adam

The combine is going to be critical, with the 1v1 interviews and the measurables. If he comes in under 6'1", that is going to be a huge red flag. If I am him, I am getting botox injections on the top of my head a few days prior.

The Detroit loss shows coaching matters. SF scored 27 unanswered pts in the 2nd half. You want to talk about epic collapses, that one was one for the ages. Both sides of the ball turtled. Why are they throwing the ball to Reynolds in key situations when you have LaPorta, St. Brown, and Gibbs? Why is Vildor asked to cover Aiyuk that deep without a Safety over the top? Why did Campbell go for it on 4th and 3 down only 3 pts when a FG ties the game? I didn't mind the earlier one as you had a lead, but when you are trailing by 3 or less, you kick the FG. Especially with the time left on the clock. If you look at that roster, Holmes did a great job, how hard is it to have a winning record with that squad? I really feel like Campbell is a little overrated, and everyone likes him because he is like that old school high school football coach that is always hooting and hollering.

I think Edmunds is fine, and still young enough to get better. However, I think Poles overpaid for him, which may not matter in the long run, but we don't know if there were other players not signed because of a couple of million. Edmunds started out slow and improved as the season wore on. I just thought his size in the middle would clog up more throwing lanes than it did. I guess I had Urlacher memories stuck in there.

Monty's 2-yard loss run under a minute basically sealed the loss. Terrible call and run lol.

If you are Poles, don't you take in all the information? Fields gets compared to Lamar more than any other QB, and rightfully so. The issue I see is like in hockey, and probably most pro sports, the playoffs are at an entirely different game than the regular season. Ask Dan Campbell, you can't just blindly go for every 4th down because you trust your guys. Lamar was supposed to be the MVP. He was shutdown for basically 58 minutes, then got 100+ garbage time yards that didn't even matter, but they look good on his stat sheet. He is primarily a running QB, while Mahomes is mobile and can run if needed, but that is normally his last option. My concern with Williams is, did he do enough in the system? He did a ton of hero ball, and in some cases, too much. I am thinking this may bring Maye back into the discussion. He plays within the system, has explosive plays, can play offscript, and runs when he needs to. Plus he is bigger, and is not going to get crushed every time he is hit. I honestly think there is a 3-headed die. One is Fields, Lamar clone without the 4th quarter prowess, two is Williams who could be a Mahomes clone or taller Kyler Murray, or three is Maye, who could end up between a Josh Allen and Justin Herbert.

9-18, 105 yds, 1 TD, 1 FL thru 3 quarters looks terrible. Lamar has never been held under 170 TDs passing+rushing in his career. He has 143 right now.

The difference though is the off script passer looks much better than the off script runner. Lamar did make a nice TD pass off the scramble but that's all he has done to this point. I was honestly thinking if Jackson loses convincingly it would make more of a case to move on from Fields than to keep him. If Jackson wins and carries the team then your roll with Fields.

I would give Poles and A for his process. That is something we haven't see out of a GM since Angelo was hitting on all the great defenders. Pace was too inconsistent and would go with his gut (see Trubisky). The results are the other half, an in order to get an A+ you normally have to hit on everything. So I would give him more like a B+ for the results. The grades are weighted heavily for this offseason.

Odunze may be slightly overrated. Here are his comps using a rather obscure stat that actually correlates pretty well to NFL production. Take it for what it's worth. In comparison, MHJ's comps were Julio, Jefferson, Chase, AJ Green, Demaryius Thomas, and Brandin Cooks.

For Waldron compared to Getsy, sure you can't predict the future, but going off of what they both did as play callers, Waldron has been superior in almost every way. The one thing the Bears stood out for the last two years has been rushing efficiency, but that was mainly due to Fields running or the threat of him running and taking away a defender on run plays. If you take away that component of the offense, Getsy was horrific as a play caller. So Waldron would literally have to have a lobotomy and call all WR screens for him to have a worse year than Getsy had in 2023. For the DC, a tackling dummy would be an upgrade over Williams. So getting a solid defensive coach that is coming from a winning culture is never a bad thing. He is a DL coach, which will only help guys like Dexter and Pickens get another set of eyes on their development. He may even may be able to unlock something in a guy like DRob. Another piece to this is Buffalo has a bunch of free agents on the DLine, I would not be shocked if they picked up a DT and Edge from them. If I had to guess, someone like Jordan Phillips at DT and AJ Espensa on the Edge.

He is definitely headed in the right direction. I agree with what I heard on the radio, that this year and beyond is where Poles will be truly evaluated as a GM. He basically had a free year to reset with no expectations, then got gifted the #1 pick by Houston, which led to the no-brainer trade for Moore+picks. Interesting note was that he wanted Burns who would've been a free agent after this year, so getting Moore actually worked out in his favor even though he was not the first choice. He got away with the Claypool trade by redeeming himself with the Sweat and Quinn trades. So it ended up being Sweat, Roschon, and a 2025 6th for 2x 2nds, Claypool, Quinn, and a 2025 7th. For the draft picks, I would say his picks have been as expected. Braxton is probably the main one playing above his draft status. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round players should be starting, so Brisker, Gordon, Wright, Dexter, and Stevenson are doing what they should be doing. Velus and Pickens may be his whiffs, but those are easier to handle when not in the first two rounds. For free agency, the Edmunds thing was a head scratcher but then Edwards was a steal. So those cancelled themselves out. Billings already earned an extension and has been a pleasant surprise. All the others are roster fillers. The best part was no wasted money or sunk costs you can't get rid of. Cap management has been excellent. We will have to see how that goes after the departure of Cliff Stein. Signing JJ is a must. If he fails to lock him up, that would suck because not a single player on the defense would be on their 2nd contract with the team. What Poles does from here on out will define his legacy. It starts with arguably his biggest decision too, lol. JF1 or CW0? Then it's how does he address the holes while also upgrading and creating quality depth. There is no reason the team should have a hole after the draft. One aspect I am impressed with this offseason has been with the upgraded coaching staff. The Coordinators are an upgrade, and overall the entire coaching staff is improved, which should raise the playing level of the players.

I thought all brokerages do that lol? I feel like that is basically acting like a booker, you want half on one team and half on the other, yet the odds make it so no matter which team wins, you always make money.

Bears got #9, #61, and Moore compared to #8, #43, #74, and London. So an extra pick (74), a better 2nd rounder, and a less accomplished but very good WR. Seems very close all things considered. Now if you are getting London, is Odunze a wise use of assets at that point? Either him or London are now WR3. With only so many passes to go around, WR3 does not get much volume.

He has an article about Rattler being the next Mahomes. Come on man. That would be even crazier than Mahomes being Mahomes, and no one saw that coming. It is fine to be the contrarian or go against conventional wisdom, but doing it just to do it, and all the time seems like it's for attention (and clicks).

For the company I work for, every external communication is approved. It may not necessarily need to be approved by the CEO, but they will know about it because if something is posted, like say about a positive quarter in revenue, they may get asked about it. The last thing they want is to be blindsided.

I don't know about this Jets scout guy. He makes it seem like he watches tape, but his comments don't necessarily reflect that. This was his mock draft from 2022: https://firstroundmock.com/2022/04/2022-nfl-draft-ex-jets-scout-releases-new-shocking-first-round-mock-draft/ It makes sense why he didn't do one in 2023, because he literally got every pick wrong lol. He thinks Brian Branch is inconsistent Nickelback at best: https://firstroundmock.com/2022/11/brian-branch-is-an-inconsistent-nfl-nickelback-at-best/ He hated Brian Branch: https://firstroundmock.com/2023/01/what-nobody-will-tell-you-about-nfl-draft-prospect-brian-branch/ There are so many bad articles on there, it almost looks like The Onion or Babylon Bee for the NFL Draft.

I am just saying if they are planning to trade him, this is some kind of psyop.

Maybe I am wrong, but I do find it odd that the team would go out of their way to promote JF1 if he was going to be traded. Not that you don't show him in highlights or season reviews, but this seems over the top if they were planning to trade him: Very cool video too.

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Just a friendly reminder to keep it civil and if you don't agree, that's fine, but stick to the topic. No one is right or wrong in the way they think or in their opinion. They can form that opinion however they want. It's all good. We all want the same thing, and there is no one right answer or path to get there. This is arguably the best and most impactful offseason in franchise history, let's enjoy it, agree to disagree, and just Bear Down. 50% of the time, I am right 100% of the time!

Getsy and Williams to Waldron and Washington is a pretty big jump in terms of pedigree.

Crisis averted, at least at DC:

I wonder if the Waldron hire tips the scales a little bit towards keeping Fields? An established playcaller is going to be expected to come right in and excel whereas it feels like a new playcaller would get a couple of years. Also, looking back at Waldron's resume, he really has never worked with a rookie QB. At first, he worked with Goff, who had several years in the league by the time Waldron was involved with QBs, then Russell Wilson in Seattle, then Geno Smith, then even Drew Lock (27 yrs old). So Goff at 25 and 26 were his youngest QBs he worked with as a QB Coach or OC. Fields will be 25, Williams will be 23.

For the Bears to get back to .500 in this century, they would have to go 10-7 for the next 9 seasons, lol.

So I saw a thread on Twitter on how SB winning teams have never had a QB that took more than 15% of the cap in any year to date. Which is odd considering most of the SBs were won by Brady, Roethlisberger, Mahomes, and Flacco over the last 20 years. So I looked back to year 2000 to see what were the top 10 teams in terms of winning pct, how many HC's they had, how many different leading QBs they had, playoff appearances, SB appearances, and SB wins. The Bears were 21st over this span with a 181-206 record, which is sad. So what stands out below is the top of the top teams have had the same HC or only 1-2 over the last 20+ years. Secondly, over that same time, most of them had only 4-5 QBs over that same span, which is impressive. The best teams made it to the playoffs 2/3 of the time. Besides NE, even the next few teams had 3 SB appearances in that span (once every 8 years), and a few other teams won multiple. This is why hitting on the HC and QB are critical. Do we have the right HC for a long term to get the Bears back to the SB? Is Fields the QB that is going to spend the next decade plus with an extended playoff run? Looking at this, I think they made a mistake with Flus, but didn't want to fire him and have to pay two HCs. I think they are going to be doubly wrong if they think Fields is the guy to build around, but at the same time, if they draft a QB, then fire Flus, we are back at the clown cycle.