adam

I like Grant too, and his Special Teams work is a plus. Not much Johnson could do on that pass to Hopkins, perfectly placed ball and great catch.

The biggest difference is Bears defenders are never in a position to make a play on an errant throw. The Cards are 2 for 2 on those. The Bears are like 1-80 on the season on those. Zero playmakers. This looks like a 40+ to 10- sort of game now. I suspect once it hits 14-0 the Fire Nagy chants will come out.

You can't make this up, the Bears drive all the way down the field running the ball, then on 3rd Down, a pass right to Kmet flys out of his hands right into Baker's hands. He returns it for 70 yds and Cards are back in scoring position. LMAO.

Then of course on 4th Down, the Cards get a TD pass to Hopkins (great pass and catch). 7-0. This defense is always one play away. They held the Cards to 8 yards on 3 plays, then let up a 21 yard TD to Hopkins with zero Safety help.

Of course, on the 3rd play Dalton throws a terrible ball to Grant that gets intercepted. Ugh. Cards already in scoring position lol. That was Dalton's first pass, he thought Grant was 6'8".

You are right AG, there is literally a stat for that. I was looking at snap counts and then subtracting from the total snap counts to get a "snap count lost" but by team, that was taking too long. I don't know if they account for guys like Cohen, and since rookies don't have AV from last year, how they account for those values (Fields and Jenkins). I would assume the Bears are closer to the middle of the pack if you account for those. On penalties, the challenging piece is there is no record-keeping for "missed penalties" or "no-calls" that favor a team. That is where the problem lies because if you just look at net penalties for and against, TB is the worst in the league with a -24 net (24 more calls against them than the opponent) and the Bears are 9th worst (-8). That doesn't tell the whole story. Without the missed calls, it is very hard to quantify the impact to a game unless you track the win probability by play to plot the difference before and after a specific penalty or play (no-call). That is a little easier to find.

Bears by 20! Jenkins with 3x pancake blocks, Irvin with 1.5 sacks and Adams with 3 receptions for 48 yards.

I was thinking about how all the injuries have really impacted the season. You could even start that with the Dalton injury against CIN, which led to that horrible game against CLE. Is Nagy going to get a pass like Shanahan has for injuries? Mack out for the season, Trevathan out of the season. Cohen and Jenkins have yet to play. Ifedi, ARob, Montgomery, Jackson, Hicks all have missed time. Roquan may be out, Fields out, etc. What was surprising to me, with all of those, the Bears are still one of the top 10-12 healthiest teams in terms of missed games this year: That should be enough to ensure Nagy doesn't get a get out of jail free card for this season. If anything, teams like the Giants and Jets have more of justification based on how many games their players have missed.

The only issue with going into the draft with the mentality of only drafting from one or two positions at any pick is you really run the risk of overdrafting a player that is nowhere near the pick value than the other positions. Unless it is QB, you have to go in with 4-5 positions of need for every pick, then select the best overall player from that pool. If not, you end up with a ton of Adam Shaheens.

After 12/2: WC2 SF 6-5 SEA-W, CIN-L, ATL-W, TEN-L, HOU-W, LAR-L 9-8 WC3 WAS 5-6 LV-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, DAL-L, PHI-W, NYG-W 7-10 (7-5) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 MIN 5-6 DET-W, PIT-W, CHI-L, LAR-L, GB-L, CHI-L 7-10 (5-7) 2 ATL 5-6 TB-L, CAR-W, SF-L, DET-W, BUF-L, NO-W 8-9 (5-7) 3 PHI 5-7 NYJ-W, WAS-W, NYG-W, WAS-L, DAL-L 8-9 (6-6) 4 CAR 5-7 ATL-L, BUF-L, TB-L, NO-L, TB-L 5-12 (3-9) 5 NO 5-7 NYJ-W, TB-L, MIA-L, CAR-W, ATL-L 7-10 (5-7) 6 NYG 4-7 MIA-L, LAC-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, CHI-L, WAS-L 4-13 7 CHI 4-7 ARZ-L, GB-L, MIN-W, SEA-W, NYG-W, MIN-W 8-9 (6-6) NO lost to DAL, as expected, dropped down to 5th "in the hunt". CAR on bye this week. Need WAS, ATL, and NYG to lose this week to stay on course. Would be great if SEA figured something out and snuck a win in against SF but I doubt it.

Right now CB2 is the biggest hole on the team, however, like you said, the team can't go into next year with Mooney and a ton of vets on 1 yr deals in the WR room. So CB/WR are my first two picks. There are some options at Center, you can draft one, or slide Whitehair or Daniels (after extension) back to Center and draft another Guard. However, is Center a bigger hole than Safety right now? Listening to Olin Kreutz, he doesn't think Mustipher is playing that bad. So I would almost put Safety or ILB ahead of Center. Those are definitely the top 5 needs and should be addressed with a high draft pick or a quality FA signing.

Impressive. I hope he keeps it up.

This will probably be an ugly loss for the Bears. Hicks, Edwards, Goodwin, Kmet, Robinson, and Smith all DNP on Wednesday. That is in addition to Fields battling the cracked ribs and Mack lost for the season. Murray and Hopkins were limited, but McCoy has filled in nicely for the Cards. They may be without Justin Pugh on the OL, but outside of that, they are pretty intact. I would expect the Bears to try to run the ball a lot, control the clock and keep the Cards off the field. I don't see any way the Bears can win this based on how they looked recently. Cardinals 31-17

I don't think it was an absolute statement. I bet it was, "IF" the Bears lose to the Lions, Nagy would be fired on Friday. That would've been 6 in a row, to a winless team, on national TV. That would've done it. Nagy needs to go, but in his defense, very few teams are going to play well with so many injuries. The Bears played without their top defensive player (Mack), another top 4 defensive player out (Hicks), the 2nd best defender leaves the game (Smith), a gaping hole at CB2, the worst Safety group in the NFL which is just on the defense. It is a miracle that they only allowed 14 pts. On offense, you didn't have the rising star QB, the WR1, even if he is having a down year, and you still don't have your gadget back (Cohen) and your top drafted OT. Those are all significant pieces to the team, either out, or in Jackson and ARob's case, severely underperforming. How would the Packers do without Rodgers, Adams on offense, then 3 of their top 4 defenders out? Very few teams are going to play well.

Can you imagine the Bears missing out on the playoffs by tie breaker or one game (when you have the tie breaker) knowing they got robbed by the officials in the Steelers game? That would be tough to swallow. That is very much in play if they finish 8-9.

There are so many more, and they are funny. Surtain is a great player, but Denver doesn't have a QB. Without it they will continue to be a .500 team. They are 6-5 and have a harder path to the playoffs than the Bears do at 4-7. They play KC twice, CIN, LV, LAC and DET. The only gimme is DET. They will have to win at least 2 against KC, KC, LV, CIN, LAC to have a chance at the playoffs.

Now their are Broncos fans believing that Patrick Surtain (CB) was still a better pick than Justin Fields, these are pure comedy:

McCaffrey on IR and out for the season again. That is why you don't pay RBs. The Packers hilariously paid Aaron Jones (6th highest) who will make $9M in 2022 and potentially $19M in 2023, when they still have AJ Dillon on his rookie deal, and Dillon is better. McCaffrey has the 3rd biggest contract for an RB and has only played in 10 games in the last two seasons. He signed his new deal in April 2020 and in September 2022, he will have played in 10 of 33 games for the 3rd highest RB salary in the league. This knocks CAR out of any playoff contention.

Yeah, Miller went from a 4-4 team to a 7-1 team, his old team is now 6-5 (2-1 w/o him) and his new team is 7-4 (0-3 w/ him). So Miller is technically 4-7 lol. Even CLE got a win w/o OBJ, so they are 1-2 w/o him and LAR is 0-3 w/ him too. So OBJ is 5-7. Those are supposedly 2x impactful players and they have done nothing to improve that roster.

Oh no, that is not optimism, they have to split those and win out to make the playoffs. I am not saying they will do that, but that is what they need to do to get in. I figure theu will win 2-3 more games and finish no better than 7-10. However, there is a path and it is not that crazy, especially if they can steal a win from ARZ or GB. If they don't they can still make the playoffs, but the margins are super slim with tie breakers. The Vikings loss actually made it easier for the Bears to get into the playoffs, but it is still an extremely long shot. The Bears can now go 4-2 and still somehow back in. If all the other games played out as below, the Bears would tie PHI and ATL, and would get in with a better Conference record than ATL and a better record against common opponents with PHI. So the Bears can technically lose to ARZ and GB, which is expected, but then win out against the lesser teams to finish 8-9. Obviously, teams like ATL or PHI wouldn't be able to win another game than I have projected here. NO could win one more as long as it wasn't against TB. So the biggest threat to this outside of MIN, ATL, and PHI is WAS. They have a great conference record and a somewhat light schedule down the road. If they win 8, they will get in with the best conference record over every team but PHI. After 11/28 WC2 SF 6-5 SEA-W, CIN-L, ATL-W, TEN-L, HOU-W, LAR-L 9-8 WC3 MIN 5-6 DET-W, PIT-W, CHI-L, LAR-L, GB-L, CHI-L 7-10 (5-7) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 ATL 5-6 TB-L, CAR-W, SF-L, DET-W, BUF-L, NO-W 8-9 (5-7) 2 NO 5-6 DAL-L, NYJ-W, TB-L, MIA-L, CAR-W, ATL-L 7-10 (5-7) 3 PHI 5-7 NYJ-W, WAS-W, NYG-W, WAS-L, DAL-L 8-9 (6-6) 4 CAR 5-7 ATL-L, BUF-L, TB-L, NO-L, TB-L 5-12 5 WAS 4-6 SEA-W, LV-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, DAL-L, PHI-W, NYG-W 7-10 (7-5) 6 NYG 4-7 MIA-L, LAC-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, CHI-L, WAS-L 4-13 7 CHI 4-7 ARZ-L, GB-L, MIN-W, SEA-W, NYG-W, MIN-W 8-9 (6-6)

Oh I agree, and Fields has a better arm and is more mobile. Fields upside is up there with a top 5 QB, but due to some fixable issues, he can easily be a bottom 5 QB any week. As long as he continues to improve, he has the capacity to get there. If there is a perfect example of a system helping a rookie, look no further then NE and Jones compared to Fields, Wilson, Lawrence, and Mills. Lance has not played enough to get an assessment there.

Just for fun, this is what would need to happen for the Bears to make the playoffs. Two of the current WC teams face off this afternoon (MIN vs SF). WC2 MIN 5-5 SF-W, DET-W, PIT-W, CHI-L, LAR-L, GB-L, CHI-L 8-9 WC3 SF 5-5 MIN-L, SEA-W, CIN-L, ATL-W, TEN-L, HOU-W, LAR-L 8-9 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 ATL 5-6 TB-L, CAR-W, SF-L, DET-W, BUF-L, NO-W 8-9 2 NO 5-6 DAL-L, NYJ-W, TB-L, MIA-L, CAR-W, ATL-L 7-10 3 PHI 5-7 NYJ-W, WAS-W, NYG-W, WAS-L, DAL-L 8-9 4 CAR 5-7 ATL-L, BUF-L, TB-L, NO-L, TB-L 5-12 5 WAS 4-6 SEA-W, LV-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, DAL-L, PHI-W, NYG-W 7-10 6 NYG 4-7 MIA-L, LAC-L, DAL-L, PHI-L, CHI-L, WAS-L 4-13 7 CHI 4-7 ARZ-W, GB-L, MIN-W, SEA-W, NYG-W, MIN-W 9-8 The Bears need to finish the season 5-1 while other the other outcomes listed. Between MIN, SF, ATL and PHI, only one of those teams can win 1 extra game. If two do, depending on the team, the Bears would lose the tie breaker to SF and win the tie breaker against MIN (assuming they beat them twice). I don't see the Giants winning another game. They have a chance against MIA, PHI, and CHI. Same for Carolina. They have the toughest schedule, the only chance is their next game against ATL. We would rather see CAR win against ATL to knock them out. Philly has an easy schedule, but I have no clue which team is going to show up. That ultimately leaves MIN, SF, and ATL as the only real playoff threats. The Bears have to win one of their next two, which is extremely doubtful, but possible if Fields plays. Thoughts?

That is what is so weird. Fields is the model player, upstanding kid, works hard, respectful, great teammate, has all the intangibles but then on the field the stats look way to close to Haskins who could care less about studying defenses, etc. Also, it was not like Haskins had some dominant players or anything. The same season he was 2-5 as a starter, Keenum was 1-7. His RB was 48 yr old Adrian Peterson and after Terry McLaurin, the next WR was Steven Sims. Their best TE, Jeremy Sprinkle. So you could say Fields is in a better place, yet the stats don't bear that out. Either we are really overrating Fields or Nagy is so bad that he can make a great QB look mediocre.

He has really grown on me. He has also been dominant against the run with several stuffs and TFLs. He now has 11 sacks and 11 TFLs in 10 games.

I agree 100%. I was just shocked that Fields' stats were nearly identical to Dwayne Haskins, who looked absolutely terrible as a rookie.