adam

2nd down, Brisker jumps a route and the ball hits him in the facemask and he drops an easy INT. Ugh. Then they let up an easy 16 yard out to Godwin. Godwin pushed off, no call. End around, Johnson blocked in the back, no call. 2 plays where WR pushes off Stevenson then catches a comebacker. Ugh. It is gonna be one of those days. Refs not calling it even so far. Bears defense holds and TB settles for a FG. TB 3-0.

Here are 5 major QB evaluation scores from different sites, ranked from high to low: nfelo - 18th PFF - 20th QB Rating - 21st DVOA - 23rd QBR - 24th Composite - 21.2 The funny part is the oldest and most basic rating, QB Rating was the most accurate and closest to the average score. Surprising to see PFF rate Fields higher than the average. I figured he needed to end up between 10-15 this year to see real progress. However, thru one week, his ranking for most of these is better than he ended last season.

Developing a QB with Defensive HC rarely works unless you have a super OC. I really think Poles is getting too cute with things. If he just auto-drafted the last two years, the Bears would be in better shape than they are now.

Davis will miss the game for personal reasons, you can't make this stuff up. He has a lot going on, I would put him on IR now, and sign Risner (even if you have to overpay). Then figure it out in 4 weeks.

Poles has a lot more to do. Missed on the Velus Jones pick, has not seen any return on investment out of Gordon (now on IR), thought Davis was the answer at RG, the Claypool trade, and passing on Jalen Carter. A lot of questionable decisions. If Claypool and Davis were not character risks, why was Carter? I would rather take a home run swing and miss vs taking a strike bunting. The O-Line is inexcusable after two offseasons, a ton of draft picks, and a ton of cap space. All Poles did was draft Wright in the 1st and Jones in the 5th, and sign Patrick and Davis. He had 9 draft picks in the first 4 rounds the last two drafts and used 1 on the OL. He had over $100M in cap space and only signed Davis who had a ton of red flags.

He was a huge loss because that moved Whitehair to LG and Patrick to C. So there are 2 downgrades with one injury. C got worse and LG got worse because Jenkins was playing at a Pro Bowl level.

With the injury to Davis, the passing game has to get going. I am updating my prediction to Bears 27-20.

This is still Year 2 of the rebuild. If everything went right and they stayed healthy, there was a chance to slide into the back of the playoffs. Jenkins and Gordon already on IR. Week 1 they were favored, and lost. So now they have to win an extra game from Week 2-18 to make up the Week 1 loss. Nothing trending in the right direction so far, but time to turn it around.

With the Bears having two 1st rounders in 2024, it will be interesting to follow the progress of those picks throughout the season. After Week 1, both CHI and CAR are 0-1, tied with 12 other teams (MIN is already 0-2). With only one week in the books, SOS is tied as every team that lost has faced a team that won. So both picks are between #2-#15. CHI @ TB (-2.5) CAR vs NO (-3)

No Carlton Davis, and no Kancey for the Bucs: Jamel Dean, Dee Delaney, and Zyon McCollum are the top 3 remaining CBs for the Bucs. Moore is a mismatch for all of them, and Mooney and Claypool are mismatches for at least CB2 and CB3. No reason the passing game shouldn't get going.

Looks like surgery for Gordon, so he will be out longer than 4 weeks, now looking at Week 6.

Yeah timing was interesting as the defense has been the worst in the league all last year and no one cared. Now with so many new starters, everyone was expecting a little better performance from them, but it was the same ole thing. I don't know how much Flus will help if it is the same defense.

Yeah, says personal issue, so whatever is going on, I hope he or his family is ok. It will be interesting to see the defense with Flus calling the game as he hasn't done that yet as a Bears coach. Now if the defense looks good, there will be a lot of questions going into Week 3.

Yeah, I like doing a true eval at the quarter pole (after Week 4), but there is a mini-bye after Week 5's TNF against WAS, so that is probably the best time to look at everything. They should come out of that little bye a little better for the next batch of games until the next mini-bye after the 2nd TNF game against CAR. 1st quarter - GB, TB, KC, DEN, WAS (TNF) at this point 2-3 in this 5 is probably fair. 3-2 would be amazing. 2nd quarter - MIN, LVR, LAC, NO, CAR (TNF) - Assuming 2-3, but another 3-2 would be crazy good here. 3rd quarter - DET, MIN, DET (Division quarter) > may decide season here. Need 2-1 here with some luck as good as 8-5 here, but as low as 5-8. 4th quarter - CLE, ARZ, ATL, GB. They will be in the hunt heading into the last 4 games, or needing a miracle (4-0) to sneak in. Odds are they will be somewhere in the middle, 6-7 wins with 4 to play. Thoughts?

They need to rattle him early. His career stats are wild. He had his most yards per game his rookie year (266), then that fell every year since (239 > 222 > 215 > 180 > 173). I don't think people realize that the Bucs only had 173 yards passing last week, yet threw it 34 times, while also having no running game (White had 39 yards on 17 carries). What makes that look worse is MIN just got shredded by PHI on the ground, so if TB couldn't do anything, that speaks more about their inept rushing offense. The more I look at the matchups, the more favorable this matchup becomes for the Bears. Mayfield rarely goes back to back games without a pick. In 10 of his last 15 starts, he was sacked 3 or more times. He also has some really bad games where the wheels just come off, multi-INT, under 50% comp, or 5+ sacks, or a combination of any of those 3. He has had 8 of those games in his last 15. He is 1-7 in those games with his only win coming against NO 24-14 where he had 12-25, 170 yds, 48%, 1 TD, 0 INT, and 3 sacks. The Panthers had a defensive TD that game.

The Carter stuff is going to go on for awhile, especially if he is looking Donald-esque on the field. However, don't forget he is on an elite DLine and they can't double everyone. Also, it is much easier to handle a problem children when you are winning. So who knows. Neither team looked particularly good. Minnesota already correcting for last year's 11-1 in one score games. A huge chunk of Cousins stats came after they were down 27-7, and what is wild is 117 of Hurts' 193 passing yards came on two plays to Smith. So he had 16 other completions for 76 yards. Without those 2 passes (blown coverages), he looks atrocious. Minnesota has absolutely no running game. Mattison was 8-28 with a fumble after he was 11-34 in Week 1. They released Cook thinking Mattison was a carbon copy. Minnesota had 4 fumbles lost, wow. SF and Dallas look like the best teams in the NFC right now. Surprisingly, KC, CIN, and BUF in the AFC do not. MIA, CLE, and LAC look like the top teams. So maybe the league isn't weighted so heavily towards the AFC after all.

Watched a little bit of the All-22. A couple of things. On both QB sneaks, the Bears got screwed on the spots. On Fields' sneak, the tip of the ball clearly makes it to the line to gain. On Love's, he is short because he goes in backwards so his body is passed the marker but not the ball. Bad spots. Moore does take himself out of the game on 1st and goal after his catch where it took 5 players to tackle him. On the next play on the throw to Kmet, Alexander literally launches his helmet right into Kmet's knee, I am shocked he doesn't have an injury. Alexander went dangerously low, below the knee is illegal, so it is a judgement call there. Then on the Van Ness sack play, 2 defenders on the right side of their line jumped early but it wasn't called. It made Jones start early before the snap. It should've been blown dead. Kmet was interfered with in the end zone on the 3rd down pass, it should've been an automatic first down there. Too many times I see players running ARob routes, like they know the ball is not coming to them, so they just trot around. Foreman did it on one play and I saw Kmet do it on another. That allows defenders to cover other areas of the field easier, making the actual play harder. They need to either sell the fake or route, or actually block someone.

Godwin is going to setup a tent in the slot.

And Blackwell has a hamstring, so Smith or Stroman? Ugh.

PFF is not useful on its own. For a QB, if you use QBR, DVOA, and PFF, and come up with a composite score, it is much more accurate than any one of those on its own.

Yeah 60.9 to 60.8. Love was not good, 4 completions accounted for 153 yds, with 92 on the other 11 completions. Aaron Jones 2 huge completions, Musgrave's blown coverage that Love under threw, and one to Reed. He had 27 attempts, and out of all of those, probably had 3-4 good throws, 10 average throws, and 10 bad throws with a few turnover worthy. The issue with Love is he was bad even with no pressure.

Why would he not spread them out, it's 3rd and 1. Let your best player handle the ball, or allow him to handoff to one of the RBs? Cole Kmet under center after motion? It literally drew in 10 into the A and B gaps, it was insane. Now if he did that and pitched it to Fields or something like that, ok, but don't do a TE dive right there. It reminded me of the Patterson run on 3rd and 1 that always lost 2. Then on Fields try. He has his feet next to each other, instead of staggered, and again, if you are going to go up and over, let one of the RBs do that. Personnel decisions! ? Down!

If you didn't know them, you would've thought they were rookies. Allen has always been Favre-like. Epic games, but epic failures too. When he is on, he is unstoppable, but when he is off, it is turnover city. Burrow has never taken a pre-season snap, and it shows. With Chase, Higgins, and Mixon, and you look like that? To put Burrow's game into perspective. His lowest career passing games were 148 and 157, the only 2 under 170. Last year his lowest was 199. He threw for 82 yards against CLE. However, he only got sacked twice and had 0 INTs. In comparison, Fields threw for 68 yards and was sacked 9 times his rookie year against CLE.

You are correct, it is a 17 game season. We have our first status check. Now we go up from here. The next game should be better, and I bet it will be.

Fields has 17 games to prove that he is H1M. I feel like he needs to show that in at least 75% of the games, or show some progress in those games. Right now he is 0/1, 0.0% on the season. He still has a lot of season left, but getting down 0/2 would be a big hole to dig out from. Every game that he starts, he basically sets a new record of futility at that amount of games started.