adam

Come on Mongo. Name all the All-Pro and HoFers for Brady, Brees, Peyton, Big Ben, Ryan, Stafford, or Favre on the O-Line. They had some good lines some years, but not all or not any historically great lines. Favre, Brady, Big Ben all have over 500 sacks against. You can add Rivers to that list soon too. Brady has historically had no-name receivers. Look at what Manning's receivers did when they played with another QB. They have each had a few, but the constant has been them, not their O-Lines or Receivers. It's a team game and they are going to get some good players next to them, and when they did, that's when the magic happens. A great QB with at least a good team is a SB contender. A great O-Line with a good team looks like Indy right now. A good playoff team, but won't go far in the playoffs. If O-line was the #1 factor, MIN, TEN, CLE, NE, and JAX would be the top 5 teams in the league as they have the best O-Lines in the league. PIT is 10-0 and has the 4th worst O-Line in the league: https://www.footballoutsiders.com/foplus/dvoa-database/basic-offensive-defensive-line-stats?year=2020&offense_defense=offense I am not saying O-Line is not important, and I would not be opposed to drafting O-Line early and often in all drafts, but without the competent QB, the line doesn't matter.

Brady, Brees, Peyton, Big Ben, Matt Ryan, Stafford, Favre, Marino, Elway, Montana?

The true franchise guys can overcome bad O-Line, bad receivers, etc. The next tier needs help, then the bottom tier fails regardless of the situation. If you have a middle tier guy, you can win with a decent team around him (Eli Manning), but a bad QB needs a historically great team to have a chance (Dilfer). The teams you see as consistent contenders have great QBs. Gotta hit on QB and make that the priority every off season until you find one. Then build.

I agree to an extent, but Watson had a horrible situation in Houston where he was running for his life half the time, but he is still elite. Wilson has had some of the worse offensive lines in the league for years, yet there he is year in and year out making plays. Mahomes would be no different. If you need great players around you to be great, you're not great. A great QB actually makes the entire offense better and is more valuable than any other single player on the team. Once you have one of those guys, you build around him. It's much harder to do it the other way around because who knows when you will find that guy? That is a huge unknown variable. Indy is going that route right now. They have a young, talented roster with an old QB. They are never going to be bad enough with that talent to get a top 15 pick, so what do they do? So if you get a top 10 pick and a top QB is available, you have to take your shot because who knows when you will be back there.

Very true. We don't have the right players for the scheme. Mack and Quinn dropping into coverage is a waste. I saw a stat that said the Bears played off the receivers farther than they have all season, allowing for easy underneath and crossing patterns all night long. So odd.

Game plan was to throw at Skrine and Trevathan regardless of the receiver. Look at the stats, those guys were heavily targeted throughout the game. The double face mask no-call on the Trubisky fumble was icing on the cake. I forgot how bad the officiating was due to how bad the team looked. What's crazy is if they call a penalty for a face mask on the Trubisky fumble, give the ball back to the Bears, and they end up scoring a TD on that drive, it's 20-17 at halftime, not 27-10. Who knows how the game turns out then.

It seemed like every pass was against Skrine. I have no clue how many receptions he let up, but I know it was a lot. He ended with 13 tackles, which is insane for a DB. He had 14 over the last 3 games. To me the weakest links on the team were Coward on offense and Skrine on defense. Teams will continue to just slide their targets into the slot, run any route, then blindly throw the ball there against Skrine and 90% of the time it's a reception. If you watched the game, that was happening a lot. That was their game plan and Pagano didn't adjust.

It is crazy to think Monty ran for over 100 yards, Trubisky threw 3 TDs and the Bears were down 41-10 entering the 4th quarter.

I don't think you take anything off the table, especially when drafting a QB. We already have 2x solid O-Linemen in Whitehair and Daniels. Mustipher actually looks pretty good and Bars is an upgrade over Coward. If you draft a guy and bring in an FA, you are pretty solid on the O-Line going into 2021. If a QB is there at 11-12, and he has a first round grade, you take him. Remember where Mahomes and Watson were selected. All those teams in the top 10 had to a chance to pick either of them but passed. Cleveland drafted Garrett 1st, passed on Mahomes and Watson, then drafted Mayfield #1 the following year. They could've went Mahomes in 2017, Quentin Nelson in 2018 instead of Garrett/Mayfield, then drafted Chubb instead of Ward at #4. No one talks about that.

Yeah, it shows that they have only been winning against the bad teams and losing against the good teams. That is how you end up at 13-14. On the flip side, they have played the toughest schedule per DVOA this year (2.1% ahead of #2 CAR, which is a lot) and had the 6th toughest in 2019. In 2018, at 12-4, they played against the 2nd easiest DVOA schedule. So this team is very schedule dependent and that has played out this year to a T. So I expect a few more wins against the likes of HOU, JAX, and DET with losses from MIN and GB to end at 7-9.

I will say this again, Pace and Nagy are like those guys who think they are the smartest guys in the room and they know better than everyone else, but are actually idiots who have no clue what they are doing, but too stupid to see it. A random simulator could've drafted better than Pace has since he arrived. Everyone praised him for Jackson, but look how he has played after he got paid, mediocre at best, not like a top 5 Safety. He has whiffed time and time again on QBs, and some other terrible free agents (Quinn, Sims, etc). Trubisky is gone, there is no way he signs back with this team after being "blind-sided" by the benching. Also, he is still a one-read QB. Those INTs into triple coverage show he is going with the pre-snap read regardless of the coverage. He still even runs out of bounds of a sack instead of launching it into the stands for an incompletion. Every QB knows to do this except him apparently. I don't believe there is any dead money if you trade them as the new team takes on the entire contract, but I am sure some teams would want the Bears to retain some salary. So much for player leadership, where was Danny T, Mack, Fuller, Jackson, Smith, all the leaders on the defense. How do you let that happen? That was one of the most embarrassing games I have seen in a long time.

The HC is responsible for instilling that pride and motivating the team. He clearly is not a good motivator of men. He rode Fangio's coattails to 12-4 in 2018 and is now 13-14 without him. Do you know the Bears have only won 2 games against teams with winning records since the start of 2019 (TB this year and MIN last year when they rested all their starters in Week 17). Also, 11 of the 13 wins have been by 7 pts or less.

One bright side to that loss, we gained some ground on a top 10 pick. The Bears are now 1 game out of the #8 pick and 1.5 games out of the #7 pick with 5 games to play. I don't expect the Chargers to keep losing, Carolina looks like a strong team, Washington is playing better with Smith at QB, Atlanta just blew the doors off the Raiders, Houston is playing some good ball and Denver was playing decent when they had an actual QB play. Those teams will all have more wins than the Bears by the end of the year. I think the only game the Bears win is against Jacksonville and end up at 6-10. That should be good enough for pick 8-10, which should be in reach of a QB. 1. NYJ 0-11 2. JAX 1-10 3. CIN 2-8-1 4. DAL 3-8 5. LAC 3-8 6. PHI 3-7-1 ----------- 7. CAR 4-8 8. WAS 4-7 9. DET 4-7 10. ATL 4-7 11. HOU 4-7 12. DEN 4-7 13. CHI 5-6 14. MIN 5-6 15. NE 5-6 16. SF 5-6 Looking at the teams to guarantee to be ahead of the Bears, the Jets and the Jags are going QB. Then the others would be PHI and WAS possibly. Carolina has Bridgewater, Chargers have Herbert, Bengals have Burrow. So the Bears will for sure get no better than the #3 QB in the draft. If there is no one worthy of that pick in the top 10, go OLine.

Oh, I agree. A win would be shocking, in GB in prime time. I just feel bad for Trubisky. After how bad Foles played for so many weeks, he probably should've been starting again a few weeks ago, but then got hurt. So now he gets his chance in the most pivotal game of the season. A win and the playoffs are a reality at 6-5 and the division is still in reach (w/ tie breaker), and a loss and the season is over. With a loss, they would be a game away from a top 7 pick at 5-6 (7 teams have 4 wins).

Shaheen got one too. Shaheen now has 3 TDs on the season on only 7 receptions.

So after how bad the Bears have played in the last month, with the Cards loss this week against NE, the Bears could slide back into the playoff picture as the #7 seed with a win tonight AND would then be only one game back in the Division w/ the tie breaker against GB AND only a half game back from TB as the #6 seed w/ the tie breaker as well.

I second the bag of dicks,lol. BTW, Mike Freaking Glennon has the 1-9 Jaguars in the lead against the Browns in the 3rd Quarter with 2 TDs and is on pace for a 300-yd passing game w/o Chark.

Backup QB us the least of my worries. On offense, obviously O-Line and the starting QB, and on defense Skrine, Quinn, and the Safeties being in position to make some plays which hasn't been there all year.

The COVID cap crunch is going to cause a lot of cap heavy teams to trade/cut players they don't necessarily want to lose. It is going to be an offseason like no other. So there may be a market for players with big cap hits where other teams can get them for peanuts. Like the Colts, they will have the 3rd highest cap space at $76M, that would be easy to take on someone like Mack or Fuller but then only give up a 4th or 5th round pick. The Jags and Jets have over $80M available. The Pats also have a ton of cap space. So I can see those teams picking up one or two elite guys even with big cap hits. My hope is they restructure Fuller, Mack, and Hicks to ease the burden on the 2021 cap, then make space with Massie, Leno, Graham, Skrine. Quinn's contract is a hot mess. He is unmoveable, so the only option is to restructure his for a couple of million to cut his cap hit from $14.7M down to something like $10M. Mack is at $26.6M, but a restructure can bring that down under $20M. Same with Fuller, he is at $20M, but they can get him to $15M. Hick is at $12M, and they can get him under $10M. Those 4 restructures can save the team close to $20M without pushing too much to later years. However, I see no way they can afford A-Rob, which sucks. There just is no cap space unless they get rid of Quinn somehow. Then you have to figure out QB, Trubisky is off the books, you don't have $20M for a new starting QB. Foles is making $6.66M, so that is not starter money. I don't know how they are squeezing a starting QB salary into this cap.

This would be a really good game for Quinn to show up. I still fear they will just slide Adams to the slot and abuse Skrine all game. Adams is the only guy I worry about. Without him, the entire offense is mediocre at best. However, on offense, we are just terrible at pretty much everything and GB has a decent defense similar to CAR. If we get into a shootout, we lose. This will have to be a black and blue division slugfest for us to have a chance. Weather should be fun, 33 degrees with 10 mph winds.

5-5 Bears at 7-3 Packers. The Packers just lost to Indy while the Bears won the bye week. I don't have a good feeling about this one. The offense is beyond repair. I expect it to be a 2-3 score deficit, Packers 31-17. The defense has to defend against too many short fields and Skrine gets exposed time and time again. Rinse and repeat.

Thru the early games today, here is the current Draft Order. The Bears are literally in no man's land at #16. They also will be the only team in the NFL with exactly a .500 record thru Week 11. So depending on how things go, the Bears are only 1.5 games away from a top 10 pick and a game out of the last wild card spot. Not only that, if they somehow beat the Packers next week, they would only be a game back in the division. So next week the season is literally on the line in so many different ways. A win and the Bears actually put themselves in a pretty good spot for a playoff berth. Mainly because the two teams the Bears are chasing play each other twice (ARZ/LAR). Either those teams both win 1 and lose 1 or one team wins both and the other loses both. A win against GB would also setup for a potential Division Championship Game in Week 17. With a loss though the Bears would be at least two games out with 5 to play and would drop to a pick somewhere between 12-14. 1. NYJ 0-10 2. JAX 1-9 3. CIN 2-7-1 4. HOU 3-7 5. ATL 3-7 6. DAL 3-7 7. WAS 3-7 8. NYG 3-7 9. LAC 3-7 ----------- 10. CAR 4-7 11. SF 4-6 12. DET 4-6 13. NE 4-6 14. DEN 4-6 15. MIN 4-6 ----------- 16. CHI 5-5 ----------- 17. MIA 6-4 18. BAL 6-4 =========== 19. PHI 3-6-1* 20. ARZ 6-4 21. LAR 6-3 22. LVR 6-3 23. CLE 7-3 24. TEN 7-3 25. TB 7-3 26. GB 7-3* 27. IND 7-3* 28. BUF 7-3* 29. SEA 7-3* 30. KC 8-1* 31. NO 8-2* 32. PIT 10-0*

Hilarious that the Bears actually won Week 11 with all 3 other NFCN teams losing and the Cards. If the Rams lose, it would be a clean sweep half game gain on a bye week against all the closest teams.

If you just look back at Pace's entire draft history, he should be fired. Just looking at the first 3 rounds, where Pace drafted defense, and then picking offensive players within the next 10 picks. Beyond that the player value at the time of the draft would probably warrant a draft down vs a pick. So I just looked at offensive players missed with the drafting of a defensive player or complete offensive bust (Shaheen). 2016 - 1st - Floyd (passed on Laremy Tunsil - OT, Taylor Decker - OT, Ryan Kelly - C) 3rd - Bullard (passed on Joe Thuney - G, Kenyan Drake - RB, Austin Hooper - TE) 2017 - 1st - Trubisky (passed on Mahomes, Watson, Fournette, McCaffrey) + the 3rd Rounder lost in the trade: (missed on Kamara, Kupp, Elflein - C, Feeney - G) 2nd - Shaheen (passed on Mixon) 2018 - 1st - Smith (passed on McGlinchey - OT) 2nd - Miller (passed on Chark - WR, O'Neill - OT) 3rd - Trubisky Trade (missed on Gallup - WR, Orlando Brown Jr - OT) 2019 - 2nd - Miller trade (missed on DK Metcalf - WR) 3rd - Montgomery (passed on Nate Davis - G) 2020 - 2nd - Kmet (passed on Chase Claypool - WR) I know it is easier to draft after the fact, but these players were rated as high if not higher than the player drafted by the Bears. To think our O-Line and offense as a whole could look like this from the Pace era from only the first 3 rounds of picks: Sutton - WR (instead of Daniels) O'Neill - T (instead of Miller) Thuney - G (instead of Bullard) Kelly - C (instead of Floyd) Davis - G (instead of Montgomery) McGlinchey - T (instead of Smith) Trubisky - QB Mixon - RB (instead of Shaheen) Metcalf - WR (instead of Miller) Claypool - WR3/TE (instead of Kmet) Graham - TE Mooney - WR3/4 Whitehair is your Super Sub, since you didn't need Daniels, you pick Sutton. I did not use anything from the Trubisky trade or pick. Take that offense and we ultimately lose Roquan, Miller, Montgomery and Kmet plus the entire O-Line from the current roster. You then can re-sign Kwit or KPL to replace Smith, and all others are already replaced by the new picks. You don't need to sign A-Rob either. So money could be spent on extending some of these guys. That team is unstoppable. Another wild option was replacing McGlinchey with Lamar Jackson, and Trubisky with Ramczyk, both one for one: Sutton - WR (instead of Daniels) O'Neill - T (instead of Miller) Thuney - G (instead of Bullard) Kelly - C (instead of Floyd) Davis - G (instead of Montgomery) Ramczyk - T (instead of Trubisky) Jackson - QB (instead of Smith) Mixon - RB (instead of Shaheen) Metcalf - WR (instead of Miller) Claypool - WR3/TE (instead of Kmet) I know it seems like a lot of moving pieces, but the way this would cascade year over year is actually somewhat realistic.

Hindsight is 20/20. Foles was the logical choice over Newton and Dalton. No one could predict he would turn out this bad. He looks like the Foles in Jacksonville or LA. He is less mobile and has lost arm strength and touch. To me that is the death knell for any QB. He is career backup now and nothing more. Even with Trubisky's inability to read a defense, you can still work with that (cut the field in half, boots, roll-outs, play-action, RPOs) and allow him to make plays when things break down. Foles needs a perfect pocket like he had in Philly to succeed. Without it, he is a tall skinny, tackling dummy.