adam

Oh for sure, but you do see it around the league. It might not be ALL on Waldron, but some of those jumps in performance seem outside of a normal bump.

If you get a chance, listen to this podcast with Flus. He sounds much better in this type of format. I wonder if it's the press conferences that he is just not comfortable with. Here he sounds much better and actually sounds like he knows what he is doing.

Yes, it easily could've been 45 or more. Metcalf was interfered with or held on every play, and when Davis was called for it, he complained, touched the ref, and never got a flag. Very fishy.

I believe the Legion of Boom was notorious for this, but did anyone watch the MNF game last night? Detroit's defense has seemed to adopt the Legion of Boom's tactics of holding and DPI on every play knowing the refs won't call them all. They basically conditioned the officials during the game to allow DPI later in the game, and it worked. There were at least 3 no-calls that were easy DPI calls that changed the outcome of the game. Carlton Davis (DET DB) is also allowed to yell in the face of officials, touch them multiple times, but Marsh (PIT game a few years ago) can get bumped by an official and he is called for a penalty? Super weird, but if the Bears have to deal with those type of calls against the Lions this year, it's going to be some bad losses.

Most people gave Waldron credit for Geno's resurgence. With Waldron gone, Geno now leads the NFL in passing yards (averaging 295.5 per game), which is on pace for over 5K. He has 19 completions more than the 2nd QB and has thrown for 57 1st Downs in 4 weeks. Kenneth Walker's Yards per carry his first two seasons (with Waldron): 4.6 and 4.1. This year: 5.7. Metcalf is on pace for career bests in yards and receptions Smith-Njigba, who was critical of Waldron in the offseason, has 25 receptions in 4 games, on pace for over 100. He had 63 last year. Charbonnet, mainly a 3rd Down back, is on pace to quadruple last season's receiving numbers. Seattle has a top 10 scoring and yardage offense this year with a Defensive Head Coach.

Great game for the Aussie, but he needs to keep it up for the remainder of the season. I have no clue why he was doing a Gill impersonation the first 3 weeks. After that great game, he now is 19th in Punting Average, T-5th in punts inside the 20, and T-4th in total punts. I hope he can creep into the top 10 by the end of the season because half the guys ahead of him are UDFAs. So the 4th round pick usage is fine if he is an elite punter, but if he is just "average", then there was no point in using a 4th rounder on him. Hopefully he reads this thru remote viewing and kicks the crap out of the ball for the rest of the season.

Some good and some bad in Week 4. Good: Waldron finally leaning on the elite players: Moore - 55 snaps Kmet - 54 snaps Odunze - 47 snaps Allen - 41 snaps Swift - 38 snaps Johnson - 22 snaps Carter - 0 offensive snaps Bad: Everett - 20 snaps (good for the offense, but this looks like a terrible signing, should've kept Bates) Herbert - 0 offensive snaps (has to be on the trading block?) Scott - 2 snaps (disappointing 4th Round pick) Velus - healthy scratch (they have to be preventing his trade value from falling any further) Amegadjie - 0 snaps this season (waste of a 3rd Round pick when they needed a Day 1 contributor)

8 carries and 2 receptions thru 4 weeks. In his last 2 seasons, he was averaging over 50 yards per game, that's down to 4. He clearly has been relegated to RB3/4, and if not for injuries to Blasingame and Homer, might've been a healthy scratch the last two weeks. He did not have an offensive snap against the Rams. As far as I can tell, that was only the 2nd time in his career that he suited up for a game and didn't get a touch (carry, reception, or KR). It is only the 5th time he didn't get a carry in his career, and 3 of the other 4 games were his first 3 of his rookie year and the 4th was Week 15 his rookie year. And for other guys, they might as well see what they can get for Everett, Davis, and Velus. Hell, throw Scott in there.

What I have seen some people say is that Caleb is slow thru his progressions. Maybe, but without knowing the timing of the routes, it seems like it would be hard to determine that. It feels like the route concepts are taking too long to develop. Also, on a lot of these incompletions, it looks to me like Caleb is throwing the ball away from danger, but possibly giving his guy a chance to grab it without risking an INT.

He has had only one turnover worthy play in 2 games, one of the INTs against IND. The other INT wasn't even considered his fault as it hit Odunze in the hands. That is on 75 passing attempts. So that is a great trend over that many passing attempts.

The Bears are also 9-8 in their last 17 games. Their pts/g is 21.3 and pts/g against is 18.6 over those 17 games. The needle is pointing up.

Shaq Thompson, arguably the Panthers best defensive player is out. That will make a bad defense worse.

Here is the throw to DJ for the TD. He was looking left the entire time, looks back to the right and throws it to the back line at the hashes, exactly where DJ needed to be. That was pretty good anticipation. The one to Kmet up the seam was amazing, he dropped it in the bucket between several defenders.

I don't trust Minnesota's offense just yet, but it does feels like Darnold is doing a Geno 2.0, which is possible. I still think there will be a market correction there. It's funny because if SEA beats DET tonight, the only 2 undefeated teams would be SEA and MIN, led by Geno Smith and Sam Darnold. That would've been a Simpson's episode joke just 4 years ago. The scary part to Minnesota is the defense, 16 sacks, 8 INT in 4 games. That is crazy. Also because they always have a lead, teams have to pass more against them, leading to more INTs and sacks. Pat Jones, who, leads them with 5 sacks. Kamu Grugier-Hill leads them in INTs with 2, who? He is on his 7th team in 7 years and now magically figures things out at 30? Blake Cashman leads their team in tackles. All 3 of those guys are LBs or OLBs. Damn Flores.

His 2nd half stats were really solid. That 12 play TD drive in the 3rd quarter was so efficient. We need about 4 of those per game. The Bears are scoring in the 4th quarter, something they didn't do with Fields.

Nix had a 35.7 QBR for the game and he had 1 TD and 0 INT, Nix also wasn't sacked. QBR takes QB Rating, EPA, and the opponent into account. That's where it hurt Caleb. He had a raw QBR of 50.8 but compared to other QBs that played the Rams, the total QBR you see on ESPN weights it for opponent. Murray had a raw QBR of 98.4 and Purdy had an 89.1 the two weeks prior. Stafford's raw QBR was 43.5, less than Caleb's, but because he was playing the Bears defense. Richardson had a 15.4 last week. So a 40+ QBR against the Bears is above average, thus why Stafford was over 50. QBR probably weights the raw QBR too much based on others because as much as it is the opponent, you also have to look at the last QB too and take it one step further for weighting. Like if Levis is the QB playing the other team's defense, the defense may not be good, Levis is just bad. So raw may be a better snapshot value. So this week Caleb was 14th, just below Mahomes and ahead of Hurts with raw QBR.

Great point. CAR is 6th right now according to Tankathon, so a loss would keep them in the bottom 5 and the Bears with a 2nd rounder between 33-38. If both teams sort of stay where they are right now, the Bears would have a pick between 15-22, then the Panthers pick between 33-38, then their own 2nd between 47-54. So 3 picks in the top 55, need 2x on the OLine and one on the DL. The Edge position looks solid with Sweat, Taylor, and Booker. Dexter had another sack, and if Billings can stay at the current level, the DLine is surprisingly good.

Andy Dalton, Old QB1 Revenge Game. He just lost to his first team, CIN this week. CAR gave up 34 pts to CIN. CAR has a bad defense and a bad offense, and an overall worse team than LAR. They have allowed 47, 26, 22, and 34 so far. Their defense allows 35 pts on the road. Every team has scored at least 3 TDs against CAR this season. I am calling it now, Bears 31-16. CAR averages 18 pts a game and allows 32 pts per game so far thru 4 weeks. Defense now has 2 weeks of Andy Dalton tape.

If Detroit loses on MNF to SEA, the Bears would actually move up to WC6 and DET would drop out and DAL would move into WC7. So a DET win would make the WC Round game CHI (7) at TB (2). A DET loss and it's still CHI (6) at TB (3).

So if the season ended today, the Bears are WC3:

Now up to 28.9 on the season, up over 2 pts. Would like to see a slightly better incremental increase week over week, but anything positive is better than regressing.

Caleb had a 38.8 QBR against LAR. So the last 2 weeks he has improved from 21.1 > 35.6 > 38.8. So there is progress. Sacks have went from 7 > 4 > 3. INTs went from 2 > 2 > 0 and he had his 2nd straight game with a TD pass. With how bad the O-Line still is and now injury to Jenkins, this is decent work. He just needs to continually improve week in and week out.

Caleb had 6 incompletions, and I think 3 were throw aways, all the incompletions were low risk I do not think he had a single high danger throw. I would have liked to have seen some more throws over the middle and some more hot routes to avoid the pressure. Still don't understand that, but overall, zero INTs and no WTF throws is progress.

Is DJ hurt? What the hell are these routes? These were his targets, not a single cross, slant, in, etc, etc. What is Waldron doing here?

I am 3 for 3 I think. I complained about how bad Taylor was (and he was), and he comes out kicking like we expected him to for 3 weeks. Injured maybe? He looked totally different, those kicks were booming. I complained about Swift and he was the all-purpose back I expected to see. I complained about Moore who does seem off. Pouty face on sidelines, flailing on the ground when the ball was not accurate, not running the correct choice routes, giving up on routes when the ball is coming to him, etc. Then he finally scores on a great pass and catch. The O-Line still needs work. I also don't like how many penalties Kmet had today. The entire team needs to cut the penalties, especially pre-snap, at home by 75%, just too many drive killers. Overall, a much better game. Some things to shore up on both sides of the ball. Stafford was 11-13 in the MoF beyond the LOS, and was 4-4 in the MoF beyond 15 yards. That is crazy. The Bears in zone have to clean up the coverage on the in breaking routes. They had no answer. I am surprised the Rams didn't keep going back to those. Look at Stafford's chart: