Football

Bears Week 3 Recap – That was fun, until it wasn’t

By Wes French 1002 0

Club Dub is open for business after the Bears outlasted the Racial Slurs of Washington in a true tale of two halves, 31-15. Mitchell Trubisky was more encouraging than not, but still had some WTF moments. The defense asserted itself early and often but left a lot to be desired in closing out the win. Matt Nagy had his best game in along time, but will need to overcome some injuries to key players to keep this win streak alive.

Trubs was as accurate as he’s been since before the shoulder injury last Winter, throwing for 3 TDs and capping a fantastic first half with an absolute dime to Taylor Gabriel for a long TD on 3rd and long. Mitch went into the half 20-23, 173 yards and those three scores with a 28-3 lead. The second half turned on Mitch, though, after he made an atrocious throw on an attempted fade route that landed well short of Allen Robinson and into the arms of Josh Norman for another Red Zone interception.

That turnover flipped the game, as Washington would close the gap to 28-15 early in the 4th quarter while the Bears offense stalled to a halt. The defense was there to bail out their Quarterback with a late fumble recovery to help ice the game, but it can’t be ignored that Mitch was not the one to put the emphatic exclamation point on this one. David Montgomery did what everyone has been saying he can do and iced the game with some very nice work on the ground, ensuring Washington no opportunity at a shock finish. Trubs finished just 25-31 for 231 yards and those three first half scores.

Khalil Mack was in the Washington backfield all night, accounting for two sacks including a sack fumble that set up a short TD drive early in the second quarter. That was just one of five turnovers created on the evening, with Kyle Fuller adding an interception on top of Ha Ha Clinton-Dix double and one for a score. Akiem Hicks added a fumble recovery but also aggravated his nagging knee injury and will be re-evaluated Tuesday at Halas Hall. The secondary is still a work in progress as well despite the INT binge, giving up massive chunks at times while sitting in Pagano’s favored zone scheme. Maybe that’s just the give to the take aways, but it looked real ugly as Case Keenum and Scary Terry McLaurin gouged the defense in the 2nd half.

Taylor Gabriel, who caught all three touchdowns, left in the second half with a concussion, and while the hit in question didn’t look all that bad you just never know how long those things will linger. Leonard Floyd was shaken up in the first half, but returned and closed out the game – still probably something to monitor as the Bears head home for a date with rivals Minnesota.

 

 

Football

Bears Week 3 – Matchups to Watch: Something’s In The Air

By Wes French 758 0

He did it again. “DJ Yung Milwaukee” lent his talents for another tandem matchups post from your resident Bears heads at FFUD.

“Big shouts out to my boy Wes for letting me drop another guest verse on a Bears positional preview; if our tandem breakdown of the Bears/Broncos was the FFUD version of Mariah Carey’s iconic “Fantasy” remix with ODB, let’s try to make this her even more legendary collab with Jay-Z on “Heartbreaker”.”

Enjoy. 

Tony on the Bears Defense vs the Racial Slur’s Offense

How ugly could Monday get? Writing about Washington’s offense is difficult. Case Keenum makes Joe Flacco look like Joe Theismann, and though I don’t want Case Keenum’s leg to explode it’s not hard to see Khalil Mack going full L-T on an offensive line missing its star LT. Statistics show that from 2010-2019 the average amount of games it takes for a first round quarterback to make his first start is 4.5, and if this game is a bloodbath (which it has the potential to be), it wouldn’t be too far of a reach to suggest there’s a chance Dwayne Haskins makes an appearance in garbage time.

Speaking of garbage time, this Washington team has gotten a lot of their offensive numbers in situations where they are down multiple scores late in games this season. So, the question is: which Washington offense shows up? Is it the offense we saw in the first half against Philly, or the offense that has played their other six awful quarters of football this season? The answer will be found through the air; “Scary” Terry McLaurin looks like a steal in the 3rd round of this years’ draft. He has speed to go over the top, finds the holes in the zone well, and with Chuck Pagano’s designed man-blitzes, look for Keenum to test the Bears with the deep ball.

Outside of Scary Terry, the skill position players on this team are a real haunted house of mediocrity. Paul Richardson isn’t a threat, Vernon Davis will put up a solid  three-catch, 24-yard performance, and the sun has set on All Day. Chris Thompson is an issue coming out of the backfield, so look for the Bears to drop down a safety or ask Buster Skrine to cover the backfield receiving specialist.

Washington’s run offense permits a pathetic average of 0.31 yards before first contact on running plays, so the Bears up front will feed. The right side of their offensive line looks so bad that any two fans sitting in FedEx field that Dan Snyder hasn’t personally banned might be able to do a better job, given they’ve had a couple $8 beers and are wearing hogs’ noses. The Bears defense is gonna steamroll these nerds.

Wes on Mitch Trubisky vs the Racial Slur’s Defense

Lets look at some numbers for this week’s exercise:

Mitchell Trubisky: 68.1, 39.1, 36.6, 15.1, 33.1 and 3.05

Racial Slurs Defense: 455, 78.3, 6, 168, 68, 34:54

Beep boop beep beep, numbers! Okay, so you’re not a computer and these all just look like squiggly lines and decimals. But here’s the story they tell…..

Trubs is bottom-10 in the league QB rankings with an overall accuracy-percentage of 68.1. This number drops to 39.1, still bottom 10, on passes that travel beyond the first down marker. Moves these numbers to 3rd down plays only, and you get a disastrous 61.1 accuracy %, which has translated to a comically bad 33.1 QB rating and 3.05 yards per attempt. That ain’t it.

Enter the Washington defense, just what the doctor ordered (or so Matt Nagy hopes). Washington is allowing an average of 455 yards/week early in the season and opposing QBs are a league-leading 78.3 in completion %. They’ve also allowed six passing scores thus far, good for 31st in the league. All of this shapes up to help improve the Bears sputtering offense, but how?

Trubs does lead the league in, wait for it…….targets to his RBs. By a lot. 36.6% of his targets have gone to RBs this season, a full 4% more than any other QB. Compare that with a sub-50% target share for his WR, good for second to last to only Baltimore (who lean HEAVILY tight end). Monday night presents the best opportunity to level this disparity out. Dak Prescott laid out the blueprint in Week 2: 25 of his 30 passes travels 15 yards or fewer through the air, continually abusing the poor coverage and soft zones to stack completions.

The Washington defense is also 31st in rushing yards allowed per game at 168. Herein lies another way to get Mitch and the offense going, through establishing the run and then exploiting the secondary through play-action. Mitch has only thrown out of play-action 15.1% of the time this season for 72 yards, more numbers that put him among the bottom third of the league. Week 2 in Denver saw Nagy lean heavily on the run after basically abandoning it against Green Bay. A more balanced play calling plan should open up the opportunity for big plays via play-action, again something everyone saw Dak do against this defense last week. That successful balanced attack shouldn’t be tough to do against a team that’s currently averaging 68 defensive snaps and 34:54 on the field each week.

Of course, the Washington defense could be looking at Nagy, Mitch and Co. and thinking the same thing – here’s the week that we right the ship against a bottom tier offense. Something’s gotta give between these two bumbling units, and which side prevails/how they execute will tell us if Nagy knows what he’s doing and if Mitch is capable enough to not waste this Chicago defense.

Passing stats from https://nocheckdowns.com/

 

Football

Week #3 – QB Study: Would You Rather Have CASE KEENUM As Your Quarterback?

By Brian Schmitz 831 0

Do you know who the quarterback of the Washington Redskins is? No? Well, when the Bears face the Redskins this week on Monday night, they will be going up against a quarterback who is quietly having as good of a season of anybody not named Mahomed or Prescott. Redskins QB Case Keenum–yes, Case Keenum–has started the season by putting up the following gaudy numbers:

There is not a single stat on this line that an OC, HC, or GM wouldn’t be ecstatic about. Now take it a step further and realize that every stat is better than what Mitch T is doing here in Chicago. Pay especially close attention to the 70% completion number, the 300 yards/game, the 5-to-0 TD to INT ratio, the two sacks taken, and finally, the 111.2 passer rating. If, and it’s a big if, these numbers continue through the next 14 games, Case Keenum will be in line for a Pro-Bowl appearance and more importantly for him, a huge pay raise heading into unrestricted free agency. Could this be a guy that is brought in to replace compete with Mitch Trubisky next season? Only time will tell, but I’m not counting it out and I’m not not excited about it.

Monday Night Football Matchup

Enough about next season, what can we expect for Keenum on Monday night? For one, you can anticipate most of his throws to be completed 10 yards from the line of scrimmage. Last week against a very good Cowboys defense, Keenum’s throw chart looked like this:

What also stands out is Coach Jay Gruden’s affinity for both traditional screen and tunnel-screen looks. 12 of Keenum’s 37 attempts were within two yards on the LOS. Additionally, only three passes over 20 yards were attempted. What all this means is that the Bears linebackers will play a significant role in pass coverage; something that they struggled with against Green Bay in the opener when Jimmy Graham was able to get open for much of the game.

The Redskins QB throw chart in Week 1 against an Eagles defense that quashed the Bears in the playoffs last season was very similar within that 10-yard range. However, the screen package was not as evident as most of the short passes were the 3-7 yards range. Keenum’s overall performance against the Eagles was uber-proficient:

In Comparison

Just in case you were wondering, here is a quick snapshot of Mitch Trubisky’s performance against what amounts to same Eagles defense last year:

My biggest takeaway from comparing these charts was that Keenum was vastly more effective on virtually the same amount of attempts. What is ultimately most maddening about the overall comparison is that Keenum was undrafted while we all know where Mitch was drafted and what was given up to get him. Fuck!

Can Case Keenum Beat The Bears By Himself?

On Monday night, Keenum will ultimately be responsible for how his offense performs. The Redskins running game is brutal; rushing for 28 yards and 47 yards in their first two games. Adrian Peterson will go down as one of the greatest dads running backs in NFL history but it’s not 2009 anymore and Peterson is probably best suited not suiting up. The dire running back situation puts the onus on Case Keenum and his receivers to carry the franchise. Keep an eye on rookie Terry McLaurin, who has been phenomenal thus far with almost 190 yards and two TDs thru two weeks. However, in what appears to be an effort to ease McLaurin into the offense, he lines up exclusively on the left side of the field. If this trend continues, this will undoubtedly help the Bears match up with the electric rookie out of THE Ohio State.

So What Does This All Mean?

Reskins coach Jay Gruden is an offensive genius. He is going to find ways to match up his skill guys with linebackers and try to exploit as many of these scenarios within 10 yards of the LOS as possible. I think Case Keenum will continue to perform at an elite level and the Redskins will defeat the Bears in a very close game.