adam

I am not liking either of them at #1. I would rather trade down and gain 1 or 2 additional first rounders.

Today's NCAA games: Williams - 26/35, 74.3%, 324 yds, 1 TD, 1 INT, 155.8 QB Rating; 3 sacks, 6 rushes, -12 yards (9 mins left, losing 38-13) Maye - 13/28, 46.4%, 175 yds, 1 TD, 0 INT, 110.7 QB Rating, 3 sacks, 8 rushes, 55 yards (10 mins left, losing 31-14)

Yep, that has been missing, virtually no Game Winning Drives.

The Allen thing is really baffling because you can see he is throwing some bad INTs that are literally losing games for the Bills. He has 11 INTs now in 10 games, and most have been back breaking. He also has 3 fumbles lost, so 14 turnovers in 10 games (Fields has 8 in 6 games). However, all the stats and metrics (outside of INTs) say he is top 5. He is 4th in QBR, PFF has him graded as the 3rd best QB, he is 5th in DVOA, and has a 96.6 QB Rating (Mahomes has a 96.7).

If you go position by position, it really is Center on the O-Line and 3T on the D-Line where the huge disparity is. Sewell/Decker are better than Jones/Wright, but it is not a massive difference. Jenkins is probably the best G out of both lines. On the DLine, Sweat and Billings would both start for Detroit, its the other half where the Bears are lacking.

Watching the TNF game, neither team looked like world beaters. The Ravens vaunted defense allowed 20 to Jake Browning throwing to Tanner Hudson and Trenton Irwin.

Like Detroit used 2x first round picks on a RB and LB. If you consider that Monty has looked great and been the bellcow for most of the season, neither of those picks have been that impactful (Gibbs did start a few games with Monty out), but for the season, those two picks are not why they are 7-2. So how did they do it?

Yeah the coaching is bad. I just can't tell if they are only a few players away from being a 10-win team, or are other upgrades needed, and if so, where are they? Like is Stevenson good enough? He is a rookie, but getting torched weekly. The assumption is Eddie Jackson won't be back, there is another hole. For how bad the offense has been, is upgrading at Center and a marginal upgrade at WR2 going to make them score 10 more points a game?

Here is the thing, most media talk about most of the roster as core or returning players. The only apparent holes or where upgrades are needed are at Center, WR2 on offense and 3T and Edge on defense. So 4 player upgrades and this roster magically wins 10 games? Even if you add QB. So say they draft Maye or Williams and add an Edge with the 2x first rounders, then add a Center in the 3rd and pickup a FA 3T and WR2 that are upgrades over Jones and Mooney. Is that complete team winning more games?

Some Over Unders: The O/U for St. Brown and/or LaPorta to be "wide" open over the middle? 5 The O/U for Monty TDs? 1.5 The O/U for the announcers saying that Monty looks like he is running angry (or getting revenge)? 3 The O/U for the number of times the announcers mention Fields' thumb? 4 The O/U for something up Flus' sleeve? 1

On the coaching side you have to also be innovative. I don't see that from anyone on the staff. That also is not trick plays, but on offense, scheming guys open, on defense, masking coverages to confuse the QB. We have the athletes to do it. Our LBs, CBs, and Safeties should be able to show one coverage pre-snap and be athletic enough to get to their "real" assignment area which is what causes the chaos for the QB to decipher. On offense, it feels like Fields has not been used to his full potential again. Almost all of his big runs last year were scrambles and just him making something out of nothing. We need designed runs to do that as well. With that said, I don't think Flus/Getsy are innovative enough to beat today's analytics. They are too predictable. If the coaching staff is changed, Fields is gone. There is no way he survives to a 3rd HC and OC. If the coaching staff is retained, that doesn't mean Fields is safe. So that leaves about a 25% chance Fields is the QB next year. For that 25% to occur, he would need to play as a top 10 QB for the remaining 7 games and win 2 out of the next 4. He needs to beat a winning team.

Congrats! That is some great news. I can't imagine being restricted for that long.

It will be something like 9-6. They are not very good on offense, especially without Watson. Their defense is awesome, but unless they score, it is going to be a low scoring affair.

Oh I understand, but you would think, after 35 starts, he would be on the winning side of at least one game where the defense allowed 21 pts or more. I was shocked that he hasn't been.

Watson out for the year, the Bears will get PJ Walker against the Browns. That game just became more winnable.

Damn, I probably found the most damning stat against Fields yet. I had no clue this was the case. How many of you guys knew this? Fields is 0-20 as a starter when the opponent scores 21 pts or more! Did anyone know this? That is a terrible stat. He is 6-5 when the opponent scores 20 or less. So basically he is a league average starter when the opponent scores 20 or less and is one of the worst QBs in the league when the opponent scores 21. That is impossible to win with because most good teams in the league will score more than 21. Now Bagent is 2-0 when the team allows 20 or less and 0-2 when they allow 21 or more. Dalton was 3-0 and 0-3. Foles was the last Bears QB to win a game when the opponent scored more than 21. The issue with Fields too is he has to win more of the easy games, losing 5 when the defense held the opponent to 20 or less is bad as well.

It looks like Fields is a go, Bears by 10.

Out of all of those things you listed, the ACC talent is what scares me the most. It is already hard to make evaluations, then having to do it when either the opponents are bad or the teammates are really good is tough.

The trade up was such an insult to injury. Why swap one slot? Besides the Shaheen pick, the trade up for Trubisky is one of the dumbest moves I have ever seen a Bears GM make. I wanted Watson and thought for sure that is who they were trading up for, then the announcer says Mitch Trubisky and I felt like the guy on the TV throwing his hands up.

QBR - Purdy, Mahomes, Prescott, Allen, Herbert - 3x 1st rounders, 4th round, 7th round DVOA - Purdy, Stroud, Goff, Tua, Allen - 4x 1st rounders, 7th round

After what Stroud has done in HOU, Fields is going to have to at least look comparable to him, coming from the same system in college (with some of the same WRs), for the remaining games. Anything less than what Stroud has done to this point, and they are going to move on from Fields. At this point, Williams feels too close to Fields in terms of what his strengths and weaknesses are. I think Poles will go with someone like Maye and trade Fields for a 2nd or a 3rd. Poles didn't think Stroud was good enough to replace Fields, and instead got DJ Moore, Wright, and potentially the #1 pick in 2024 for what could've been CJ Stroud. How would Stroud have looked on a Bears team w/o DJ Moore, Borom playing RT? I doubt he looks much different than Fields. So does Poles do that again? Add a 2025 1st rounder, and potentially another blue chip player comparable to Moore to move down 8-9 slots in the 1st round. Then he can draft 2 top 10 players while adding that blue chipper, while already adding Sweat. So from the 2023 opening day roster, he could add 4x blue chippers (2x draft picks, Sweat, traded vet) to go with (Wright, Moore) the year before. Then in 2025 he has 2x 1st rounders (AGAIN), and 2x 2nd rounders (potentially more). That could be 4 more blue chippers to go with the 6 other acquired ones, not counting any existing players already on the roster (Fields, Jenkins, Jones, Kmet, Herbert, J. Johnson, Gordon, Brisker, Edwards, Edmunds, Stevenson, Billings, Dexter, Sanborn).

We were talking about Jared Goff, which led me to Cooper Kupp. I don't think people talk enough about his 2021 season (or the fact that he has lived off of it ever since). He had 145 receptions, 1947 yards, and 16 TDs that year. That was basically 1000 yards more than his previous season where he had 974 yards. That one season is such an outlier, it is crazy. He has only had one other season over 1000 yards. He is also already 30 yrs old. So in 7 years, he has made one All-Pro Team and Pro Bowl, in 2021, that's it. 2021 is also the year the Rams won the SB. They basically rode him all the way there. Then in the postseason he scored 7 TDs in 4 games and averaged 8 receptions, 120 yards and 1.5 TDs per game. Crazy.

Mongo, come on man. Goff was 19-38, 50%, 229 yds with an INT and no TDs for a 57.9 QB Rating in that game and they scored a total of 3 pts. He has played in 6 playoff games, his passing yards are 259, 186, 297, 229, 155, and 174, a 216 yards per game average, like 50+ yards less than his regular season average. In those 6 games, he has never had more than 1 TD. He is one of the more overrated QBs in the league. He is something like 4-11-1 when he is sacked 4 or more times.

Goff? Like other QBs, he is great when there is no pressure, but if pressured, he is terrible. If an offensive mastermind trades you for another QB, you are the problem. Rams couldn't win with him and had to go to Stafford to get over the hump. Detroit is winning with Goff, not because of him. They beat KC opening day and have not beaten a winning team since. So I would not call the QB position a huge win for Detroit. I would take Fields over Goff.

Fields contract is going to be the issue. If a new QB is comparable to Fields, you are basically buying 3 extra years on a rookie deal compared to keeping Fields and having to pay him and gut the roster. The team's construct completely changes and you have to rely on the QB more than ever before. If Fields is not the guy now, he is not going to be when he is making $40M+ a year and the Bears have to play 3 more UDFAs. Fields has to literally be a game changer on his own for it to be worth keeping him. I think he has the potential, especially when he uses his legs, but unless he goes full Lamar/Vick mode, I don't think he will ever get there.