Bears4Ever_34

Bears are about to implode. Just inexcusable to go from 1st and 10 on the 24 to come away with zero points, even if the penalty was bullshit. Cairo Santos is horrible. MIN's kicker confidently makes a 59 yarder with ease while Santos misses a 50 yarder horrible and damn near missed an XP in the same game. Time for a new kicker.

God, they needed that pick 6 in the worst way. If the offense can stop sucking and get it together for at least one more TD drive, that should do it.

Swift sucks. 9 carries: 22 yards. No reason Monangai shouldn't be given an opportunity. They have to change something this half. One dimensional football against this defense is sub-optimal. Honestly, neither of these defenses have blitzed a lot. I expect that to change, especially from MIN in the 2nd half to generate something. Feels like a game where the first team to force a takeaway or have an explosive score might win. Bears missed a lot of opportunities in that half, including poor clock management by Johnson to take a timeout so early, to give MIN enough time to get in position for a FG.

Absolutely brutal OL performance. Dumbest line in football? High school teams are more disciplined than this.

And, of course, no Gordon OR Jaylon Johnson. Bears, for some reason, didn't elevate anybody from their practice squad for depth, so we could be looking at a safety playing corner if one of those guys goes down in this game.

If Gordon, Edwards, and Johnson are all out, my opinion on the outcome of this game is going to take a dramatic shift. Those would be three brutal losses. Those are arguably your 3 best players on defense. Bears offense might have to play a lot of ball control, ground and pound football tonight to come away with a win, because this Bears secondary without those two guys is awful.

It sucks for us, but it's a big gamble by GB, because it puts everyone on the clock. They are Superbowl or bust for the next couple years, and I'm not sure they are a clear favorite in the NFC after this trade. Everything is going to ride on Jordan Love. Losing Kenny Clark figures to hurt the middle of their defense, potentially leaving them more vulnerable against the run. Parsons himself is not a good run defense. He'll make them better, but how much? This defense isn't stacked like the 2018 Bears. He probably had a more talented defense last year with the Cowboys than he's walking into with GB. Again, it will all hinge on how good Love is. If he can replicate his success at the end of 2 seasons ago, they're definite SB contenders, but if he looks more like he did this past year, I don't see them as a serious threat to PHI, DET, or even WAS.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the Bears keep missing on these background evaluations. I'd be willing to give him some slack if we didn't already have to go through the Nate Davis/Chase Claypool drama. What a joke.

Worried about their run/play action game. Aaron Jones always kills them.

Me too. I'm hedging my Bears cynicism with a QB making his first career start on the road. If they win, it probably won't look pretty. The only thing I'd be shocked by is if either team won in a blowout.

I tend to think this becomes a defensive struggle for both teams with the Bears narrowly winning because McCarthy turns the ball over more than our quarterback. I imagine it playing out very similarly to week 1 last year, hopefully with not as inept QB play from Caleb. I might be on suicide watch if he throws for under 100 yards again, and McCarthy outplays him in his first career start. Early prediction: Bears 20 Vikings 17, offense rallies from down 13-17 in the 4th and the defense holds at the end.

In minor defense of the offense last night, I think it was fairly obvious Johnson was trying to focus more on the run game and under center formations. Caleb's just not as comfortable with that as he is in shotgun. All of the explosives in the game against the Bills came from Shotgun. I didn't see as much of that until the 2 minute drive in this game. Frankly, if it were up to me, I'm running a mostly no-huddle, shotgun heavy system for Caleb to start the season, and will sprinkle in more of the Detroit stuff that Ben wants to run as the weeks go by. Just don't do the Luke Getsy/Shane Waldron thing and force your system on the QB right out of the gate and have to peel back after you start the season 0-1/0-2. I am worried that's what's going to happen.

Defense got abused by KC on those drives with the starters. DL running in quicksand, Nashon Wright getting exposed at CB.... Officiating has been horrible though. KC got away with multiple holds and they were calling every ticky tack thing on the Bears. Offense predictably came back down to earth against the Chiefs #1's. Caleb had a rough go until the final drive against their backups. Botched handoff, took a bad sack on 2nd and 3, and missed a wide open checkdown to Swift in the redzone that would have kept the drive alive that they ended up settling for 3. Good ball placement on the deep throw to Rome on the last drive. Rome has to start coming down with those.

Wright wasn't good at LT in college, like Trapilo. I don't know of many comps of RT's in college who became good LT's in the NFL. Wright is a mediocre RT as it is now. It'd be crazy to think he'd do a better job on the other side. If they were going to mess with the rotation, moving Thuney to LT would make more sense because he's done it before. Personally, I think there are no good options. They're going to have to accept being bad at LT for the season and hope Ben Johnson can scheme around it. They also better hope it's the only position on the line that is a liability or they are in much deeper trouble.

Scrolling through some of the tweets from practice today, it seems like it was a better day for the offense than the joint practices against Miami, but LT has become a major bottleneck for their ability to sustain drives. Way too many false starts and sacks given up. Braxton Jones with another subpar practice. On the positive side, OZ keeps making plays as WR3. Another 40+ yard TD reception in one of the final 11 on 11 drills today, and the Caleb/Rome connection is apparently red hot right now. Multiple TD's for Rome in team drills on the day. Oh, and Shamar Turner came back to practice, which is good to see.

This is the guy they had to have instead of Jalen Carter. Not a great news day for Ryan Poles' OL draft picks. Trapillo seems destined for the swing tackle position as he continues to lose reps to Braxton Jones and an undrafted free agent at LT.

That was a rough watch. Brutal offensive execution down the stretch, especially after the big sack to set them up in FG range. My only real observation/takeaway from that game is that Keenum looked a lot more comfortable than Tyson Bagent. I'd elevate him to QB2 for the next pre-season game, at the very least.

Booker with the hat trick today. He's a pre-season demon. If only he could translate this to the regular season.

Not a good day for the Bears secondary or Tyson Bagent. Monongai looked great, though.

Sounds like another rough practice for the offense in joint practice with Miami. From what I was reading, he threw a pick on the first play of 11 on 11's, followed that up with a 70 yard TD to Zacheus, but then not much success after that in any other team drills. Sacks, false starts, and throwaways seemed to be the theme of practice. I wonder if Johnson is going to regret not having #18 out there in pre-season on Sunday. I understand his decision, but I feel like he needs to play better in these practices to justify it. On the flip-side, the defense dominated without Kyler Gordon (and Johnson, of course). Miami also didn't have Tyreek Hill, which shouldn't be discounted. Tua had 3 picks today after reportedly only having 1 the entire training camp.

What the hell is going on with Zah Frazier? He's been MIA since before camp with a "personal issue." Whatever it is, it's kind of crazy he'd potentially throw away his NFL career over this, because I can't imagine him making the team at this point.

I haven't heard anything out of camp this year that feels any different than in year's past. It's always the same story about the struggling offense and quarterback. There's still a few weeks left to turn a corner, and maybe they will after the install period is over later this week, but the vibes don't feel great to me with the quarterback. Way too many delays of games and lack of anticipatory throws.

Saw this play pop up on social media yesterday, but this angle adds a layer of context that makes the play look even better. I think Jenkins is correct here. It's a designed sprint action throwback towards the opposite sideline. You can see the route the receiver runs is synced up perfectly to Caleb stepping back up into the pocket after fooling the defense with misdirection. These are the kinds of plays I imagine Ben Johnson is designing specifically for Caleb to take advantage of his mobility. More of this please.

Yeah, I saw that late last night cycling through my feed. Not surprised. Eberflus tried to do some of that last year in camp, but he wasn't/isn't smart enough to learn anything from it the way I'm certain Ben Johnson can. It sounds like they are trying to drill in the under center aspect of the offense, and he's not reacting to it particularly well, at this point. I'll be curious to see when the season starts if they abandon that idea and keep him primarily in the shotgun while mixing in some tempo to keep him comfortable. Hopefully he starts to take more to the things he's struggling with now, because that will make the entire offense more dynamic, but it also wouldn't surprise me if they started the year off super basic, running variations of the same few plays that the QB likes and expand from there. Peyton Manning made a HOF career out of that.

All good. I'm very optimistic about Ben Johnson. I'm still a Caleb fan, but the honeymoon phase is over, at least on my end. No more excuses. He needs to look like a #1 pick, and I think he needs a fast start to the season to maintain any chance of a potential playoff spot.