Bears at Lions Week 13 - NFCN 3rd Place Bowl Official Game Thread (Thu, Nov 28, 11:30 AM CT/FOX/Bears -3.0, O/U 38)

[Mongo3451]

It was only the Lions but he's getting betterrrr!

[adam]

This was the most Jekyll and Hyde game all year. Great plays followed by bad plays. We should've won comfortably by 2 TDs. It should not have come down to the Lions inside the 25 needing a TD to win. Way to close for me. Outside of 2-3 passes, Trubisky looked much better. Arob had a brutal drop. Miller has answered the call. Get him the ball. All around great team win, offense carried the defense today. Roquan was a beast, best player on the field next to Miller today. Game balls to Miller and Smith. 

[Connorbear]

Just now, adam said:

This was the most Jekyll and Hyde game all year. Great plays followed by bad plays. We should've won comfortably by 2 TDs. It should not have come down to the Lions inside the 25 needing a TD to win. Way to close for me. Outside of 2-3 passes, Trubisky looked much better. Arob had a brutal drop. Miller has answered the call. Get him the ball. All around great team win, offense carried the defense today. Roquan was a beast, best player on the field next to Miller today. Game balls to Miller and Smith. 

Agreed on your overall review of the game - Too many penalties and mistakes but Miller and Smith were huge today!  

Peace

[adam]

2 hours ago, Mongo3451 said:

All your fault Adam, lol...?

Seriously, after that first 75 yard TD pass, I was like oh no. However, after the first quarter the Bears outscored the Lions 17-6, it wasn't really that close, we just never broke out with a big lead. 

[adam]

Just now, Connorbear said:

Agreed on your overall review of the game - Too many penalties and mistakes but Miller and Smith were huge today!  

Peace

Connor, just reading your posts, I was thinking the same thing the entire game. It was literally a postive play followed by a negative play, or a great play negated by a penalty. If they can somehow clean up some of these mistakes, this team will actually be pretty good. Also, Prince got completely exposed today. He is not a starting CB, and he will not be back next year.  Of all the players on both sides of the ball, he is the donkey today. Worst player on the field for both teams.

[Connorbear]

3 minutes ago, adam said:

Connor, just reading your posts, I was thinking the same thing the entire game. It was literally a postive play followed by a negative play, or a great play negated by a penalty. If they can somehow clean up some of these mistakes, this team will actually be pretty good. Also, Prince got completely exposed today. He is not a starting CB, and he will not be back next year.  Of all the players on both sides of the ball, he is the donkey today. Worst player on the field for both teams.

Yeah, Prince is gone. He looked really bad today. 

Peace

[adam]

Trubisky's numbers today: 29-38, 76.3%, 338 yds, 8.9 Y/A, 3 TD, 1 INT, 1 Sack ,118.1 Rating.

He had 9 incompletions, with 1 as the INT, and there were a couple of drops. There were a few that were throwaways, so he had about 3-4 incomplete passes that were his fault.

[adam]

1 minute ago, Connorbear said:

Yeah, Prince is gone. He looked really bad today. 

Peace

OMG yeah, he was literally the worst player on both teams on the field. If you watch him, his receiver was open all game long. 

[Stinger226]

They havent put it together yet but some parts are improving. 6-6 now and just worry about winning next week in a winnable game. Lets say we get better and lucky and go 10-6. It is much better than going 6-10 and us not improve the rest of the year. Playoffs are probably never going to happen but might as well be a better team going down the road.

[Bears4Ever_34]

Thank god they won, but they didn't make it look easy. The defense just isn't that good this year. I know their stats are similar to last season, but losing Hicks has really killed their run defense, as well as their pass rush, and their DB's are getting beat much more than they were last year too.

Mitch made some great passes, but overall, I thought he was just okay. I'm not going to wave the pompoms while he's playing against one of the worst defenses in football. They scored enough to win, but he still made a lot of boneheaded plays, whether it was the interception, the decision to run out of bounds, instead of running forwards to pick up a 1st on a crucial 3rd down, and also some of his other plays in the pocket where he held the ball too long and didn't take off with it. I still think that, for whatever reason, he's got it in his head too much that he has to be pass first all the time. I don't know if he's scared of getting injured against or what, but he needs to be much more decisive when choosing to scramble for yardage, and make those decisions much quicker than he has been. Those plays are basically free 5-10 yards everytime, and could be the difference in points vs no points on certain offensive drives. 

It's nice to be back to .500, but I don't see them winning another game the rest of the year. I'd give them a puncher's chance to win maaaaaaaybe one more against either DAL or MIN, but it would take some kind of miracle to run the table. The sad thing is that even if they did, they still likely wouldn't even be a wildcard team. SEA or SF has one of those locked up for sure, and GB/MIN still only have 3 losses.

The Bears are going to finish the year looking back at those 3 games against SD, LA, and NO (without Brees, Kamara, and Cook) being the difference between playoffs and no playoffs this year. Hell, throw in that game against GB they only scored 3 points in. Even converting in half of those games could have been a huge difference. Their margin for error is so small because of their horrific offense. League average offensive play, and they'd be shoe-in's for the post-season. 

[adam]

The Bears get Dallas next at home, next Thursday. The Cowboys just got embarrassed at home by the Bills. We are a very similar comp to the Bills. Also, game time temperature is expected to be in the mid-30's at game time.  Prescott has one game with temps under 40 this year: 19-33, 212 yds, 0 TD, 1 INT, 64.2 QB Rtg. So we should have a favorable matchup at home. You can't ask for much more than that. If we win, then we go to Lambeau after a mini-bye, coming off a THU game. There is a chance that Hicks will be back for that game. If he comes back, the Bears will have a real shot at winning that. Then it's KC at home, who is only 7-4 and has alternated wins and losses every week for the last 6. They are not as dominant as they appeared to be earlier in the season. Then we get MIN in the final game, who we already beat. The hope is we are no worse than one game down entering Week 17. If that is the case, Week 17 basically becomes a play-in game. If we are really a playoff team, these all should be wins. Every game here on out is an elimination game. Win or the season is over. It's that simple.

MIN is at SEA this week, then the Lions at home, then out to LAC, which is never easy to do, then GB at home. So all we need is for SEA and GB to beat MIN to have a chance. However, if LAC somehow beats MIN, then we have a really good chance at the playoffs.

In regards to the game, Fuller made a shoe-string tackle that ultimately prevented a TD. One of the plays of the game. Something that might be missed is Patterson had two long returns, a 57-yarder and a 33-yarder that gave the Bears favorable field position. 

Penalties have to be cleaned up, we had 10 for 89 yards. Most were avoidable, one or two were pretty ticky tack. Montgomery was 16-75, 4.7 and had some holes. They need to keep going back to the successful runs and stop the RPO handoff that gets plugged every time. They know Trubisky is not running, so they all crash in. 

This was by far Mitch's best game of the year. He ended with solid numbers and his INT was on a crossing route where Arob had a step on Slay, but Trubisky didn't lead Arob enough, which allowed Slay who was trailing to undercut the throw and make the INT. Slay actually bobbled it, but still caught it. We had several of our defenders drop INTs. Kwit had another solid game and had one of those near picks. I thought he had it, but they called it incomplete on the field.

The officiating was horrible. They missed two roughing the passer calls against Trubisky where he was hit in the head or when the defender landed on him with his entire body weight. Both plays, not call. The refs also gave DET some favorable spots that the Bears didn't challenge. So with all that against the team, they still came out with the W. You can feel the confidence growing and I think they are peaking at the right time of the year.

[adam]

No flag:

 

[adam]

Full body weight, driven into the ground, the exact definition of a penalty for roughing the passer, yet this was not called:

 

[AZ54]

I watched all 3 games today and I think Trubisky was the best QB among the 6 who played.... by far.  That includes Drew Brees.  Maybe someone will point out that Brees' Oline wasn't playing well and hindered the offense overall.  Usually Bears fans are begging for a QB to put up the numbers Trubisky did today.   They get it and still can't be happy.    

My request hasn't changed:  I want the Oline to play as well, or as poorly if you prefer, as Trubisky.  I've yet to see that.  

His teammates don't share the same feelings:  "Where's #10?"

https://www.chicagobears.com/video/club-dub-week-13-locker-room-celebration

[adam]

9 hours ago, AZ54 said:

I watched all 3 games today and I think Trubisky was the best QB among the 6 who played.... by far.  That includes Drew Brees.  Maybe someone will point out that Brees' Oline wasn't playing well and hindered the offense overall.  Usually Bears fans are begging for a QB to put up the numbers Trubisky did today.   They get it and still can't be happy.    

My request hasn't changed:  I want the Oline to play as well, or as poorly if you prefer, as Trubisky.  I've yet to see that.  

His teammates don't share the same feelings:  "Where's #10?"

https://www.chicagobears.com/video/club-dub-week-13-locker-room-celebration

I agree on the QBs, if you didn't know who was who or their past performances, you would think Trubisky was the franchise QB, which is refreshing. We need to see him string together games like this. I would say, if this is who he is, then I am good with it. Just need this more often.

The O-Line is still a problem, but did play better. Still some guys getting completely beat or stupid penalties, but overall, an improvement from previous games. They need to keep that trend. Lucas played decent filling in for Massie.

[AZ54]

10 hours ago, adam said:

I agree on the QBs, if you didn't know who was who or their past performances, you would think Trubisky was the franchise QB, which is refreshing. We need to see him string together games like this. I would say, if this is who he is, then I am good with it. Just need this more often.

The O-Line is still a problem, but did play better. Still some guys getting completely beat or stupid penalties, but overall, an improvement from previous games. They need to keep that trend. Lucas played decent filling in for Massie.

Lucas was awful in the preseason.  Maybe he was thinking far too much pre-snap due to being new to the offense but he's done well as a backup. 

We'll see what happens with Trubisky but the most promising thing I saw was that the INT didn't faze him one bit and he threw some beautiful passes into tight windows afterward.  IMO he has to overcome the most difficult thing in all of sports:  Pressure of the fan base.  That gets in his head and affects him in bad ways.  

People forget he had a very serious shoulder injury.  I think he's been told to avoid hits whenever possible because that's the way he's been running/scrambling lately.  Or his shoulder is bothersome enough that he's just naturally avoiding any contact on it.  If you aren't going to lean into a tackle with the bad shoulder would you do so with your throwing shoulder?  

[ASHKUM BEAR]

3 hours ago, AZ54 said:

Lucas was awful in the preseason.  Maybe he was thinking far too much pre-snap due to being new to the offense but he's done well as a backup. 

We'll see what happens with Trubisky but the most promising thing I saw was that the INT didn't faze him one bit and he threw some beautiful passes into tight windows afterward.  IMO he has to overcome the most difficult thing in all of sports:  Pressure of the fan base.  That gets in his head and affects him in bad ways.  

People forget he had a very serious shoulder injury.  I think he's been told to avoid hits whenever possible because that's the way he's been running/scrambling lately.  Or his shoulder is bothersome enough that he's just naturally avoiding any contact on it.  If you aren't going to lean into a tackle with the bad shoulder would you do so with your throwing shoulder?  

I seen this the first game back. His injury set him back.  He has to be almost back, but he has been conserving himself

 

 

[adam]

19 hours ago, AZ54 said:

Lucas was awful in the preseason.  Maybe he was thinking far too much pre-snap due to being new to the offense but he's done well as a backup. 

We'll see what happens with Trubisky but the most promising thing I saw was that the INT didn't faze him one bit and he threw some beautiful passes into tight windows afterward.  IMO he has to overcome the most difficult thing in all of sports:  Pressure of the fan base.  That gets in his head and affects him in bad ways.  

People forget he had a very serious shoulder injury.  I think he's been told to avoid hits whenever possible because that's the way he's been running/scrambling lately.  Or his shoulder is bothersome enough that he's just naturally avoiding any contact on it.  If you aren't going to lean into a tackle with the bad shoulder would you do so with your throwing shoulder?  

I think there is a difference for QBs when it is a bad throw vs a bad decision. Like when they completely miss a LB or Safety or a CB drops off and cuts of the pass, compared to just a pass thrown behind the receiver. Trubisky just didn't lead Robinson enough and Slay undercut the pass because he had time to catch up. I can live with some bad passes, it's the bad decisions that are game breakers.

[Alaskan Grizzly]

Watching the game on replay and have to say Horstead reminds me of Zach Miller.  Very similar style. 
 

He’s a keeper. 

[Connorbear]

On 11/30/2019 at 3:23 PM, adam said:

I think there is a difference for QBs when it is a bad throw vs a bad decision. Like when they completely miss a LB or Safety or a CB drops off and cuts of the pass, compared to just a pass thrown behind the receiver. Trubisky just didn't lead Robinson enough and Slay undercut the pass because he had time to catch up. I can live with some bad passes, it's the bad decisions that are game breakers.

Agreed