adam

Miller and Wims need to go. Robinson is gone. You are going to have to draft one early and bring in a couple of FAs. Here are some free agent WRs: 50+ receptions: JuJu, Samuel, Jones, Davis, Godwin, Hilton, Cole, Fuller, Reynolds, Patrick 40+ reception: Bourne, Agholor, Green, Byrd, Pascal, Conley Patrick, Cole, and Reynolds should not command a ton of money but all were productive. All would be upgrades over Miller and a slight downgrade from ARob. However, if you can get one of these from each group, and draft one in the first few rounds, then you might actually have a better group than this year.

Kamara against Woods or Iggy? Good luck with that. Manti Te'o revenge game? The only way we have a chance is with some defensive turnovers and a score on defense or special teams. We are going to need to outscore them with how bad our defense is playing. Someone needs to mirror Kamara everywhere, and when Hill is in the game, you know a run off tackle or on the edge is coming. Just fill the damn gap!

You nailed it, it is all of them. Pace, Nagy, Trubisky, and the O-Line (main culprits of Massey, Leno, and Coward). In defense of Trubisky, how can he take a shot when the receivers aren't running any deep routes, or if they do and are bracketed with safeties over the top? Pace made the biggest and initial error drafting Trubisky, then hiring Nagy who can't develop an offense with the players he has. It has been square peg and round hole since. Pagano is the same way. The DBs don't play 12 yards off a receiver on a 3rd and 7 because they want to. That is the scheme. We saw a few flashes of the offense working with Foles and Trubisky. I wonder if we will see Foles if Trubisky starts off bad?

Poll results look like it is flipping me the bird.

Robinson's, see the trend, all the routes are short, so Trubisky's percentage for deep balls is going to be dependent on a very small sample size:

Mooney's route tree vs GB:

What if Trubisky just needed glasses or Lasik? That's why he can't see all those defenders past 10-15 yards.

A lot of QBs struggle with the deep ball.

A weird stat, the Saints are 12-4 and have only beaten one winning team (TB twice). The Bears are 8-8 and only beat one winning team (TB once). So these teams may be closer than we think. I still don't think the Bears have a chance without Roquan as Kamara will just run some bubble screens all day long for 15-20 yard gains. The only chance the Bears have is if Thomas doesn't play and the Bears can hold Kamara to under 100 total yards. If he gets 150+ yards again, it's game over.

What's funny is Houston is basically in the situation we would be in if we acquired him. They have an aging defense and no early draft picks due to some bad trades. So if the Bears somehow pulled off a trade, they would have to give up so much that we would look just like Houston does now, with Watson, and not much else. The crazy part is even with a new GM and HC, they are still years away from competing. They have TEN and IND in their division who are going to be good for the foreseeable future AND Jacksonville, who will have the #1 pick and a ton of draft capital to reset.

So these are the QBs closest to Trubisky in terms of stats with a few years of playing time. Some are just as polarizing for their fanbases, some have lost their jobs, and some are expected not to be back with their teams. We all know 99.9% of the people would take guys like Mahomes, Watson, Burrow, Herbert, Allen over Trubisky, but I was curious to see what people thought about other QBs in Trubisky's tier. I didn't include the older guys as they have a shorter remaining career. All these guys have 10+ years left in the league. I personally feel like Goff is solely a product of McVay and would already be a backup on any other team. Wentz's great play for 10 games a few years ago was obviously a fluke as he has been the worst starter in the league this year. For all the hype around Mayfield, unless things are perfect around him, he struggles mightily, so it is hard to get a read on how good he really is. Then you have Darnold, put on the worst team in the league with no O-Line or weapons on offense and got sacked week in and week out. I have no idea how good he is. However, I don't think any of these QBs could come to the Bears and make them better than they are right now.

Poll Time, pick a QB from this tier based on what you know about their teams.

Yeah, if he is hired the Bears would get an extra 3rd Round Comp pick in 2021 AND 2022, which would be huge. My assumption is that he would be considered for the Bears job if Pace is let go.

It feels like a bad scheme with players not knowing or doing their jobs. That equates to what we see on the field. They are not playing as a unit.

I just thought about this, what the hell happened to the "Adjustor"? Remember when Nagy said Burton was the Adjustor and everything keyed off him on the offense? Who is the adjustor in this offense? No one really plays that role which makes the offense feel very clunky. I think when you add Trubisky to a clunky offense, you get exactly what we see every week. So if Nagy comes back, I don't think Trubisky will be back. Cap will play a role in this decision too.

GB played Cover-3 a ton taking away most throws between 10-20 yards by having 3 DBs in that area in addition to the DBs playing man. They forced all throws to go underneath or be contested between 10-20 yards. If you notice that any throws over 10 yards probably had 2 or more DBs in close proximity. The game plan did not take advantage of this defensive scheme. Cover-3 is easy to beat and exploit, yet Nagy/Lazor didn't attack it. They were very passive. The 4th Down rollout was a perfect example where they had only one option. Trubisky's biggest issue is thinking on the fly. He just throws the ball where it is called regardless of the defense. He has to be able to see that the play is not there and move to other reads. He just throws it. That is frustrating, especially when someone like Josh Allen can improve by changing his mechanics in the offseason. Trubisky ended the year with a higher QBR than Roethlisberger, Goff, Burrow, Dalton, Minshew, Tua, Wentz, Lock, Newton, Dalton, and Foles. His last 4 games QBR: 85.9, 81.9, 63.3, and 63.6. That run matches his best stretch of any in his career. He has only had one other 4 game stretch with a QBR of 60 or higher (in 2018 TB, MIA, NE, and NYJ, team went 2-2 in those games). Trubisky also had his highest career QB Rating at 93.5, a 2:1 TD:INT Ratio and his highest completion pct at 67%.

Bears DVOA 12/14 Offense DVOA 13/14 Defense DVOA 7/14 Saints DVOA 1/14 Offense DVOA 7/14 Defense DVOA 2/14 So we are playing a team that is technically better/more efficient than GB, at their home, and they have done this in a season without their starting QB, #1 WR, and #1 RB, and all of them may be playing on Sunday. I wouldn't be surprised if NO is resting their players by halftime for their real playoff matchup the following weekend. Rewatching the GB game makes me sick. On every defensive play, there is something ridiculous going on, especially the pass plays. Defenders would peel off their receiver to stop and guard an empty part of the field while their guy runs wide open. Jackson is covering Adams and starts backpedaling before the snap until there is 15 yards of cushion. He was so far away that Fuller makes the tackle off of his guy. What the hell is this. On a Jones run on the first drive, Trevathan literally doesn't move until Jones is in the hole. It looked like a broken game controller. The entire line passes him by before he reacts and Roquan, who is actually on the other side of him gets to Jones before he does. So bizarre. If Trevathan is in his gap, Jones is stopped near the LOS. On that first drive, Shelley got a DPI on Adams which basically gifted them a TD since it was a 4th Down play. What I don't understand is why they wouldn't put Fuller on Adams (who is standing right next to Shelley) who was guarding Jones?

that post was from 2019?

I felt much better about Pace before this year where guys like Jackson and Cohen were huge contributors. However, Jackson has played no better than a 4th or 5th round safety and Cohen, even before injury have became a sideline gimmick runner. Pace has lost on basically all of his $100 bets, but won a few scratch offs. Every miss in the first or second rounds, he would need several hits in the later rounds to compensate. That has not happened.

Yeah Ryan Walter Pace is an idiot. Philly is a hot mess. How can a franchise go from model franchise with SB win to this clown show? They couldn't even win a division with 7 wins and we got in playing with the #1 seed in our division. Howie Roseman was the Exec of the year in 2017 and look at this team now. That award is hot garbage, the 2016 winner was Reggie McKenzie of the Raiders, Roseman in 2017, and Pace in 2018. None of those franchises are in the top 10 of the league.

Nope Eddie is not under contract, he is a RFA though. However, since he is not under contract, he can't be traded. What sucks is it will cost the Bears a couple of million to keep Santos. He was a top #5 kicker and those guys make $4M+. I am hoping they can sign him to a longer deal with more guaranteed money, but a lower hit in 2021. The only thing that scares me is the only one of the top 5 salary kickers is in the playoffs (Tucker).

Yeah, just think if you are the Bills. You go 13-3 and get the 7th Seed Colts who are not an easy out. The Bears and Redskins are the two easiest teams in the playoffs. The only thing the Bears have going for them is they have nothing to lose. No one expected them to make the playoffs and the Saints are huge favorites. This will also be Trubisky's last game as a Bear, and we can expect some other changes too. This is also some good experience for the young guys. Outside of that, I have zero expectations going into the game.

I really like the new format where each conference gets an extra team. This prevents a team like the Redskins with a losing record from bumping a true playoff team like the Bears out of the dance. I also like that only the Conference regular-season champ gets a bye. That makes more sense as does a guaranteed home game for the division winners. Of the 6 Wild Card matchups, two are divisional games (Rams @ Seahawks and Browns @ Steelers). The Browns will have to beat the Steelers in back to back weeks to advance. All the games seem fairly even but the Bears are the biggest underdogs at -9.5. All the other games are between 3.5-6.5 pts. TEN @ BAL is a rematch (TEN won at home). The Bears have probably the craziest path to the SB. They will have to more than likely beat the Saints, Packers, Seahawks, and Chiefs on the way to this year's Lombardi trophy. Only Indy would have a tougher path (BUF, KC, PIT, GB) if all favorites win. The playoff QBs: Mahomes, Rodgers, Allen, Brees, Wilson, Roethlisberger, Smith, Tannehill, Jackson, Brady, Mayfield, Goff, Rivers, and Trubisky. Goff is the worst QB, followed by Roethlisberger, than Trubisky in QBR. Those 3 and Smith are the 4 that are not listed in the top 10 in QBR. Only one QB finished in the top 10 in QBR and didn't make the playoffs (Fitzpatrick - MIA, who finished at 10-6).

I don't know about you, but I didn't expect this kind of season from our kicker. Santos broke all kinds of franchise records and ended the season making 27 straight kicks. His only misses were from 46 and 52, with one blocked XP. I really hope we can lock him up for a few years and not have to worry about kicking. Then our favorite ex-kicker Parkey is prepping to let down another entire fanbase in Cleveland in the playoffs.

Thanks, it has been a comedy of errors this year which I tried to convey in the game threads. This game deserves to be on Nickelodeon for how comical the Bears are playing. Comedy Central would've been perfect, but getting slimed on Nickelodeon is a close second.