adam

COVID List, out for today.

Akiem Hicks is playing today. That's great news. The Packers don't have either of their starting CBs or Z. Smith on the Edge, and allow a TD 100% of the time once a team gets into the RZ. They have a terrible Special Teams unit as well. This is a prime time to get the Packers. One other sneaky fact, the Bears hired Mike Pettine, the former GB Defensive Coordinator, who is on the Bears staff. He practiced against this offense for 3 years and has intimate knowledge of the defensive player's strengths and weaknesses. If we see the Bears have the edge schematically, he might be why. To me it comes down to Davante Adams. If the Bears can limit him to under 100 yards and 7 receptions they win. If he goes off for double-digit receptions and over 120 yards, they probably lose. NO MISSED TACKLES! NO BUSTED COVERAGES! EDDIE JACKSON, PROVE US WRONG AND MAKE A PLAY! GO BEARS!

You don't clear cap space for nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if they added a CB, OT, or even a RB if they don't think Monty will be back as soon as originally expected.

I was hoping for Quentin Nelson, but the Smith pick turned out awesome. He adds to the legacy of great Chicago Bears LBs.

I was figuring 4-6 weeks for Borom (so Week 5-7), this week is Week 6, so they may just hold him out until the bye in Week 10. If Jenkins ever plays, Thanksgiving (THU) against Detroit would be a good game he would get extended rest after his first game before Arizona 10 days later. My predictions: Borom is back vs SF at home, Week 8 Jenkins is back at DET, Week 12 on Thanksgiving or doesn't play all year.

From Pace 2 weeks ago, very vague: On the status of injured rookie offensive linemen Teven Jenkins and Larry Borom: "Both those guys are working really hard. They continue to progress. They're both on schedule. It's a really good, combined effort with our trainers and strength coaches, along with those players being fully committed to that timeline to get them back as soon as possible. But they're both working hard and they're both on schedule." Maybe they can insert Elijah Wilkinson at right tackle instead of Germain Ifedi, but they still have a left tackle problem until rookie fifth round pick Larry Borom returns from IR and he has to miss at least one more game.

Man, I wish I didn't live in Alabama. Talk about an easy prop bet for an anytime TD. Herbert is easy money. He is going to either get one on the ground or in the air for sure. GB RZ defense is terrible.

Wilkinson played well after Ifedi went down. With Attaochu on IR, we may see Snowden get a shot and Mack backfills on PS.

Get out of my browser history Mongo! I was assuming he would be fined or suspended, and would have to attend some type of sensitivity training. It seems odd that he was forced to resign yet there are players, coaches, and owners who have said and done worse that are still employed.

Man, they have turned the All-22 into crap. For some reason, not all the plays and only half the game are available in that format. So it just jumps from one series to the next, missing plays and entire series. It is hard to watch unless one specific play you want to see if available for playback. From what I can tell, ARob looks slower. Almost like he is just going thru the motions. On Jackson, for a ballhawk, he is never around the ball. Outside of the time where the plays goes directly at him and he is forced to attempt a tackle, he is literally just running around the field for the other 60 plays. It is so weird.

It looks like the Packers may be down both of their starting CBs (Alexander and King). Their defense was already ranked 20th with them. How bad is their defense without their top 2 Corners?

Yeah, that too. I think Dalton was Plan "B" after RW fell thru.

The fact that we are dead last in yards with a 3-2 record is actually very promising. Odds are that the offense will improve significantly over the remainder of the year. Also, yards are very misleading because if you score on enough drives, have turnovers (like against CIN), you have short fields and thus don't need multiple 70-yard scoring drives. KC is 3rd with a losing record. The Giants are 12th in yards but have 1 win. I also think the team is not showing their full hand and that may be on full display this weekend. They haven't needed to the last two weeks, so why not wait to unleash new plays, formations, etc the most important week before the bye? Division opponent, at home is as important as it gets. Also, the defense still has yet to field all their starters at the same time for a full game. Hicks, Goldman, Trevathan, and Gipson have yet to be on the field at the same time this year. So both sides of the ball can improve. On Special Teams, Grant had a decent first game, and I can only imagine he will get better once he is in sync with his blockers.

I don't mind not turning over the calls, except when the call on the field is wrong. The side judges ran in and marked the spot with their feet, but you can see they are running to where his helmet was, not the ball, which neither can see from their perspective. Like I said, off by a football length, ok got it, but this was beyond that.

Pic 4 - The spot was literally where Peterman's helmet was, not the ball. This could've been a game-changing play. Games should not be decided by a visual guess and a chain. Luckily this one didn't bite us. Nagy challenged, but there was no evidence to overturn it, but there was also no evidence that the ball got that far. What is crazy is at best it was a half football from the line, yet is an entire football over the line. An average NFL football is about 11 inches, so they were almost a foot and a half off on the spot. I can see if they were off a half a football, but giving them an extra football without being able to actually see the ball is ridiculous.

Pic 3 - Side angle of replay, shows same line to gain in red, and the farthest possible point of the ball (in yellow) before Peterman gets blasted back by Roquan Smith. At best he gained an inch, but ultimately only gets back to the LOS. One thing to note is where his helmet is at, it crossed the line to gain which comes into play in the next pic.

PIC 2 - Last good view of where Peterman is holding the ball. He never extends the ball and if anything tucks it lower than it is in the picture. From the side angle, this is the last time any official can physically see the ball. Red line is line to gain.

So in the 3rd Quarter, on the Raiders only TD drive, Carr gets hurt, then Peterman comes in for a few plays. On a 4th and inches play, the Raiders get a great spot without there being any possible way the side judges can see where the ball is to spot the ball. Here is the play in 4 pics: PIC 1 - Ball is spotted just short of a football's length from the first down marker.

The All-22 posts 24 hours after game end, so I will look at it tonight. However, from the TV view it was pretty evident he was terrible and avoiding contact. Looking back at his numbers, it is clear to me that Jackson is not the same player since the injury. It has nothing to do with the contract. He is avoiding contact so he doesn't get hurt again. It is either physical or mental, but he is not even a quarter of the player he was in 2017 and 2018. The mistake by Pace was not seeing the steep decline in his play in 2019 and signing him to an extension only after 3 years of play. He was already a different player. In 30 games prior to injury he had 8 INTs and 21 PD. Since that point, in 37 games, he has 2 INTs and 10 PD. In 7 more games, 25% of the INTs and half as many PDs. And those last 2 INTs were the last play of the games against Sean Mannion (MIN) a hail mary, and a deep pass by David Blough (DET) on Thanksgiving into double coverage. It's not like those two plays were impactful. So his last meaningful INT was the one he got injured on against GB in 2018, which is crazy. So it is coming up on 3 years since he has a seriously impactful play that changed the game.

Lol, I was winning with only the opponent's defense left. The only way I could lose is with a turnover by KC in the last 2 minutes of the game and that is exactly what happened and that was after a Pick-6. So in a matter of 20 mins I went from being up comfortably to losing to a defense that got a Pick-6, INT, and 2 fumbles in that timeframe. All I needed was one of those things not to happen and I win.

Pace's biggest issue was cap management, but the cap situation looks much better with how Quinn is playing. The worst contract right now is ARob as the highest-paid player on the team with a $17.9M Cap hit. Then you have Goldman at $7.8M who hasn't done much. Foles is getting $6.6M as QB3, Graham is $5.3M for 1 reception, and Eddie Jackson is getting $5M to be the worst player on the entire roster. For 2022, Jackson's jumps to $15M which is scary. Goldman's jumps to $11.8M (if he doesn't improve, he is an easy cut), and Foles jumps to $10.6M. They need to move any, if not all 3 for anything they can get. Cap relief enough would work. I would not even oppose trading Jackson with a draft pick just to take him off our hands. There are teams with enough cap space who could use a better draft pick.

This is a winnable game for the Bears. The Packers lucked into a win against the Bengals two weeks removed from doing the same thing against SF. This will be Fields' 3rd game with Lazor as the play callers. At this point we should start seeing improvement from him and the offense overall. Hopefully Hicks is back for this one. Davante Adams now has 42 receptions on the year for 579 yards. He accounts for almost 50% of their passing offense, which is bonkers. If you can limit Adams, like the Saints did, you win easily because it looks like Rodgers throws to Adams regardless of the situation. Out of 163 attempts, Rodgers has targeted Adams 66 times. If possible, I would line up Johnson on him the entire game. The Packers defense is in the bottom 3rd of the league, better than the Lions and worse than the Raiders. So the Bears should score in the mid-20s. It is going to come down to the Bears defense. If they can keep them under 21, the Bears win. If they allow more than 24 they probably lose. The Bears have back-to-back double digit wins while the Packers have won 3 straight by a total of 15 pts with 2 GW FGs. Packers will be on the 2nd of back to back road games after playing an extra 10 minutes with OT on Sunday. The Packers won't have Za'Darius Smith (12.5 sacks in 2020) or Jaire Alexander (13 PD in 2020), two of their top 2 defenders. That would be close to not having Mack and Johnson for the Bears. Bears have 18 sacks, Packers have 10. INTs are 5-4 Packers. Rodgers averages 2 sacks a game, Bears average just over 3. Rodgers had 5 INTs all last year, already has 3 in 5 games. So 3 sacks and an INT would be perfect for the Bears defense in this game. Weather for the game looks perfect, around 60 and sunny with a little wind. If it comes down to it, I like Santos over Crosby in the kicking game. An early prediction, I am going Bears 27-23 in a close one.

The Chargers only scored 28 on the Raiders. I would've liked to have seen another TD instead of FG, but they got 4 scoring drives, just like the Chargers did against the same defense. The Bears did it on the road where the Raiders defense should've had the edge. They also did that without Monty who has been a huge percentage of the offense. On the short yardage plays, I thought they were bad play calls, but the overall grade was fair. Grant had a 21-yard and a 17-yard punt return while Webster had 4 for a total of 13 yards. How much better could he have been on those? O'Donnell averaged 50 per punt with 5 of 5 inside the 20. Renfrow was only able to return 1 for 9 yards. Drake had 3 kick returns and averaged 17.5. All in all, Grant had 107 return yards and the Raiders had 44. I don't think you can ask for a better game from your special teams unit. I agree on the offensive coaching, but this is really just Game 2 for them with Lazor calling the plays. How about defensive coaching? Does Desai get any credit for the defensive resurgence? I feel like he is scheming pressure. Also, even though the Raiders had a TD drive, that was one of the toughest to get I have seen in a while. It took them 16 plays to go 74 yards and only come away with 6 pts. They burnt the clock on themselves. Same thing with their FG, 13 plays and 69 yards for 3 pts. That is some super-efficient defense right there. It is definitely another B game. The good part is they still have room to improve in a lot of areas, but are still winning. That is a great sign.

I loved that play, especially on a player like Abraham, who is a heavy hitter.

The worst part of the Glennon deal was Glennon. The idea was ok, but there were other vets available to be a bridge QB, Glennon was not one of them. For the Dalton deal, with Pick 21, there was no way the Bears thought they were getting a 1st Round QB with all of them expected to go in the top 10-12 picks. So Dalton was essentially replacing Trubisky and then Fields fell into their laps. If the draft happens first, I think there are several moves done differently, and Dalton is never signed. Right now, Fields needs the game experience. Outside of Lance, all the other rookie QBs got an entire offseason and QB1 reps. That was the mistake. Fields should've been splitting the reps with Dalton. That is why ARob is struggling and Graham has 1 reception on the year. There is no chemistry and timing built with those guys yet. To me, this is where we should start seeing Fields improve. 3 full games under his belt with game prep and QB1 reps. GBs defense is better than Detroit's but worse than Las Vegas. Right now Quinn looks much better for the contract. The biggest mistake in the last few years is signing Jackson for that amount and length.