adam

8 wins would exceed most projections, I think the win total was 7.5 O/U.

For sure, they need one of the top 2 or 3 guys. They probably need to pick up another vet in place of Mooney via FA to upgrade the room. Moore + Rook + FA is a much better top 3 than what they have right now.

Of all the position groups, this one has to be one of the most disappointing ones. Outside of Moore's god given talent, has any other player from this group done anything positive this year? Like for me, they have all been net negatives, Claypool, Mooney, Velus, and Scott. St. Brown has barely played this year so I don't even count him and his lack of availability is a negative. There was the Claypool stuff that started from the day he arrived until he left. Zero accountability both on and off the field. Then there is Velus Jones, who never developed into anything near his draft status, he basically drops passes or fumbles returns. Tyler Scott was a later draft pick, but still, only 14 receptions in 14 games, and he had that bad fumble and some bad drops the last few games? These are professionals wearing sticky gloves and they are dropping passes that hit their hands. Has anyone ever tried these gloves? It is actually hard to drop a ball that hits your hands. Then there is Mooney, in a contract year, getting the CB2 or CB3 assigned to him, he has more drops this year than his previous 3 years combined. I thought he had this awesome connection with Fields on and off the field. Where did that go? Look at his production pre Getsy and with Getsy? He had 81-1055 in 2021. In 22+23 so far he has 69-902 with 3 games left for a 2-year total. That is barely WR3 production. With his lack of effort in the run game, even on a scramble drill, he lets the DB beat him to the ball, then the effort on the hail mary? Come on man. Something is going on. To me this is all impacted by coaching, so clearly Tolbert is doing a terrible job right?

The Bears are still in the hunt. With a win and the following, their playoff chances go up to 10%: 1. LAR beats NO (LAR -4 at home) 2. TEN beats SEA (tough with how SEA looked but it is short week, TEN +2.5 at home) 3. PHI beats NYG (PHI -12 at home) All home teams, TEN the only Dog at +2.5. Under 3 is really promising.

So I went thru the NY Times Playoff Predictor (pretty cool): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/upshot/chicago-bears-nfl-playoff-picture.html There are several scenarios, but I tried to find the most realistic one. So besides winning out, the Bears need 8 other games to go there way in the last 3 weeks (less than I thought) in one scenario. This one is without needing a CAR win: Week 16 1. LAR beats NO (LAR at home) 2. TEN beats SEA (tough with how SEA looked but it is short week) 3. PHI beats NYG (PHI at home), OR (Week 18 rematch of PHI @ NYG) - 2 out of 3 are likely, TEN needs to beat SEA or that will make things way more complicated for Bears. Week 17 4. NYG beats LAR (tough one but in NY) 5. TB beats NO (TB at home) 6. PIT beats SEA (PIT looks checked out and it's on the road) OR (Week 18 ARZ beats SEA) 7. MIN beats GB OR (GB beats MIN AND Week 18 DET beats MIN) - PIT and NYG need to step up. The GB vs MIN game will decide the playoffs for those 2 teams. Week 18 8. SF beats LAR (SF at home) - this one seems likely unless SF is locked into a slot, this week could need some other games added depending on how the previous weeks went. BLUF: SEA, LAR, GB and NO need to lose 2 of 3, and NYG has to lose 1 of 3. If GB wins 2, MIN has to lose out (DET, GB, DET). SEA has to lose to TEN and PIT or ARZ, which may be tough. The only other game that is tough is NYG beating LAR (but it is in NY). There are several other scenarios, and games like CAR vs GB have a massive impact on all the other scenario outcomes. - The funniest one is if CAR beats GB in Week 16, and GB beats MIN in Week 17 (MIN loses out), while all the other teams do what is above, the Bears would actually be the 6th seed at 8-9 (LMAO), but risk losing the #1 pick. - An alternative to NYG needing to beat LAR is the following: CAR beats GB + ATL beats NO + SEA loses out

I think it comes down to efficiency overall. So he will have to be productive in the pocket, out of the pocket, and on the ground. If the offense has sustained drives with a good balance, and that is consistent, that's all they are looking for. If he only does the houdini stuff and that is the only way they move the ball, the efficiency will be terrible even if they win or score points. He needs to be a positive EPA/play player.

One thing I did notice, to add onto #4, I think the hits are adding up. They are in his head. He is not as confident as a runner like he was last year. This year it looks panicked if that makes sense. On the DET play near the goal line when he did the Houdini act, the Right Edge from across the field caught him from behind to force him to slide 20 yards downfield. Last year, Fields would've had 5 yards on him by then. #3 it still gets out of some negative yard situations, rarely is this a negative, even if it is not a net positive. #2 I still think there is something to his feet, they made him swap to make the timing routes work but he has not looked natural doing it that way. This is also on Getsy, which makes the overall assessment of Fields tough as hell. It feels like he goes thru his progressions, but there is a delay between his vision, processing what he is seeing, then acting on. That's where the pat comes in, it gives himself a tic to process before throwing. Then everything is off. It reminds me of the firing range in the Army. There was a sequence of shots out to 300m, targets would pop up left and right and drop after a few seconds. You had to aim, fire, find new target, aim, fire, readjust, etc, etc. You could easily memorize the sequence, but if you miss one and tried a second bullet, you would be racing to readjust and aim at the new target giving yourself a fraction of second to shoot before it too drops, then probably miss, and now you are trailing the rest of the targets.

Taking coaches out of the equation. I guess the question becomes do you believe Fields has done enough if the season ended today to give him his 5th year option (and/or extension) and they run this back with him in 2024, trade the #1 pick or select MHJ. or Fields may or may not have done enough, but let's hedge this, keep him for one more year and draft a QB. or Fields has not done enough, draft QB #1, trade Fields. Would anything change your mind one way or the other in the last 3 weeks? If he balls out or completely shits the bed. I feel like a win or loss at GB is going to carry some weight and it will be the final memory heading into the offseason.

With 2 wins projected right now, Bears looking to slide to #11. 1 win puts them at #7 0 wins keeps them at #5 3 wins vaults them to #16

For the Bears to make the playoffs, CAR would have to win at least one more game, and that would not be good for the draft pick.

I would trust Kurt Warner's assessment over most others. He excelled at the highest levels. I would not trust current or former teammates as they are very loyal and rarely throw each other under the bus.

One of the issues is he makes the tough throws (Kmet TD, Tonyan drop, etc) but misses the easy ones. The problem is the offense is predicated on the easy ones.

He doesn't trust what he sees, that's where that hesitation comes in.

There are a ton of examples of QBs excelling with weak supporting casts. That continually gets used for Fields and the assessment of Fields should consider his surroundings, but they should only factor minimally into the overall assessment. I am just done speculating on the QB position. The fact that we are having this discussion in Week 15 should be a huge red flag. I hope he can turn it around and have 3 strong games to finish the year ending it with a Packers loss that knocks them out of the playoffs. However, if Love outplays him or if he looks really bad in any of the last 3 games against subpar defenses, I think the decision will be an easy one for Poles.

I wish I knew. I am going more off what I think the Bears are going to do than what I think. My opinion is not going to sway them one way or another. If they keep Fields, I am good with that, hopefully they can build a strong enough supporting cast around him to lift him up. I am rooting for whoever they run out there. If Poles doesn't believe any of the QBs coming out have a higher ceiling than Justin, he will trade the pick again.

Part of his job is to stop the bleeding, help out the defense when they are struggling. Denver is a terrible example for Fields. Fields literally lost the game as one of the Broncos TDs was on his fumble, that gave them 7 pts and the Bears lost by 3. The defense only allowed 24 pts, enough to win, but the offense scored 28 but gave up 7 for a net of 21. Then after the bleeding continued and there was a chance to win the game they had a turnover on downs and an INT to seal it. In the DET first meeting, after they were up 26-14, the offense went 3 and out for 1 yard (26 second drive) and 1 play fumble/safety. They needed one first down and it was game over, and they couldn't get it. The defense gets blame here too but the Bears need a QB that can get that first down. Fields always seems to come up short, whether it is his fault or not.

It is a very tough defense, and things were not in Fields favor at all, but the Bears faced a bunch of second stringers for the Browns and still struggled on offense. It just felt like the Browns could care less about Fields running. That wasn't a threat to them, which gave them an easy assignment to just meet at the QB. The defense is what kept them in this game though.

I don't understand how Fields gets so many balls tipped at the LOS. Is his arm angle too low?

That's the thing, if the player can only be good in the right circumstances, they are replaceable. Purdy is looking great, but Lance, Jimmy G, Nick Mullens, and Beathard all looked very pedestrian in the same offense over the last year. So Purdy would probably be good in most offenses, maybe not to his current level, but he wouldn't all of sudden be terrible. There are guys in the league doing more with less than Fields, which tells you where he falls.

Fields best trait is his escapability and his off script plays, but he still struggles with traits that are more important to a sustained offense (playing with timing, throwing to the MoF, pocket awareness/internal clock). Most QBs just need to be "mobile". Fields has yet to break off a super long run this year because teams have figured out how to contain him. Once that strength is neutralized, he is a below average QB. I hate the bad supporting cast or bad coaching argument when DeShaun Watson had a very similar supporting cast in his 2nd year, Hopkins and Fuller at WR and Lamar Miller and Alfred Blue (he needed the money) at RB. With that group, he threw for over 4100 yards, 26 TD, 9 INT and rushed for 551 yds and 5 TDs. He had 5 4th Quarter comebacks that season. We have lowered the bar so far for Fields, that we only want 3500 and 500 from him, yet in the last 4 games since coming back from injury he is averaging only 193 passing yards a game with 3 TD passes which is bottom 5 in the league over that period. Nothing has changed.

Nate Davis is crap. I am sorry for his loss, but man he is bad. Once Jenkins went out the entire interior was getting owned. The edges were ok, but with that amount of speed on the edges, you have to be able to step up to avoid that pressure, otherwise you are standing right in the path of a speed rush around the OT. Fields got strip sacked on one of them. If he steps up, they run right by him. They need a lot more rollouts, bootlegs, and misdirection. The offensive game plan allowed Cleveland to keep 8 guys in the box and rush 5-6 every time straight at Fields. When they did that, like the Velus plays, they got some big plays out of it, but then never went back. You would think with all that pressure, Fields would throw the ball sooner but he still held on. He missed a few and was late on a few. All he needs to do is hit 2-3 of those and it's game over. His teammates didn't help, but he still needs to improve. They could DFA Mooney today and it would improve the team. Give the snaps to someone who cares and is going to at least try. He has turned into ARob 2.0. It's like he has writer's block, but in this case it is QB's block.

I totally understand. However, Fields has done neither. If he was a heroics guy, the Bears would be 8-6.

I wouldn't say he is a bust, he was the 4th QB selected. I know he was a first rounder, but it was him or Jones at that point. I would say he is at a good backup and spot starter level, and a better version of Taysom Hill and/or Gardner Minshew. He can win a few, lose a few, but ultimately does not move the needle enough at the most important position on the field. So the net result is almost negligible.

Yeah, I wanted a big enough sample size, 4 games was enough for me. Fields needed to show me he was head and shoulders above an average QB and I just haven't seen it. Just say he Tonyan doesn't drop the ball and they win, it still is a bad game. That was an awesome throw, but there is not enough in between the great and the bad.

I love this one. My only addition would be extending Fields to a 3yr/$75M deal (like Geno) as a bridge contract.