead cap. At that point, they are worth more off the team than on it. Johnson $9M Dead / $16M Savings Sweat $4M Dead / $21M Savings Jarrett $4M Dead / $13.5M Savings

Yeah, 7-3 with 7 left. 4-3 the rest of the way is 11 wins. If they get to 8-2, then you are talking #1 Seed. The crazy part about the playoff path is, not that you try for it, but the easier path may be the 1st or 2nd Wild Card team because those two teams will play the winners of the NFC East and South, who are both pretty bad. Otherwise, the NFC North winner is also assuredly playing another NFC North team or SEA in the first round.

Yeah with him on IR and in the last year of his contract, there would be little benefit to an acquiring team.

Crazy how just a few years ago we would be looking at the Tankathon rankings to see how high a pick the Bears would get, and now it's their playoff odds. Through Week 7, the Bears have a 71% chance to make the playoffs, the 3rd highest in the NFC, only behind MIN and SF as the 5th Seed (best non-Division winner). They would play CAR if the season ended today. The 8th Seed right now is SEA. GB is the 7th Seed. The Bears just have to beat out one of them to make the playoffs, preferably both. GB owns the tie breaker right now. So the MNF game against SEA is huge.

I would take either of those guys. Buckner has 4.0 sacks, Mack has 3.0 (in one fewer game). Mack also just had a bye, so he will have some fresher legs, especially with another bye for the Bears coming up. Cap hit is going to be the biggest factor. From my own math, Mack would cost $4.89M to the acquiring team. Buckner would cost $7.94M. So both could be had under the Bears current cap. Since they would be taking a spot within the top 51 salaries, they would bump Loving off, reducing the new cap hit to the salary cap by 891K. The Bears have approximately $9.2M available, so Mack would cost about $4M to that number, leaving just over $5M on the cap. Buckner would cost $7.1M, leaving just over $2M on the cap. I don't know what performance bonuses are out there, and those have to be taken into consideration. So my assumption is Mack is way more realistic than Buckner unless the Bears are able to move a player on their top 51 who has cap savings if traded post-June-1. A Jaylon trade would be amazing. Save $15.5M on the cap, get Buckner and Mack AND save $4M in cap space.

In all fairness, I don't think KC was nearly as good as their record was coming into that game. Their last 4 games were against the Chargers, Raiders, Dolphins, and Colts. All terrible in their own way. Mahomes is a shell of his former self; Kelce is a HoFer, but past his prime, and once they committed to stopping the run, Walker had nowhere to go. SEA's entire offense is JSN. SEA has 4x 3pt wins. This was their first by more than a TD.

Also, a weird split. The Bears are 0-4 when Caleb passes for 320 or more yards, are 12-3 when he passes from between 220-320, and 7-12 when he passes for fewer than 220. So 220 is the magic number for him, and it seems that once you get too high (over 320) that they are trailing or in a shootout.

It's pretty insane. Last year thru 7 games, the average TOP was 29:34 with only two games over 30 mins out of 7. This year, the average TOP is 35:30 with 2 games over 40 mins, 6 over 30, and the lowest game of 29:36. So there is essentially a 6-minute gain in TOP from last year. The Bears current TOP is the highest I could find dating back to 2000. No other team was over 35 mins, and only 3 teams were over 34, the 2018 Ravens, 2001 Steelers, and 2000 Titans.

Thru 7 games, the Bears are a game ahead of last year's pace at 5-2. They lost to BAL to fall to 4-3 last year before rattling off 5 straight and 7 of 8. The offense is averaging 1.7 extra pts per game, 3.4 extra first downs, 40 more yards on offense with +0.7 extra turnovers per game. The only flaw being the extra turnovers. Honestly, I am surprised how close the numbers are. They would probably be a little better if Caleb didn't miss time, but it feels like the Bears offense has a floor, and 24 pts a game is the new 17 (in the Fields era). The defense is pretty shocking. They are allowing 6 fewer pts, 4.9 first downs, 37 fewer yards, and are averaging 0.86 fewer takeaways per game. The run defense is the biggest change from last year for either unit, averaging 55.7 fewer yards per game. The reason for the change is that the Bears are playing with the lead this year. They had 180 pass attempts with the lead for the entire year in 2025. They already have 121 thru 7 games.

Season Projections thru 7 games: Passing Williams 308-434, 71.0%, 3,570 YDS, 8.2 Y/A, 18 TD, 4 INT, 42 Sacks Rushing Swift 282-1,156-17 (Career Best 1,087) Monangai 210-1,134-11 (Career Best 783) Williams 84-448-7 (Career Best 489) Receiving Burden 85-1,192-5 (Career Best 652) Odunze 58-925-0 (Career Best 734) Loveland 63-592-5 (Career Best 713) Raymond 63-592-3 (Career Best 616) Swift 53-369-0 (Career Best 452) To get to 4K Passing, Caleb needs to average 298 a game for the last 10 games. Swift is about to have a record year for himself, on pace for ove 1,500 total yards and 17 TDs. I always thought of him a 3rd Down outside the numbers type of runner, at least when he was in Detroit. He has completely changed his game since coming to the Bears. He is 3rd in the NFC in rushing, only behind Bijan and Gibbs. If Monangai misses additional time, obviously his projection will drop, but right now the Bears have 2x 1,100 Rushers. That has only happened one other time, the 2009 Panthers with Stewart and Williams (16g season). Burden is a problem for the opponents. He is 9th in receptions, 8th in yards, but 18th in targets. He has the highest (YACOE) YAC over expected for WRs. He is already a top 10 WR in the NFL with the fewest targets of the bunch. If he gets more targets he will be in the top 5 easily. Odunze is settling in as a solid WR2, like Tee Higgins. Would be nice to see him come down with a few more balls and hit 1K. If Caleb is going to get to 4K, Odunze gets to 1K. There will be around 20 Receivers (WR+TE) with over 1K Receiving Yards this year. Would be crazy to have 2x 1K RBs and 2x 1K WRs in the same season. That has never happened before. Loveland started last season slow, with 11-116 yards thru his first 6 games, then exploded down the stretch, so I expect his number to go way up from the current projection. Especially with Kmet out for the year. Loveland will see more snaps.

So he couldn't declare because he is a Guard, and only the ends can declare, at least thats how I interpreted the rule. If he declared, and was at RT, he could've received the handoff that way. Not declaring, and at OG, he could only receive the ball lateral or behind. Which brings up an interesting wrinkle, they could pull a OG behind the QB and the QB could hand it to him legally.