Cutler again above 100 on QB rating

[madlithuanian]

Almost in retrospect, it's probably good we lost it. It was a big wake up call. And how the team has bounced back these past few weeks shows a ton of resiliancy.

 

When we all looked at the schedule once announced, I think we all for the most part felt that 2-2 going into the bye would be about right. Well, we have a legit shot at going 3-1, and that's pretty darn good.

 

Hopefully the lines can improve. If we can start seeing some meshing on the Ol particulary, we could be seriously very dangerous.

 

Your right and if we do hang on to win that game everyone would be talking about how Cutler was able to put his previous problems behind him to will us to win the game and then right now we would be talking about how Cutler would have 3 straight come from behind wins.

 

[bowlingtwig]

Almost in retrospect, it's probably good we lost it. It was a big wake up call. And how the team has bounced back these past few weeks shows a ton of resiliancy.

 

When we all looked at the schedule once announced, I think we all for the most part felt that 2-2 going into the bye would be about right. Well, we have a legit shot at going 3-1, and that's pretty darn good.

 

Hopefully the lines can improve. If we can start seeing some meshing on the Ol particulary, we could be seriously very dangerous.

Your absolutely right, if you look at our remainder schedule it isn't that bad.

[defiantgiant]

It seems like teams are still forcing the Bears to pass and stacking extra guys in the box. We have also been very predictable on our runs.

 

Yeah, with any luck that'll stop once teams watch some film on Cutler and the receivers. The Seahawks walked their strong safety up into the box constantly, and Cutler took advantage of it. For Forte's sake, I hope he starts seeing some 6- and 7-man looks pretty soon.

 

nfo - You're right that my last post was a little abstract, so I went to find some stats. I agree with you about Beekman, Kreutz, and Garza; the three of them are just fine. Since we haven't seen a full season of play from Williams, I guess the jury's still out on whether he's better than Tait. From my (totally uneducated) perspective, he looks better in pass pro and worse at run-blocking, but that could just be me - I'll have to wait until he's had 16 starts to say for sure. I do have some empirical evidence on Pace-versus-St. Clair, though.

 

Pass-blocking first. I think Pace is a better pass-protector than St. Clair: St. Clair allowed 9.75 sacks last year, good for 30th in the NFL, with only Duane Brown and Jason Peters allowing more. Pace, on the other hand, only allowed 2, ranking him #4. Neither guy had a terrifically mobile quarterback, and both saw some pretty decent pass-rushers. On balance, I think Pace comes out way ahead. I might agree with you that the line as a whole is not doing as well, though: the Bears allowed 29 sacks last season, but they're on pace to allow 32 for this season. I think you're right that the pass protection needs improvement: if they keep up this 2-sacks-a-game clip, it won't be great news.

 

Run-blocking is a little trickier to quantify, but I think that Football Outsiders' Adjusted Line Yards stat does a decent job of isolating the performance of an o-lineman from the performance of his running back. By that measure, Pace is the worse run-blocker of the two: looking at the ALY rankings for 2008, the Bears ranked 16th in the NFL when running behind St. Clair, while the Rams ranked 25th when running behind Pace. St. Clair's 4.08 ALY is way better than Pace's 3.68. Basically, a league-average running back with St. Clair as a blocker would average nearly 4.1 YPC, while the same back running behind Pace would get less than 3.7 YPC. That's pretty significant.