adam

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.

I just listened to a crossover Podcast (Bears/Vikings), and it is always interesting to hear the other side cope. So this MIN guy basically said McCarthy is not a rookie QB because this is his 2nd training camp. So by definition, sure, but he was not talking about that. So he said the Darnold floor and Burrow ceiling for McCarthy is fair (from the recent article). LMAO, what? He also said MIN has a top-5 OLine because they signed Will Fries (played 268 snaps last year) and Ryan Kelly. Yet when the Bears trade for Thuney, Jackson, and sign Dalman, the Bears will be lucky to have a top 20 unit? I need whatever he is smoking. For me, I can't see MIN having another 14-win season. Not because they are worse, but because that is hard to do when you change QBs. Hell if they win 12, KOC should be CotY. DET has a lot of question marks losing both Coordinators and the health of Hutchinson at game speed is unknown. 10-12 feels like their range without know how good Goff will be without Johnson. GB is just GB, they definitely feel static and just added a rookie WR to meh WR corps, which doesn't move the needle for me because you are still dealing with Jordan Love.

and it also goes the opposite way, MIN won 14 games last year, but were probably more like a 10-win team. So if they only win 9 or 10 games, it will feel like a huge disappointment. I also think coaching/scheme changes are the biggest factors outside of a new QB on how much a team can change in one offseason. All the other positions have impact but it feels like those are orders of magnitude lower than QB and coaches. Like it is hard to name a good team with bad coaches. Most good teams have at least serviceable QBs, but on those good teams, there are bad CBs, LBs, WRs, RBs, TEs, OGs, etc.

With the Bears finishing 5-12 last year makes it feel like a herculean effort to even get to a winning record at 9-8. However, turn arounds with much more wins are almost commonplace nowadays. Last year alone, 3 of the top 9 teams in the NFL all had a win differential of +6 from the previous season: WAS 4-13 > 12-5 (+8) MIN 7-10 > 14-3 (+7) LAC 5-12 > 11-6 (+6) I feel like there is less correlation from year to year than ever before. In the season prior to winning 12 games, WAS lost their last 8 games, MIN finished 1-6 with their only win a 3-0 barnburner against LVR. LAC finished 1-8 and their only win was a 6-0 win against NE. So as much as this feels like the Bears are building on a 5-win season. They really are starting over with all teams 0-0. Ben Johnson has led an offense that has been top 5 in scoring and top 4 in yards in all of the last 3 seasons. While Dennis Allen, as a DC, has coached a top 11 scoring unit in his last 3 seasons as a DC. There were 7 teams to have a top 11 offense AND top 11 defense in 2024, they all made the playoffs, the worst team (DEN) had 10 wins, and their average win total for the group was 12.4.

11-6 is fair. I think there is a big variance because there are still a lot of unknowns with how the combination of things will work. We know Ben Johnson is a great play caller, and we can see how that impacts other teams with comparable play callers (Reid, McVay, Shanahan, LaFleur, etc). A good coach who is a great play caller almost gives every team a floor of 7 to 8 wins just by default. I think the Bears basement is 7 to 8 wins. That is if nothing goes right. RB and Edge are issues, LT never gets resolved, and Caleb doesn't take the next step. I think the median is 9-11 wins, the more things go right, the more wins.

Good luck with surgery!

GMs, I have renewed our annual TalkBears Fantasy Football Keeper league, which is now entering its 16th season. We need at least one new GM for this upcoming season. There may be more openings if we don't get commitments in time for the draft. Once we get the confirmations, we can schedule the draft for late August and I can send out the LeagueSafe payment dues ($75 per team). The winning payouts are as follows: 1st - $440 2nd - $200 3rd - $75 4th - $35 The payment deadline is usually Week 4, so people have some time to pay the dues. However, if payment is not received by then, that GM will be removed and the best recommended roster will be played for that team the rest of the season. If you have any questions, let me know, we normally conduct the draft a few days prior to the kickoff game around 7pm Central. I will send out a weekly reminder until the last week of July or until we have 10 commitments.

and I am sure Johnson will go more on 4th downs than the previous Bears coaches, maybe not to the level of Campbell, but I am sure he will go more than Flus/Waldron/Getsy ever did.

I was thinking JAX, new HC/Playcaller, bad division. CIN has to play BAL and PIT 4 times a year. I think it will come down to their defense. They are going to score 20+ every game.

I know I numbered them, but that was more for a count than a ranking.

Yeah he didn't need elite production in sacks to have a top 10 defense: 2023 Carl Granderson 8.5 Demario Davis 6.5 2022 Cameron Jordan 8.5 Kaden Elliss 7.0

What would be cool is if DA is content staying as one of the premier DCs (like Fangio) instead of trying HC again. Some people don't realize that NO was his 2nd stint as a HC. He was the Raiders HC from 2012-2014. Interestingly enough, he was fired in season both times and never finished his 3rd season with either team. However, people may also not know how good he has been as a DC. From 2017-2023 between his time as a DC and HC, his defense was top 10 in scoring 5 out of 7 years and 13th and 14th the other 2 years, and 5 years out of 7 in the top 10 in Takeaways. To put that into perspective, Fangio, in all his years as a DC and HC, never had a 7 year stretch where his defense finished in the top 14 in scoring defense or had 5 out of 7 years in the top 10 in Takeaways. I honestly think a lot of people are underestimating how good this defense can be.

It's just another illustration on how bad the franchise has been in the passing game. He didn't really do much in Philly, but that would've been enough to make him the best WR in franchise history.

Looking around the league, this year looks like it is going to be extremely competitive. I would say there are 20 competitive teams (w/ the Bears being one of them) that all have a shot at the playoffs. Then out of those 20, I would say 7 have a realistic shot at the Super Bowl. 1. PHI 2. KC 3. BAL 4. DET 5. BUF 6. LAR 7. LAC ------------- 8. TB (lost OC to JAX, easier division) 9. HOU (Easy division but) 10. WAS (was last year a fluke?) 11. DEN (was last year a fluke?) 12. GB (No secondary) 13. CIN (will they have a defense?) 14. PIT (which Rodgers will show up?) 15. SEA (Darnold vs Geno) 16. SF (Purdy without Deebo) 17. DAL (Can Dak rebound?) 18. MIN (depends on McCarthy) 19. ATL (depends on Penix, easier division)

Yeah, JSN warned us during his CHGO interview. That was a red flag then and still is today for Waldron. Now it seems like every position group is finally being coached right. I still find it wild that Eric Bieniemy is the RB Coach, Randle El the WR Coach, and Al Harris is the DB coach all the while having Dennis Allen as the DC and Ben Johnson as the HC/Play Caller. It doesn't feel real. We have been so beaten down by always getting the wrong HC, or a bad OC, etc, etc.

Goff had 3,700 passing yards to WRs and TEs, and his group was St. Brown, Williams, LaPorta, Patrick, Raymond, and Wright, so your 3,550 to WR/TEs checks out. I was a little extra optimistic and had him throwing for 4K to WR/TEs and about 450 to everyone else. My thinking was the top 6 pass catchers are so good, that there is almost no point to target anyone else. However, I am probably downplaying a guy like Zaccheaus, who has had 500 receiving yards in 2 out of the last 3 seasons. So that would also contribute into that 4K to WR/TEs.

I have seen some updated projections with Moore and Odunze both hitting 1K receiving yards. I think this has a great shot at happening.

Flus went on a Podcast recently and answered some questions related to this story. People seem to be crossing streams. Caleb never said he wasn't coach, or that they never watched film together. I still think this is a non-story that the media tried to make a thing in support of the book coming out. However, Cowherd did have a good nugget of info that I forgot about, that Flus was 0-18 on the road on Sundays as a HC. I double checked and he is correct. Flus had a win on MNF in 22 as his only road win, then doubled that to 2 road wins in 2023, but one was on TNF and the other MNF. Then he had zero road wins last year, and the Bears actually got a Sunday road win in Week 18 in GB, but Flus was long gone when that happened lol.