adam

Yeah, I like doing a true eval at the quarter pole (after Week 4), but there is a mini-bye after Week 5's TNF against WAS, so that is probably the best time to look at everything. They should come out of that little bye a little better for the next batch of games until the next mini-bye after the 2nd TNF game against CAR. 1st quarter - GB, TB, KC, DEN, WAS (TNF) at this point 2-3 in this 5 is probably fair. 3-2 would be amazing. 2nd quarter - MIN, LVR, LAC, NO, CAR (TNF) - Assuming 2-3, but another 3-2 would be crazy good here. 3rd quarter - DET, MIN, DET (Division quarter) > may decide season here. Need 2-1 here with some luck as good as 8-5 here, but as low as 5-8. 4th quarter - CLE, ARZ, ATL, GB. They will be in the hunt heading into the last 4 games, or needing a miracle (4-0) to sneak in. Odds are they will be somewhere in the middle, 6-7 wins with 4 to play. Thoughts?

They need to rattle him early. His career stats are wild. He had his most yards per game his rookie year (266), then that fell every year since (239 > 222 > 215 > 180 > 173). I don't think people realize that the Bucs only had 173 yards passing last week, yet threw it 34 times, while also having no running game (White had 39 yards on 17 carries). What makes that look worse is MIN just got shredded by PHI on the ground, so if TB couldn't do anything, that speaks more about their inept rushing offense. The more I look at the matchups, the more favorable this matchup becomes for the Bears. Mayfield rarely goes back to back games without a pick. In 10 of his last 15 starts, he was sacked 3 or more times. He also has some really bad games where the wheels just come off, multi-INT, under 50% comp, or 5+ sacks, or a combination of any of those 3. He has had 8 of those games in his last 15. He is 1-7 in those games with his only win coming against NO 24-14 where he had 12-25, 170 yds, 48%, 1 TD, 0 INT, and 3 sacks. The Panthers had a defensive TD that game.

The Carter stuff is going to go on for awhile, especially if he is looking Donald-esque on the field. However, don't forget he is on an elite DLine and they can't double everyone. Also, it is much easier to handle a problem children when you are winning. So who knows. Neither team looked particularly good. Minnesota already correcting for last year's 11-1 in one score games. A huge chunk of Cousins stats came after they were down 27-7, and what is wild is 117 of Hurts' 193 passing yards came on two plays to Smith. So he had 16 other completions for 76 yards. Without those 2 passes (blown coverages), he looks atrocious. Minnesota has absolutely no running game. Mattison was 8-28 with a fumble after he was 11-34 in Week 1. They released Cook thinking Mattison was a carbon copy. Minnesota had 4 fumbles lost, wow. SF and Dallas look like the best teams in the NFC right now. Surprisingly, KC, CIN, and BUF in the AFC do not. MIA, CLE, and LAC look like the top teams. So maybe the league isn't weighted so heavily towards the AFC after all.

Watched a little bit of the All-22. A couple of things. On both QB sneaks, the Bears got screwed on the spots. On Fields' sneak, the tip of the ball clearly makes it to the line to gain. On Love's, he is short because he goes in backwards so his body is passed the marker but not the ball. Bad spots. Moore does take himself out of the game on 1st and goal after his catch where it took 5 players to tackle him. On the next play on the throw to Kmet, Alexander literally launches his helmet right into Kmet's knee, I am shocked he doesn't have an injury. Alexander went dangerously low, below the knee is illegal, so it is a judgement call there. Then on the Van Ness sack play, 2 defenders on the right side of their line jumped early but it wasn't called. It made Jones start early before the snap. It should've been blown dead. Kmet was interfered with in the end zone on the 3rd down pass, it should've been an automatic first down there. Too many times I see players running ARob routes, like they know the ball is not coming to them, so they just trot around. Foreman did it on one play and I saw Kmet do it on another. That allows defenders to cover other areas of the field easier, making the actual play harder. They need to either sell the fake or route, or actually block someone.

Godwin is going to setup a tent in the slot.

And Blackwell has a hamstring, so Smith or Stroman? Ugh.

PFF is not useful on its own. For a QB, if you use QBR, DVOA, and PFF, and come up with a composite score, it is much more accurate than any one of those on its own.

Yeah 60.9 to 60.8. Love was not good, 4 completions accounted for 153 yds, with 92 on the other 11 completions. Aaron Jones 2 huge completions, Musgrave's blown coverage that Love under threw, and one to Reed. He had 27 attempts, and out of all of those, probably had 3-4 good throws, 10 average throws, and 10 bad throws with a few turnover worthy. The issue with Love is he was bad even with no pressure.

Why would he not spread them out, it's 3rd and 1. Let your best player handle the ball, or allow him to handoff to one of the RBs? Cole Kmet under center after motion? It literally drew in 10 into the A and B gaps, it was insane. Now if he did that and pitched it to Fields or something like that, ok, but don't do a TE dive right there. It reminded me of the Patterson run on 3rd and 1 that always lost 2. Then on Fields try. He has his feet next to each other, instead of staggered, and again, if you are going to go up and over, let one of the RBs do that. Personnel decisions! ? Down!

If you didn't know them, you would've thought they were rookies. Allen has always been Favre-like. Epic games, but epic failures too. When he is on, he is unstoppable, but when he is off, it is turnover city. Burrow has never taken a pre-season snap, and it shows. With Chase, Higgins, and Mixon, and you look like that? To put Burrow's game into perspective. His lowest career passing games were 148 and 157, the only 2 under 170. Last year his lowest was 199. He threw for 82 yards against CLE. However, he only got sacked twice and had 0 INTs. In comparison, Fields threw for 68 yards and was sacked 9 times his rookie year against CLE.

You are correct, it is a 17 game season. We have our first status check. Now we go up from here. The next game should be better, and I bet it will be.

Fields has 17 games to prove that he is H1M. I feel like he needs to show that in at least 75% of the games, or show some progress in those games. Right now he is 0/1, 0.0% on the season. He still has a lot of season left, but getting down 0/2 would be a big hole to dig out from. Every game that he starts, he basically sets a new record of futility at that amount of games started.

Only one team has an active losing streak in the double digits, the Chicago Bears at 11. No coach from the previous decade has survived a longer losing streak. If the Bears lose to TB, with KC in Week 3, it looks like it will be 13. How many more losses do you need to evaluate a coaching staff? They had 2 offseasons and majority of the roster has been turned over. So it is either talent (on the GM), coaching, or player performance, or a combination of those. If it is all of the above, the Bears are screwed for the next 5+ years. If it is just coaching, this year is already over. The only thing that can change is the player performances as they get better working as a unit.

Injuries suck and we were hoping for a huge jump this year from him. However, he was terrible last year. So even Blackwell is probably an upgrade from last year's Gordon, but probably a downgrade from what we were hoping for this season.

A lot to cleanup in one week. Better effort, better play design, better play selection, better personnel decisions, and better performance from almost every player on offense outside of Moore, Mooney, and Johnson is needed. Yes, JT could not understand what Getsy was trying to do on at least half of the plays. Pulling the LT to pass block the right edge; route concepts that run the same exact route or to the same area; confusing blocking schemes with half the players run blocking while others pass blocking. Out of all the plays reviewed, he liked 3-4 total plays, and hated 10+. He literally said "wtf" at least 10 times. So Getsy, play design, and play calling (Kmet dive on 3rd and 1 followed by QB sneak on 4th and 1) had him baffled. He said a few times "no one at any level of football would run this". On the O-Line, on almost every play there was a breakdown. One where Jones is doing jumping jacks down the line while letting a defender run right by him for the sack. A lot of odd techniques. Davis looked terrible. On one play he made like he was passing off a defender to his right but Wright was already blocking someone, Davis turns to dry hump Patrick's butt while Fields gets sacked. So odd. Wright looked pretty good actually, but the scheme and failure to adjust made everyone look worse. Patrick was also bad. I didn't hear Whitehair's name much. Receivers: Claypool should be released. Zero effort, didn't even make an attempt to block anyone. To me, it literally looked like a woman out there scared shitless but with a helmet on. He didn't catch either target, and ran maybe 2 good routes all game. Mooney looked good and made some nice blocks. Scott actually showed a lot of effort in his routes and blocking. Moore was open a lot. Fields needs to just throw it to him. Kmet had a terrible game. He looked clunky and slow, like he didn't know what he should be doing, really odd for him. Blocking wasn't great, he whiffed on a few. His routes were really slow, like he is having a hard time getting up to speed compared to last year. Injured? Fields: Oh boy. If you strip away everything else going on around him, which is hard to do, I would say that he has not developed like we thought he would and looks like when Nagy said Trubisky is at the 201 level. He is not trusting his eyes. He is looking down quicker than ever before. Some of this may just be Week 1 stuff, but somewhat alarming considering what other QBs have looked like. He is going through his progressions, but not throwing the ball. JT does not like his slow, nonchalant drop back. He said that it is too slow, he needs to get back to the back of his drop faster. I have seen and mentioned that before. To me it is like he is trying to show that the NFL game is not too fast for him by looking super relaxed in the pocket. However, that slower drop may be causing him to miss those early progression throws. Fields missed at least 4-5 NFL open throws. He just didn't throw the ball. He either scrambled, took the checkdown, or got sacked. Fields athleticism saved a few negative plays. The pick-6 was bad. He liked Rochson's effort and blocking. He didn't like the personnel on some of the plays. 2 RBs and a TE out wide, and you throw to a FB? Why not have your WRs out on the field for that play. So personnel decisions were also a huge question mark. Bear Jacks:

Some hope for next week. Based on net success rates, which normally correlate to wins over time show that the game was closer than it seemed. If you look at TB, they were negative.

All I can say is wow. This is exactly how the game looked in real time, but every play had so much more badness than I thought. A must watch, but it is an hour long. Much better than rewatching the game. JT has some funny zingers. Arguably his best video yet.

Fields against TB in 2021, 22-32, 184 yds, 59.3%, 6.4 Y/A, 0 TD, 3 INT, 4 sacks, 8-38 rushing. Relatively the same defense and scheme. Mostly zone with blitzes. Let's see if he has improved any from 2021. This will be a good test for him.

I am sure he doesn't want to go out like that, but mother nature is undefeated. He may have no choice. GB gets a 2nd rounder from NY now.

There are a lot more. He is becoming David Carr. On this one he has two places to put the ball, one early and one late, and doesn't take either. https://x.com/AdamHoge/status/1701582714153943518?s=20

I remember that live, man I am getting old. It was crazy that you watched whatever sports they had on tv. Track and Field, Tennis, Strongest Man Competition.

Dalton Risner posted a picture of himself at an airport heading "somewhere", hopefully it is to Chicago. Poles needs to fix the O-Line any way possible. Knowing the injury history of Jenkins and Patrick, he never should've counted on them. I don't care about how much they owe Davis. Just like Claypool, make them a healthy scratch, try to trade for a bag of balls or cut them while there are other players still available.

The teams that really struggled this weekend all had one thing in common, terrible O-Lines. Bears, Giants, Bengals, Steelers. However, of all those teams, the Bears scored 20 pts some how.

So many layers to this. All the drama before the trade. Hard Knocks. All the hype leading up to the game. Him running out with the US Flag on 9/11. Gets sacked by former Bear Leonard Floyd. Bad turf gets him. Josh Allen was apparently on mushrooms allowing Zach Wilson to come back and win the game. Rodgers gets the credit for the win too. At his age, a return would be questionable at best at this point.

Oh I know, I am just saying Week 1 is actually a good indicator of playoff teams as 71% of the playoff teams start 1-0. This team will probably fall on the low end of the range based on how they looked on Sunday, 6-7 wins is probably the mark.