adam

I would say a season for 2 QBs in the same system with relatively the same supporting cast is a pretty good comparison. I actually thought both QBs in the SB played average at best. Mahomes had two huge throws to wide open receivers that accounted for most of his yards. Outside of those two plays, he really didn't do too much. I just thought the stats were too similar to pass up the comparison. This is truly the year where we find out about Trubisky. There are literally no more excuses. If you count college and pro seasons, he will be in his 5th, in the system, his 3rd. We will know by the 3rd game if he is the problem.

I like Rivers, but he can't run the RPO, which Nagy refuses to abandon.

Smith is a true wild card. If healthy, and cheap, he would be a viable option that has history in the offense and with Nagy. Take a look at Smith's last full year with KC (2017) and Mahomes 2019. The comparison is uncanny actually. Mahomes 2019 > 319-484, 65.9%, 4031 yds, 26 TD, 5 INT, 105.3 QB Rating, 8.3 Y/A, 218 Rushing yds, 2 TD. Smith 2017 > 341-505, 67.5%, 4042 yds. 26 TD, 5 INT, 104.7 QB Rating, 8.0 Y/A, 355 Rushing yds, 1 TD. Can you tell they are in the same offense? How is Mahomes otherworldly if a game manager like Smith could put up identical numbers throwing to Hill and Kelce? If you like PFF, Smith had a 85.9 Grade in 2017 and Mahomes had a 90.2 with those stats. To me that's kind of funny since the stats were so close. This does not get enough attention really. Mahomes is Smith 2.0 with a little more flair. Ultimately, it makes me think that the Bears offense, O-Line, TEs, and play calls were more of the problem than Trubisky was in 2019. Trubisky still was a problem, but the other factors seemed to restrict what he could do.

So here is comparison #1. Look at how similar all these QBs really are: 1. Trubisky (26) 23-18 Record, 811-1280, 63.4%, 8554 yds, 48 TD, 29 INT, 6.7 Y/A, 85.8 QB Rating 2. Mariota (27) 29-32 Record, 1110-1765, 62.9%, 13207 yds, 76 TD, 44 INT, 7.5 Y/A, 89.6 QB Rating 3. Keenum (32) 27-35 Record, 1304-2091, 62.4%, 14368 yds, 75 TD, 47 INT, 6.9 Y/A, 85.3 QB Rating 4. Dalton (33) 70-61-2 Record, 2757-4449, 62.0%, 31594 yds, 204 TD, 118 INT, 7.1 Y/A, 87.5 QB Rating So do we want Mariota who has 6 more wins and 14 more losses than Mitch? The best thing he has going is a solid Y/A. Outside of that, are we really getting an upgrade? His best season was 26 TDs and 3426 yards. That would be career highs for Trubisky, but only a slight improvement. Since he and Trubisky share the same agent, this one is highly unlikely as that agent would be putting two eggs in one basket which would be counter to trying to maximize contracts for themselves. Next up, Keenum. I think he would be the cheapest option for bringing in competition. However, he is almost identical to Mariota with a worse Y/A. Keenum had a solid stretch with MIN and then the next year in DEN, where he threw for 3890 yards. The odd part was he only threw for 18 TDs? His career-high is 22 (less than Mitch). So this would be an acquisition to push Mitch and fill in better than Daniel if Mitch shits the bed or if Keenum looks better in TC, he gets the nod and Mitch watches from the sideline. Then we have Dalton. Definitely the most accomplished out of the group, with a solid record on a typically bad Bengals team. However, it just seems like he is where Mariota will be in 4 more years. He did have two 4k passing seasons and threw for over 30 TDs once, but looking at his overall career, that year seems like the outlier. In the two years he broke 4k in passing yards, his QBR was 55.1 and 50.8, basically, league average. His last solid year was 2016 (4 seasons ago), so who knows which player you would be getting. Can a guy at 33 who has never really been great change schemes like nothing? I don't know. For the QB situation, I think it would be good to bring in a solid vet to push Mitch and play better than Daniel if they need to start. Another wild card is Fitzpatrick. More on that later.

That's fair, I haven't looked too hard at them yet. Anae looked really good at Senior Bowl. I was just targeting TE and Edge early.

What do you think? Adding Hopkins and Anae in the 2nd Round: QB - Trubisky, Keenum RB - Montgomery, Cohen, Rookie or cheap vet RB WR - Robinson, Miller, Ridley, Wims, Rookie (Speed) TE - Hopkins, Burton, Holtz OL - Vaitai, Daniels, Whitehair, Glasgow, Massie DL - Hicks, Goldman, RRH, Williams LB - Mack, Smith, Kwit, KPL, Anae CB - Fuller, Fuller, Skrine, Tolliver S - Jackson, Bell We get upgraded at backup QB, TE, OL, Edge, CB, and Safety. Keenum over Daniel, Hopkins replaces Shaheen/Braunecker, Vaitai replaces Leno, Glasgow replaces Long. On defense, Anae replaces Floyd, Fuller replaces Prince, and Bell replaces HHCD. We bring back KPL and Kwit for ILB. Then fill out the rest of the depth slots.

Here is the current list of top 100 FA's for 2020 from The Athletic. I excluded the top 30 due to the expected salaries and/or projected tags. This is the remaining list. If you could pick 4 guys off this list to target, who would they be? After reading some articles about FA TE failures, I am avoiding TE in FA. I selected Fuller's brother at CB, Vonn Bell to play SS, Vaitai to replace Leno, and Glasgow at G. All are young enough to play out a full contract. I also re-signed Kwit (not counting that as a target). Then in the draft, the team can address TE, Edge, speed at WR, and depth. Top 1-30 Excluded: 31. Chris Harris Jr., CB, Broncos (31) 32. D.J. Humphries, OT, Cardinals (26) 33. Devin McCourty, S, Patriots (33) 34. Trae Waynes, CB, Vikings (28) 35. Bradley Roby, CB, Texans (28) 36. D.J. Reader, DT, Texans (26) 37. Jason Pierre-Paul, EDGE, Buccaneers (31) 38. Teddy Bridgewater, QB, Saints (27) 39. Robert Quinn, EDGE, Cowboys (30) 40. Joe Schobert, LB, Browns (26) 41. Hunter Henry, TE, Chargers (25) 42. Austin Hooper, TE, Falcons (25) 43. Andrus Peat, OG, Saints (26) 44. Jarran Reed, DT, Seahawks (27) 45. Marcus Mariota, QB, Titans (26) 46. Kendall Fuller, CB, Chiefs (25) 47. Germain Ifedi, RT, Seahawks (26) 48. Blake Martinez, LB, Packers (26) 49. Leonard Williams, DT, Giants (26) 50. Eli Apple, CB, Saints (25) 51. Logan Ryan, CB, Titans (29) 52. Breshad Perriman, WR, Buccaneers (27) 53. Jimmie Ward, S, 49ers (29) 54. Vonn Bell, S, Saints (25) 55. Maliek Collins, DT, Cowboys (25) 56. Halapoulivaati Vaitai, OT, Eagles (27) 57. Danny Shelton, DT, Patriots (27) 58. Ndamukong Suh, DT, Bucccaneers (33) 59. Graham Glasgow, G/C, Lions (28) 60. Eric Ebron, TE, Colts (27) 61. Melvin Gordon, RB, Chargers (27) 62. Ronald Darby, CB, Eagles (26) 63. Bashaud Breeland, CB, Chiefs (28) 64. Jordan Phillips, DT, Bills (27) 65. Mackensie Alexander, CB, Vikings (26) 66. Shelby Harris, DT, Broncos (29) 67. Vic Beasley, EDGE, Falcons (28) 68. Shaq Lawson, DE, Bills (26) 69. Markus Golden, EDGE, Giants (29) 70. Mario Addison, EDGE, Panthers (33) 71. Jamie Collins, LB, Patriots (30) 72. Kyle Van Noy, LB/EDGE, Patriots (29) 73. A’Shawn Robinson, DT, Lions (25) 74. Kenyan Drake, RB, Cardinals (26) 75. Rodney McLeod, S, Eagles (30) 76. Jimmy Smith, CB, Ravens (32) 77. Carl Nassib, EDGE, Buccaneers (27) 78. De’Vondre Campbell, LB, Falcons (27) 79. Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, S, Bears (27) 80. Gerald McCoy, DT, Panthers (32) 81. Derek Wolfe, DT, Broncos (30) 82. Karl Joseph, S, Raiders (27) 83. Jason Peters, LT, Eagles (38) 84. Andrew Whitworth, LT, Rams (38) 85. Damarious Randall, S, Browns (28) 86. Michael Brockers, DT, Rams (29) 87. Nick Kwiatkoski, LB, Bears (27) 88. Kevin Johnson, CB, Bills (28) 89. Brian Poole, CB, Jets (27) 90. Randall Cobb, WR, Cowboys (30) 91. Nelson Agholor, WR, Eagles (27) 92. Devin Funchess, WR, Colts (26) 93. Demarcus Robinson, WR, Chiefs (26) 94. Connor McGovern, G/C, Broncos (27) 95. Jalen Mills, CB, Eagles (26) 96. Tre Boston, S, Panthers (28) 97. Kamalei Correa, EDGE, Titans (26) 98. Quinton Jefferson, DT, Seahawks (27) 99. Michael Pierce, DT, Ravens (27) 100. Daryl Williams, OT, Panthers (28)

That is totally fake. The Bears would have a bigger gap hit by trading him than just keeping him. He is untradeable thru 2021 due to dead cap.

I would say he was average with the blocks he made, but if you add all the penalties and the missed assignments, that puts him the bottom third of the league.

If you cut Floyd (No Dead Money), Gabriel ($2M), Leno as a June-1 cut ($3.7M), and Prince ($1M), that would save $23.1M with $6.7M in dead money. Cohen is another candidate, he would save $2.1M with only 158K dead money. Shaheen should be cut, which would save $1.2M with 600K in dead money. There is also some restructuring that can be done with the core guys (Mack, Hicks, Fuller, Goldman, and Whitehair) that can free up cap space this year, if needed. So I don't think we are as bad off as some think. Losing Long saved a chunk of cap as well.

I watched a few games on Game Pass and besides Floyd looking overmatched on every play, Mack didn't seem to have the same explosion like he did last year. He was a Tazmanian Devil in 2018, but in 2019, it looked like he lost a step and wasn't as powerful. I know the defense for his regression was these double and triple teams. However, even when he had one on one matchups, even against a rookie, he didn't really do anything special. My fear with some of these guys is once they get a payday, they cruise. It really looks that way with guys like Leno, Massie, and Mack. Fuller seems like the only one who has consistently played to his contract, except for the fact that he played 10 yards of the WR every snap. So we will see what EJack does. Looking at Mack's contract, we got him thru age 33, and he is in his prime right now going into 2020 at age 29. This should be his year. Hopefully, he gets back to form because we really need him to be dominant regardless of the other players around him, that's what he is getting paid for.

I am going to post some info in here to discuss the QB situation. First I was looking back at some past League MVPs, and one season popped out at me. Take a look at this recent league MVP and two similar Pro Bowl QBs from different years: League MVP: 1. 67.0 QBR, 59.8% Comp, 239 Y/G, 7.8 Y/A, 39.8 Rushing Yards/G Pro Bowlers: 2. 65.0 QBR, 62.6% Comp, 252 Y/G, 8.1 Y/A, 56.3 Rushing Yards/G 3. 70.8 QBR, 66.6% Comp, 230 Y/G, 7.3 Y/A, 30.1 Rushing Yards/G #3 was Trubisky in 2018, and he had a better overall QBR than Cam Newton's 2015 MVP season and Michael Vick's 2010 with the Eagles. They were the closest comps in multiple statistical categories and all three made the playoffs. The biggest outliers were TDs. Next post is going to be all the available QBs and some of their numbers.

I don't even know if he is worth that but it reasonable. To me, especially with Mack's cap hit, it might be too much for that output. Looking at other 3-4 OLB deals, anything between $7.7M-11.4M would be a top 10 contract for 3-4 OLBs. The 9th highest is $11.5M and the 10th is currently at $7.6M. Floyd is not a top 10 3-4 OLB. If you add 4-3 DEs into the mix, as a group, the top 23 make over $10M, #24 makes $9M (Ansah). I think a good comp to Floyd is Clelin Ferrell (LVR), he is 28th in Edge and just signed a new deal with his current cap hit at $7.8M a year. I would not pay more than $8M a year to Floyd. If Floyd is the #2 Edge player on the team, he should be somewhere in the 30's for Edge salaries as every other team should have their top Edge player making more than him. Also, with our needs elsewhere, we might not be able to commit over $30M a year to 2x Edge players with Mack's cap hit.

I don't know if it would work the same way during the draft. Like what freedom does he have to trade picks and who needs to approve? It seems like he has had a lot of freedom to trade up, which would be the same thing here. I think free agency will be telling.

One crazy thought on Pace. What if, with his back against the wall, he says screw it and tries to make one last hail mary move to save his job? I could see him trading away future picks to do that. If he guesses right, the future picks won't matter as much. If it doesn't work, he doesn't have to deal with the loss of picks anyway.

and how do they grade that? He lets the first guy run free but then makes a nice block on the 2nd guy as the first guy pancakes Trubisky. He gets a good grade for his block.

For Leno, it's easy, he got paid, got married, and had a baby. Most non-elite players drop off after a pay day, a good amount never recover. Leno's penalties were also directly related to his conditioning. I think he knew he was not as fast or as strong, so he would jump and false start against a speedy Edge guy or hold the stronger one. His penalties in terms of % of team penalties was 4th worst in the NFL, that is insane. Tunsil and Bolles were two of the three worse than him and they were flat out terrible players. I don't like PFF, but O-Line seems like one of the easier positions to grade (in relative terms), and his PFF grade dropped from mid-70's to mid-50's from 18 to 19. Mid-50's is replacement level and below a backup: The Player Grading Scale: 100-90 Elite 89-85 Pro Bowler 84-70 Starter 69-60 Backup 59-0 Replaceable I am going to go thru the entire season over the next month and grade out the entire O-Line myself. I watched the first quarter of the Packers game and already saw a few bad plays from Leno. To me one of the biggest issues was he gave up on his blocks too quick, then didn't attempt to block anyone else or run with the play. It's easy to see where some would call him lazy from that type of display. Hopefully Castillo will get more out of him, but with a new sheriff in town, he will be riding the pine if he continues playing like that. Another weird twist during the season was with Leno's wife defending his play. I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, I feel like you can only hope to expect a starter in the first 4 rounds. Getting one in the 5th or beyond is rare and not something you should plan for. With that, the Bears only have 3 picks in the first 4 rounds, so trading down in the 2nd to pick a 3rd up makes too much sense. Then you can potentially fill 4 need positions. For me those would be TE, OL, Edge, and S. Fill the rest via free agency. If you do address one of those 4 in free agency, then go after the speedy WR, CB, or QB in the draft.

It's funny how much of a different assessment can be made on the same player, here Robert Schmitz breaks down Leno and says he is perfectly average. Then there are articles about how he sucked: https://www.si.com/nfl/bears/news/chicago-bears-offensive-line-needs-include-tackle. So what gives. How can so many people come up with different opinions on the same player. To me, it was clear that Leno was part of the problem last year. I will have to track down the totals, but I know he allowed a lot of hurries and hits, and had a ton of penalties.

Adam Hoge's Mock Draft 1.0: 2nd Round, No. 11 (No. 43 overall via Raiders) — TE Harrison Bryant, Florida Atlantic (6-4 3/4, 242) 2nd Round, No. 18 (No. 50 overall) — EDGE Bradlee Anae, Utah (6-3 3/8, 257) 4th Round, No. 41 (projected comp pick) — OG Damien Lewis, LSU (6-2, 329) 5th Round, No. 17 — CB Dane Jackson, Pittsburgh (5-11 5/8, 180) 6th Round, No. 17 — RB Antonio Gibson, Memphis (6-0 1/2, 223) 6th Round, No. 21 (via Eagles) — WR Binjimen Victor, Ohio State (6-4, 199) 7th Round, No. 12 (via Raiders) — QB Stephen Montez, Colorado (6-4, 240) 7th Round, No. 19 — OL Calvin Throckmorton, Oregon (6-4, 7/8, 310) https://wgnradio.com/2020/02/04/hoge-2020-bears-mock-draft-1-0/ This would be a solid draft. I would like to have a Safety, especially with EJack getting a big contract (hard to pay 2x at one position), but other than that, it looks good.

Yeah that is the worst thing a team can do, pay a terrible player AND keep him on the team. At least cut your losses and let someone else step up. At worst you are no better off than you were before.

Yeah I agree. On another note, I saw some post game breakdowns the last few days saying that on one of Mahomes INT's that he was intentionally throwing behind Hill "to protect" him. It's amazing how they come up with instant excuses for his mistakes. Definitely on Floyd, we can't afford to have his weak pass rush on the opposite side of Mack. We need them to at least honor the other side, not completely abandon it. Out of all the outcomes, I am fine with Reid getting one. Now doesn't get any more.

So we can finally start looking hard at the offseason. 1. February 24th - March 2nd - NFL Combine: we should have a good idea how the players will be slotted after the combine and some pro days. Mock drafts on fire. 2. March 16th - Legal tampering period: We will see a flurry of activity starting around this date as players start locking in deals with teams, will the Bears sign a QB? Is Mike Glennon available? 3. March 18th - The official first day of the league year and the official Start to Free Agency. All the official announcements start on the first wave of free agent signings; teams have to exercise options by 4pm. 4. March 29th - April 1st - Annual League Meeting 5. April 1st - April 22nd - The second wave of Free Agency, this normally starts in early to mid-April as players start to get desperate and want to get on a team before the draft. 6. April 16th - My guess on when they will release the 2020 schedule like they did last year. It will be nice to know when we have our opponents and when we get our bye. 7. April 20th - Offseason Workout Programs begin 8. April 23rd - 25th - NFL Draft, We will see what Pace has up his sleeve with the 2x 2nd rounders. My belief is he keeps one and trades down with the other. Will he draft a QB? 9. UDFA signings: April 25th-27th (UDFAs start to get linked to teams a few days after the draft. This is starting to become an important part of team building) 10. Teams can sign XFL players: April 27th (This will be an interesting twist to the offseason) 11. April 27th - May 31st - Post-draft Free Agency: (This is the 3rd wave of free agency as players and teams start to get linked before 12. May 1st-4th/8th-11th - First Rookie Minicamp 13. May 4th - Deadline for clubs to exercise Fifth-Year options (Trubisky) 14. May 19th - 20th: Spring League Meeting 15. June 1st - Deadline for June 1st cuts 16. June 1st - August 11th - Last wave of free agency after June 1st cuts 17. Mid-July - Training Camp 18. August 13th-17th - First Preseason Game, the first game for Nagy to hold out all starters 19. September 5th - Rosters reduced to 53. 20. September 6th - Players claimed off waivers and teams establish their 10-man Practice Squads. 21. September 10th - The regular season begins with the Bears quest to go 19-0! GO BEARS!

Key takeaways, don't neuter the offense because you are scared of mistakes. Mahomes threw 2 INTs that resulted in opponent scores (10 pts), yet they still allowed him to take shots down the field. He had three relatively deep passes, and only one was a dime. The other two were "throw them up to an area" throws that the receiver had to adjust to make the catch. He did nothing that Mitch can't do. It's crazy really. Mitch just needs to recognize what to do better on the RPO and option plays and connect on a few deep passes per game. The key to both defenses was getting there with 4 rushers. Also, I saw a lot of single-high safety looks most of the game. That is where Eddie thrives. Jimmy G choked, Shanahan choked (again), and Sherman got burnt like Michael in the Pepsi commercial. The team had zero faith in Jimmy G, and you could feel it. He was inaccurate (missed an easy deep ball to Sanders) and his picks were ugly. It's crazy to think that the Chiefs won their last 3 playoff games after trailing by 10 or more points. Every team had them on the ropes and then went into prevent mode (which is where KC destroys babies). You would think that after HOU, that TEN would've made the adjustment, then after TEN that SF would've just kept doing what they were doing for 3 quarters to put the game away, but instead they got passive. They let over a minute run down before half with 3 timeouts to ultimately run out of time to score after a 1st down because they had no confidence in Jimmy G. With the running game not working as well as it did in the previous games, they had no choice but to let Jimmy G throw the ball and they lost because of it. The SF vaunted defense went into prevent mode, and when their best corner had to play man to man, he got beat badly. Game over. I really don't think we are far off. We need to move on from Floyd, use any cap space he was using and go get a true compliment to Mack on the other side. We need a strong pass rush. Kittle and Kelce really didn't do too much in the biggest game of the year, so either the other teams took them away or TE is not as valuable as I thought. One interesting note, Damien Williams ended up with 100 yards rushing. So it seems KC flipped the script a little bit on SF and it worked. Mahomes ended up with a 78.1 QB Rating as the MVP, that's impressive. Hopefully this will be the last mention of Pace passing up Mahomes for Trubisky. He won the league MVP last year, and the SB and SB MVP this year. There is nothing more he can do to validate that Pace made the wrong choice. I don't know if there has been another draft pick scrutinized more since Ryan Leaf (who the Chargers traded up for one pick and gave up a future 1st round pick a 2nd round pick and Eric Metcalf).

OMG no, absolutely picking Mahomes or Watson. However, Mahomes still ended the game with only a 78.1 QB Rating. SF completely crapped the bed, just like Shanahan did with Atlanta. He coaches scared and loses. They made Jimmy G play QB and SF got owned. Jimmy G ends with a 69.2 QB Rating, Grossman-esque. I was not impressed with either QB. Mahomes only hit wide-open receivers.