adam

Work travel season, on the road a few weeks, back for one, rinse, repeat.

If they go Center in FA, they are not paying top tier money. So I think Dalman is out, but someone like Josh Meyers (GB) or Evan Brown (ARZ) may be who they target. An upgrade over Shelton but not a huge one.

I know most people hate PFF, but it is another data point. Surprisingly, Pryor had a better grades than Jackson last season, even when he was in DET. Pryor graded out at 69.9 and 78.1 in Pass Pro. Jackson's overall season grades have been 67.6 with the Rams, and 61.0, 66.1, 69.3, and 57.0 with the Lions. Looking at his grades, he seems more of a road grader and is better at run blocking than pass blocking. So it will be interesting to see what they do with him. A 6th is nothing, but his cap hit is. Is he playing Center like he did for the Rams or back to Guard?

With Smith off the board, I figure Dalman and Zeitler are probably two of the top targets as well as an Edge or DT. It will be nice to get free agency underway and see the 2025 team take shape. We have been let down before, but Ben Johnson and this staff feel different. For the first time since the 80s, we have a franchise QB, a legit coaching staff, a proven playcaller, a solid core, a ton of cap, and some great draft picks.

Yeah, I would rather use that pick than one of the first 4 on a RB.

Everyone has their peak, it is ok if Bieniemy's is a position coach. He comes in with OC experience, Allen comes in with HC and DC experience, so overall this is probably the best coaching staff the Bears have ever had from top to bottom if you include Harris, Randle El, and Hightower. I really think this team is going to surprise next season. I am not going to get all hyped like I did last season, but a 10-win team is not that crazy if you consider they should've been an 8-win team this year (3 Flus losses). Johnson is easily worth 2-3 wins from Flus/Waldron/Brown. The leap in coaching, scheme, playcalling is almost hard to quantify.

Arthur Smith left TEN, and made the 16th scoring offense into the 26th scoring offense in ATL. So this looks to be very situational. He got a dying Matt Ryan, then Mariota, then Ridder as his 3x QBs. He has never replicated his offense in TEN again. McDaniels left NE and made the Raiders jump from 18th to 12th on offense. Shottenheimer left SEA in 2020, then didn't OC or HC until 2023 where DAL ended up with the #1 offense, up from 4th the year before, so a slight improvement. Carmichael left the Saints and in 2024 was on the DEN staff but not as OC. DEN did improve from 19th to 10th. VanPelt left CLE and joined NE where he made the 31st offense slip up one to 30th. So no big change there. So only Arthur Smith left as an OC and didn't improve his next team as an HC or OC.

So I looked back 5 years at the top 10 scoring offenses. I found 5 teams that lost/fired their OC after a season where they finished in the top 10 in scoring. Every one of them dropped out of the top 10 the following season with a new OC: TEN 2020-2021, 4th > 15th (lost A. Smith) SEA 2020-2021, 8th > 15th (lost Shottenheimer - gained Waldron lol) NE 2021-2022, 6th > 17th (lost McDaniels) NO 2023-2024, 9th > 24th (lost Kubiak) CLE 2023-2024, 10th > 32nd (lost VanPelt) My next one is to see how the top 10 OC faired on his new team (if he had one).

The OC/Playcaller will dictate the scheme and plays. So it is up to Morton, and I don't know if I have ever seen a new OC come in and adopt someone else's playbook. Before Johnson, the offense was 25th, in his first year they jumped to 5th with basically the same players. In the two seasons before Johnson, Goff averaged 3500 passing yards, with Johnson? Over 4,500. He went from 20 TDs per year to 32. A massive jump. That will likely come down. Also remember Goff has had McVay, Lynn for his first year in DET (his worst), then Johnson. Morton is no McVay or Johnson, so Goff having a year closer to 2021 is more likely than him having another 4600 yard season.

Yeah, that was it. When was the last time you can remember a team losing their OC/Playcaller and DC/Playcaller and follow that up with a great year?

It takes a good play caller, look at what Waldron did to the Bears and Seahawks. It was like a trail of tears. Morton comes in as a failed OC and hasn't called plays in the NFL in 8 years (2017). I honestly don't think he will last and DET will end up with the rotating OCs like Lovie had. The speculation was they would promote from within, and that did not happen.

Lions go from Johnson to Morton at OC. Morton has only been an OC once before in 2017, with the Jets, with the 24th scoring offense and 28th in yards. Fired after one season, never was an OC again. Talk about a downgrade. Waldron's offenses were better, that says a lot.

Also consider the timing for Dennis Allen and Al Harris. Allen was a HC and Harris was on the DAL staff. So we got Johnson, Allen, and Harris this year. Johnson is 38, so I am praying he is finally going to be our "franchise coach" like Tomlin, Reid, Harbaugh that we have in place for 10+ years. We are due.

Randle El has been St. Brown's WR Coach his entire career so far. Al Harris is a high end DBs coach that may get more out of Stevenson. Between Johnson and Allen, Randle El and Harris, both sides of the ball have some of the best coaches the team has ever had. Plus Morgan is gone, which is a net positive.

Allen would be a great hire, someone with HC experience and is one of the better defensive play callers in the NFL. So the Bears could possibly have 2x top 5 play callers on both sides of the ball.

This is an amazing hire. He was my top choice, but I expected Monken or McCarthy. This is not Nagy 2.0. Johnson called plays for 3 years in DET. In all 3, they had a top 5 scoring and yardage offense. The last time the Bears had that was in the early 60s. If you just go back in the Bears coaching hires, this one is the biggest fish. Flus was meh, Nagy was exciting, but a huge question mark about playcalling, which ultimately was his downfall. Fox was always just an interim guy to get the locker room back after Trestman. So Lovie was the last coach of this caliber. If they fix the OLine, get a true speedster and upgrade at TE2, this offense is comparable to DET next offseason. RB is about the only thing that the Bears would be lacking in, unless they sign or draft someone there. However, the WR Room is already solid with Moore and Odunze. Obviously Kmet at TE, and the biggest position is QB where Johnson is going from Goff to Williams. Nothing was easy for Williams, yet he still broke numerous rookie records. Goff numbers tell the story, he regressed in LA, they traded him, he struggled in Year 1 without Johnson, then Johnson arrived and since then he has AVERAGED over 4,500 passing yards a season with over 32 TDs.

Roquan is great and overrated at the same time which is hard to do.

Yeah, the script flipped pretty quick. Love is way to careless with the ball. Goff folds under pressure, and Darnold may not even play in the division next year. So year, Caleb may be the best QB in the NFC North next year.

After watching two weeks of the playoffs, for how bad the Bears played this season, they played way too many of these teams close enough that with small changes, the outcomes could've been much different. Just like 2023, the Bears were a better team than their record. We now know a lot of this was on Flus and the coaching staff. The Bears had 5 games decided by a FG or less, two others by 6 or less, and then the NE game where they didn't even show up. That is 8 games. If they just won half of those, that is a 9-win team. Win 75%, and it's an 11-win team. With the right coaching staff, a few key FAs, a solid draft, and this team will look magically transformed come next summer.

The Lions scored 31 pts in the playoffs with 4 INTs and a fumble lost.

Turnovers were the theme of the weekend, DET, BAL, and LAR all lost and had multiple turnovers. DET threw 4 INTs and had a fumble lost.

Looking at the paths for each team, WAS had one of the easiest paths to the NFC Championship game. First TB, who was only 5-4 at home, then to DET where they had 16 Day 1 starters out. No other path for a WC team was easier. Good for them. MIN was always playing by fire over the last few years. No coach or team have won more 1-score games than MIN. So their overall record was inflated. They also had to travel the farthest to play on the road against a team that was finally healthy. So neither of the MIN or DET losses surprise me. Goff shit the bed like he does, and Darnold came back down to earth. I am surprised those games didn't occur more often.

I feel like McCarthy is the equivalent of an offensive Tomlin, who has a high floor. Then if the GM can get some superstars on the roster, that is what makes the difference. I like the core of Caleb + Rome + DJ + Kmet. I think they need an upgrade at RB to be an elite skill position group. The Oline needs a complete overhaul. One interesting thing I haven't see talked about, who is going to be the DC? Would someone like Rivera come in as a DC with someone like Johnson as the HC?

I am kinda at the point where I want Johnson, would be fine with Monken or Brady (for Caleb Dev), but understand if they went with McCarthy. Wild card is Matt Campbell. Thoughts?

Remember GB was 1-5 in the DIV and a blocked FG from 0-6. They should not have been a playoff team. For MIN, McVay knows the KOC playbook, because it is his. The league watered the playoffs down when they added the 7th team. Only one #2 seed has ever lost a #7 seed, and that was DAL. It feels like there are way too many non-competitive games this year.