Bears4Ever_34

Brisker and Gordon being out is scary news if Daniels decides to play. I think, even with Mariota, that makes the Commanders dangerous on offense. The secondary was lucky Jacksonville couldn't catch the ball in the endzone. Trevor Lawrence was doing some nice things until the lead just became too insurmountable. This Commanders team is much better running the ball than Jacksonville. I worry this could be a game the D gets exposed more than they have in the last year if those two are unable to play. And, yeah, Bears need to look at a Brisker replacement next year. I'm not re-signing an injury prone safety. Maybe there's a team in the off-season who'd be willing to give up draft capital for him. Otherwise, I'd just let him walk and collect the comp pick. Gordon, on the other hand, is a trickier situation. He's just as injury prone, but plays a more important position. He's a little like what we had with Bryce Callahan under Fangio. Good player, but just can't stay healthy. Not sure what to do with him.

Schefter says the plan is to attempt to see if Daniels can practice on Friday. I still think he plays.

Love is the luckiest quarterback in the NFL. HOU dropped a game ending INT on the Packers final drive of the game. Houston mismanaged their last drive which gave GB enough time + an extra timeout to drive down the field. HOU was missing 5 starters on defense + no Nico Collins. Stroud was terrible. Collins might be more of a difference maker than I ever gave him credit for last season. Matt Lafleur has been padding the hell out of Jordan Loves stats the last 2 years in goal line situations. It's almost all pass plays down there. Last year, the Packers only had 4 rush TD's all season. This year, Jacobs has just 1 touchdown on the ground. That's not even counting goal line, either. That's ALL touchdowns. Anytime they are down inside the 5, you can rest assured Love will be throwing something off play action that is wide open at least once a game. And of course, the Packers win on a GW FG with a guy they just signed off the street the week before. So frustrating the Bears couldn't make up any ground in the division on their bye.

Schefter was pretty adamant last week saying that he didn't expect players like Crosby or Garrett to be traded by the deadline. Neither team is dying to get rid of their best player. To me, this team has too many holes on the OL to be making such a deal. I think you hold tight and use next off-season to go all in. They are going to need 4 new OL, potentially 5 down the line if Wright continues to underwhelm. Use free agency and that extra 2nd round pick to bolster both sides of the line, and then make a serious run at a SB.

He also had 2 dropped interceptions go right through the defender's hands on back to back series. It wasn't as good of a game as the stats indicate. I'll give him a little credit, though, because I thought he'd look MUCH worse. I just can't see that slow delivery work, long-term, at the NFL level.

Are the Bears actually the 6th seed right now? Tankathon has them the first team out. I'm not sure how the tiebreakers work, but seems strange the Packers would be ahead of them given they've already lost a divisional game.

I continue to be perplexed at the lack of Herbert usage in this offense. He's too good of a runner not to play. Roschon might be a better receiver out of the backfield, but Herbert is much more explosive, and I actually think he's better in short yardage than Roschon, but I digress. With Wheeler on IR, I think you have to keep Herbert in case of injury, because otherwise you're down to trusting Velus Jones or another practice squad guy to fill in, and I don't think that's a risk I would take if I'm the Bears and am trying to compete for a playoff spot.

Thought this was interesting. Definitely matches the eye test, too. Caleb has been scanning the field and Daniels has been throwing to his 1st read nearly 80% of the time, though with crazy efficiency.

Been watching JT Osullivan's breakdowns on Caleb the last couple of weeks, and he's been pointing out since the beginning of the season that the Bears are not utilizing their personnel as effectively as they should with their WR's. He thinks Rome should be our #1 because of his ability to create separation. DJ Moore's route running is not #1 level, in his mind, and Keenan Allen isn't creating separation at all, though his ball skills were evident in the game the other day. I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment. Caleb has been making up for some of these issues with elite mobility and ball placement, but we really need to start lining Rome up as the team's X and start taking more deep shots with him. He was the best deep ball, contested catch receiver in the draft. He needs to get more opportunities, moving forward.

Not to reopen old wounds, but Justin Fields was in the bottom 3rd of the league in each one of these stats all 3 years of his Bears career. It's refreshing to see a Bears quarterback is no longer in the basement of his peers when it comes to passing.

Or Zach Miller, who I don't believe ever played again after his. Hopefully, Hutchinson makes a full recovery, but anytime you see a compound fracture like that, you immediately think, "Will this guy every play again" and "If he does, will he ever be the same?"

What are the odds the NFC North has 4 of the 5 best teams in the conference? If the Bears can get a big win against the Commanders, I think they have to be in that conversation.

Caleb very easily could have had 6 touchdown passes today. DJ was inches from #5, and the interception to DJ would have been a 40+ yard play, at the very least. Caleb's deep passes continue to be perplexing. I thought he sorted that shit out last week, but apparently not. At any rate, he responded about as well as you could hope—had a couple of pinpoint TD passes to Allen to make up for the one bad throw, and the team cruised to its 3rd straight win. You have to feel pretty good going in to the bye week, and I think it's coming at a good time, given the injuries. Hopefully everyone is healed up before the Commanders game. Week 8 is definitely a statement game. 5-2 with a bad AZ and NE team after that would be huge. If Caleb outperforms Daniels in a W, he's likely going to vault himself ahead in the ROTY rankings. I continue to say this team needs to be at least 6-3 before the Packers to give themselves a chance at the playoffs, but 7-2 would put them close to a virtual certainty.

He's definitely still improving. BAL also dropped a couple interceptions from him in that game today. I do think teams will try to copy what BAL did to contain their run game in the future.

Brisker being out could be a bigger deal than we realize. Stopping the run has been a problem with this team all year, even when Brisker has been playing. The drop off between him and Hicks worries me against a team that can run the ball. I expect JAC to test Hicks early with deep shots off play action. On the flipside, their defense is horrible. Caleb should be in line for another huge game through the air, but the neutral site and perhaps shoddy field conditions could throw a wrench in how we'd like to think this game should play out. The Bears are the better team, but JAC is desperate, and they have the experience playing in this game. Not to mention, I think they're also getting a few guys back on offense. This one is probably going to come down to whether the Bears can limit the explosives on defense and not giving away the ball on offense while staying discipline with pre-snap penalties. Out of the remaining opponents on the schedule, JAC is probably the 2nd worst team besides the Patriots they'll play the rest of the season. This is one they have to have.

Can anybody explain how QBR average is calculated? ESPN still has him at 36.2 for the season, but if you add up his totals and divide by the 5 games, it comes out to 40.9. I don't understand.

Outside of beating the Packers this year, there's nothing I want more from this regular season than for Caleb to silence the media love-fest with Daniels by beating the Commanders in a few weeks while clearly outplaying him.

Herbert with 8 300 yard games as a rookie is insane. I know people tend to gloss over 300 yards as a meaningless stat, but for Bears quarterbacks, it's important because of how rare they are. If I'm not mistaken, Caleb and Justin Fields now have the same amount of 300 yard passing games for their careers, lol.

100%. It's frustrating to watch him pad his stats on so many of these catch and runs or insane catches. He's clearly regressed from where he was at the end of last year. Much more turnover prone, less accurate. Their defense is pretty much all too reliant on turnovers. Maybe it'll continue, maybe it won't. All I know is that I see a very vulnerable team if the quarterback can't protect the football.

Bears did what they were supposed to do to the Colts a few weeks ago. Beat a bad team. Easily Caleb's best game of the season. Could have had an even better stat line had it not been for drops and penalties. A little frustrating he couldn't get that 3rd TD pass, but nonetheless, he played really well. Waldron has clearly unlocked something with the no-huddle offense. The run game has been thriving in it; less so when they aren't in no-huddle. Caleb looks very comfortable in the pocket. The OL actually blocked well for him in this game. Swift had a couple of really nice blitz pickups, one that lead to the 1st DJ Moore TD, the other on a bogus hold that wasn't a hold. All in all, outside of the penalties, you have to like what you saw from the offense in the last 6 quarters of football.\ Defensively, the run defense really needs to get cleaned up quickly. They aren't going to get away with this against the better teams. Bears should be expected to win again next week against another bad team, though London games are always weird. 4-2 going into the bye, with an extra week to prepare against Daniels and the Commanders. How bout' it?

To be clear, Kurt was saying Caleb has been a one read QB this season (which has been true, to a degree), but made no mention of how Daniels is just as much, if not more of a one read QB through 4 games. My complaint about Kurt is not that his criticisms aren't valid. On a macro-level they are. He's been inconsistent getting through is progressions and trusting his eyes, which have lead to horrendous overthrows and poor decisions. My problem is that he's been overly uncharitable about his progress in some of those areas the last couple weeks. Caleb objectively improved his decision making against the Rams and Kurt still lead with the idea that he's made no progress. It feels bad faith to me, I don't know. Oh, and the whole "Jayden has been asked to do just as much if not more for WAS offense than Caleb has for CHI" is certifiable absurd. No shot is that remotely true when you look at the passing charts and when you watch how both are operating at the LOS.

Don't know if anybody has been paying attention to Kurt Warner's weekly interview segments he does with 670 to talk about Caleb, but he seems pretty committed to the idea that he hasn't progressed from where he was 2 weeks ago against the Texans. He's been pretty negative about his performances each of the past 2 weeks when conventional wisdom seems to suggest he has improved. If you haven't listened, be sure to check out 670 YouTube page, but the bulk of his criticism seems to boil down to him not trusting his eyes, particularly on downfield throws, and looking uncomfortable anytime he has to come off his 1st read. The big area I disagreed with him most on was when they talked about Daniels and he scoffed at the idea that the Bears were asking more of Caleb (in terms of pre/post-snap operation) than Daniels. He made no mention of the fact that Daniels almost never comes off his 1st option and most of his passes are thrown within 10-15 yards of the LOS. There's a reason why he's completing 80+% of his passes. It's not that he's sooooo much more accurate than the likes of prime Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees, it's that he's been ultra conservative in attacking down field. His criticisms of Caleb seem valid, but I just flat out don't agree that he hasn't progressed at all from 2 weeks ago. Again, I'd encourage everyone to check out his interviews to get the full picture, but the tone I've been getting from him is that he isn't a fan of Caleb's game.

If Caleb could just hit those deep balls, his numbers would have looked a lot better today. That's the thing that's really been killing him this season. He's just not even close with anything beyond 15 yards. I've given him a 4 week grace period before getting too critical, but he HAS to start hitting those shots to DJ down the sideline when he's open. If you're going to dink and dunk for most of the game, you can't blow the few opportunities you do have to attack a team down the field. To his credit, he didn't turn the ball over, and the run game and penalties didn't allow him to be as prolific as you'd like to see, yardage-wise, but he did have some nice moments in the pocket. The TD to DJ and the dot over the middle to Kmet on the final TD drive were special throws. CAR JAX WAS NE AZ Going back to the IND game, the Bears have about 7 consecutive games against teams with shoddy defenses. This is the part of the schedule I anticipated Caleb having the most success with. You can't drop more than 2 of these next 5. Realistically, I think they probably need to go 4-1 to get to 6-3 before facing the Packers to put themselves in contention for a playoff spot down the stretch. Even with a win today, I haven't seen enough from the offense yet to make me feel confident in their ability moving forward. Still only 260 yards of offense against a bad defense today, despite the W.

I really don't get QBR at all. It's so strange to me how Stafford can have 2 turnovers and no touchdowns and still somehow come out of that game with a significantly better QBR (54) than Caleb today (39). They don't really explain the methodology clearly enough for me to trust the stat as meaningful. I mean, Bo Nix has a QBR in the 50's, somehow, despite a 1/4 TD/INT ratio and a game with 60 passing yards. It's crazy.