Bears4Ever_34

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.

Ryan Poles has always been bad at his job. I've maintained this since I witnessed the disaster that was his first off-season, starting with the Larry Ogunjobie debacle. He doesn't do enough background research on the players he acquires, whether that's with Ogunjobie, Chase Claypool, Nate Davis, or Kiran Omigadjie. Is it laziness, general incompetence, or both? Lovie Smith did more for this franchise as the head coach of the Houston Texans than Ryan Poles. That is the honest truth.

QBR is really annoying. I've seen guys throw multiple interceptions and barely complete 60% of their passes and somehow have higher QBR's than when Caleb throws 2 TD's and 0 INT's and completes over 70% of his passes. The numbers always seem random. I never know what to expect. His best game of the season was clearly the Vikings game where he was throwing the ball all over the field, but yet the Packers game is ranked higher, despite less yards, less touchdowns, and less big time throws. He played well in that game too, but you're not going to convince me it was a better performance than his game against Minnesota.

I think the Bears are the only team in history to play with even less effort for their interim HC in his 1st game than they did for the guy who was fired. Truly a remarkable organization we have going on here.

Mike Florio apparently got a text from a coach asking why he wasn't included in his list of coaches the Bears should try to trade for. Most are speculating it's Kevin Stefanski, because of his Minnesota connection. With Florio being a Vikings fan, It would make sense for them to have a relationship with each other. I've been saying the 3 names the Bears should be targeting in trades are McVay, Shanahan, and Stefanski. 3 high level offensive minds. Cleveland might not fire Stefanski after only being a year removed from a playoff appearance. Not to mention, the Deshaun Watson disaster that you can't really pin on him. However, CLE is kind of stuck with Watson and have virtually no way to improve until his dead cap money clears the table. You'd have to imagine they'd listen to offers for Stefanski if they'd be able to recoup some of their lost draft capital and jump right into a rebuild immediately. I'd be all over it if I'm the Bears.

I appreciate Vrabel's no nonsense approach, but I'm out on any and all defensive head coaches. Caleb's already been through 2 coordinators in 1 year as a rookie. If they hire another defensive coach and put the kid through more of this constant coordinator shuffling, I will be livid. Now is not the time to outsmart conventional wisdom. Just hire the best offensive mind available with the highest leadership qualities.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/42737364/nfl-bears-matt-eberflus-fired-ryan-poles-thomas-brown Via Courtney Cronin. This makes me feel better about the search if this is the direction they are looking in. Those are the exact 3 names I had circled as part of my short list. Ian Rappaport essentially said the same thing yesterday, talking about how an offensive mind seems to be the direction the Bears are leaning.

Caleb is on pace to have the best all-around statistical season of any Bears quarterback ever as a rookie. He won't break the TD or yardage records for a single season, but a 20/7, 3700 yards, 4000+ total yards season he's projected to have (as of now) would be, in my opinion, the most impressive season in franchise history. No Bears quarterback has ever gotten close to a 3:1 TD/INT ratio, and Caleb is right there.

49'ers have been hit hard with injuries all year. They'll be down to their 3rd string RB now. The opportunity is there for the Bears to win this game. It'll be interesting to see if we get a new coach bounce.

Bears are going to win next Sunday, I'm calling it. Both 49'ers RB's just went on IR. They've been bad all year and just got blown out by BUF. Perfect time to get that new coach bounce for the Bears.

To me, the 3 front runners right now should be Ben Johnson, Thomas Brown, and Kliff Kingsbury. Don't bother with defensive coaches. You cannot put Caleb in another situation like this year where he'll be in a constant shuffle of coordinators every year and allow that to get in the way of his development. Do the smart thing, for once, and pick the best offensive mind who is the best leader. McCaskey would never go for it, but my personal dark horse candidate would be Gruden.

Relative to what came before and after, yeah, Nagy looks a lot better by comparison. I still wouldn't consider him to be good. He had a great 1st season, but defenses adjusted to his offense, and he couldn't adjust after that, for 3 more years. He really just rode the coat tails of an elite defense throughout his tenure up until the very end when everyone got old and stopped caring. Nagy's career probably would have ended up very similar to Zach Taylor in CIN with Caleb, and I don't think Taylor is a very good HC. In 2018, they probably make the Superbowl with Caleb, and then, who knows what happens after that. The luck of the draw..

Keenan is still dropping way too many passes, but his production has noticeably increased, along with DJ Moore since Brown has taken over. The trade doesn't look as big of a fail now as it did 3 weeks ago. Curious to see if it can continue.

I don't think record is as important as his success with Caleb. He probably does need to win at least a couple games to be able to sell his impact on the team for any interview. More importantly, can he avoid the same end of game blunders as the man he's taking over for? If he can do that, and Caleb continues to look like the #1 pick in the draft, he deserves strong consideration for the job. I hate the idea of them only going after experienced head coaches, but I tend to agree that's the route they'll choose to take, given the situation at stake for the organization. John Fox was experienced and had been to 2 Superbowls, but turned out to be a disaster.

Unless things have changed in recent weeks, everytime I've listened to him on all the various podcasts he's appeared on, he's quick to point out all his flaws and always pours cold water on the things he does well, where he'll talk about how bad the competition was that he faced. But then he won't do that for any of the other rookie quarterbacks. He applies a double standard for Caleb that he doesn't apply to any of the other quarterbacks, which is aggravating to listen to, because he sounds like a twitter troll. I get why people like Vrabel, but I just can't anymore with defensive guys. Caleb is already on track to have his 3rd coordinator in 2 years with a new HC next year. There's too much of a risk to hire another defensive coach and keep Caleb on this cycle of learning new offenses every 1 or 2 years because the coordinator is either bad enough to be fired or good enough to be hired elsewhere.

Belichick hates Caleb and has already made public criticisms at Poles for ignoring his OL. Without Brady, he was a disaster in New England. I absolutely want no part of him. I'd rather have Pete Carrol, if we're going down that road.

I'd be surprised if Brown isn't still calling plays. If he gets the HC job, it'll be because of the job he does with Caleb. Unlikely that he'd willingly give up play calling and risk Caleb looking bad, which would end any semblance of him landing a HC job. Whoever the assistant HC is right now should take some of the load of Brown's shoulders during these remaining 5 weeks and allow him to spend as much time as he needs with the offense. Wins and losses don't really matter right now. All that matters is Caleb.

Thank god! Thomas Brown made the interim. Exactly who it should be.

Adam Hoge just said on his podcast that he doesn't think a decision has been made yet on Eberflus, and that it could take until Monday morning to have final confirmation. The press conference was earlier than normal, and we know the Bears love to dither on obvious decisions that most normal people could make in a fraction of the time (see the Shane Waldron firing).

If it's going to happen, it'll be tomorrow. I won't believe it until I see it, but you have to think someone in that organization has to care enough to make the switch now. The team is done with Eberflus. The players are speaking out, and now the national media has made them into a laughing stock (again). If it doesn't happen, it never will. This is as bad as it has ever been. Worse than Trestman, worse than Fox, worse than Nagy at the end. For once, can things just be different?