adam

Brees just played like crap in Year 3, giving them the reason to draft Rivers. I thought he got hurt, he just got benched for Flutie.

I did not know personal attacks were going on that long.

Purdy still leads the NFL in QBR. That is hard to do regardless of how good the team is around you. Miami is stacked pretty good with Hill, Waddle, Mostert and Achane. You can say that about DET, DAL, and PHI too. At some point the QB has to get some credit. With 29 TDs to only 7 INTs, Purdy is doing something right. Fields has 14 and 8 in 100 less passing attempts.

I didn't know that about the VR, Fields needs to try that, get the twitch response mechanism going quicker.

Brees had more passes in college than Fields has in college+pros combined so Fields definitely still has a way to go in his development. Brees was much more of an established pocket passer coming out of college and the only difference between his 4th season and any previous was TDs and INTs. He actually passed for more yards in his 2nd year than his 4th. Half of his completions in 2004 went to Tomlinson and Gates. I definitely see where you are going on the timing though, but the Brees situation was more injury history and injury related on why they first drafted Rivers and why they ultimately went with him in the end. If the Bears get the #1 pick and draft a QB, and they keep Fields, I wouldn't put it past him if he balled out. Maybe that is what he has been missing, true pressure/competition.

TNF tonight: LAR beats NO helps the Bears slim playoff chances and doesn't affect draft order.

Part of the problem is some light sarcasm or humor could be construed as poking fun at someone vs the subject, then the other person responds personally and we are off to the races. Facts are facts, numbers are numbers, but everyone is entitled to interpret them in their own way, it doesn't make anyone stupid, dumb, or an a-hole. 250 yards passing may be a success to some and a failure to others. I just like to see all angles and if not find more to further the discussion. At the end of the day, we all are dying for some prolonged success so the offseason is not the most exciting part of the year. I think we are close.

Gents, we don't need this here, there is enough chaos on Reddit, in Discord, on Twitter, FB, etc. Please stop with the personal attacks. If you don't agree with someone, just don't respond. There is no need for anyone to get stressed out on a Bears discussion board. It's a free country and you can do and say whatever you want, but don't make this personal. Fields is a very polarizing player. 10x more than Trubisky ever was, but at the same time, there is an opportunity to draft a QB #1, which the Bears have never done. Poles can literally go in any direction, which is unprecedented freedom. The franchise is probably in the best position for sustained success going into next year since Lovie/Urlacher era, maybe even better. Can we just enjoy the ride?

Yeah, I read a book about the 10,000-Hour Rule. Basically that is the amount of time you need to put into something to truly "master" it. It can be applied to just about any skill. Obviously some more than others, but when it comes to QBing, the actually rep of the pre-snap read, receive from Center, post snap read, and then an actual passing attempt (vs a scramble) is super important. Some guys played more games, but other played less but had more passing attempts. To me the volume matters, and historically, Fields has been on the low side of volume, which is fine, but it makes the eval window slower/longer. Daniels is very intriguing because, for me, he hits all the things you are looking for in a future NFL QB, he played at a big school, against tough competition, had 7x 300yd passing games AND 5x 100yd rushing games (with 3 others in the 90s), a total of 40 passing TDs and 10 rushing TDs to go with only 4 INTs, and never more in one game and no back to back games with an INT. That is very impressive to me. He is 6'4" (I hope they didn't measure his hair) and 210, so he has the frame to put on a few lbs of muscle. He just turned 23, so he is not too young or too old (22-23 seems like the best window for success).

Omaha, it is very interesting because you have to weigh their own performance, the quality of their teammates, coaches, and opponents, then figure out what projects best to the NFL. For Daniels, he had an incredible season, and he should be considered in the top group of QBs. I am sure as the offseason goes along, combine, pro day, etc, he will slide up the chart. I always look at different ways to figure out who can project to an NFL QB AND how long that will take. Looking at college passing attempts (equate to experience), here are college attempts and pro attempts for all the main QBs over the last few years. In this list below, the * is the number of seasons with a QBR over 60.0. There is a huge clump of QBs that had over 1000 passing attempts in college to Mahomes in the 1300's, then even after him, you have Purdy, Goff, Mayfield, and Browning. Goff and Mayfield are pretty well established QBs, you kind of know what you got (their floors and ceilings are defined). Purdy is well on his way, and even Browning has filled in for Burrow with better numbers, but the jury is still out on him. For Fields, he was in the high risk area coming out with only 618 passing attempts. The only QB that has succeeded for more than one season with fewer passing attempts is Kyler Murray (2x QBR seasons). Mac Jones and Trubisky are like clones, projecting very similarly. What I find interesting is Fields still has less live game attempts than Mac Jones (started with less), Zach Wilson (didn't play that much), Sam Howell (drafted later), Jordan Love (just started this season), Daniel Jones (always hurt), Desmond Ridder, Brock Purdy, Jake Browning, Mike Penix, Kenny Pickett, and Bo Nix. Every rep is development. So the jury is still out on him, though he is getting close to those 1600 reps. By then, they are who they are. Passing Attempts College+Pros High Risk/Small Sample Size T. Lance 318 (+102)=420 A. Richardson 393 (+84)=477 D. Mills 438 (+880)=1318 K. Murray 519 (+2140)=2659** M. Jones 556 (+1308)=1864 M. Trubisky 572 (+1872)=2444* [Did the Bears really do this back to back?] J. Fields 618 (+883)=1501 [Did the Bears really do this back to back?] J. Allen 649 (+3056)=3705**** T. Tagovailoa 684 (+1536)=2220* W. Levis 738 (+249)=987 ------------------- Min. Eval 800-1000 Attempts C. Stroud 830 (+441)=1271 Z. Wilson 837 (+993)=1830 J. Burrow 945 (+1895)=2840** B. Young 949 (+441)=1390 D. Maye 952 ------------------- Projectable Range 1000-1600 Attempts J. Hurts 1047 (+1501)=2548* L. Jackson 1086 (+2056)=3142**** C. Williams 1099 S. Howell 1117 (+554)=1671 J. Love 1125 (+569)=1694 T. Lawrence 1138 (+1678)=2816* D. Prescott 1169 (+3767)=4936***** D. Watson 1207 (+2089)=3296*** D. Jones 1275 (+1900)=3175* J. Herbert 1293 (+2422)=3715**** D. Ridder 1304 (+469)=1773 P. Mahomes 1349 (+3517)=4866****** J. Daniels 1438 B. Purdy 1467 (+554)=2021* J. Browning 1484 (+144)=1628 B. Mayfield 1497 (+2725)=4223* J. Goff 1569 (+4001)=5570** M. Penix 1596 -------------------- Hard to Adapt 1600+ (can they improve from here?) K. Pickett 1674 (+713)=2387 B. Nix 1901

They got their win out of the way. GB, JAX, and TB are all definitely better than ATL and it would take an epic collapse by any of those teams to lose to the Panthers with so much on the line. Young is 2nd in the NFL in sacks with 51. His sack rate is still less than Fields at 1 sack per 8.7 passing attempts. Is the NYG OLine the worst ever? Jones+DeVito= 65 sacks. 8.7 Young 8.4 Fields 8.0 Z. Wilson 5.3 D. Jones (IR) 4.6 Devito

Bears favored by 4 over Cardinals. Packers only favored by 4.5 against Panthers is surprising.

Media is really stirring the pot. Getting the #1 pick two years in a row should not require you to take a QB, but because the last 3 teams did it, they make it a precedent. My problem is, do you really want to follow the footsteps of JAX, CLE and CLE? Everything should be on the table at #1, what move makes the team better longer. They have to weigh trade compensation (both projected and real) for the pick, for Fields vs using the pick. For Flus, if he gets fired, are any of the other teams with vacancies hiring him? If the answer is no, why should he stay on as the Bears coach? The Purdy thing is an anomaly, if SF really thought he was going to be that good, they would not have traded up for Lance AND drafted Purdy with the last pick. Also, every other team passed on Purdy 7 times. With that said, if the argument is SF has built a team that allows a 7th Round QB to excel (which is true), then the Bears don't need to pay Fields as a first round pick, trade the #1 pick AND trade Fields, and then draft a QB later after the team is stacked. That is one scenario that I have not seen (trading both).

It's a hobby, been fiddling with numbers for a long time. I like to throw one of those in there. I was surprised about Kramer too, he went 18-28 with the Bears. He had the record breaking 3,838 year in 1995 when the Bears went 9-7, which is the year I remember. However, the year before he went 1-4, the year after 1-3, then 4-9, and then 3-5. If Santos sticks around for another contract, he will be neck and neck with Robbie for a lot of franchise marks. It would be Santos, Butler and Gould.

Lol yeah right, if the Bears make the playoffs AND beat DET in a playoff game, the Bears will resign Trubisky!

What I find fascinating is teams like Philly, KC, and DAL all seem beatable. Only SF and BAL have 3 losses, all other teams have 4 or more. KC is currently the 3rd seed in the AFC and PHI is 2nd in their Division and currently the 5th Seed. I am sick of the Kelces. If the Bears don't get in, I am hoping for a BUF vs SF Super Bowl with BUF finally winning one. If the Bears do slip in at #7, it would be hilarious if they played DET (#2 vs #7 seed) and the Bears beat them again at home. I would be cry laughing for weeks.

1. Montez Sweat has 12.5 sacks with 3 games remaining. The Bears single season franchise leader is Quinn at 18. Sweat can pass him with 2 sacks per game for the final 3. That would give him 18.5, even though not all of them were on the Bears, it is still a single season accomplishment. 2a. Fields needs 77 passing yards to pass Rex Grossman for 14th on the franchise Passing Yards leaderboard, 85 more to pass Vince Evans, and 160 to pass Mike Tomczak (12th), 167 to pass Rudy Bukich, and 208 yards to pass Johnny Lujack for 10th. All those seem achievable this weekend. 2b. Justin Fields has tied Bob Avellini for the 5th most losses in franchise history, with one more he would move into a tie with Erik Kramer for 4th. 3a. DJ Moore is 17th on the single season receptions list for the Bears with 80 and 3 games remaining. At 90, he would tie Martellus Bennett for 9th all time. He has an outside shot at 100 receptions, which would make him the 4th player to hit that mark. 3b. Moore is also already 13th on the receiving yards list for a single season (for Bears). He only needs 11 yards to get into the top 10 and 66 to pass Marty Booker for 8th all time. He has a good shot at breaking 1,300 yards, which would put him in the top 4 all time. 4a. Quietly, Cairo Santos is moving up the franchise kicking leaderboard. He as 27 FGM with 3 games left. Gould owns the #1 spot at 33. Santos would need 2 per game to tie that mark. 4b. Santos has made 6 kicks from 50+. He is 6 for 6. Gould owns the franchise record at 7. 4c. Santos is 5th on the Bears all-time list for FG's and needs 5 more to tie Paul Edinger for 4th. 5. Velus Jones has 849 KO return yards and needs 37 more to pass Willie Gault for 26th on the franchise all-time list. 5b. Velus only needs 4,655 more KO return yards to tie Devin Hester for first on the franchise list. At his current pace, Velus will only need 11 more seasons (until he is 46) to hit that mark.

8 wins would exceed most projections, I think the win total was 7.5 O/U.

For sure, they need one of the top 2 or 3 guys. They probably need to pick up another vet in place of Mooney via FA to upgrade the room. Moore + Rook + FA is a much better top 3 than what they have right now.

Of all the position groups, this one has to be one of the most disappointing ones. Outside of Moore's god given talent, has any other player from this group done anything positive this year? Like for me, they have all been net negatives, Claypool, Mooney, Velus, and Scott. St. Brown has barely played this year so I don't even count him and his lack of availability is a negative. There was the Claypool stuff that started from the day he arrived until he left. Zero accountability both on and off the field. Then there is Velus Jones, who never developed into anything near his draft status, he basically drops passes or fumbles returns. Tyler Scott was a later draft pick, but still, only 14 receptions in 14 games, and he had that bad fumble and some bad drops the last few games? These are professionals wearing sticky gloves and they are dropping passes that hit their hands. Has anyone ever tried these gloves? It is actually hard to drop a ball that hits your hands. Then there is Mooney, in a contract year, getting the CB2 or CB3 assigned to him, he has more drops this year than his previous 3 years combined. I thought he had this awesome connection with Fields on and off the field. Where did that go? Look at his production pre Getsy and with Getsy? He had 81-1055 in 2021. In 22+23 so far he has 69-902 with 3 games left for a 2-year total. That is barely WR3 production. With his lack of effort in the run game, even on a scramble drill, he lets the DB beat him to the ball, then the effort on the hail mary? Come on man. Something is going on. To me this is all impacted by coaching, so clearly Tolbert is doing a terrible job right?

The Bears are still in the hunt. With a win and the following, their playoff chances go up to 10%: 1. LAR beats NO (LAR -4 at home) 2. TEN beats SEA (tough with how SEA looked but it is short week, TEN +2.5 at home) 3. PHI beats NYG (PHI -12 at home) All home teams, TEN the only Dog at +2.5. Under 3 is really promising.

So I went thru the NY Times Playoff Predictor (pretty cool): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/upshot/chicago-bears-nfl-playoff-picture.html There are several scenarios, but I tried to find the most realistic one. So besides winning out, the Bears need 8 other games to go there way in the last 3 weeks (less than I thought) in one scenario. This one is without needing a CAR win: Week 16 1. LAR beats NO (LAR at home) 2. TEN beats SEA (tough with how SEA looked but it is short week) 3. PHI beats NYG (PHI at home), OR (Week 18 rematch of PHI @ NYG) - 2 out of 3 are likely, TEN needs to beat SEA or that will make things way more complicated for Bears. Week 17 4. NYG beats LAR (tough one but in NY) 5. TB beats NO (TB at home) 6. PIT beats SEA (PIT looks checked out and it's on the road) OR (Week 18 ARZ beats SEA) 7. MIN beats GB OR (GB beats MIN AND Week 18 DET beats MIN) - PIT and NYG need to step up. The GB vs MIN game will decide the playoffs for those 2 teams. Week 18 8. SF beats LAR (SF at home) - this one seems likely unless SF is locked into a slot, this week could need some other games added depending on how the previous weeks went. BLUF: SEA, LAR, GB and NO need to lose 2 of 3, and NYG has to lose 1 of 3. If GB wins 2, MIN has to lose out (DET, GB, DET). SEA has to lose to TEN and PIT or ARZ, which may be tough. The only other game that is tough is NYG beating LAR (but it is in NY). There are several other scenarios, and games like CAR vs GB have a massive impact on all the other scenario outcomes. - The funniest one is if CAR beats GB in Week 16, and GB beats MIN in Week 17 (MIN loses out), while all the other teams do what is above, the Bears would actually be the 6th seed at 8-9 (LMAO), but risk losing the #1 pick. - An alternative to NYG needing to beat LAR is the following: CAR beats GB + ATL beats NO + SEA loses out

I think it comes down to efficiency overall. So he will have to be productive in the pocket, out of the pocket, and on the ground. If the offense has sustained drives with a good balance, and that is consistent, that's all they are looking for. If he only does the houdini stuff and that is the only way they move the ball, the efficiency will be terrible even if they win or score points. He needs to be a positive EPA/play player.

One thing I did notice, to add onto #4, I think the hits are adding up. They are in his head. He is not as confident as a runner like he was last year. This year it looks panicked if that makes sense. On the DET play near the goal line when he did the Houdini act, the Right Edge from across the field caught him from behind to force him to slide 20 yards downfield. Last year, Fields would've had 5 yards on him by then. #3 it still gets out of some negative yard situations, rarely is this a negative, even if it is not a net positive. #2 I still think there is something to his feet, they made him swap to make the timing routes work but he has not looked natural doing it that way. This is also on Getsy, which makes the overall assessment of Fields tough as hell. It feels like he goes thru his progressions, but there is a delay between his vision, processing what he is seeing, then acting on. That's where the pat comes in, it gives himself a tic to process before throwing. Then everything is off. It reminds me of the firing range in the Army. There was a sequence of shots out to 300m, targets would pop up left and right and drop after a few seconds. You had to aim, fire, find new target, aim, fire, readjust, etc, etc. You could easily memorize the sequence, but if you miss one and tried a second bullet, you would be racing to readjust and aim at the new target giving yourself a fraction of second to shoot before it too drops, then probably miss, and now you are trailing the rest of the targets.

Taking coaches out of the equation. I guess the question becomes do you believe Fields has done enough if the season ended today to give him his 5th year option (and/or extension) and they run this back with him in 2024, trade the #1 pick or select MHJ. or Fields may or may not have done enough, but let's hedge this, keep him for one more year and draft a QB. or Fields has not done enough, draft QB #1, trade Fields. Would anything change your mind one way or the other in the last 3 weeks? If he balls out or completely shits the bed. I feel like a win or loss at GB is going to carry some weight and it will be the final memory heading into the offseason.