BearFan2000

Add to that I enjoyed watching the Packers lose yesterday. Rodgers with 3 picks and the offense with 4 turnovers to end their playoff hopes. This is probably the best Vikings team they've had in a long time. I feel like they have as good a shot as anyone to make it to the SB along with the Rams. I wouldn't count Philly out though Foles has done a good job taking over for Wentz. At least in the NFC it's nice to see some new blood in the playoff hunt. In the AFC it's hard not to expect the Pats to be the fav to represent in the SB but they've shown some chinks in the armor of late. It's hard to root for anyone when our Bears aren't in the mix though.

Coaching has been bad, but part of the issue with the penalties can be attributed to the musical chairs we've been playing on the OL. It takes an OL time together to gel and really work together well. When the line is constantly being shuffled for whatever reason you lose continuity which I do think effects the line's overall discipline, and definitely lowers it's effectiveness. As a lineman when the guy next to you or on either side of you changes a lot, it makes you have to think more than just play cause you haven't developed a trust or familiarity. It makes it more a line 5 individuals rather than a unit of 5 players. It effects your focus at leas on some level. I think this has played a part in issues with dumb penalties on our line. Not saying it's a large part because we do have repeat offenders who are frequently killing drives. And coaching does make a difference too as we have team wide discipline issues that are killing this team. One of the things that Pace must try to fix is stabilizing the offensive line. If our offense is going to find consistent success it has to start up front.

That's the thing that comes to mind about throwing for 10 yards or so on 3rd down when it's 3rd and longer and we're not converting. Converting third downs is far more important. Far to often on 3rd down our WR's routes come short of the sticks. Deafness will give that to you all day and come up to make the stop to force the punt/FG. But the positive of this is his accuracy has been good especially lately. If we can cut out the negatives on the earlier downs that keep putting us in third and long. The offense needs to get better at staying on schedule, giving us more 3rd and manageable. I like the links and it's a good read, there is hope for better days. Successful and consistent offenses don't put themselves in holes regularly. We just aren't good enough to constantly overcome negative plays on 1st and 2nd down. Just proof we need a better more disciplined line, and better weapons. It'll be interesting to see in these last games to see if our offense is able to build on last weeks success.

They should have never benched him to begin with. The guy has been the ultimate team player and class act through all the ups and downs. As a football fan what they did was inexcusable especially benching him to start Geno freaking smith. Seriously? Not a Giants fan but Eli deserves better. He was not the problem. The problem is no line, no WR's, no run game, and bad coaching... wait a sec. That sounds eerily familiar.

Agree, I love me some D but when your offense gets your QB killed down after down and you go 3 and out or turn over the ball with regularity it won't matter how good your D is they will wear down as the game goes on as they're on the field most of the game and often put in bad positions. A dominant D can keep you in games but at some point your offense has to do something. Right now we don't even have an offense that can sustain drives very often for our D to actually rest.

pathetic peformances all around. Defense only playing on 1st and second down, and resting on 3rd. It's embarrassing watching us get them into 3rd and medium to long and not coming up with a stop. If SF had any decent red zone offense we'd have gotten blown out by a 1 win team in our house.... The score only makes this game look close. 15-14 and it could have been 35-14. With only 7 of our 14 coming from the offense. We are getting outclassed weakly/yearly. Earlier in the year when we were saying in games with our D and run game. I was of the mindset to elevate Fangio to head coach and have him bring in an OC and DC to keep continuity. But even with the injuries on D there should be more production out of the talent we have left. I'm not sure anyone on our staff are the kind that can get the most out of our players. It's easy to coach when you have all stars like Vic had in SF and Fox had in Denver. I'm also tired of the retread coaches. We need to go after up and coming coaching talent. After looking more into Shaw I would really like to see him or someone like him come in and shake things up. Pace has one shot this offseason to fix the coaching issues that have plagued us or it's time to clean house again. I'm sick of this once proud franchise spinning it's wheels constantly having to change coaches/GMs because we can't right the ship. We are becoming the Browns.

My thoughts exactly. I'm tired of Fox and Logains hindering this team. Fangio has been the bright spot of this coaching staff and it shows on the field with our D showing major improvement in his time here. He has HC aspirations. Offer him HC position, can fox and the rest of the staff. Let Fangio bring in a likeminded DC to maintain the progress and continuity in his system. Then bring in a real NFL offensive Coordinator. I think if we make him HC and with it a respectable contract of decent length it would make his job filling out a staff easier. Vic is well respected in the coaching community.

Not sure if I care to look into the timeline for sure but does make me question how much his faking the injury coinciding with Rodgers going down and with him the Packers hopes of going anywhere this year. The timing of him playing up a possibly fake shoulder injury that he was looking into getting surgery leading the packers to cut him for not disclosing the "injury," only to be immediately claimed off waivers by the Pats and suits up days later with not even so much as a shoulder harness or seemingly any precautions that you normally see with such a "serious injury." Bennet is a tool, just like his brother. The only injury Martellus suffers is hurt ego, and not even surgery can fix that. It's very ironic that this episode lead him to be cut from a Packers team going nowhere and signed onto a team with legit SB aspirations.

Pats claimed him off waivers so now he's back in NE.

It's a far cry from smokin' Jay's "don't care" attitude. I like it. We finally have a QB with some kahunas and leadership. Seeing good things on the field as he's developing. I think this is why the team seemed to rally around him in preseason it's like they got new life when he'd come in. A QB must take command of the huddle and the offense. Get your teammates to believe in you and trust in your leadership is huge. Your teammates play for you, and they fight for you.

No doubt they will attack with blitzes from all angles, Trubisky will see that from here on out till he and the offense can prove they can beat it and use that aggressiveness to our advantage. Need to run more screens, this could be a way to get Cohen more involved and get him in open space with blockers in front. Like that video posted in another thread about hot reads there are plays where there is no hot called at the line or not in the play design. It's little things we can do with play design and reads that can help Trubisky out. I think we can take advantage of the Bulaga injury. We've watched our D grow in confidence and swagger. This unit is finding it's stride and keeping us in game against high scoring offenses like GB used to be with Rodgers. I think we can get after Hundley and make his day miserable. I can see us forcing turnovers that will help our offense.

he is fun to watch. Reminds me of a shorter Hester with better hands. If we can figure out how to utilize him to maximize his talent ala Sproles he could be a game changer for us. I cringe when we try to use him as a between the tackles RB cause that is not his game. Get him in space at the second level and he's dangerous. We need to use play design to get him free. He's still learning that not every play needs to be a home run. If it's not there take what the D gives you.

Last week was a disaster. I played the guy who has Ezekiel Elliot who again got his suspension put off so instead of him having to scramble for a RB he gets his stud to play. Sunday morning Zach Ertz is ruled out and I have to scramble for a fill in. Then AJ Green does his thing and gets tossed so I'm stuck with 1.6 for him. My opponent had Tyrod Taylor who goes off for probably his best game in years. I had just 3 out of my 9 starters muster double digits and my team didn't even reach 80 points. At 2-7 with just 5 games left, now it's officially a dumpster fire this year. Only way I make the playoffs is to win out and hope only one other team has 7 wins or higher, the top two teams in our league are both sitting at 7-2 and a good 2 games or so ahead of everyone else. The ironic thing is I have the second highest scoring team in the league. I'm hoping I can at least climb from 10th to 7th or higher and qualify for the consolation bracket. In our league the champ gets the 10th pick next year and the winner of the consolation bracket gets the 1st pick. Picks 2-9 are random draw.

It does stink to see him go down with an ACL when he was playing well and providing a spark for that team. From what I can tell he's a good kid so you hate to see it. The NFL is full of unknowns. Had we drafted him perhaps the injury doesn't occur, maybe it happens in preseason maybe later down the road. These are fluky injuries. Perhaps that he had an ACL injury in college played into Paces decision to lock in on Trubisky but it's something that is difficult to predict. There's no question however that Watson was more set up to succeed than Trubisky. Watson came into much better offense. Better weapons, better line, better coaching, etc. Outside of White we're starting no names that would not likely see the field on other teams let alone start. Having Cam and White both out hurts. It's also a little annoying seeing how well Deonte Thompson has done with Buffalo considering we cut him and kept Wheaton who's done nothing.

We literally have nothing to lose by trying out kickers over the bye. What is Santos' health status?

Agree and you hit on one thing that cannot be taught and that is desire and dedication to his craft. I remember them mentioning on the pregame that he was the first guy out on field before the game. You can look at his career to this point and his dedication and preparation are hard to miss. Even when he wasn't the starter at NC he prepared hard like he was so when his number was called he was ready and made plays. He's humble and puts a lot on himself to get better and works hard. That can't be taught you either have that in your character or you don't. On top of being a very talented and mobile QB I believe this will pay off well for him and for us. I can see him being the type of QB who stays hungry despite success rather than someone who'll just rest on his abilities or success. The drive to get better should serve him well. He has much to learn but he seems eager to do so.

It was a gut wrenching loss that given that if a few plays here and there went differently we could have upset the Saints in their house. As it is we held Brees without a TD pass at home that doesn't happen often. We got screwed by the refs on the TD pass and and at least one of the fumbles overturned where you never saw his knee (thought it was supposed to be indisputable visual evidence required to overturn a call). Play calling and execution both hurt us. For all the great things Howard does running the ball he lacks in pass catching ability. The drop he had should have been a walk in TD. The last drive 3rd and 1 and then 4th and 1 and we don't run the ball, I would have more faith at that point at gaining 1 yard on the ground in 2 plays than trying to find a WR who's not velcro'd to a defender. Fox challenging a call that has no shot at being overturned but not challenging the Miller TD or the fumble call earlier. Like others here have said we have 0 margin for error and we make mistakes we can't afford both in coaching and in execution. What I do take away from this game is our D is legit and has kept us in games. They have really found their identity and you can see the confidence and swagger growing on that side of the ball. If we can ever get our offense up to an average or better we can start building something special here. Imagine if we had even a decent scoring offense this team could start to make some serious noise. The positive here is much of the core of our D is fairly young. If we keep infusing youth and playing at this level we could in good shape for years. Then it's up to Pace and company to improve the offense to match the D. I've been impressed with Trubisky we let him play a little more today than we had and you see things in his game that give you hope that we may have finally found a QB to lead an NFL offense. That is exciting, but we need to get him help, in the form of blocking and weapons. This offseason will be crucial. We should get Meredith back, the rest of the season is an audition to see who can emerge and prove that they could be part of the future here. With Miller done for the year and possibly done for his career. Now more than ever we need Shaheen to step up and perform and show us why we spent a 2nd round pick on him. The opportunity is there can he make the most of it now. The overall arrow I feel is pointing up, comparing this team now to year 2 under Dr Doom where we were not only not competitive but looked uninspired. Remember the mess Pace inherited. Halfway through that season I could hardly bring myself to watch anymore. I think we all want a quick turn around and it's hard to be patient it really is because we're so sick of losing. And "rebuilding" can feel more like a label or excuse for losing. But there signs that things may slowly be turning around. If we get better blocking, more weapons, and a dependable kicker to go with this up and coming D we could become a serious contender.

Definitely thoughts and prayers with him and his family it was gruesome looking and turned out to be a very serious injury. Hope he makes a full recovery and doesn't suffer permanent damage. His career at least in Chicago is probably over, good guy, hard worker, very talented. Hate to see this happen. Wish him the best in recovery. Scary when you think of the possibility of losing a limb. Possibly the scariest Bears injury since Knox was folded in half.

Sure looks that way, he has been a beast for us, and he's making life easier for our LB's, he's a force on his own but his play frees up other playmakers. Glad we locked him up for at least the next 4 years. He makes our D better.

This. While admittedly, seeing Gould be consistent this year in SF it's easy to ask "why'd we release him?" But at the time we released him he had had back to back seasons where he was struggling more and more to be consistent. Perhaps he got his mojo back, but his last couple years here he wasn't right. We signed a retread in Barth as a stop gap not a future piece. I'm sure it will be something looked at in the offseason. Dependable kickers are not easy to find/come by. There are some good young ones coming into the league, like Jake Elliot, Butker, Tavecchio. Barth has been been bad and his misses have been costly as points have been hard to come by. I highly doubt the bears look at Barth as more than a fill in till we find someone better.

This is the lineup I went with fortunately this week my opponent's team barely showed up and I'm going into the Monday night game up 75 points barring an insane performance by the Broncos D I'll win this week handily. Also fortunately 2 (and possibly 3) of the 4 teams in my division could lose this week. Which helps in the standings. If they keep losing and I go on a little run I could creep back into the running for the 4 seed. Last year I won the championship and had slump but recovered to make the playoffs and once your in anything can happen. The way I've played the last several seasons has been like Stinger suggested is you stick your best players, and overthinking the lineups is where you mess yourself up. I've been league champ twice (including last year) since I learned to stop over tweaking my lineups. I would be making changes to my lineup all week, and Sunday mornings/afternoons. The more you lose in a season the more tempting it is to second guess and try to make changes. One year I was in second place with 5 weeks left and I outsmarted myself to finish on a 5 game losing streak and miss the playoffs entirely. What I've learned is some years just don't go your way whether it's injuries, unforeseen game flows. This has been one frustrating season week after week feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football and having Lucy pull it away. But that's the way it goes sometimes. One week I had a 20 point lead going into MNF my opponent had Fitzgerald who'd had 13pt and a 5 pt game and he goes off for almost 34 points The next week I go up against the guy who typically finishes dead last beat me soundly as my guys didn't show up especially Gordon who had his worst week Next week I'm only down like 8 points going into MNF and just need Diggs to get me 9 points when he'd been averaging close to 20. He gets me 1.4 Next week I'm up by 18 going into MNF and my opponent only had her kicker to go. Her kicker got her 21 points Last week in a tight matchup going into Monday night I had a good shot at winning I had Cousins and he had Wentz. Kirk had a big game but I came up three points short. It really is a crap shoot, you can study targets and touches, tendencies, which defenses present favorable match ups vs your specific player's position but game flow, and any given Sunday can flush that down the toilet.

I know this is not Bears related. Need help with my Fantasy lineup this week. 10 team PPR. My Roster QB - Kirk Cousins RB - Mark Ingram, Melvin Gordon, Chris Thompson, Dion Lewis, Alfred Morris WR - AJ Green, Keenan Allen, Amari Cooper, Stefon Diggs, Nelson Agholor TE - Zach Ertz K - Will Lutz D/ST - Panthers I'm 1-6 going into week 8. It's a must win here on out. Seems every week I have one or two guys have dud games and my opponent seems to always have at least one surprise player. I've been losing by mere points every week it's been maddening. QB, TE, K, and D/ST are a given. The logical starts would be RB - Ingram & Gordon, WR Green and Allen. Flex being either Thompson, Diggs, or Cooper and maybe Agholor or Lewis. I also put a waiver claim in for Evan Engram TE Giants that I could have Saturday could also be a flex option. I'm also wondering that since there are so many of us that do fantasy football maybe we could have either a dedicated thread for fantasy or a section for fantasy football posts here at Talk Bears.

Wasn't able to see the game due to celebrating our first anniversary in Cincy. All I have to go on are highlights and box scores. This just blows my mind 7 pass attempts.... 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can see 7 in a quarter, maybe a half given game flow but in an entire game??? And we are seeing this week week in and week out. Trubisky's first start they allowed him to use his abilities more and he looked better. Did they chose to take the game away from him because he threw a pick in his first start??? That says we don't trust you to learn, therefore we are going to use game plan to limit your opportunities for error despite the fact that doing so also severely limits opportunity for success. This has to be the most gutless play calling I've seen in some time. If all your going to do is hand off, stay in the pocket, take sacks, and only attempt a hand full of passes a game we might as well have stuck with Glennon as that's all he's capable of doing. You draft a kid #2 overall be cause you are impressed with his mobility, and all the good things that come him throwing well on the run then you tell him "here's your spot" don't move from there and just hand off. Once in a while we'll let you throw a pass. If not for the defense this is a loss and probably a bad one. If we don't step outside this microscopic box we've put Trubisky in we will get slaughtered next week. The D will only be able to hold up so long agains a high scoring offense like NO especially now that they have a run game to go with their air attack. I absolutely love what I"m seeing out of the D this year. Early on we weren't getting turnovers but were getting our hands on a lot of balls, those almost turnovers are turning into big plays. That is giving this D confidence. The secondary is playing better and now taking the ball away that is huge for the front 7 to be more aggressive. This D could be special, just wish we had an offense to go with it. One must ask, in what universe is this kind of offensive game plan in any way helpful to a rookie QB or a team in general. I don't care if you have Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, etc. back there throwing when you rarely throw you negate your QB and force your team to face 8-10 men boxes all game long because they don't fear your passing game for the hand full of completions you may get. What this teaches Trubisky is we don't think enough of your talent to give you room to succeed because we're too scared of letting you make mistakes. What's the difference between 3 and out nearly every possession and committing a turnover but giving yourself a chance to move the ball? The difference is cowardly play calling. It's not just playing not to lose it's playing scared to death of making a mistake. All this is doing is delaying his development not helping it. You have to turn him loose and see what he can do, let him make mistakes it will happen, but those mistakes can be learning experiences. And with a rookie mistakes are expected. It's like getting a brand new awesome toy for Christmas and just leaving it in the box cause you are afraid to break it.

Agree especially if he keeps this up all year especially with all the struggles at CB in recent years.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Fuller looked promising as a rookie then his play declined, how many years did we expect him to be in the cut list. This year he has no doubt stepped up his game, but that was not a known quantity when the decision was made not to pick up his 5th year. Maybe that motivated him, maybe it lit a much needed fire under him, maybe at this stage in his career he's starting to put it all together. Whatever the reason he's playing at a high level, thus far and it is a pleasant surprise. I don't have a problem with us paying him, even during this season. He needs to keep it up to truly earn it. Jeffery, wanted out we offered him a long term deal he passed it up for a 1 year deal in Philly. I have him on my fantasy team and he has not produced to the level of his hype. He just isn't a one man show. Jeffery's best play has been when he had a stud opposite him (Marshall). Now that he is drawing the top coverage with not much on the other side to keep the defenses from focusing on shutting him down. It is a sign of respect for his skills but Jeffery is a better #2 than a #1 that he thinks he is. Could we use him now? Sure, but he'd most assuredly see the same defensive focus here maybe even more so cause outside him who would defenses fear? What we need is a true #1 that can lead our WR's and help them by drawing coverage. Currently all we have is supporting cast.