adam

I love Wims and hopes he gets more PT. Daniel looking really good. Bears settle for FG. The only thing that needs improvement is some of Nagy's 3rd Down play calls. Gets too cute sometimes. Also, if they bring all that pressure up the middle we need an easy crossing route. Either way, 16-0 with just over a quarter to go. Defense absolutely dominating. Mack is the DPOY already.

Mack is an absolute beast. Strip sack on first down, Bears settle for FG, but points are points. 13-0 One more FG and Minnesota would need 2 TDs and a FG to win (3 scoring drives). Unless we get torched deep, that looks like a tough task.

10-0 at half. The defense literally gave MIN life after a bunch of penalties but otherwise have shut down Cook. Thielen without a catch. Vikings get the ball in the 2nd half but you have to like a 2 possession lead with a half to play.

So Trubisky gets hurt and may be out with a separated shoulder, it didn't look good. Then Daniel comes in and takes the team down on first drive for a TD. Crazy. He looks waaaayyy more comfortable than Trubisky did.

Might be because of the jerseys? Didn't want to wear ones when the NFL banned African American players?

Davis too. What the hell is going on? We have 5 starters out, ouch, Hicks, Nichols, and Smith out on defense, and Long and Gabriel out on offense.

Roquan out for personal reasons. So it Davis, very odd.

Mongo, I don't know man, Daniels is getting burned pretty bad, and with him next to Long really makes the A-gap right side of the line a huge liability. We can't run there as we have seen numerous plays get blown up for losses, and most of the pressure is coming from there. I just think it was a mistake and the team never really gave a good reason on why they wanted to do it. I can see the preseason thing maybe for the first week but after that, I don't buy into it. The starters might play a drive in game 1, a quarter in game 2 and a half in game 3. They would have that amount by the 3rd quarter of Week 1. After that, it's just on the players. Long just looks out of shape and gassed. Either he has an injury (I saw something about a hip) or he is just done. He was supposed to be the anchor to the right side and he has been the worst O-Lineman by a Long shot. The preaseason was an issue but now it's an excuse for poor play.

Yeah, I meant you can't predetermine and just blindly throw it without seeing the play develop. The issue was the play was to the other side and would've resulted in at least a completion if not a TD. I agree that if he knows the O-Line can't hold up, he needs to be ready to move, but Nagy then needs to start calling more plays that support that.

I know, it's stupid, but I have heard it a couple of times: "Bears have only beaten winless teams". Yet the Pats have 3 wins against some terrible teams, but they are the #1 team in the league. That division has made their path to the SB that much easier every year for 20 years. They go 5-1 or 6-0 in division annually, then cruise to a 6-4 or 7-3 non-division record to consistently win 11-13 games every year.

AZ, the O-Line has been one of the worst units in the league. Long has arguably been the worst Guard thru 3 games. He would be better off just standing there and letting the guy run around him. Daniels has not been good at center. Whitehair has been decent, but that switch is still questionable. Leno has had some penalties, but for the most part has been ok. Massie was below average before missing last week and Lucas actually played decent. It almost seems too late to switch back to Whitehair at Center, but I would do that, and send Long to the bench. Those moves would at least bring the O-Line back to average. Besides CB and TE, O-Line is a must in the next few drafts. Even though we brought back the same starting 5, we need to get better. Mitch is still lucky that wasn't a 99-yard pick 6. I don't understand why he was pre-determining where he was going with the ball there.

Yeah, with Nichols out and Hicks likely a GTD, this makes sense. This also shows they really need to expand rosters to 55. Silly to have to do this shuffle every few weeks.

One interesting thing to watch, Diggs has basically been absent from this offense. Once the deep passing game was taken out for Cook rushes, Diggs lost the most. He is the worst receiver from last year's top 10 thru 3 weeks with 6-101, 1 TD. For how bad our offense has been he would be tied for 4th in receptions with Burton and Davis, and would be our 3rd WR after Arob and Turbo in terms of receptions and yards. Some interesting stats, we have scored 5 TDs and allowed 4 (all passing). We have 11 sacks and have allowed 8. Our 3rd Downs have been 14/39 while we have allowed only 8 for 35. However, we have allowed 5 of 6 4th Downs, which brings the number of conversions back up. We really need to fix the 4th down conversion problem on defense. People are making an issue out of us only beating teams that are 0-3, yet when NE does it in 3 games and it's no big deal. You can't help who you play.

More along the lines of from game to game.

Remember he got hurt on a run by that dirty hit my Smith, so hopefully he gets down and slides when he does run. From listening to all the local beat writers podcasts, a few things seem to be coming out. One is that Nagy is basically using a different game plan every game and has yet to run the same play twice. With Gabriel out, I think Miller will have a big game. If Burton is a full go, he will also be involved a lot. The Vikings Safeties will be baiting Trubisky into throwing ill-advised passes, so we will see who wins that chess match.

He is better than Eli (which is not saying much), and will have to play some games without Barkley.

Minnesota has not been a very good road team with Cousins. Since the start of 2018, MIN is 3-5-1 on the road with scoring 200-205. However, two of those games were blowout wins against lowly DET and NYJ teams (64-26 vs NYJ/DET). Against the rest of the league they are 1-5-1 on the road allowing almost 26 pts per game (136-179). In that same stretch we are 7-2 at home with pts of 225-150 (Our two losses were against NE 38-31 and GB 10-3 in Week 1). If you take out DET and NYJ out of our wins, to make it even, we are 5-2 (167-118), basically 24-17. Using our pts for and against vs non DET/NYJ games from last year and doing the same with MIN's, we get a Bears win of 24-17 based solely on the averages. We beat them last year at home 25-20 and 24-10 on the road. Those average out to 24.5-15, very close to the other projections oddly enough.

Lions also play KC, which should be a loss. That would put them at 2-1-1 behind us. We then go to London to play the Raiders while GB goes to DAL. So we have a great chance to be in first going into our bye at 4-1 (GB at 3-2). Philly looked very beatable and I am a little more confident about a win there in Week 9 than I was at the start of the season. Their defense looks like a shell over what they used to be. Also, GB looks like they got exposed. Just cover Adams and run on them and you will win by 20. The problem was Philly couldn't cover Adams, but they were able to run the ball. GB also plays DET in Week 6, so one of those teams will have an additional loss that week. MIN plays at NYG, then plays Philly in Week 6. If we beat them this week, they would be no better than 4-2 coming out of Week 6 but more than likely 3-3. I am hoping for CHI 4-1, GB 4-2, MIN 3-3, DET 2-2-1 going into Week 7.

If you saw the gapping holes Howard was running thru, you would see what I was talking about. It also could be another indictment on our O-Line playing terrible. Wentz didn't have to do much. They rushed more than they passed, and in this league, that is a lot of running. Rodgers passed for over 400 yards but had a fumble and a RZ INT to end the game (which was awesome). He should've had 2 more INTs that were dropped, but everyone will drool over his one or two great passes.

Rodgers throws an Red Zone Interception (very similar to the Seattle one vs NE in the SB) to lose the game. He also threw a pass a few drives earlier right to a defender who dropped it. What sucks is we should've beat GB, all we had to do is run the damn ball. Philly gashed them all night with Howard and Sanders. Howard barely had to do anything, he had huge holes to run in because of how aggressive the pass rush was. That Week 1 loss is on Nagy for sure now.

Speaking of the Packers, this TNF Game is really an indictment on Nagys play calling. GB getting shredded by Eagles running game in the first half.

Strength vs Strength. Minnesota Running Attack vs Chicago Run Defense. If Dalvin Cook goes over 100, we lose. If we can shutdown the run game, we have a great chance at creating turnovers. This is going to be an ugly game. I think it is going to be close and come down to a turnover or big special teams play. Bears 17-13.

So through 3 games, Trubisky now has a 32.0 QBR, which is lower than he had for his entire rookie year at 32.4. Last year he had a QBR of 71.0. To match that QBR for this season, he would have to average a QBR of 80.0 for the next 13 games. Of the 96 games this season by a QB, there have only been 18 games with a QBR of 80 or above. So the chance of Trubisky matching his QBR from last year is basically impossible unless he has some great games (90+) with no bad games for the remainder of the season (highly unlikely). He had 6 of those games last year so there is a glimmer of hope. To put into perspective, this is what Goff's QBRs look like: 2016 - 18.3 2017 - 55.7 2018 - 63.6 2019 - 38.1 Mariota 2015 - 48.4 2016 - 59.1 2017 - 58.6 2018 - 53.2 2019 - 39.2

The Offensive Line has been the worst unit on the team, which has impacted all the skill position players on offense. Between penalties, missed assignments, or just bad blocking. They are in the bottom 10 of the league and 32nd in short-yardage situations. If you haven't noticed, players are getting blown up behind the LOS on almost every run. Montgomery is working his magic just to gain 2-3 yards. Leno hasn't been bad, but has had some penalties. Daniels has been terrible. Long has been brutal, and Lucas was probably the best one of the bunch last night, which is saying a lot. Helfrich should be getting a lot more flak for how bad they are playing. This is the same starting 5 from last season, no excuse not to be in sync. If the problem is Daniels, put him back at Guard. Forget about Trubisky, the team is only going to go as far as the O-Line takes them. It all starts up from. Just look at the Trubisky to Gabriel TD pass, Trubisky had less than 2 seconds before he had to avoid pressure. There is no way we can make any long passes because Trubisky doesn't get the time to let those plays develop. He is still missing some throws and the INT was a brutal pass, but otherwise he ended the game with 25 completions and only 6 incompletions, with 2 drops for sure. On a side note, we really have to work on our special teams. We got gashed on a long kickoff return, and our returners (mainly Patterson) are continually taking the ball out of the end zone only to be tackled inside the 25. We can't keep backing our offense up like that.