adam

The vibe around this team really is different. Before, the optimism was based on hope, now it is legitimately backed up with the players and coaches. Still early but it is nice to see the change this soon. Every time there was a controversy before, Flus would downplay, deflect, or flat out not comment on it. When in reality there were like 10 huge elephants in the room. Now both Johnson and Williams have come out and addressed what could've morphed into something bigger. Players on both sides of the ball, especially ones that were here from last year are saying how things are more challenging. Sweat said DA's defense has a lot more complexity to it than he is used to. It makes sense because how complex could a Flus defense really get if Flus was the mastermind?

and Patrick Finley asking one of the most ridiculous questions of all-time "Caleb, does your dad speak for you?" Can you imagine asking a grown man this question and being serious about it? Our media has always been mixed, either super homer or super negative, but this is on an entirely new level of stupid. The media gets Caleb for only a few minutes to ask questions you can't get anywhere else and he felt it was necessary to get that answer?

Most of Daniels advanced stats (EPA, QBR, even PFF) were artificially inflated because of his scrambles. He is still a good QB, but we all saw what that fluff looked like with Fields and once they pinned him in and took away his first read, he really fell off a cliff.

He really stressed the defenses with the threat of running, and he did make good decisions, but rushing+sacks near 200 times is unsustainable. Daniels had 148 rushing attempts and was sacked 47 times, for 195 potential hits. Lamar Jackson had 139 rushing attempts + 23 sacks = 162 Josh Allen had 102 rushing attempts + 14 sacks = 116 Caleb had twice as many sacks and was still basically 25% lower: 81+68 = 149 If Caleb cuts his sacks in half he would be near Josh Allen's range which seems like the sweet spot for QBs that extend plays. There are 2x QBs in NFL history to have over 40 sacks and 130 rushing attempts in a season, 2022 Justin Fields (55+160=210) and 2024 Jayden Daniels (47+148=195). Daniels had 4+35 more in the playoffs, so 234 over 20 games is pretty wild. That will catch up to him.

I will have to find the stat, but I know Daniels was in the top 10 for throwing to his first read and he was #1 in scrambling under pressure. So those sort of lend themselves to the fact that he would throw to his first read or run majority of the time. Not always, but he did one of those two things a lot.

It is a great question, he did pretty well with Kyler, who peaked in years 2 and 3 in that offense, then the wheels came off in Year 4.

I agree on Fields. I think it has to do with just taking what the defense gave them. I know he averaged fewer intended air yards than Caleb did per throw, so he had a lot of short passes.

Yeah, but the media is eating them up. Daniels in MVP talks and the Commanders are magically a top 5 team in the NFL. They had a cream puff schedule and then had the easiest path in the playoffs. I think Daniels is a better passer than Fields, but the frame scares the hell out of me. He is one hit away from being out for the year. I read something about what Kingsbury did, and it was essentially one read, checkdown, then scramble. Pre-snap determines first read, hike the ball, first read yes or no, checkdown yes or no, then scramble. This allowed Daniels to get the ball out of his hands but it also didn't really have him doing too much processing. That can only get you so far.

I have seen a lot of projections with the Bears automatically losing to WAS in Week 6. Besides the Bears beating them last year before that ridiculous hail mary, this is who they faced the last 6 weeks of their season, and they lost to Cooper Rush, then won 5 straight. Their signature win on the season was a Week 3 win over Joe Burrow and the winless Bengals.

There is a lot of data on Johnson, it just depends on how you want to skin the cat. The obvious thing is it will be basically impossible to be worse than last year, and just based on normal trends, the Bears should see a 12-15% bump in all offensive statistical categories (Yardage, scoring, EPA/P, etc), if not more. I am thinking closer to 20% because the 2024 Bears were really bad. Johnson has the 2nd highest Success Rate for a play caller since 2020 at 43.38%, behind Monken, but Monken got a lot of that from Lamar's scrambles. Either way, the Bears are going to be ahead of the sticks. We are so used to playing from behind the sticks. This will feel weird. For Scoring%, the Lions are 2nd in the NFL in scoring rate over the last 3 seasons at 45.1%, only 0.3% behind BUF. CHI has been a raw 10% lower, or close to a 25% difference. Last year DET was 51.6%, which was the highest rate going back to 2020. So combined, no team has been more efficient moving the ball AND scoring over the last few years than Johnson's offense. Another wild one is that Goff got better under Johnson than he was with McVay. McVay needed Stafford. Goff went up over 6% on comp% and 5% on catchable ball rate, and a whole bunch of raw stats increased (TDs up, INTs down, QB Rating up).

I thought he was omitting OL altogether and stating they had Gibbs, Williams, and either (LaPorta/St. Brown) as mismatch players? For OL, Sewell and Decker are clearly better on the outside, but on the interior, they lost Zietler, so it would seem that Dalman+Thuney+Jackson has the edge over Ragnow+Glasgow+Ratledge at this moment. Also, how will Detroit's offense look without Johnson and the coaches that left?

The only statement I saw was that Caleb said no one from the team "told him what to watch". That doesn't mean he doesn't know "how" to watch tape or that he didn't.

No, as far I can tell, that is only for the offseason 90-man roster, which the league gives exemptions for international players (1 per roster).

I think the Bears are a year away from an all-in type of move and it feels like they will want to shape the roster more to Johnson's liking. and they also have to be 100% Caleb is the guy for Johnson's offense.

Yeah I agree, Hunter seems like a good athlete, but not someone you spend that much draft capital on.

So with the new rule added in 2023, there is a good chance they go with 3 QBs on the 53-man. Without a 3rd QB, you can only have 48 players active on game day, so 5 players on the 53-man don't dress every week. However, the 3rd QB does not count towards the 48. So if they did keep Keenum, he would take up a 53-man slot but would not impact the game-day 48-man roster (and would actually make it 49).

and looking ahead capwise, there are some easy decisions to free up a ton of cap in 2026: 1. Edmunds - $17.4M Cap Hit, $2.4M dead money if cut/traded (Potential Cap Savings: $15M) 2. Kmet - $11.6M Cap Hit, $3.2M dead money if cut/traded (Potential Cap Savings: $8.4M) 3. Swift - $8.8M Cap Hit, $1.3M dead money if cut/traded (Potential Cap Savings: $7.5M) Easy way to free up $31M w/o restructuring. I am not saying that will but I would suspect Edmunds and Swift are the most likely of those 3, Kmet is just there because of his cap savings.

It is going to be hard to comprehend what we are seeing on the O-Line this year. Thuney didn't allow a sack in 2024 lol. That is just absurd:

This also makes the trade for Thuney even more of a steal. They traded him for a 4th, which they got back in the Rams trade anyway.

Watching training camp videos of Travis Hunter compared to real WRs, I think JAX made a mistake trading away all that draft capital for him when they could've had Jeanty+BTJ. Hunter will still be a great CB, but I don't think he will ever even get to Hester level at WR. He will be more of a gadget guy, Jet Sweep, Fly, Post.

Make it 10 if you count Trapilo now that Thuney was extended.

Extended:

If you consider Trapilo as the eventual starter at LT, the entire starting OLine is on contract or cost-controlled (5th year option for Wright) thru 2027, which is Year 4 of Caleb's rookie deal. If you extend that to the rest of the offense, you can include Williams, Moore, Odunze, Burden, Kmet, and Loveland. That is insane. RB is the position not signed thru 2027 (Swift and Roschon signed thru 2026). Outside of RB, the 2026 draft will be defensive heavy (Edge, Safety, DT, LB).

He will get a $1.5M raise annually from his current AAV of $16M, which only bumps him up one spot from 5th highest paid LG to the 4th highest. By this time next year, when the actual extension kicks in, he will probably be out of the top 5.

This O-Line is now locked in for a few years. As long as they figure out who starts at LT (Jones/Trapilo), I like having this type of continuity.