adam

Weather looks to be nice, low 30s, partly cloudy and only a light wind.

This game is the most important regular season game for this team in years. It will ultimately come down to what defense shows up. If it is the one from the last few weeks, we have no chance. I believe the offense will score 20+ but can the defense stop Rodgers and Adams? The game was shifted to the afternoon slot parallel to the Rams-Cards game. A win and the Bears can actually knock GB out of the #1 seed and possibly all the way to the #3 seed. There is also a chance that there is a rematch in GB the following week if the Bears win. The Bears also can jump to the #6 seed with a win and Cards win. People forget there was a 14 pt swing in the last game, the Bears gifted them 7 pts on the Trubisky fumble and lost 7 more on the end zone INT. If Trubisky can hold onto the ball, that's a completely different game. Monty had success and Nagy abandoned the run. Just pound the rock, make them commit to the run and then hit them with PA and boots. Easy reads for Trubisky and put the ball in playmakers hands in space.

If Nagy is back, does Mitch want to play for the HC that "blindsided" him? Also, if he plays well in the next two games, there may be more suitors with bigger caps than just the Bears.

It looks like Wims is supposed to sit down in the soft spot in the zone but doesn't get a clean release. Based on Mitch's foot placement, on the snap he tries to hold the Safety to the left, but Smith immediately turns his hips and starts dropping in coverage, so Trubisky goes to the next read (Wims). If Wims makes a clean move back outside, that ball hits him in the hands, or there is at least a 34% chance that it does.

Yeah, look at Wentz. What the hell happened there? He was an MVP candidate within the last few years and lost his job to a rookie. Goff has been nothing but a system QB, but he can throw the deep ball. I looked at Goff's stats, this guy has had 4x games with a QBR under 40 (3 under 20 which is almost impossible) and 4 over 80. Talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you have no clue which QB you are going to get. One of his worst games this year was against the Jets. Now all of a sudden Mayfield is a top 10 QB. I find it funny that Mayfield gets all this credit for being a great QB when he is about to have 2x 1000 yard rushers, and for at least half the season had 3x All-Star pass catchers (Beckham, Landry, and Hooper) behind one of the best lines in football. So we will see how Trubisky measures up to Mayfield who had 19-29, 65.5%, 258 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT against JAX a few weeks ago.

I know there has been a lot of buzz during this last few game stretch where Trubisky has looked better. So I tried to see if anything stood out in this most recent 3-game stretch that was something we have not seen, at least from a numbers perspective, in his entire career. I did find one set of numbers that stood out. In 44 games where Trubisky had 20 or more passing attempts, he has only had a completion percentage over 70% in 14 games. 3 of those have occurred in the last 3 weeks. That really stood out to me. Obviously, the coaches have made some changes to make things easier on him, which has had led to some promising results. I however do not know if it will be enough to keep him around or if that type of play is sustainable because he is still one of, if not the worst deep ball QB in the game, and at some point that has to be fixed or teams will stack the box for both the run and short passes. This is still a concern for me:

Leno has been visibly better over the last few weeks. This style of running game suits him much better than the other crap they were doing earlier in the year. It also helps to have Whitehair next to him to help him on inside moves. Totally off topic, but I completely forgot that Wims and Miller are both 26 and only a year younger than ARob.

I am not disputing that a team has a 77% better chance to pick a quality player in the first 10 picks vs the next 10, though those older numbers don't account for a lot of different factors. I think it just comes down to how it is expressed. If you compare it to something like completion percentage. If one QB has completed 73% of his passes and another QB has completed 43% of his passes (same total attempts), are you going to say that the first QB completes 69% more of his passes than the 2nd QB, or that the first QB completes 30% more?

Unfortunately, due to all the lost revenue this year, it is going to come down to money. Pace has one year left on his deal (thru 2021) and Nagy has two left, thru 2022. So I could see them being more open to moving on after next season with only one contract to eat, and would be surprised if the organization eats two contracts this offseason considering how much they already lost due to COVID this year.

Yeah, that's the mistake. He should be throwing it to Kmet before hits the 15 for an easy score.

After seeing the Jets beat the Rams, then the Bengals beat the Steelers, I really hope the Bears don't crap the bed on this one with so much on the line. This is the worst team the Bears will face this year, 31st in DVOA, 25th Offensive DVOA and 31st in Defensive DVOA, only the Jets are worse. If the Bears manhandled the Texans, this should be a blowout, however, Minshew is actually really solid for a QB on a 1-13 team. He has thrown 16 TDs to 5 INTs and Robinson is one of the best RBs in the league. However, after those two and Chark, they have a bunch of very average players. The Jags defense is crazy bad, they have allowed 20 or more points in every game and 27 or more in all but two, and 8 games allowing 30+. The Bears have scored 30 in 3 straight. On offense the Jags are decent and will score some points, they have scored 24 or more in 7 games and have lost 6 by one score or less. It will depend on which Bears defense shows up. The one that shutdown the Texans or the leaky defense that has allowed 27, 30, and 25 in the other 3 games after the bye. I think the Bears pull this one out rather convincingly and setup for a potential playoff play-in game in Week 17 at home against GB. Immediately following this game, everyone needs to root for a SF win in ARZ which would put the Bears into the 7th seed heading into Week 17. Then on SNF, the Titans play the Packers. A Packers win and they will clinch home-field advantage and a first-round bye, but a loss and Saints win against MIN will guarantee a playoff implications show-down in Week 17 for the Bears and Packers. Bears 31-17

Looking back the Bears were 5-2 going into the Saints game that they lost in OT and where our defense couldn't defend Taysom Hill who scored on a TD reception. That was the game where Trubisky got hurt. Foles also had a decent game. So at that point, they were 5-3, but Foles wasn't terrible. However, then they lost to the Titans and Vikings where you could've went to Mitch before the bye, but he was hurt. I think he even went and got a 2nd opinion on his shoulder. Then the bye week hit and Trubisky was back against the Packers. So there really wasn't a chance for Trubisky to come back earlier than after the bye. The Coward thing boggles my mind. When Daniels went down, how could they not at least try Mustipher at Center at that point? Coward was so bad that he was affecting the entire offense.

10% more, 77% better.

You have a 77% chance of getting a better pick 13% of the time.

Another cool nugget, Kmet played every offensive snap. Every one of them. So there were no keys to whether it was going to be a run or pass unless they were in empty. That has to be a Lazor thing because I never saw that with Nagy calling the plays. Just like you guys said, if you can line up and the defense can't tell whether you are running or passing, you already have an advantage and can play downhill. For most of the season, it looked like defenses were on the offensive and they knew what the play was and just needed to stop it. Now they have no clue and the offense still has room to improve.

It's those quick throws, which are fine with me. I watched the game again and one play stood out to me where I thought it was a bad throw initially and didn't realize what really happened. There was what looked like a bad throw behind Wims, but upon second look, Wims was held and couldn't get to his spot, so Mitch hitched when he saw that and then threw the ball away from the defenders side, but there was no penalty on the play. This dude wanted to make a comment about Mitch's pocket presence, but he didn't watch the play. Run this video a few times and watch Wims (where the pass goes), then watch Mitch again. No call on the play and the defender has a handful of jersey and was preventing Wims from getting to his spot. A few other promising stats, according to ESPN Next Gen Stats, Trubisky is 2nd in the league in Aggressiveness (only behind Tua) AND 4th in Air Yards to the Sticks (AYTS): https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/passing#aggressiveness

I am not disputing the raw math, you are correct. It just depends on how you express it because you can also say that 13 is 56% of 23. I am also not disputing the fact that the odds of selecting a quality player are higher the earlier you pick. What is odd is that based on "Approximate Value" on the chart I posted, there is virtually no difference between picks 10-22. So once you are out of the top 10, then the pick value levels off a little before falling again in the 20s.

Yeah, I agree. Also, with analytics and advanced scouting, I would almost say anything beyond 5 years in terms of drafting comparisons is almost irrelevant now.

It's actually a pretty tough offense to stop because if you commit too many to the box, the boot and flats are easy gains and if the over-under is working, those are easy reads and safe throws for Mitch. People also forget they are doing this without Cohen.

If you are Trubisky, there is no way you are signing a deal now unless you think COVID is going to kill your market. The best option may be a 1-yr deal somewhere.

Picks 1-9 have pretty distinct value, then from pick 10-21, there is almost no discernable difference in value, then a pretty big difference between 22-32. So unless you have a top 9 pick, anything from 10-21 is relatively the same value.

I just wanted to give a shout out to Monty for his performance over the last few weeks. Lazor has emphasized the run and Monty and the O-Line have not disappointed. With such a turbulent season, revolving O-Line, QB swap, and yet Monty is still putting up top-10 RB numbers across the board. Here is where he stands in some major categories: 7th in Rushing Yards (906) 9th in Rushing Yards per game (69.7) 5th in yards after contact (485) T-7th in yards after contact per attempt (2.4) T-2nd broken tackles (24) T-2nd broken tackles per attempt (8.4) 10th in yards from scrimmage (1255) T-7th touches (245) 9th in receptions for RB T-1st with 0 fumbles He has surpassed the likes of Rashaan Salaam, Cedric Benson, and Curtis Enis on the Bears all-time rushing list and should end the season in the Bears top-20 and has an outside shot to pass James Allen and maybe even break 2K for his career. He has back-to-back 100-yard rushing games, and 3 out of the last 4. He had 2 100-yard games last season, and his 146 yards and 32 carries were both career highs. Feed the beast.

Yeah, you can go back to any 3 game stretch of his career and tell something is different. To me he is being more decisive with his throws, but they are all not first read, he is making quicker decisions and not just starring down one receiver. I thought he had two bad passes all game, and for the most part made the right decision with the ball. He also had his highest carries in a game this season with 8 and was only sacked once.

You can absorb an INT if your offense is putting up 30+. Was it a bad throw yes, should he have ran or thrown in away, yes, but his bad throw pct is way down over the last 3 weeks. I don't know if you have watched any other teams, but there are bad INTs thrown each week by some great QBs. To me it was as bad of a throw as it was a play design. 5 receivers all running into the end zone, no outlet, and defenders close enough to contest balls thrown to other receivers. Holtz's defender made the interception in front of ARob. ARob was also interferred with and changed his momentum towards the ball. I didn't like the play calling and didn't like the throw, but it happens to all QBs. The defense is another story. It is clear that Jackson is playing not to get hurt. He is just running around as an 11th player on the field, but is not doing anything. On the two large receptions by the TEs, him and Fuller avoided contact and allowed 10-15 extra yards on the receptions. That has to change. Something is clearly going on there with them. Outside of the mixup on the TD to Thielen, Vildor and Shelley played decent. Look at Thielen's numbers.

Mustipher has been amazing for an undrafted rookie. I would not be opposed to bringing Ifedi back and drafting some tackles early. The interior line with Whitehair, Mustipher, and Bars has been very good, and that is not even counting Daniels who was arguably the best of the group before he got hurt. It is crazy how long they went with Coward though. I am glad they made the switch but man, how long did they have to watch him completely whiffing on guys to make the switch.