Bleeding Bills Blue

Bears had 8 games where they had 3 or more takeaways - went 6-2 in those games. They scored 6 defensive TD's in 2018. They also led the league with 36 Takeaways. Tied for 3rd in the league with 50 sacks. Like all of those are incredibly volatile stats. Defensive TD's and takeaways in general are sometimes a lot of luck (ball bounces up in the air instead of into the ground, or ball bounces to your team on a fumble instead of out of bounds, etc.). Sacks are the same way, teams can scheme ways to slow a pass rush down (bootlegs, screens, run game). It's still a solid unit - but the same teams show up as high with turnover differential every year and they are the teams that don't turn it over on O. As for Trubiskey - He definitely played his best against bad defenses - 350 and 6 TDs against tampa, 300 3/1 against miami, 355 and 3 against detroit. I do feel like he may be pressing a bit, holding the ball , and Nagy seems to have been figured out. The free plays to cohen aren't there and they can't run the ball or protect him it seems. 3rd down percentage has gone from 40% to 30%, They're scoring on 26% of drives vs. 36% of drives in 2018, they're averaging under 10 yards per completion, under 6 YPA (there is no fancy advanced metric that makes their passing O look mildly effective). Just not efficient - inability to run the ball or in some weeks - call running plays... has killed their O. They're actually turning it over less than last year - but their rushing offense is terrible and their passing offense is pretty much the worst in the league outside of not throwing interceptions.

He living in DC? Or probably moving out to california to enjoy his retirement

Yeah - we could have just - drafted mahomes in 2017 too... He already won an MVP and isn't just the flavor of the month at the moment. Or watson. You literally do not know who is going to be good or bad at draft time. Mayfield shredded as much as watson did in college - and he's struggling this year. Murray is plugged into an O that is basically the same as his college O - with vastly different results. Mahomes came from an air raid offense of throwing the ball 70 times a game (remember when he threw for 734 yards and 7 TDs against oklahoma? Yeesh) His "hero ball" seems to always work for whatever reason too.

Taron Johnson in the 4th in addition to Neal. We also drafted Teller in the 5th, who we then moved with a 2021 7th for 5th and 6th rounders in 2020. So we got our starting QB, MLB, rotational DT, NCB, Backup NCB and lead gunner, and a guy we flipped for 2 more picks.... thats a pretty solid draft no?

Absurdly low wonderlic, vanilla offense, low velocity throws - there were red flags.

Agreed - don't gotta prove anything to anyone at this point.

Career earnings put him at 161 million currently. He did make 27 on the signing bonus from Washington, and the guaranteed salaries of 13 mil in 2018 and 15 mil in 2019. 2020 is i believe injury guaranteed - so there's another 16 million. It sucks that his career is over - but he played 10 games for Washington and will get 71 million dollars. I'd cut my leg off for 71 million dollars...

Had an unsportsman like and a roughing the passer were the main like - drive extenders. Maybe 1 defensive holding?

Hmm i'd probably go with Barry. The guy was just so smooth. Not to mention his college season record somehow still stands even though there are teams that play 14 games and he only played 11. If i gotta pick 3 - i'll add Faulk because of his pass catching on 3rd downs. After that I want Bettis for short yardage situations. It's not an all-time team for me, i want my team to be able to have a HOFer to contribute at their best in any situation.

Yeah - if teams want to roll straight man coverage and don't have the corners to do it that can get you in trouble too. Play action, bunch formations, pick plays, pump fakes etc. There's ways to scheme open in man coverage.

Yeah they made that Mack trade to like - be elite. And it sort of worked year 1 with all those takeaways. Trubiskey is a miss tho, so back to the drawing board. I'd expect them to draft a QB but they may also be in the market for a vet.

I'll agree to an extent. Last year's bears had a ton of turnovers and short fields. We haven't been doing much of that so we're asking the offense to take care of the ball. Pittsburgh or SF would be the ones expected to regress in that category YoY.

Ypa is very completion percentage dependant. He had a high air yards per attempt

I know the bengals are bad - but man the steelers are banged up... JuJu has 2 injuries, their #2 receiver johnson is also hurt, they couldnt run the ball before and they're out pouncey for a few weeks with a suspension. They played a few weeks back and pittsburgh beat them down (8 sacks, 2 takeaways, 175 total yards) - So they probably take this one... but i wouldn't be counting W's on their schedule outside of maybe this one. Especially with how much Rudolph has regressed recently. They're going to need turnovers and short fields to even win this game comfortably, but I'm not sure they're going to do enough to finish above like 8 wins this year.

What about Kenyan Drake? Or Jordan Howard?

Right? Newhouse is starting for the best team in the league! True, but it gives you another tackle on the 53 to replace nsekhe. And a guy who's started 40 games in the league vs. a rookie UDFA. Especially when the current starter has struggled at times this year.

I think part of this "play fearless" thing had something to do with him. He's been one of the offenders in the tentative game the past few weeks. It's not just about fitting your gap, he wasn't attacking his gap, disrupting play, or finishing downs. He did all 3 of those things this week.

They have had 17 different players catch a pass this year. Their leading non-edelman WR is dorsett. Gordon didn't do much, and sanu is new. They need Harry to step up, and they need to find a LT who doesn't flat out stink.

I feel like we got one popped up in the air INT in every one of those games including the loss. That'll happen but to catch all of them is absurd. That and all the defensive TD's... which are also really hard to replicate.

Yep - either kicker didn't kick it where it was supposed to go, players over pursue, or get caught out of their lanes. Same for the onside kick - coach isn't going to be in your ear before every one going "look out for the fake" - you're supposed to pay attention to the kicker, the ball etc.

he was late a few times in coverage this week - but maybe he didnt break it up... he was laying lumber all day tho.

He was getting swallowed up a lot, and not covering his gaps in the zone scheme. I get that our d-line needs to prevent clean guys getting through but if he doesn't attack the gap then he's not even muddying it up and letting the guy get to the 2nd level really easily.

Regarding the eagles - most of the damage was done with screens and obviously the 200+ on the ground. Eagles also didn't have Jeffery, and Matthews is a huge downgrade there especially 1x1. Some of those 0 blitzes don't happen with a guy like Jeffery available in a 1x1 situation. The patriots rush discipline basically took away the screen game and their man cov. helped them get 5 sacks as Wentz is getting forced to hold the ball. Agholor dropped a chance to tie the game, but it felt like they deserved to lose the game. They couldn't get the run game going, and couldn't give Wentz the extra time he needed. Eagles defense played pretty well though - they gave their team a shot and held the patriots under 300 yards of total O, and under 100 on the ground.

Are we looking for mahomes and wilson? Or are wentz/goff close comparisons to what we want?

He's doing a better job getting the ball out and committing to underneath passes. He's still got improvements to be made on a lot of aspects of his game 1 - the short running back plays to the outside, those are extended running plays that don't work if the ball isn't thrown to the right shoulder etc. 2 - 3rd down blitzing - he's gotta do a better job identifying, not taking sacks, delivering accurate balls 3 - Deep passing - obvious 4 - Pocket prescense - still bails from clean pockets. 5 - Eye discipline - did a lot better against miami, but its probably what cost us the cleveland game. 6 - Playing a complete game - even against miami he had drives where he just missed 2 throws and it was an immediate punt.