adam

Oh no way, I will keep eating crow all year long as long as he plays like this. This is what I expected. Maybe he had an injury, but the way he is running is night and day compared to previous games.

OK, now the pass to Kmet was precision. Then the run by Swift with actual blocking assignments. Amazing how much different the offense looks when in tempo.

Still no holding calls on the Rams.

Complain about Swift, he finally gets his head out of his ass. Complain about Moore, scores a TD. I like the trend. Jokes aside, that may have been the Bears best drive of the season, 6 rushes, 6 pass plays, no penalties, very efficient, defense was gassed. Great pass and catch to finish it off.

They refuse to call holding on the Rams, it is maddening.

Rams have most of their yards over the middle, LBs are a non-factor in pass def, they are going to need to step up. Otherwise, the defense only allowed 6 pts and gave the offense a short field on the strip sack.

Moore is starting to look like ARob 2.0 wtf. There have been way too many of these targeting him this year. The him and Caleb not being on the same sheet of music when pretty much every confirms (this time Sanchez) that Caleb was in the right. He had to throw it like that because a loft gives the Safety too much time to get over. If Moore just kept running the same speed he runs right into that pass. Also, how is there no DPI against Rome? That was blatant right at the top of the route, easy call.

Remember the Rams have a bottom 3 defense.

Wow this team is bad. Anyone wanna reconsider Pole's roster construction with this O-Line? Keeping Flus? Hiring Waldron? This all starts with Poles and ends with Flus and the coaching staff. Where are all the quick routes? Get the ball out of Williams hands. This is not rocket science.

Screens never worked unless you use them once per game. Not once per drive. Max Protect that allows 2 free rushers is a problem. Looks like nothing has changed unfortunately. Can we just have a normal offense that throws a variety of passes beyond the LOS?

Yeah, that's on Waldron. Stretch them out, all those short plays and they have 9-10 in the box.

Throwing behind the sticks on 3rd Down rarely works.

Yeah durability is the concern. Daniels can definitely be a top 10-15 QB annually as long as he stays healthy.

Yep, I have no clue why he would launch himself laterally into the DL instead of turning the ball upfield then diving. Also, he has done that on several occasions where he runs into blockers instead of cutting back to the hole. I honestly have no clue what the Bears saw in him. I was thinking to compliment the running of Herbert/Johnson, but they have tried to run him like a Powerback and that is not his game .

On Yahoo, for the NFL Pick'em Contest, straight up, 73% of the people are picking the Rams. On CBS, 58% are picking the Rams. On ESPN, it's 73% for Rams as well. That's close to a 70% average. If betting is going the same way, there is a lot of money on the Rams. 30% of the people are going to win a lot of money.

AI results: Bears win! Book it!

With Kupp and Puka out, their leading WRs are Tutu Atwell and DeMarcus Robinson. So they come into the game with the 7th best Passing offense, but a 1/3 of that production was Kupp alone. On defense, the Rams give up 30.3 pts per game, have the worst defense in terms of yards against, 29th against the pass, and 31st against the rush. This is by far the worst defense the Bears have faced this year. They are tied for 28th in sacks with 4 and are tied for 29th with only 6 passes defended, and only 1 INT thru 3 games. If this is not a get right game for the offense, this is going to be an extremely long year of pain and suffering.

He was talking about the coaches. This is what he said about Waldron specifically:

Another thing that doesn't get talked about enough. Who have the Bears beat in the Flus era? What elite offense has the Bears defense shut down? How about the defense's success is also sort of hollow? Here is a list of every QB that Flus's defense has beaten: 2024 - Levis 2023 - Heinicke, Murray, Goff-11th, Dobbs, Young, O'Connell, Howell 2022 - Lance, Mills, Zappe Goff is the only QB with a QBR in the top 20 for that respective season. Murray is the only starter from previous seasons who is still a starter (or even on a roster). That is another reason why this weekend's game is so important. If the Bears defense can't stop Stafford who is without Kupp and Puka (top 2 Receivers), then we have to start doing more relative comparisons with the defense as well. Another component to the offensive struggles is Waldron is too nice of a guy. He is scared to tell vets what to do as evidenced by Lewis's comments this week. With all the analytics, tape, and now AI. There is no reason you can't draw up plays that are undefendable. Just like chess, the opponent can only react to your next move. They can position themselves for what they think you are going to do (show Cover-2), but until the ball is snapped the defense is at a disadvantage. The Bears do not take advantage of that edge. The offense doesn't dictate what the defense does. They take what they are given and in most cases this season, they can't even do that.

SF, LAR, and MIA are bad examples, they are ravaged by injuries, which no amount of coaching can overcome. DEN? Payton has a losing record without Brees at QB, so the jury is still out on him to begin with. I would be less concerned about coaching if the rookie QB was the problem. Williams is not the problem though. So it falls back on the roster or coaching, or both.

I almost think of it the opposite way. Waldron has had 3 weeks with a rookie QB and what looks like a suboptimal O-Line. Flus can't do much about the O-Line, so that falls back on someone like Morgan as the position coach or the GM for player acquisition. Poles has also been with the organization the longest and hired everyone and drafted Williams, so all of their performances fall back on him.

So I have always liked QBR as a way to represent QB production over other methods. I just didn't know that it had such a strong correlation to wins. Looking over the first 3 weeks of the season, a team has at least an 80% chance of victory when their QBR is in the top 10. On the flip side, a team has over a 70% chance at a loss if they are in the bottom 10. The outliers are usually super close games. Purdy had the #6 QBR and lost 27-24 this week. In Week 2, Hurts had the #3 QBR and lost 22-21, Burrow lost 26-25, and Jones lost 21-18. 3 losses by 5 pts. In Week 1, Richardson had the #1 QBR and lost 29-27, and Murray had the #4 QBR and lost 34-28. On the low end, the wins came only due to the defenses. In Week 1, Caleb had the 4th lowest QBR, but the Bears still won. All the wins by low QBR QBs came when the defense allowed 20 or less except one game, KC's Week 2 win against CIN 26-25 where Mahomes had the 4th lowest QBR and still won due to the refs. So for Caleb going forward, he needs to improve himself and the good thing is, he has. He had a 23.4, then 20.6, and jumped to a 36.1 in Week 3. If he can keep that trend going and get over the 50.0 mark (average QB), the Bears will be looking good after the bye. However, he needs to make improvements enough to get out of the bottom 10 which usually is a loss indicator.

Also, I don't think it can get any worse than what we have seen. That is a good sign. Some of the other surprise teams are peaking now and will fall back down to earth soon. Caleb is only going to get better. Rome is only going to get better. So if the line can improve and they can give more touches to Roschon and Herbert, the overall operation will improve. It really comes down to 2-3 plays a game that swing the score 10+ points. The offense looks completely different without the dropped passes, that's at least 3 more TDs for Williams in 3 weeks, which would probably equate to 2 more wins.

After 3 weeks, there are 14 teams with a 1-2 record. CLE is technically the last WC team in the AFC. So the Bears could be as low as #4 or as high as #17 thru 3 weeks. Honestly, I am surprised CIN and JAX are 0-3, but CIN did look terrible in joint practices, so it does make sense a little bit. I have no clue how JAX got worse, but they did have a super easy schedule last season that may have masked their issues. Crazy to think the entire QB draft class with Fields may end up not living up to the hype, with Lawrence as the last victim. 1. JAX 0-3 2. TEN 0-3 3. CIN 0-3 ------------ 4. IND 1-2 5. NE 1-2 6. CLE 1-2 7. MIA 1-2 8. CAR 1-2 9. DAL 1-2 10. CHI 1-2 11. NYG 1-2 12. BAL 1-2 13. DEN 1-2 14. LAR 1-2 15. ARZ 1-2 16. SF 1-2 17. ATL 1-2 Also, you don't want to fall to 1-3. The chances of making the playoffs at 1-3 is around 12%. It is worse for the Bears because the other 3 teams in the division all have 2+ wins.

Bears by 20!