adam

So this comes out: The phantom low block (that missed) on the Graham TD, the Fields Roughing that Passer (that extends the drive), and the lining up in the neutral zone on the missed FG. 2 out of 3 scoring plays and a scoring drive, all negatively impacted by officials against one team. That doesn't even include the hip check and BS taunting call that led to a PIT score. Unbelievable.

What is pretty remarkable is you can tell this is a good kid, from a great family, but also knows his place. The QB has to have a ton of extra traits and qualities to be special, and Fields is checking them all. As Bears fans, we know what bad QBs look like, and I know we want to temper our excitement over Fields, but damn, he is sure making that hard to do. On MNF, Fields overcame corrupt officials to take the lead and give the Bears a shot with a few seconds left. With how bad that game was called, there was no way the Bears should've been in that position other than for Fields taking over the game. We haven't seen that in a long time.

Arob's catch and drop was great for 7-8 yds a few years ago but now that he can't get separation, it is easy to defend. Fields throwing style is more vertical, which fits with speed and or size. I would love one of the OU guys but it looks like Olave has a first-round grade. That 2nd rounder next year has to go to CB, WR, OC, or S.

There are few decent options this upcoming offseason, but the Bears will have to figure out who they want to pay. At this point the Bears need to get younger. By replacing ARob they can improve and get younger at the same time. Here are a few names that could come in and be potential WR1s if the Bears look to FA for that. Another option is to go by WR1BC and taking a lesser option assuming Fields doesn't need a true #1. 1. Chris Godwin, TB will not be able to afford him, he is 3 yrs younger than ARob and would fit well with Fields style of play. 8th in Rec yards with only 8 games. 50-660-4 TD. 2. Mike Williams, LAC, has 37-575, 15.5 per reception and 6 TDs, 27 yrs old. A bigger WR that compliments Mooney well. 3. Courtland Sutton, DEN, 41-588, 2 TD, 14.3 Y/R, 26 yrs old. Another 6'4" WR. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd Tier (WR1/2s): 4. Christian Kirk, ARZ, 40-545, 4 TD, still not even 25 yrs old. Very similar to Mooney, which would create matchup problems. 5. DJ Chark, JAX, just turned 25, can show what he can do with at least a competent QB. On IR for ankle injury, and a slight dip in performance may make him very affordable. 6'4" WR. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3rd Tier (WR2/3s): 6. Tim Patrick, DEN, 34-509, 15.0 Y/R, 4 TD, only a few months younger than ARob but one of the most efficient WRs in the league. I doubt DEN signs both him and Sutton. 6'4" WR. 7. James Washington, PIT, production down from last year but only 25 yrs old with potential. Sub-6' WR, but would be an upgrade over Goodwin/Byrd. Him and JuJu are FA's, doubt they sign both. Honorable Mentions: 8. Smith-Schuster, PIT, out for the season due to injury, hasn't done much and has been injured a lot in last few years. Will be curious to see what he gets. Seems like a great fit with Fields if healthy. 9. Fuller, MIA. This guy looked like a WR1 with Watson in Houston, but injuries have limited him as well. Might come cheaper than expected which would help cap space. He had 53-879, 8 TD in 10 games for HOU in 2020 with 5x 100 yards games. Nuclear Option: 10. Adams, GB. Bears sell the house and only sign Adams and a bunch of vets on league minimum this offseason (assuming Rodgers is out in GB), restructure Mack with some void years to make room for Adams. Get rid of ARob, Graham, and Cohen to pay Adams. Would be crazy with him 6 months older than ARob, but man is he productive and his game style won't age like ARob's has. If they are looking to win in Fields rookie contract window, this would help. Offense would look like this: Fields, Adams, Mooney, Kmet, Monty, Jenkins, Whitehair, New C, Daniels, Borom, Herbert, James. Who says no?

Adding insult to injury, the league fined Marsh for the penalty: Yet the corrupt ref who hip checked him gets to collect his gambling earnings on the game. Unbelievable. One good thing about the game on MNF, everyone got to see the Bears get screwed by the refs as it has been a regular occurrence for a few years now.

Into the bye, one of these guys is getting paid as a top 5 Safety, the other basically making the vet minimum and plays special teams: Jackson - 460 snaps, 40 tackles, 0 INT, 0 PD DHC - 295 snaps, 31 tackles, 1 INT, 3 PD, 1 TD on ST I know some of the media have pointed to the absence of Jackson as a reason for the defense's recent struggles, but they held PIT to 280 total yards? If not for the zebras, the Bears win by 20. The SF game was bad and a terrible game called by Desai, he got schooled by Shanahan, didn't neutralize Deebo, and was ill-prepared for the screen game which gashed them. None of that had anything to do with Jackson. It was not like he was going to tackle Samuel on that long play anyway. The biggest hole on defense is Vildor. He has made a few plays, but has been a reception machine allowing a league-high passer rating of 150.3 when targeted. Shelley on the other hand stood out against PIT, so hopefully he can lock in that Slot Corner position. Looking at roster composition, on defense, CB2 is probably a bigger need than Safety right now. You can't have one player take down the entire defense on almost every other play like Vildor has done.

Depending on how you look at it, he hasn't been the same since his monster game against Indy 5 weeks ago. The last 4 weeks he has thrown for 167, 257, 266, and 238. He ran for 51, 88, 120, and 39 in the last 4. He runs so much (more than their top 2 RBs combined), that is almost makes it easier because on any fake the odds of him getting the ball are higher than him doing anything else. He has 5 INTs in the last 4 games, so that's promising for a Bears defense that went cold on turnovers. If we can get Mack back, a healthy Hicks, and figure out how to help Vildor, the defense should be better than it has in a few weeks. The offense still has the arrow pointed upwards and now gets an extra week to prep specifically for the Ravens. They may still lose but it is going to be a close on either way. One benefit, the Bears are playing at home, which is much easier for a young QB.

Here are the rookie QBs thru Week 9. Some of the advanced stats have shown that Fields has been the best rookie by a long shot the last few weeks. If he keeps it up, he will really close the gap on some of these stats (not that it matters). Jones has clearly been the front runner from the get-go, he has been very consistent which was sort of expected based on his college tape. I think he is already near his ceiling where all the other guys have much higher ceilings than they have shown. Even with that terrible Cleveland game, Fields is climbing out of the QBR/Rating/DVOA blackhole of death. 1. Jones 204-300, 68.0%, 2135 yds, 7.1 AVG, 10 TD, 7 INT, 49.0 QBR, 89.8 Rating, 19-59 rushing (10 overall TDs), DVOA -6.9% 2. Lawrence 176-296, 59.5%, 1821 yds, 6.2 AVG, 8 TD, 9 INT, 36.0 QBR, 73.6 Rating, 32-136, 2 TD rushing (11 overall TDs), DVOA -15.9% 3. Mills 140-209, 67.0%, 1357 yds, 6.5 AVG, 7 TD, 8 INT, 30.1 QBR, 80.2 Rating, 7-8 rushing (7 overall TDs), DVOA -21.0% 4. Fields 111-170, 65.3%, 1198 yds, 7.0 AVG, 4 TD, 8 INT, 27.3 QBR, 69.4 Rating, 52-288, 2 TD rushing (6 overall TDs), DVOA -42.4% 5. Wilson 104-181, 57.5%, 1168 yds, 6.5 AVG, 4 TD, 9 INT, 27.9 QBR, 63.5 Rating, 8-22 rushing (4 overall TDs), DVOA -35.6% 6. Lance 25-48, 52.1%, 354 yds, 7.4 AVG, 3 TD, 1 INT, 39.6 QBR, 88.4 Rating, 27-133, 1 TD rushing (4 overall TDs), DVOA 14.6% For Fields, I would like to see him average 240 yds for the remainder of the season, which would put him over 3K. The biggest improvement I would like to see is passing TDs. I am hoping he can get 1.5 per game for the last 8, which would give him 16 TDs, and if he can cut the INTs to 0.5 per game and end with 12, that would be a solid rookie season without playing the entire thing as the starter including the CLE debacle (3000+ yds, 65%, 7.0A, 16+ TD, 12 INT, 500+ yds rushing, 5+ TD). If Fields averages 254 yds per game the rest of the way, he would surpass Trubisky's best year (2018) in yardage (6th best in franchise history). To get into the Bears top 10 all-time, he would only need 241 yds per game to pass Harbaugh. He would need 2.5 TDs a game to tie Trubisky (24 in 2018). The eye test tells me Fields is legit and the coaching, play calling and lack of playmakers is what is holding him back. The schedule is much lighter on the back half of the season with only one elite defense in Arizona (ARZ 2nd, MIN 8th x2, NYG 15th, GB 16th, SEA 23rd, BAL 26th, DET 29th) so he should continue to improve, which should be scary for opposing teams.

Baltimore looked pretty bad on both sides of the ball. A 22-10 loss and they were down 6-3 heading into the 4th quarter. The combined totals for Brissett and Tua was 19-36, 304 yds and neither of them are close to Fields yet had multiple explosive plays (2 passes longer than 50, and at least 3 more longer than 20). If the Bears can contain Andrews, I am not too worried about Bateman, Brown, or Duvernay and Jackson is their run game. Freeman was 10-35 yds and 3 catches for 23 yds as their leading back.

Looks like OBJ is going to the Rams. They got Von Miller via trade and now OBJ for pennies. I don't know how they can fit all these guys under the cap, but all I know is they are all in this year and will have to blow it up next year.

He has been all over the field.

Fields is going to shred Baltimore, Brissett and Shaheen are beating them.

The young core is there and showed up on MNF. Fields, Monty, Herbert, Mooney, Kmet, and Borom all played well. If they can fix the interior (get a stud Center) and Jenkins plays as advertised. This offense is 2-3 pieces away from being dominant. Need a true WR1 and a C for sure. I would like to see James come back too but try something different at WR. Need a true slot guy that can get open in a phone booth. I was worried about Kmet, but in his last 4 games, he has really produced and has been a solid blocker. Last 4 games: 18-203 yds equates to an old 16 game season total of 72-812 yds. His per game average over those games is 4.5 receptions and 50 yds. If he can average that for the remainder of the season, he will end with 64-643 yds. That would put him near Hockenson and Engram's totals from last year (5th in receptions and 8th in yards). Now we need to see some additional RZ targets and TDs. I was not expecting him to be a top 5 TE, so that would be impressive if he keeps it up. I know it is still a week away, but I like the Baltimore matchup for our offense. They are 26th in DVOA compared to PIT at 13. Baltimore's defense is on par with Miami and Jacksonville's. Their offense is very similar to SF's. The Bears offense is slowly climbing out of the ashes, now 29th in DVOA, but only 2% from 25th. On defense, the Bears have plummeted from top 10 down to 19tt but are also within 2% of 13th. So a good game against BAL would more than likely bump them up to 25th/13th respectively. If Fields can keep this offense score in the mid to high 20's, I figure they can sneak into the top 20 offensively. That would make them look a lot like TEN.

I can't imagine what he is going to look like with a competent coaching staff and at least one legit WR outside of Mooney.

At this point, it is play design for me. Fields naked off PA to the side of an unblocked Watt who didn't bite on the run fake, come on. Let's run stick routes 70% of the time (which I hate btw) for a 20% completion pct, then run every other route 30% of the time for an 80% success rate, but keep going back to sticks. Two passes near the end of the game with what looks like only two receivers in a route, both double covered, leaving Fields no choice but to attempt to scramble. He needs some outlets and those just haven't been there for him.

Fields look better than Love and every rookie QB outside of Jones. Even then Jones is dinking and dunking his way down the field. I think the stats will bear this out by the end of the year. Love is going to be a bust. He will be here without Davante Adams in a year or two.

So hard to judge the team when there was a flag thrown against the Bears on every drive for either team. That doesn't include the non calls against the Steelers. This may have been the worst called game I have ever watched. Fields is legit, Borom is playing solid, the defense held up down 4 starters. WRs played better but still don't get any separation. Kmet was 6-87. Regardless 3-7 looms large going into bye.

Drew Brees made a point about this. He said that a ton of Rodgers great plays are non-traditional or things that guys like Love shouldn't be emulating, especially as a young QB. In practice, those passes can be made, but in a game, those are INTs. The other issue is very similar to other QBs, Rodgers' offense is Rodgers offense, not GBs where they can plug any QB not named Rodgers into. That was has been this way for at least the last 6-7 years. GB is 9-14 when someone other than Rodgers has started since he took over as starter. Everyone is spouting off on how great LaFleur is with a 33-8 record. His record without Rodgers is 0-1. He is 2-2 in the playoffs and one of those wins was against Jared Goff. Let's see how good he is w/o Rodgers for a full season.

Yeah, it's not like you bench someone like him, but every week he gets less than 20 pts pretty much is a guaranteed loss.

Perfect week for rookie QBs: Jones 12-18, 139 yds, 1 TD, 1 INT, 2 rushes for 4 yds. Lawrence 15-26, 118 yds, 0 TD, 0 INT, 3 rushes for 4 yds. Wilson and Lance DNP. Fields has some huge performances to follow this week. ?

A Bears win with Fields going off seems like the only outcome based on Sunday's games.

They did it without Henry which is mind boggling. They made Stafford look like backwards hat Matty Stafford who throws pick-6s for a living. He had one 1 garbage time TD, that's it, now that's the Stafford we all know and love. Speaking of Love, did anyone see his performance against one of the worst defenses in the NFL? 7 pts, shutout for 55 minutes, scored on 53 yard drive. A QBR of 27.4. That's after sitting for a year watching arguably a top 5 QB of all time, getting first team reps and multiple pre season games in the off season.

Could be but man he looks bad. He now has strung 3 straight replacement player games in a row. Mahomes the last 3 games: 216 yds/g, 0.66 TD/g, 0.66 INT/g.

Jags also beat the Bills. Crazy week.

Mahomes was 20-37, 54.1%, 166 yards and 1 TD. Again bad game from him.