Football

Bears Offensive Rankings Are Offensive

By Brian Schmitz 1365 0

With the first trimester of the season in the rearview, let’s take a look at where the Bears offense if through the first five games. Caution, reader discretion is advised.

Yards Per Game:              Ranked 30th (266 YPG)

This stat is especially alarming because the Bears offense has actually been more effective with their backup quarterback under center. Additionally, the dominating nature of the Bears defense give this offense more time on the field to put up yards – or in the Bears case, not put up yards.

Points Per Game:            Ranked 28th (17.4 PPG)

This is a stat that has plummeted since about the middle of the 2018 season. Three major factors contribute to this: bad quarterback play, bad o-line play, and an offensive playbook that that seems like it has been figured out. It is a chicken or egg scenario: is the system bad because of the players? Or are the players bad because of the system? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want it figured out.

Yards Per Play:                  Ranked 30th (4.5 YPP)

This number is easily explainable and falls squarely on the lack of a running game. Consistently being in a 2nd and long position very much limits your playbook. RPO and zone running plays are just not working and I anticipate a change in aspects of this coming out of the bye week.

1st Downs Per Game       Ranked 27th (17.4 1DPG)

What we can deduct from this stat is that Bears are really not a threat on plays 10 yards or longer. A 10-yard play gets you a second set of downs, which in turn, keeps opposing defenses on the field longer, thus equaling a high level of fatigue. When you are averaging only 17 1st downs per game, you are facing a fresh defense on about ½ of your possessions.

3rd Down Percentage     Ranked 23rd (35%)

As we all know, Mitch Trubisky is not an overly accurate passer. So anytime you are facing a 3rd and medium/long, you are looking at routes that are not in Mitch’s 5-yard comfort zone. Add to this a porous line, and you can clearly see why the team struggles to convert 3rd downs.

Penalties                             Ranked 7th Highest (43 Penalties)

Like all coaches, Matt Nagy talks about discipline ad nauseam. And while 43 Penalties are a big number, this is more of an NFL officiating issue than it is a Bears issue. However, don’t take for granted that the Bears O-Line is among the most penalized units in the league. This reasoning behind this is simple: when you are not very good, you get beat, which then makes linemen hold. False starts and delay of games have been minimal, so this is more of talent issue with the linemen than it is an overall team discipline issue.

When looking at these numbers as a whole, the Bears are dreadfully comparable to the Dolphins, Redskins, Jets, and Bengals – four teams that share a combined two wins. And before you speak about the strength of the respective defenses the Bears have faced so far this year, please note keep in mind the only defensive juggernaut this team has faced is the Minnesota Vikings.

Coming off the off week, I am hoping we will see far less RPO and zone runs – the Bears are talented enough in the backfield that getting outside the tackles may be the plan that resurrects this offense. The NFL remains a league in which you have to be successful in the run game to be successful throwing the ball. Very few teams are good enough to be successful being one dimensional; the Bears are not one of them.

My biggest concern is that Matt Nagy is too proud to change his offensive philosophy in the run game and will keep trying to make chicken salad from a chicken shit line. Nagy is a guy who experienced much success and admiration in his rookie year as head coach. How that the sky is falling on him and he is getting figured out, it’s up to him to counter-punch and get this team in the end zone.

**In an effort to give a more accurate picture of the Bears offense, the above-noted rankings were taking prior to this past week’s games.

Football

Week 7 – Saints vs. Bears: QB Study – Bridge Over Troubled Water

By Tony Martin 1997 0

Worst title I’ve ever given an article? Yeah, it’s up there but the season is still young, folks!

This week the Bears were gifted a game against a high-octane offense with a backup quarterback under center. Teddy Bridgewater is playing his 6th game this year, his 5th start running the Saints attack. The first question is, who is Teddy Bridgewater? Pick 32 of the 2014 NFL Draft, that’s who. The game managing QB who made his money handing off to Adrian Peterson and throwing to, uh, I’m not really sure. Is Mike Wallace a real person or just a collective fever dream we all went through together, like that one year where Brandon Lloyd was king?

Teddy Bridgewater was the 2014 Rookie of the Year as sponsored by Pepsi and voted on by fans, which is somehow different than the NFL AP vote which pegged Odell Beckham Jr as the best offensive rookie that year. The NFL AP made the better decision, but I still love and respect the concept of the fan vote, since this isn’t the NBA and Yao Ming can’t keep being selected to All Star games even though he didn’t play (Free Hong Kong, while we’re here). 2014 seems like such a different time, and Bridgewater’s path here has been so long and winding that it’s almost surreal to think about OBJ and Teddy coming into the league at the same time. Shit, Teddy was in the Pro Bowl the next season!

…and then you know the rest, I’m assuming. HOWEVER, my bandmate Katie reads these articles for some reason and she has no clue what I’m talking about most of the time, so this one’s for the Katies out there. Bridgewater suffered a non-contact knee injury in practice that was so bad the doctors thought his leg would have to be amputated. He dislocated his knee, tore his ACL, and had significant structural damage. The words that doctors used to describe it sound like metal band song titles:

“Grotesque”
“Mangled”
“Battle wound”
“Worst knee dislocation I’ve seen in sports”

I reached out to my buddy who is a Physical Therapist and asked him his take, and he responded by telling me that a knee dislocation like that can destroy your entire leg and compromise all four ligaments, and the fact that he has anything resembling stability in that knee to this day is beyond him. Shouts out to my homie Virak for the insider tip.

Teddy recovered from an injury that had people fearing he’d never walk again and has now started four games, three years and a handful of months removed from the kneepocalypse. It’s really hard to not root for this guy, but he is at best a replacement-level QB on a team loaded with weapons.

The numbers are nice (69% completion percentage, 7/2 TD/INT ratio), but he isn’t passing the eye test (trust me, I have a number of Saints players in fantasy leagues). Four of those seven scores were against a Tampa Bay defense that plays with the urgency of a pug who just walked a mile and a half. He’s been hot and cold. He was stellar against Tampa Bay and Seattle, and not good against Dallas and Jacksonville.

His stats will give Bears fans Shane Matthews/Kyle Orton flashbacks. His average completed pass travels 4.5 yards in the air. He throws what Football Outsiders defines as a “bad throw” 12% of the time, and he does NOT go deep. The Bears might have an advantage here, with Eddie Jackson lurking on some of those crossing routes underneath. Bridgewater still hasn’t mastered the Drew Brees classic “know exactly which option route Alvin Kamara is going to run and hitting him for a 12 yard gain six times a drive”, but he has weapons.

Teddy is a game manager with an outstanding backstory, but the Bears match up well here against him. If the pass rush can shake him or make him get rid of the ball quickly, I like their odds. Hopefully the defense doesn’t have to send too much extra pressure to get after the plucky Saints QB, because the big play potential is there if Kamara or Michael Thomas find themselves in man coverage with no safety help. Make no mistake, the Saints have some burners and they can turn a short toss into a big gain. Their screen game is tight, and Ted Ginn can stretch the field. If the line can get to Teddy, the Bears have a chance to slow this offense down dramatically.

Football

Bears after the Bye: What now?

By Wes French 1816 0

Daaaaaaa Bears are back at Halas Hall and practicing this week after the long week off following the loss in London. They’re not whole, though. Kyle Long was mercifully decommissioned on Monday, hitting IR without a designated to return rider. Akiem Hicks isn’t on IR, but Matt Nagy casually said he hopes to see his disruptive DT back THIS SEASON…so, uhh, maybe we’ll see him by Turkey Day?

Mitchell Trubisky, Taylor Gabriel and Bilal Nichols were all back, though, so it’s not all bad. And the Bears look out at an odd, changing NFC that still holds a path to the postseason if they can navigate it all well from here.

Where we left off

The Bears are 3-2, good for third in the division. They lost two games they probably should have won, but won at least one they shouldn’t have, so we’ll call it even. The fairy tale of a near injury-free 2018 has turned into a crowded trainer’s room in 2019: Trubs, Gabriel, Nichols, Hicks, Trey Burton, half or more of the O-Line…all missing time through five games.

The off week comes at a good time getting a good amount of that list back for Week 7, and while the loss of Long may actually end up being a positive (more on that later) the arm injury to Hicks is a major blow. Nichols will need to step in and contribute right away and more is needed from the already pleasant surprise of Roy Robertson-Harris. Hey, it’s not all bad. They still have Khalil Mack.

Trubs back under center remains an uncertainty, but anyone that wants to argue they’re better with Chase Daniel is lying to you and themselves. Mitch is the guy, for better or worse. Nagy getting the best out of him and the offense is still the key to the way this team is built. The revamped offensive line helping to open up the run game is probably what helps Mitch and Nagy more than just getting the QB1 back.

Dan Durkin at the Athletic penned a massive article you can go read if you want, but it basically boils down to the big bodies up front getting to the second level and giving the backs something to work with. There’s more to it than that, but it boils down to better play in the trenches going a long way to offensive success.

State of the NFC…and path to the playoffs? 

The NFC North is incredibly tight. The Packers are in control at 5-1 after a very, um, oddly officiated MNF win over the Lions last night. Detroit drops to 2-2-1, but they look better than expected thus far. Minnesota is going to look great and then awful week to week, but currently sit at 4-2 after a big win over Philadelphia. So the Pack sit in the driver’s seat, but they’re banged up on offense and might be carried by the defense for the first time in…ever? The division is still very much in play, but for a team that needs to create their own identity, the Bears should focus on winning each week one at a time.

That mentality starts now, with a home date and the 5-1 Saints ahead. Beyond that, games against the Eagles, Lions x2, and Rams will all hold bigger weight than a single win as they could come into play as tie-breakers in the NFC playoff picture. If the Bears aren’t at eight wins by December, that big SNF matchup with Dallas won’t be big at all. Can Nagy get it all going well enough to go 5-2 from now until December? A final month of games with the Cowboys, Packers, Chiefs and Vikings sets up for some real excitement if this team can get things sorted out.

That’s a very big “if” at the moment.

Football

Hold The Lines, Football Isn’t Always On Time

By Sam Fels 1336 0

Woof. I know. Let’s just move on.

As the Bears return from their off-week (Eric Zorn correctly pointed out that calling it a “bye” isn’t correct, and we have only the highest of standards here as you well know) they certainly aren’t without some news. And none of it is particularly good or up-lifting.

This morning head coach Matt Nagy made it clear that Akiem Hicks is going to be out a while, and quite possibly the rest of the season. When you’re saying you’re hopeful he can return before the end of the season, we can safely assume that nothing before Thanksgiving is a possibility and quite possibly a couple weeks after that. Whether Hicks can even be effective after so much time out and not really being able to use his arm the whole time is another question, though one we’d like to find out more than just seeing him not return at all.

We saw what the defensive line looked like without him last week, which was not life-affirming. Bilal Nichols‘s return helps a little, but he is not the Hot Gates that Hicks has been the past couple seasons. And while the win against the Vikings proved the Bears do have some depth, you don’t want to be pressing into that too much more before you don’t have that depth.

On the plus side, at least for one week, the Saints offensive line isn’t the mass of humanity that the Raiders’ one is, depending on more of the zone-blocking and nimbleness that the Bears cut through against Minnesota. On the downside, that Raiders game is now on film and whatever team can in any way emulate that is going to. And Sean Payton, despite being a world-class asshole, is also one of the brighter offensive minds around. Didn’t stop him from getting stonewalled by the Jaguars, so there’s that. Bite down on something and get through it is going to be the order of the day with the defensive line for the foreseeable future.

The less surprising, but in some ways more sad, was the report yesterday that Kyle Long will be IR’d. Long has looked awful all season, with the word “finished” becoming more and more often used to describe him. He has graded out as one of the worst linemen in the league each week, and it would appear that all the injuries he has dealt with in the past few years have completely caught up to him. He couldn’t get to the second-level, as his mobility that was once a feature is completely gone. He couldn’t even avoid getting blown off the line at the first level, run or pass, which has complicated what the Bears want to do and prevented them from either running the ball or getting it down the field in the air. Long wasn’t the only problem on the line, but he was not an insignificant one either.

The options behind him are either unappetizing or unknown but, and I take no pleasure in saying this, they almost certainly can’t be worse. Ted Larsen has his own injury issues, which would leave either Rashaad Coward or a promotion from the practice squad for Alex Bars. The latter holds some real promise, even if it comes in a very un-shapened mass of clay right now. He has the biggest upside, though to go from the practice squad to effective in games is a huge leap.

It’s hard not to feel that the biggest bummer of Long’s season ending is that it almost certainly ends his Bears career, if not his career altogether. Long will join the list of many, many Bears of recent vintage who were great players on only bad to mediocre teams. He got to play in one playoff game, which was last year. Most at the time greeted his drafting as a missed opportunity (or worse if you’re Hub Arkush), and then he went on to immediately be just about the only bright spot on the offensive line for years. He quickly became a team staple and leader, and it just sucks that he mostly won’t get to participate in what we still hope is the top part of the cycle for the Bears. The dude is like half bionic now, and yet he kept getting out there and until this year was mostly very good at his job.

He deserved better than this, but football has a tendency to not really care about that sort of thing. Time catches up to you hard in the NFL, and it appears it snagged another captive in Long.

Everything Else Football

The Vault: Bye Week

By Tony Martin 1385 0

Welcome back to THE VAULT, where I revisit some of the best vintage games our beloved Bears have played against whatever team they match up against this week.

The Bears don’t have an opponent this weekend, but I’m trying so hard to make THE VAULT indispensable; think of me as Matt Nagy, and THE VAULT as Cordarrelle Patterson. THE VAULT KNOWS NO BYE WEEKS. I’m picturing Matt Nagy and Patterson this week in an otherwise empty Halas Hall, practicing 5 yard outs in the darkness.

So, let’s talk bye weeks. Bye weeks were brought to the NFL in 1990, supposedly to give players the chance to rest, but also to provide more TV revenue, since they were restructuring their contracts with the networks. Good to see how important player safety is, y’all.

What’s your Bye-Week tradition? I feel like what someone does on the Sunday their favorite team is off tells me more about someone’s fandom than what they do during the games themselves. So, pick your “My Team is Off This Week” trope from the guide below:

Family Time: You’ve been spending your Sundays on the couch, and your significant other is begging you to do all the fun fall stuff that you ignore every year. Go to the pumpkin patch, take the kids mini golfing, go to Bath and Body Works and smell all the candles for free? Do you, friend. Family time rules.

Fantasy Dork: You still park your ass on the couch and watch RedZone for SEVEN COMMERCIAL FREE HOURS, listening to Scott Hanson slowly lose his mind and get too excited to call a Raheem Mostert one yard touchdown during the late games because nobody has scored in 32 minutes of real time. Also, if anyone knows where I can find recordings of those tasty riffs they play while running highlights let me know. I’ll pay Hansonly.

Any Football is Cool: You’ll watch whatever national game is in your viewing network. I swear, it was football hell growing up and watching whatever game was on Fox while CBS showed the World Bull Riding Championships or whatever. Now that I’m an adult, I gladly pay extra to not have to spend my afternoons watching Minnesota play Detroit and hoping for James Brown to jump in and tell me the Dolphins are now down by 31.

The “Cultured Fan”: You watch playoff baseball, NBA games, shit you’ll even watch golf? You must hate your family.

The Space Cadet: You have spent so many Sundays (and Mondays… and Thursdays) ignoring your responsibilities, it’s time to catch up. Fuck football for a day, you haven’t caught up on your grading, or you haven’t played guitar in weeks, or your dog needs to get in some kickass dog park hangs before it gets too cold.

Helping Hand: Mow the lawn, clean the basement, prune the tree. Today is the day that you make up for all the stuff you’ve been forgetting to do on the list. It doesn’t have to be all bad, make it fun! Walk around and see what needs to be done and yell at it like Chris Jericho. Tell that pile of leaves it just made the list!

Full Hesher: Do like my pal Nick does and go to a Bills bar and get blackout drunk. I feel like if I really wanted to just say fuck it and tie one on, Bills fans would be the ones I’d do it with. The Bears being on bye seems like the best time to get put through a table.

Binge Watching: You’ve missed a lot of great television while opting to watch Matt Nagy be himself on Sundays/Mondays/Thursdays. You’re gonna spend your Sunday catching up on, uh, actually I don’t know if there’s anything good on since I pretty much only watch sports these days. I’m fucking lame.

I’m gonna be honest, I’ll be watching RedZone. Fuck it, I might as well enjoy some good football this week. I’ll spend my morning listening to fantasy football stuff as I cook lunch, and enjoy the bye. I’m not inviting a damn soul over, I am going to sit on my ass and just love watching football.

Loving the Bears is fucking stressful, we all need a week off too.

Football

Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Week 5 Roundtable

By Sam Fels 1329 0

So what do we make of this loss and the 3-2 record at the bye? On the one hand, the Bears looked bad for most of three quarters against a bad team and the game was still there to be won and they gave it away. On the other, they were missing two of three starters on the d-line, and were with a backup QB who proved last year he can get you out of one game but not much more. Just one of those days?

Tony Martin (@MrMartinBruh): For about ten minutes, I was optimistic that the Bears would’ve somehow gotten to the bye at 4-1 and had a week to get healthy and make a real push. This one stung, for more reasons than one. The defense got pushed around, that special teams sequence that gave Oakland a first down on the eventual game winning drive was awful, and the offense once again abandoned the running game.  Honestly, Daniel played well enough to win the game, but they just didn’t have enough. That first half was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen as a football fan.

I didn’t see Chuck Pagano blitz too much today, and the Bears got run on in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. Get well soon, Akiem.
Brian Schmitz: As I wrote, I am under the impression that this team may not be as good as everyone thought they were. The offensive line is either really hurt or really bad, but they are probably both. The run game is nonexistent. But MOST importantly, the offense is getting out-schemed at every turn. That is where the truth lies.
Tony: I’m pretty sure Kyle Long is either done mentally or no longer physically effective. He is becoming an actual detriment on the offensive line. In fact, the line is one of the biggest problems with this team. No matter who is at QB, they’re being rushed and there are no real seams opening up for the running game unless David Montgomery is creating them via the cutback.
Is there any tweak to the o-line or offense over the bye that you’d like to see? Or is even possible? Obviously new personnel isn’t really an option. 
Tony: The offensive line simply needs to improve, by any means necessary in my opinion. You’d think it would be obvious to Nagy, who works with the most fearsome defensive line in the NFL, that if his offensive line isn’t holding up to switch it up to shorter dropbacks and quick hitting plays. The Bears have been beaten this year on defense when the quarterback gets rid of the ball quickly and the running game is established; I’m wondering when he game plans similarly for his own offense.
Brian: The only way to tweak the O-Line would be to put them in a better position to succeed. Which would entail more roll outs in the passing game and more outside runs in the running game. Getting outside in the run game requires your TE’s and receivers to be responsible enough to block. So basically, we are asking out skill guys to run block because the line cannot. This will assuredly end well.
Tony: Kyle Long- as Lizzo said: “I’m crying because I love you (but you probably shouldn’t be starting at guard)”
Football

Three Things We Learned From Week 5

By Sam Fels 1270 0

Hello! This is something I did at FanSided last year. But Fansided is dumb and evil, so I’m bringing it to you, the people. It’s not mean to be serious, because you shouldn’t take the NFL and the Bears seriously.

You Can Only Get Away With A Backup Defensive Line For So Long

For one week, the Bears rolled in backups, beer vendors, and a couple janitors into the rotation against the Vikings and they were all getting to pose behind the line after making a play. They didn’t need Akiem Hicks or Bilal Nichols that week, and you wondered if they were just unearthing people like Sarumon and the Urukai. But there’s a reason Hicks is an All-Pro level player, and you’re supposed to struggle to replace him. Trying to do it for a second straight week showed that.

Without Hicks, the Raiders seemed to figure out they could throw multiple people at Khalil Mack and Eddie Goldman, and no one else was going to be able to make them stop. And that’s how it proved. We’re doing the Leonard Floyd early-season thing, where we wonder why he isn’t running wild when only facing one guy. Backups proved to be backups. It’s football, injuries happen, and they determine a lot of what will happen in January. It went well for the Bears last year, which is why it still feels like such a missed opportunity.

If Hicks’s elbow suddenly putting up a carnival tent inside his skin keeps him out long-term, it’s a huge problem. Especially for however long Nichols is out along with it. Once you get your backups on film, you give everyone a chance to see what they can and can’t do. The Raiders and Jon Gruden pretty quickly figured out what they couldn’t. At least the Bears will know what’s coming.

You Can Only Get Away With Your Backup QB For So Long

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, because we did this last year. Chase Daniel gets you out of the Thanksgiving game, as backup QBs are kind of designed to do. Get you out of a game. One. Two is pushing it. So the next week, Daniel made enough plays to keep the Bears in it against the Giants when the defense took the week off, but he also made enough plays to get you beat. He got you out of the Vikings game. Here comes a second straight game with him behind center, and boy didn’t it look the same? Enough plays to give you the lead, enough plays that put you in that hole to begin with and then lost you the game. That’s kind of what a non-starting QB in the NFL looks like. There’s a reason every rule is meant to protect starting quarterbacks. Your season is fucked if they get hurt.

There were two sacks at least that were from Daniel holding the ball too long, possibly because he’s not much taller than a fire hydrant. In more Rex Grossman comparisons, he has a nasty habit of running straight backwards when under pressure instead of stepping up, possibly because stepping up into the pocket would cut off his vision even more. He should have had three INTs, got bailed out by a roughing-the-passer call for one (and game-changing penalties appear to just be things that are going to happen every week). The other two were bad.

He didn’t get much help. It went a touch overlooked in the buildup to the season, but the Bears couldn’t really run the ball last year. We pinned it on Jordan Howard or Matt Nagy’s over-creative nature, but there weren’t many places for Howard to run. We wanted to think the more explosive and elusive David Montgomery and another year of Nagy’s schemes would get around it. Yeah, well, Kyle Long is made of more spare parts than the car they give Matt Damon at the end of “Good Will Hunting.” Charles Leno was doing his own version of Hamilton out there, and has been. Again, switching Whitehair and James Daniels…was that really so clean?

The difference in football is that you can’t solve it from outside the organization. In the other three sports, if your right fielder can’t hit or your second-line left-winger gets hurt or you need a new small forward, there’s a trade deadline for that. Football doesn’t work that way. How do you solve this internally though?

Everyone Is An Expert On Jet Lag Now

This was an argument making the rounds right around the second quarter, and it was the Bears decision to fly out to London on Thursday evening, arriving Friday morning. What it ignored was that the last time the Bears had to do this, they thwacked the Buccaneers after flying out on Thursday. Most teams fly out on the Thursday. They get a plane you and I will never see. They have experts on this we don’t. They weren’t attempting to sleep in a coach seat next to the smelly guy while sitting up. It’s fine. Whatever. They lost because they got their ass whipped, not because they were groggy. Shut up.

Football

Week #5 – Bears 21, Raiders 24: Jon Gruden Bitch-Slaps Matt Nagy; Bears Lose To Raiders

By Brian Schmitz 1765 0

What if maybe, just maybe, this Bears team isn’t as good as we thought? Sunday evening in London provided the Bears an opportunity to show the world that they are indeed the Super Bowl contenders that they think they are. Then, unfortunately, the game began and the oft- celebrated Bears team was punched square in the dick. Time, after time, after time. To see an opponent physically dominate the Bears on defense AND offense was a surprising as it was disappointing.

But why were they dominated? The answer is because the more I see this offense, the more I believe that Matt Nagy has been figured out. We’ve blamed Jordan Howard. We’ve blamed Mitch Trubisky. We’ve blamed the O-Line. But really, the blame needs to fall on the shoulders of the guy who is calling the plays. I get it – Nagy is cool. His players like him. He’s great with the media. That’s all great, but it doesn’t mean dick when you can’t score points with any sort of consistency. This loss and this unspectacular season are on Matt Nagy.
Should we really blame Nagy for a team that came out flat, and stayed flat? Probably not, but if you are looking for excuses, you can blame the overseas travel, the late week arrival in London, and of course, a plethora of injuries to key players. However, any or all these excuses should not have resulted in the type of ass kicking that Raiders orchestrated. Don’t kid yourself, the Raiders were the better team today and if not for some hideous turnovers by Derek Carr, the Bears very well could have been shut out.

Where did it all go wrong? It started early folks. The entire first half had the look of the Raiders playing the role of the Chicago Bears. They pressured Chase Daniel on almost every drop back and parlayed that with an epic run defense that held the Bears to a grand total of 16 rushing yards. The 17-0 first half whitewash could and should have been even worse had Richie Cognito, who is a certifiable crazy person, not committed a questionable personal foul penalty that forced the Raiders out of field goal position. The 1st half numbers tell you all you need to know about how this team started:
Points 0
1st Downs 2
Total Yards 44
Passing Yards 28
Times Sacked 3
Turnovers 1
Rushing Yards 16
Penalties 3
Time of Poss. 10:07

Meanwhile, the defensive unit formerly known as the Bears was not much better, giving up the following:
Points 17
1st Downs 14
Total Yards 208
Passing Yards 109
Times Sacked 0
Turnovers 0
Rushing Yards 99
Penalties 0
Time of Poss. 19:53

The 2nd half afforded the Bears the opportunity to cash in on some nonsensical Derek Carr decisions, but this was a game in which you were never comfortable with the way things were going. Chase Daniel looked like a backup quarterback most of the day, which is troubling since Mitch Trubisky is essentially a glorified backup at this point. Daniel finished 22-30 for 231 and 2/2. On the surface, this isn’t the worst of days. However, both INT’s came at the most inopportune of times and he also had a terribly thrown ball picked off which was negated by a penalty. One positive we can take from Daniel’s performance is that there will not be any talk of a QB controversy this week; so, we have that going for us…which…is nice.

Still, with all the shit we saw from the Bears, this team was still in position to win the game. Late in the 4th quarter, The Raiders would have to go 97 yards to score a touchdown and win. 97 yards against the leagues best defense? Not happening right? Well, you know what happened. The Bears forced a punt, but where called for running into the punter. Then they give up a fake punt for a 1st down. Then Derek Carr put on his big boy pants, made some great throws, spread the ball around to 5 different receivers, and delivered the most impressive drive a Bears opponent has had all season. Touchdown Raiders. Game. Over.

Where does this leave us heading into the Saints game in 2 weeks? Well, we are looking at a Bears team who is lucky to be 3-2 and very likely could or should be 1-4. It would be a damn shame to waste this generationally talented Bears defense on a team that can’t score points with any consistency. I am afraid that is what we are going to continue to see from this team moving forward this season.

Football

Week 5 – Bears vs Raiders Matchup: Oakland vs What Could Have Been

By Wes French 1360 0

I know you’ve seen the stat. It’s pretty damning.

Since the start of the 2018 season, it’s as follows:

Yikes.

So Khalil Mack, on his own, has matched production of the Oakland Raiders since they made the decision to not pay him. The team a whole hasn’t fared much better, notching a 6-14 record since the deal, acquiring more future draft picks than wins. Oh, and there was the whole sideshow event this Summer with Antonio Brown, another star that Jon Gruden deemed worthy of the massive contract, only to have him throw himself out of town with tantrums before he played a snap in the Black and Silver.

Curious, that choice. To NOT give the requisite guaranteed money to a star pass rusher in his prime and then turn around and trade for an end-of-his-prime, if not twilight of his career, Wide Receiver with a history of on/off the field issues is pretty odd. But it’s not that odd when you consider Gruden, and his old school machismo persona. He took over a team he previously had coached for, but this time he had all the power he’d lusted for. He saw a 12-4 team, a playoff team, from 2016 go down it’s leg in 2017 and fall to 6-10. And then he saw the team’s best player talking about wanting the biggest contract for the position ever. All this added up to Gruden being able to show everyone in the organization who held the power. That, FRENTS, is a special kind of dick-swinging.

So what’s the matchup here? did I bury the lede?

This is the REVENGE game. The VINDICTIVENESS game. The THIS COULD BE US BUT YOU PLAYIN’ game.

Khalil Mack vs the entire soon-to-be Las Vegas Raiders. Let’s see what some of the beat have been saying this week…

So Mack is good. Okay. What else…

Oh. So the guy they drafted to take over the pass rush for Mack won’t be able to play, or arguably their best WR…

Narrator: They did not, in fact, get five downs.

At least the Raider OLine is sorta prepared?

Oh.

 

If you pray, pray for the Derek Carr and the Raiders on Sunday.

photo credit up top to Kevin Fishbain