Bears4Ever_34

For their own sanity, I just hope they can win one of these next 3 games so we don't go into next season wondering if they're going to break their previous record of 14 straight losses. Detroit's defense is banged up. This will be Caleb's best chance to play well among the 3 teams. He needs to take advantage of it, if for no other reason than to impress his future HC (Ben Johnson) and solidify it in his mind that this is the job he covets the most.

How many people thought Kyle Shanahan or Nick Siriani sounded like an alpha before they became HC's? You can never fully judge a book by its cover. He just needs to be able to deliver a clear message to the locker room and hold everyone accountable, including himself. To me, when I listen to him, the two things he has going for him is that he doesn't sound like a weirdo and he's not a corny acronym guy, which are huge pluses. Ultimately, it is a gamble. I understand why people like Vrabel—super easy guy to get behind—but coordinator stability is always going to be a problem with him, and there really is no other way around it. Sure, they could always hire the next Nat Hackett, which would be horrible, but to me, it's a less risky gamble than going with another defensive mind where you have to get both the HC and OC hires right instead of just the one.

Excluding the actual dream scenario of landing McVay, Shanahan, or Stefanski in a trade, my ideal HC/DC pairing is Ben Johnson with either Robert Saleh or Rex Ryan. God, wouldn't that be fun? Rex has already been calling Ben Johnson the next Bill Walsh (lol) for months on ESPN, basically begging the Bears to hire Johnson. Part of me wonders if the two of them have ever spoken to each other before about the Bears job.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there was a stipulation as part of Belichick's contract that dictated they hired Mayo if he decided to step down. Similar to Bill Parcels when he left the Jets and had it written into his contract that they'd automatically hire Belichick. There are rumors about Vrabel being interested in the Ohio State job if they fire Ryan Day. Otherwise, the Raiders have always been the most likely team speculated for Vrabel because of the connection to Brady.

My biggest fear right now is if the Bengals or Patriots jobs open up and how that will affect Ben Johnson's decision. That Bengals team is ready to win now with an MVP level quarterback, and the upside with Drake Maye is not hard to see. Even though I'm higher on Caleb, you could see a scenario where working with Maye and that organization is more appealing. No idea how hot the seat is for either of those coaches, but it's certainly something I'm going to be watching on Black Monday.

25 QBR yesterday is such bullshit. He had 6 drops in that game and was only sacked twice. Once again, no picks and the fumble was on the LT for whiffing. freak QBR.

Yeah, I'm not really worried about Caleb at all. He's been put in a horrible situation having to deal with 3 coordinator changes in a season, a head coach getting fired, a really bad OL, and having several come from behind victories stolen from him in the final moments. And even with all of that, he's been one of the best in the league at protecting the football, despite always having to play from behind in every game this season. He has to iron out those accuracy and footwork issues, but the arm talent and intangibles are there. Don't freak up the HC hiring and we'll have ourselves a pro-bowl QB in no time.

Somehow, Caleb made it out of that game only getting sacked twice. I guess that's the only positive from this god awful performance. There were at least 6 drops tonight, 4 from Keenan Allen. Odunze dropped a touchdown.. Caleb's accuracy was all over the place. He, again, was hesitant to take off and run for easy yardage, but his receivers did him no favors tonight. It really looks like his confidence is just about shot. He needs a win in the worst way. Going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the embarrassing performances are mostly over this year. I'm not sure they win any of these next 3 games, but there are opportunities for the offense to play better. 2 of the 3 are home games, DET, a dome team, missing almost everybody on defense, should be a game for the offense to move the ball. SEA will be traveling a long way for a night game on a short week, and who knows about Geno Smith.. And then finally GB might not have anything to play for and could be resting most of their starters.

Brian Daboll and Greg Roman stayed for at least 3 years before they left the organization, which gave Jackson and Allen enough time to develop. If you can get a good OC to stay for at least 3 years, you can make it work, but I think it would be reckless to assume that would happen here. Vrabel had 4 coordinators in 6 years with TEN. 2 of his OC's left for HC jobs and 2 were bad. That's the issue. You can't keep the good ones, and the bad ones get fired.

Probably not anymore. We're too far away from contending to be making "go for it" deals right now. Unless I can get McVay, Shanahan, or Stefanski, I'm holding on to those draft picks to rebuild this OL and DL lines.

As a general rule, I always eliminate coordinators who come from an offense with a hall of fame quarterback that they didn't develop. I call it the Adam Gase problem. I can't really think of an example of a situation like that working out. Joe Brady would scare me. Coen also scares me just because he's only been in TB for a year, and the guy who came before him, Dave Canales, was just as successful last year with Baker. Ben Johnson has been really good for 3.5 years. People only like to remember the last 2 years in Detroit to try to discredit Johnson's success as someone who's only good because of a stacked roster, but that really wasn't the case before he took over in the middle of 2021. They were an awful 0-8 team before he became the primary play caller. He increased their ppg average from 16.7 to 21.2 ppg in the final 9 games before Cambell named him OC going into 2022 when they really took off and became a top 5 offense. To me, we're kind of getting to Ben Johnson or bust at this point. I think Vrabel is probably the best overall HC candidate, but I'm just not hiring a defensive coach to oversee the development of Caleb Williams, which is, by far, the most important puzzle to all of this. A great QB is the most efficient way to sustained success in this league. Lovie won games with Cutler, but it came at the expense of his overall development because of the constant shuffle of coordinators he had to deal with. Vrabel might get us back to respectability, but I fear he'd lead us down the same path as Lovie where they're always good enough to just miss or make the playoffs, they win with defense, and the quarterback remains inconsistent. Giving Caleb stability needs to be the primary focus of this search rather than this need for a culture changer.

Is it a league-wide trend this year or are the Bears just incredible unlucky with the amount of time a player misses with a concussion? It used to be that there was a 50/50 shot a player even missed a week if he was diagnosed with a concussion, but rarely would they miss multiple games. Brisker has missed 3/4 of the season with his. Bates has already missed a month, and now Roschon Johnson has missed a few games. Tomorrow is going to be awful. I'm really not looking forward to what I expect to be another national embarrassment.

That Eberflus bit about him maybe getting fired by the Colts was common knowledge at the time. If you recall, they blew their last regular season game against a horrible Jaguars team that caused them to miss the playoffs. There was a lot of talk about Eberflus' defense imploding down the stretch. Colts fans were sick of him. Not only was nobody going to hire Eberflus back in 2022, nobody was going to hire him last year, had he been fired, and everybody BUT Ryan Poles knew it.

Yeah, I think they just see the raw numbers and automatically dock the quarterback. Even the turnover was pretty fluky.

Jaylon Johnson, Edmunds, Stevenson, and Jonathon Owens didn't want to be there yesterday. There were a lot of business decisions being made on defense.