adam

Foles time.

And Trubisky with the pick, threw it right to the defender. Sickening. Put Foles in already.

So the Bears finally put together one TD drive, but only due to a complete breakdown in coverage on the Falcons. Trubisky gets 45 yards on a scramble to setup an easy TD to Graham. Then after stopping the Falcons and getting the ball back with timeouts and good field position, Trubisky can't hit a wide open Miller deep. I will say this is one of the most lopsided officiated games I have seen in a long time, and that is saying a lot. The Bears are getting called for penalties that they are not committing and the Falcons get called for nothing. Watch the Falcons long TD run by Hill. There are two holds right at the point of attack that opened up the hole, neither were called. Leno was called for a hold on a hook play, but it was more about his defender looking stupid trying to run around him. There is no way the Bears can beat the refs, if they don't call holding on the Falcons, it's game over. Nothing else even matters, because the Bears are playing shorthanded.

We got a roughing the passer on a sack? Mack sacked Ryan and Edwards was already diving and hit Ryan on the head after the ball was out.

Refs not doing Bears any favors.

No way, don't waste your time. Defense looks OK, but offense doing absolutely nothing against no name players. It's embarrassing.

So 6 mins left, Falcons up 9-3 and Trubisky gets sacked on 3rd Down. I am so done with him at this point. They need to go to Foles in the 2nd half, this is a winnable game with an NFL QB.

So the last drive of the 1st quarter ends with 2 Trubisky deep balls that go 3 and 5 yards out of bounds, uncatchable. Down 6-3, all on Trubisky. The running game looks decent but the only plays Trubisky can make are one read throws to an open stationary receiver. It's sad.

Offense playing way to conservative, it's clear Nagy doesn't want Trubisky making any decisions. They can only get FG attempts at this point. The defense got burnt on the first play and trail because of it. Not the start you want on the road against an injured team.

Julio officially out. Zero excuses not to win this game today.

Isaiah Oliver supposedly was terrible last week against Dallas. Darqueze Dennard looks to be the #3 and he was getting lit up too. Zero excuses for the Bears passing game not to dominate this game.

Terrell was in on all defensive snaps so far in 2020. Ricardo Allen is also out, but only played in 30% of the defensive snaps.

Damn, I guess this game was in doubt at some point with the Falcons rookie CB Terrell testing positive for COVID. He was playing bad anyway, so I don't know how big of a loss he will be or if his absence will actually help the Falcons defense.

I am revising my prediction. Atlanta has a lot of injuries and Julio may not play, and if he does, he will not be 100%. So I am going Bears 27-20.

Some promising notes about Trubisky, using the NextGen Stats, his average air yards to sticks is +1.8, tied for 3rd in the league. Traditionally Trubisky has had a negative value, meaning he was always throwing short of the sticks. Another one is aggressiveness, he is actually #2 in the league at 34.4%. So he is taking more shots down the field. Through 3 games this year, his numbers don't look much different than Mahomes or Watson's. That is all pointing to improve behind Center. Now we need a little more timing and feel for ball placement on certain routes, and we should see more improvement.

So I saw an idea that might actually get some legs involving Nick Foles in the next few weeks. Very hypothetical. If the Bears beat the Falcons this week and go to 3-0 behind Trubisky and the Eagles somehow lose to the Bengals to fall to 0-3 with Wentz, do you consider trading Foles to the Eagles if they come calling? I don't think it would ever happen, but just for the sake of the discussion, what would you want in return for Foles? We sent a 4th to JAX but there was no leverage either way at that point. So to me, he is worth at least a 3rd, if not more at this point to the Eagles. So I was thinking of a 3rd and a 6th. We don't have a 4th or 7th next year, so adding a 3rd and 6th would be a nice haul to recoup some draft capital. That would turn a 4th into a 3rd and a 6th. You really can't beat that. What do you think?

Damn, I noticed this out of the WR's but didn't think anything of it at the time. It might be the routes, but even on that Miller TD catch against DET, he had very little separation against a backup DB. With the amount of cushion Robinson gets you would think the catch rate would be a little higher. Both WRs are dropping a lot of balls. If you compare these players (CHI and MIA) with their QBs, then look at others around the league, I don't see any correlation between QB and separation. For once, it looks like Trubisky is not the main problem on offense. With the O-Line and running game going, it looks like the receiving corps is failing. At the same token, Trubisky's QBR is at 54.2, 23rd in the league behind Jeff Driskel and just ahead of Daniel Jones and Joe Burrow. We need him playing around #15 to have a chance at a playoff run.

Yeah, I agree, but like in the Giants game, if Miller holds on to the TD pass that hit his hands, it's a blowout. A lot of games come down to one or two plays, there just not always at the end of the game like the Swift play. The ones at the end of the game are just magnified but have no more value than ones earlier in the game that might have had the same effect/result.

Good news, we are down to 2 GM's left for league fees and we will be paid in full for the season.

We are off to a good start to the 2020 season. However, we still have 4 GMs that have not paid their league dues yet. Leaguesafe imposes a $10 fee on late payments, so there is not much I can do there. https://leaguesafe.com/join/3948858 The updated deadline is now set to Sunday, September 27th. I will need a consensus from the GMs on how we want to proceed for those that don't pay by the updated deadline. I just don't want this to drag out too much longer. If you can't meet the payment deadline, please let me know. Thanks, Adam

RIP to one of the all-time greats.

I know most media outlets had the Bears at 6-10 or 7-9 going into the season, but that is a tall task now with a 2-0 start. Things would have to really go south to end the season with anything less than 8 wins. That's good news. Despite being one of 11 2-0 teams, the Bears crack the top 15 in only two of the national power rankings I could find. NFL.com ranks the Bears 19th, USA Today 19th, Bleacher Report 18th, ESPN 17th, Yahoo Sports 15th, and SI.com ranks us 14th (the highest of the few I looked at). Right now the Bears have played the 2nd easiest schedule besides the Bills. Yet you will see the Bills are being ranked in the top 10 and sometimes even the top 5 in some rankings (which is crazy to me). So how accurate are the power rankings compared to advanced analytics? Using Sagarin ratings (which has been around a long time), the Bears are ranked 18th, the Bills 10th. The Bears play the Falcons who are ranked 22nd, so that is a good thing. We should win a game against the Falcons majority of the time. https://www.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/sagarin/ For DVOA, which is team efficiency, the Bears come in at #18. Offensively, the Bears are 24th, showing that they have not been very good outside of the 4th quarter against Detroit. The defense comes in at #6, which is surprising to me but a good sign. Special Teams comes in at #23, which is not good. We need some better output from that unit. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/team-efficiency/2020 According to FBOs playoff odds, the Bears have a 56.1% chance to make the playoffs, currently the 8th team in the NFC, which would just miss the 3rd Wild Card slot (to TB). The NFC West has 3 undefeated teams and the 1-1 49ers. That will all change when they start playing each other. FiveThirtyEight also does simulated predictions. Right now they have the Bears at 13th, which is very promising. They predict a 10-6 finish with a 65% chance to make the playoffs and coming in as the 7th seed. Very interesting to me. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-nfl-predictions/

Also another weird note, the Bears have yet to play a team that has won a game. DET, NYG, and ATL are a combined 0-6 on the season. With the Lions playing in Arizona and the Giants playing against the 49ers. If the Bears win, there is a good chance that they could go into Week 4 with a 3-0 record against teams with a combined 0-9 record.

There is definitely a little reverse psychology going on. However, this is a road game against a solid team that. The Bears have yet to take advantage of bad defenses, so I don't see that changing. The Falcons are going to score in the high 20's or more. So unless we have a dominant defense showing with some turnovers and a full 4-quarters on offense, then this is going to be a tough win.

So here we are, Week 3, with one undefeated team and one winless team. Even with that, the 0-2 Falcons start as 3.5 favorites against the 2-0 Bears. That just shows the lack of confidence in the Bears right now. Who knows which Falcons team or Bears team will show up this week. The Bears have now held on to barely beat bad football teams with a ton of injuries. It feels like this is the first true test for the Bears. The Falcons have faced the Seahawks and Cowboys, two really good teams, and the Falcons offense has put up a ton of points, but their defense looks bad. So it is underwhelming Bears offense vs bad Falcons defense against and solid Bears defense vs explosive Falcons offense. The Bears have to get pressure and cover 3 top receivers in Jones, Ridley, and Gage, plus Hurst at TE AND Gurley out of the backfield. I don't like this matchup as the Bears have not played this caliber of an offense yet, but have played some bad defenses. Unless there is some surprise Falcons injury or huge letdown from their late-game collapse against the Cowboys, I don't see this being a very competitive game. I am thinking Falcons 31-21, with the Bears scoring late to make it look closer.