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Honestly, if Pace doesn't think fangio is a head coach (and he should have as good of an idea as anyone), then this makes a lot of sense. Would be curious to know who is on the list. By the way, just to put this out there, but if the Jets move on from Bowles, I'd love him as our DC.

http://www.profootballweekly.com/lists/201...ndex.xml?page=4

Leno flat mauled in that game. He was really good and it was evident on a number of runs. Everyone likes ripping on him, but he's actually a pretty solid LT. Great, no, but he's solid and getting solid protection out of a late round pick at LT is a good value play. By the way, if you go to any fan board, almost every teams fans rips on their tackles and the play calling.

The penalties were brutal. Our offense is bad. We have one of, if not the worst QB in the league. Please note that I'm not saying Trubisky sucks...but from a current production perspective, he sucks, and that is how you evaluate current wins/losses and how good you should be. Our offense is extremely one-dimensional and before we even debate scheme and if Loggains is good (or bad), we have a banged up oline, one of the worse QB's in the league, and the worst receiving corps in the league. When you add those things up, no scheme in the world is going to unmask/make good that potential. We do have an excellent starting RB (even being so one-dimensional) but against the Eagles that was a hard thing to do (top run unit in the league against a solid rushing attack (thanks to Howard who is a beast) but one-dimensional...way too easy for a good run D to shut that down and force the hand. So that sums up our offense...really no way I can see it being good given current limitations. Key is all about how you get better and even that is pretty limited given how "raw" the QB is (and really he wasn't ready to play...our coaches said it from day one as did the GM and their hand was forced). Defense is okay but not great. Not enough playmakers and that is magnified when your better defenders (outside of Hicks) go down (Floyd / Danny T, especially). 3/4th of our LB corps out, including three of our 6 best guys on the defensive side of the ball. Its hard to be very good. The secondary is not near good enough to overcome a lack of pass rush (which happens when you don't have a ton of depth and lose your better pass rushers). Our best player, Hicks was also playing on one-leg. The penalties were bad but man, Fox was dealt a really bad hand. When he's been given good hands, he's delivered. Both with Carolina / Denver. In fact, I'd argue he maximized everything he could under a Denver team led by Tim Tebow and got a lot out of Jake Delhomme in Carolina. My point is, Fox has proven to be at the least, a competent head coach, so to put all of the blame on him is just delusional. This isn't like a Trestman or someone else where you could literally say he sucked and something else would just immediate fixed it. Fox has a proven track record and is a good head coach. Great is debatable, but good is not, imo. All this said, I can see reasons why we want to go another direction long-term and if so, I still would give Fox credit for cleaning up the rot that ran very deep in the organization post-Trestman.

This match-up was bad for the Bears. Our D is very banged up (no Floyd / no Trevathan / no Freeman...essentially 3/4th's of our starting LB corps and some of our better playmakers) and we are going against a very dynamic and well balanced offense. Our offense was also going up against the top run D in the league and given our style of offense we couldn't be in a worse position. I expected us to get throttled and we did. The penalties and how we shot ourselves in the foot were just brutal though. Eagles are an outstanding football team.

He's not ready. He isn't reading defenses quickly/comfortably enough and with that his timing isn't right and therefor his footwork won't be right. He needs to put in a lot of work, but none of this should be a surprise. Look at film of Goff last year vs. this year. Reality was Goff wasn't ready to play last year, got out early, really struggled because he wasn't ready to read NFL defenses / be in an NFL offense. This actually ups the learning curve because they haven't read and reacted much in their college career their entire timing is impacted so it isn't just the fact that they can't read defenses yet its also that they haven't had to do that stuff so timing and inherently footwork are messed up (compounding the problem and making them look even worse).

Agree; The reality is if we hired an OC who hasn't been at all close to running an offense, we would be widely considered a laughing stock. Could it work...sure, but the fact is, he just hasn't been involved running an offense before. A really bright guy might figure it out...but man that is a leap of faith and a LOT of learning on the job. I could maybe see it if the HC was an OC and it was more of a "grooming" process where the HC was still really acting in the role of an OC (and if that were the case, I don't think it would be done for Toub). Your analogy around the lead doctor was spot on. Toub could definitely be a good HC candidate...but I would be disgusted if we entrusted him to be the OC for Trubisky.

Now I've listed coaches I don't like, but Frank Reich is a guy I really really like. He did well with Phillip Rivers and now doing great work in Philly with Wentz. He'd be very high on my list if we were to make a change (and go with an assistant). I still am a fan of stability though. I actually think Loggains is pretty creative, but the Bears have been extremely careful in how creative they've been because they recognize Trubisky has his limitations. I'd also say that Trubisky has developed (AZ made that point earlier in this thread and I think it was lost). You can't ignore the fact that Trubisky is making strides and not give some credit to the coaches, imo. We knew he was raw when we drafted him and were forced to start him sooner then the staff liked and thus they kept things much more vanilla before slowly opening the playbook up. Not necessarily that bad of a concept...yes, as fans it isn't sexy, but it is better then letting your rookie throw 5 picks in his first game or going the route of the Browns (where Kizer has just been wrecked). I actually feel like the Bears coaching staff truly has had a plan and while they had to speed up that plan, they are being very methodical in terms of how much they open up the playbook.

Everyone is high on Cooter, but I couldn't get past the stat in the Lions game...60+ games without a 100 yard rusher. That is insane and while the league is a passing league, the better teams can run the ball.

Nice.

Santos has visited quite a few teams. I presume he isn't quite 100% but I also am going to guess he's going to have his pick of clubs...hopefully Bears can get him. I had read that Santos wanted to be careful that he didn't come back too soon. He's a pending free agent so the last thing he wants to do is come back too early, miss a handful of kicks, and lose out on a payday. If I'm the Bears, I know he's good and just give him the payday now.

I'm with you. This was actually a pretty enjoyable game (outside of the Floyd injury). We got the loss, but played extremely competitive and lost because our kicker (who will not be around next year) stinks to a solid team. I'm okay with that because Trubisky looked like he is legitimately making progress. I saw a QB read the field more, I saw a QB get rid of the ball sooner (and not take the sack). In fact, I saw a QB who started to look downfield when scrambling (something he didn't do much of until this week). I still saw a QB who got flustered with a bit of pass rush (where he didn't set his feet and because of it, left some plays on the field), but I also saw a QB who used his mobility to his advantage and at times was very aggressive and assertive throwing strikes. Oh and he showed moxy on that final drive. Defensively I see a lot of people knocking Bears and yes the Lions scored, but take away that defensive TD (on a bad fumble) and they didn't give up that many points (take note that since week 6 Stafford was averaging more yards per game then any QB in the league...Lions have a good offense). We also saw Shaheen make some more plays (which was great to see). Really sucks Floyd got hurt...hoping somehow it isn't as bad as it looked.

Here is a name for you...Mike McCarthy. I'm not saying Packers are going to get rid of him, but I think their fans had grown a bit impatient with their inability to get back to the big game. They could struggle with Hundley and decide that this is the right time to make a change. If that happened, I'd be all over Mike. He's a very good QB coach / bright offensive mind. I think the reality is, Hundley will show enough growth that the Packers won't let McCarthy go, but I wouldn't' be shocked (and he really did do a lot of great things to help develop Rodgers).

Agree with you completely.

I want to see our defense get better and I want to see Trubisky grow as I'd like to see other young players grow. Never expected playoffs this year anyway.

I agree with you on Inman. He had that bad drop (imo) late in the game, but in general, he's at least an NFL receiver who got open from time to time (vs. the crap we have had). Huge difference.

It was also a one score game...you usually aren't playing prevent in a one score game...you are doing that in a two score game where you are more focused on making them take a long-time going down the field. I thought Trubisky was better, but he is still extremely slow at his decision making and not getting the ball off fast enough. Somewhat related, he tends to panick and have bad footwork in those situations as well, which impacts the footwork. In general, he looks like a guy who doesn't have much experience reading defenses and given his lack of playing time in college that really shouldn't be a surprise. This is all going to come down to how mentally strong he is (to not let this struggles create bad habits) and how smart / how hard of a worker he is so that he can correct this issues and really deliver. Our coaches and players also have to help him out, but there were at least a few sacks where live (not on replay) I was busy going, you got to get that ball out to X (who was open) and he just wasn't scanning the field / making the immediate reads based upon blitzes coming in, etc. He's playing "slow" and I mentioned it above, but we shouldn't be surprised given his lack of experience.

OMG...the Bears needed to invest in the position because Miller had proven he was going to be on IR. Maybe we should ignore the fact that White is always on IR again next year too....

Interesting...the Browns acquired Aj McCarron but the paperwork didn't get into the league offices in time, so no deal.

Great post and I agree with you that Trubisky made some strides this past week. Still lots to learn, but we really shouldn't be surprised with him needing to have a big adjustment...he just hasn't played that much football at the highest level and that means it is going to take him longer. The good thing is, he seems to put in massive amounts of time to learn those things and I've seen him make adjustments week to week. Long way to go though...long way to go.

Thoughts and prayers with him. He's always been really good when he was on the field and I just hope he's able to have a normal life (after football) given all these injuries.

It has been fantastic. Dline has been awesome and Christian Jones and Danny T at ILB have been a great pairing. Floyd is really good and I presume we will look to upgrade our other OLB position in the off-season.

I hope we can pick up Santos from the Chiefs. That would be a huge upgrade. We know my feelings when we got rid of Gould. I thought moving from Gould to Barth was just an awful move. I would have been able to accept moving on from Gould (because he was looking like he was on the back-end of his career), but if you do it, take a chance on someone you think has some real upside...not a guy like Barth who is just bad.

I hope our dline stays healthy cause it has been phenomenal and I'd argue the arrow is pointing up (as goldman and bullard are getting better...heck, Hicks is getting better and he's an absolute monster).

Interestingly enough when looking for quotes on Sproles working out of the slot...I found an article on Jordan Matthews and why the Eagles traded him and they mentioned it was because he was pretty limited in the route tree and they wanted to move him because they didn't see him being anything other than a slot receiver and they couldn't justify handing him the contract extension he wanted (given the limited route-tree). Of course, we all know who Wes Welker was...just a "slot" receiver, but I don't think Matthews is that.