Bearstalk

As expected Roquan Smith was put on IR. Former Buc and former Sooner OLB Devonte Bond was signed to the team in his roster spot. Looks to be a speed rusher so maybe competition for Floyd during the offseason? With Smith out on IR, the defense has lost Trevathan, Amukamura and Hicks (to name key pieces) on the defensive side of the ball and their replacements; KPL, Tolliver and to some degree Nichols have all stepped up and played pretty darn well. That I think is a credit to Pagano and his ability to coach his side of the ball. And to be fair and not lost in all this is the sudden resurgence of the offense with credit thrown towards Nagy. On the of…

Here we go! The real test starts this week. We need to take care of business this week or the remaining games will only matter for draft position. In our Week 1 loss, Montgomery only got 6 carries as Davis started. Miller only had 1 target and did not have a reception in Week 1. This week should be a lot different in terms of the offense. We are going to score some points. On defense, the biggest change will be with our LB corps. However, with the forecast, running the ball is going to be critical and Kwit is a huge run stopper, which works in the Bears favor. KPL is the wild card, as is Tolliver. If those two guys can step up and we can get some production out…

I'm just looking at some footage from the Cowboys game, and able to watch certain players rather than the ball on the second look. Gosh Leno is terrible. Just awful. I think if you had to find one player to blame the whole season on, he might make a good candidate. Of course it is more than one player, but Leno is probably the worst player at any position on our team. YUCK!

Saw on the Chicago Bears website Robinson was the team’s selection to be a finalist of the Walter Payton - Man of the Year award. And he desires to remain in Chicago for the remainder of his career. Seems logical to me... I look forward to him being yet another Bear inducted into the Hall of Fame. https://www.windycitygridiron.com/2019/12/10/21004628/allen-robinson-chicago-bears-all-time-franchise-johnny-morris-walter-payton-nagy-ryan-pace-contract

https://www.chicagobears.com/news/bears-fans-uncover-long-lost-footage-of-historic-game You never know what old houses have tucked away.

Braunecker to IR to make room. He won't be back full strength but having his experience in the rotation so others get less snaps will be a big help to our Dline. https://www.chicagobears.com/news/roster-moves-hicks-activated-braunecker-to-ir I would not be surprised at all if Braunecker retires this offseason. He has long term plans to be a doctor or medical researcher. Weeks off trying to recover from another concussion might be the trigger for him to make the career change.

One former Cyclone (Rosenfels) trying to help another (Montgomery). https://twitter.com/i/status/1206968490567098368 If Nagy is serious about his "self scouting" then he'll realize he needs help in the running game. It could be the passing game is just his forte and that's fine but don't surround yourself with other passing game coaches (Helfrich). I see these two in Nagy's office over the summer scheming up new passing plays. Then the season comes along and they just call the same old running plays to mix in on occasion so they can say.. I called a running play now let's get back to passing.

With us locked into the 3rd place slot in the division, the only undecided opponent is the NFC East 3rd place finisher. Right now that is the Giants, but could be the Redskins. Either way, they are fairly the same opponent. The NFC North draws the AFC South and the NFC South in 2020. So if the season ended today, we would only have 2 games against playoff-bound teams (Saints and Texans) outside of our division. Our problem is we will more than likely have 2 teams in our division (and 4 games) against more playoff teams. However, 6 games against playoff teams is not too bad. Here is what it will look like: HOME: NFC North Saints 11-3* Buccaneers 7-7 Texa…

Smart move - just shut him down. https://www.bleachernation.com/bears/2019/12/21/akiem-hicks-ruled-out-for-sundays-game-vs-chiefs/ Peace

Mahomes vs Trubisky, Reid vs Nagy, Butker vs Pineiro! A bunch of storylines this week, except the Bears at 7-7 have very little to play for while the Chiefs are essentially only jockeying for the #3 or #4 seed. The #4 seed gets Buffalo and the #3 seed gets Pittsburgh or Tennessee. After that loss, and how it ended on the 2 yard line. I don't know how the Bears get up for this game. I am thinking the secondary gets torched by KC as no one can stay with Hill, Hardiman, or Kelce. Mahomes might be out at halftime with a huge lead. The Bears have too many injuries and nothing to play for. The offense is still a mess, so it could get ugly. I am thinking Chiefs 34…

We score 3 points in each game.

Probably a bad time to do this after a bad game but I have a lot of free time in Thailand. First of all as much as Nagy and Pace has a bad year but there not going anywhere. So trying to create that chaos is a waste of time. For 2020 we have 12.5 in cap space. 1. Cut Long saves us 8 mil. The rest of the line isn't going anywhere cap hits would be terrible for them. 2. At WR give ARob a new contract to reduce this years cap hit of 13 mil. ( reduce cap hit to 9 this year.)Cut Gabriel 4.5 , and Patterson to save 5 mil 3. Floyd is not a pass rusher but can play football. Due a contract of say 3 year= 27 mil with only 10 guaranteed. Saves 4 mil.…

So I was looking into the free-agent QBs going into 2020. There are a lot of options with potential huge differences in salary cap hits. Take a look at the list below sorted by DVOA. The guys with asterisks are free agents and the guys with a carrot are potential cap casualties. To me, there is no point to add a guy who would essentially have the same production as Trubisky. Looking at the guys in his group, those are all the same type of performers, all underwhelming. So I would target no one worse than Keenum out of the available pool of (Keenum, Brissett, Rivers, Bridgewater, Moore, Carr, and Tannehill). If you reduced the candidate pool by age first, that w…

Bears playing for .500, Vikings playing for absolutely nothing. Hard to see the Bears not winning this one with Minnesota basically resting all their starters. Bears 20-10

So the Bears finished 8-8, and actually beat SI.com's prediction by a game. Football Outsiders nailed it. Sporting News had the highest projection at 11 wins. Here were some predictions: Sporting News 11-5 ESPN 10-6 CBS 9-7 Football Outsiders 8-8 SI.com 7-9 This year was a disappointment and the team was literally two plays away from finishing 10-6 (LAC and OAK games). Just think how good this team would be with a top-15 offense. They played so bad, yet won 8 games. That ultimately means we can only go up from here. With the leaner schedule next year, that should be worth at least a game and if we play better on offense, that's another two games. That…

Based on the cap space, pending free agents and projected draft picks, this is what the team has to do in the offseason (based on starters only): These are the 6 positions based on free agents or health that absolutely need a new starter in 2020: RG, TE, Edge, ILB, CB, S, if you add performance, you would have to add LT, RT, LG, and DE in there. 1. O-Line, RG is a hole and LT needs to be addressed in some way. Due to contracts we are stuck with Leno, Daniel, and Massie to go with Whitehair. The Coward project didn't work, and Lucas looked horrible. You take a look at Bars, draft someone early to start Day 1, and bring in a vet to compete somewhere in the starti…

The Bears did not have a TE with 100 yards receiving for the year for the first time since the 1960s. This has to be a priority to fix in the offseason. Realistically, Burton is back given his cap # and, hopefully, he can be the player he was in 2018 but they need to bring in another veteran. Shaheen and Sowell can go. Peace

Oh boy. It is clear that Pace and Nagy are staying, and they affirmed that Trubisky is their guy today. Even worse, when they, and Ted Phillips spoke, they mentioned the offense as a whole, giving examples of bad routes, bad QB choices, bad play calling, and unproductive running. Literally EVERYTHING but the OL. Now I understand, this may mean they are in the market for OL and/or QB and they dont want to telegraph that. So it's hard to read them. But we can look to this past season to see what they adjusted and what they didn't. Apparently, they all have each other's backs. The only possible leadership move this year would be to fire Pace if he wo…

I know it’s not Bears football but I’m a fan of Fangios and my sister lives near so... At any rate, saw this video and noticed Vic has his own “boom” type of speech. Wonder if it was Nagy that taught him that or the other way around? And gotta love his opening line.