adam

Nope and I thought about that. Ultimately the best stat is the % inside the 20 from all punts capable of landing there.

His raw inside the 20 was 4th but on 82 punts. His average inside the 20 was actually below league average.

Hopefully Stinger's surgery went well and he is recovering today. Ice up son, we got some Fantasy Football coming up.

I will add one extra player, but from Special Teams. I think we are going to see an elite Tory Taylor with fewer total punts, but his yards per punt and % inside the 20 will go up.

That 84 Team was wild. The defense held opponents under 10 pts, 7 times. Every win, including the playoff win against WAS, the defense allowed 14 or less. In every loss, they allowed 20 or more. So they were 11-0 allowing 14 or less and 0-7 when allowing 20 or more for the season (including playoffs) What is even crazier is that followed a season where they went 7-0 when allowing 19 or less in 1983, and then followed it up with the 85 team that went 16-0 in those games. Check out how good Dikta's teams were when they allowed 19 or less: 7-0 in 1983 11-0 in 1984 16-0 in 1985 13-0 in 1986 7-1 in 1987 (NO 19-17) Strike season - Bears blew a 17-3 halftime lead. 13-0 in 1988 5-1 in 1989 (GB 14-13) - Bears blew 13-7 lead in 4th quarter. 10-1 in 1990 (WAS 10-9) - Bears blew 9-0 halftime lead. 82-3 when holding opponents to 19 or less from 1983-1990 and led in all 85 of those games. Wow. The team was also highly dependent on McMahon's health. Fuller was the only QB to lose in 1985 and 1986 regular seasons. McMahon was 17-0, Tomczak was 6-0, Flutie was 1-0, Fuller was 4-3. McMahon was 36-5 as a starter from 84-88 but missed so many games. Putting those two together, from 83-88, McMahon never lost a game when the Bears defense allowed 19 or less. In an odd mirror to that, Fields has never won a game when his defense has allowed 21 pts or more, he is 0-22 in those games.

Doing some stat comparisons, it really is hard to find a way for the Bears to not have a top 10 offense. If Johnson's offense only brings last year's offense halfway to his annual totals (for EPA/Play), then when you nudge it further considering the offensive roster upgrades (Thuney, Dalman, Jackson, Loveland, Burden), it could easily be a top 5 unit.

For sure, on the wait-and-see. There are way too many offseason champions that never work out. I remember the Philly Dream Team that flamed out. That was pretty funny. On Davis though. He had a ton of red flags, more so than any FA the Bears signed or traded for this year. I would say the biggest question mark is Dayo and that is just because his contract value. Also, as much as every team has a goal for the Super Bowl, I think the Bears are at least one more year away from being perennial contenders. I think that is where the wait and see is for me. I know they will be improved, but I just don't know by how much.

Yeah, and the first 4 games are somewhat favorable. MIN at home against McCarthy to open the season, then to DET (short travel), back home against DAL, then out to LVR. Opening Day MNF on the road for your first start is pretty tough, so I think the Bears have the edge there. With DET, I think that game becomes a toss up because of the coaching staff turnover on both sides, and the unknown health of Hutchinson. DAL has a new coaching staff with Flus as the DC, then the Raiders.

Yeah, absolutely. The only thing that could stop Williams now is an injury. There is no way he could put up 3,500 passing yards in the shit show last year and some how not hit 4K doing the exact same thing. Everything around him improved, and in some areas, a lot. Coaching and O-Line upgrades are so big they are hard to quantify. That is in addition to still adding top end skill position players in Loveland and Burden. Because of the skill position depth with little drop off, I could see the Bears really blowing teams out in the 4th quarter where their skill guys still have fresh legs and the DBs have been on the field the entire time.

DomRob. He is in a contract year, new DC and HC, improved DT rotation will draw attention away from him. He won't have a Pro Bowl year, but I can see him getting 5-6 sacks, which would be 2-3x his career total.

Kmet gets a lot of hate, but he did more with less than most TEs in the league.

So I have seen media discussing the leap Goff took when he went from LA to DET. They have tried to project that same leap onto Williams this year. Now I can see using that as a starting point, but Williams is destined for a much bigger leap in my opinion. The gap between McVay and Waldron/Brown is massive. The fact that Johnson got something more out of Goff than McVay did should speak to how good of a coach and play caller he is. This is also evident by the down year Goff had in between McVay and Johnson with Anthony Lynn as OC in 2021.

This is considered the biggest surprise for the Bears. I had to lol over it, as we are talking about LB3 on a defense that plays in a package with an LB3 less than 25% of the time. However, it actually highlights something else, that the Bears roster is pretty solid. Outside of Jones vs Trapilo, every starter and key backup is already set as far as I am tracking. Maybe you could make a case for CB2 and Stevenson vs Smith/Frazier?

Nice to see Brisker out there, JJ looks faster. The hype train is full steam ahead.

Fields is such a weird case, he is one of 40 QBs in NFL history with 4K Passing yards and 2K Rushing yards (career totals). Of that group, he has the 2nd fewest passing yards (Bobby Douglass), and is below Tyrod Taylor, Colin Kaepernick, and Daniel Jones. His career arch is looking very similar to Marcus Mariota's (started as rookie, then jumped around on one year deals, now on 5th team). Fields is on his 3rd team.