How Bout Dem Bears?

kennyb3 wrote: »

Disappointed tbh, if we were going to win I'd hoped for a nice performance. A scrappy, turnover laden performance that does nothing to help long term. Really hoping lovie can beat us next week.

Only thing I'm glad of is that anyone with a season ticket or over for the game got to see a home win.

If I was a vikes fan, I'd be consoling myself with the fact their s'hitty qb is costing a small amount compared to our ****ty one who's on a kings ransom in comparison. We somehow lost the tun over battle.

In fairness their QB is a rookie who has a huge amount to learn. He shows flashes of ability, he has a future. I didn't get to watch enough of the game to have an opinion on it yet.

Nice to get a win but the defence was brutal again and Cutler was Jekyll and Hyde with more interceptions. A better team than the Vikings would have destroyed them. Thought Trestman played a fairly aggressive game too with lots of plays on fourth downs.

ChicagoJoe wrote: »

At least we got something over the Vikings after the disasters against the Patriots and Packers. God it's not easy been a Bears fan some days Briggs is a concern, too many half hearted efforts in the last two years and still seems in bad form about contract negotiation.

That's the weird thing about AF. Its a very fine line between wanting your team to win when they won't make the playoffs and not being bothered when they lose resulting in a higher draft pick. I saw the win v vikings as about 5 draft positions

Good stuff.

https://twitter.com/ChicagoBears/status/536589123809603584
https://twitter.com/LPetruny/status/536590340703404033

Horrible first half but turned it around the second. Bucs are such a poor team and were really there for the taking.

Yeah crappy win. Probably should look at the offense for the rest of the season because we know Tucker's gone and there will be draft investment on the defensive side. And the offense really ****ing stunk (Forte probably excepted). 204 total yards, 3.6 yards-per-play, this loses you just about every game except the Bucs at home.

Between Trestman and Cutler, I think Cutler's probably the bigger problem. If he gets it off quick to his 1st or 2nd read, you're happy. If the first or 2nd read isn't there, you get a bad feeling, more often than not something bad is going to happen. Just not a smart guy at reading the field, locks onto players, which makes it easy for DBs to read and intercept.

Listening to the Chalk Talk podcast last week, great podcast actually. They have a discussion at the start about risk-averse QBs, and co-ordinators telling you what they think about their players by how they play them.

Although they're talking about Alex Smith and Russell Wilson, the discussion reminded me of Cutler. They talk about shot-plays being necessary to beat modern NFL defenses, you have to make plays out of structure, WCO alone doesn't cut it any more. What they discuss about the Seahawks minimising risk with Russell Wilson, I think the Bears are also trying to do with Cutler.

Seems to me now a major problem with the Bears offense is they just don't trust Cutler to make plays out of structure. So we see a lot of him throwing it away, or some easily-defendable check-down play when the initial reads aren't there. We're paying a guy $18m/year that the coaches don't trust to do more than the basics. And that's why the drives continually stall, it's just all this short stuff.

Dunno what the answer is, we're handcuffed to Cutler now for the next couple of years. Maybe another offensive co-ordinator (WCO and Cutler seems to be a bad fit), but we've being saying that for a while now.

I guess there's nothing shocking about the game today, if we're honest. We are who we thought we are...

But what annoyed me was how well we played at the outset. The D were fantastic in the first quarter, and obviously the O looked like last year, which is as high a compliment as you can get. But it all comes down to defensive play calling after that.

It seemed to me (and I guess for confirmation you'd need to watch again, which I have no intention of doing) that the whole thing just confirmed what we already knew: Tucker and Trestman don't know how to call a game. Trest is clearly able to gameplan, and actually so is Tucker. They can come up with some great ideas for how to work around a team's weaknesses. But against a good team, capable of seeing what your approach is and making necessary adjustments, we have no answer. So we stuff them on a few drives, and then blast them on a few of our own, then they figure us out, and we have no other surprises in store, and just have to keep plugging away with Plan A.

It was, at least, a little nicer to start well rather than having to give up on the game before half time, but Jesus Christ, what an indictment of our coaching staff. How can you be on third and 18 and have a dump off to Forte, not as your last resort, but as the play call? The objective seemed to be to get an extra five yards for the punt. I know Cutler's contract sucks, and we are lumbered with it, but late in the game, before it was beyond us, he was clearly looking to make plays to get us out of the hole that the D had gotten us into. Correction: not the D, who were playing OK, but the D coordinator, who had hobbled us so catastrophically. Hence the first INT.

That nice start really made me think we were serious for a little while but it actually just sums up the problem: we don't have a game time coordinator of any kind. We are a great confidence builder for serious teams, we make the Staffords of this world look like the Rodgers of this world, and the Rodgers of this world look like the Dan Marinos on fire of this world. We are star makers.

Anybody have the courage to listen to the press conference? I actually went to meet friends for beer just to get away from the temptation to watch, but I am willing to bet that we are sticking with Tucker. But Jesus, might as well, tonight was at least important for the vague possibility that we might get a wild card if we won out from here in. All we got was confirmation that winning out from NOW would be a disaster (not that it's a risk) because we haven't a hope on that front. Ideal scenario now is that the Lions and Packers contest the NFC championship and the winner loses the Superbowl. That way we don't have to watch either do it but they get bad draft picks.

I still won't be hoping for us to lose because it's honestly not in my DNA to cheer against us, and because the wait for the chance to get into football is so long, but I am looking forward to the draft and the firings. If the firings don't happen though...

https://twitter.com/JedYork/status/538188354609610752

Compare that to our clown of a GM and the rhetoric we are being fed by our coaches.

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Meh, Marshall was trotting out that unacceptable stuff a week's ago, it doesn't change things. If agree with your other post about Harbaugh except that I don't see the bears paying what he'd cost, and also you mentioned trading draft picks. I dunno how you square that with wanting to build the team from the ground up through the draft as you'd said earlier. It would force us even deeper into free agency surely?

Think you've confused padraig f's and my posts.

I wouldn't trade draft picks. I'd wait till he is gone then throw a fortune at him and give him control.

Emery will never do that, so it won't happen if Emery is still gone. I'd be happy with Emery gone.

Anyway as for Marshall saying it - he's a player. York is the CEO - he can instigate change - big difference.

What’s interesting is that there are Saints fans pining for Kromer back. I mean, there is a sure fire playcaller in place if Trest gets the boot.

Go all out for Harbaugh and if that fails give Bowles a go. Bowles on D, Kromer on offense. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can replace Joe D and be an improvement.

padraig_f wrote: »

Agree it's an outside chance though, I'd heard his wife wanted to stay in California and the Raiders would be a more likely destination for him.

Why come to Chicago...played for the team for years and should appreciate the coach that wins the 2nd SB with the Bears will be a lifetime legend.

Agree it's highly unlikely (remote even if Emery remains) but there are definitely reasons to come:

- Those you've outlined above
- Big city & 3rd biggest franchise media market wise
- Historic franchise that mesh's well with his tough style
- Would be hard not to improve on what's being achieved (good chance of success)
- Some talent in place (no depth admittedly but talent compared to say the Raiders)

Probably a stupid post but if we get harbaugh as coach does that effect new players coming and going?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/chi-matt-forte-bears-offense-20141201-story.html

Pretty obvious the players ain't behind Trestman - forte sounds downright annoyed

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

I don't understand it though, Trestman has said this week, and in numerous other weeks, that he really wants to run the ball more and they should run it more and that he intends moving towards running the ball more and he was disappointed that they didn't run it more.

YOU'RE THE FCUKING PLAYCALLER MARC, CALL MORE FCUKING RUNS IF IT'S BOTHERING YOU!

Edit: On another note, it was quite depressing watching the Pats-Packers game Sunday. The sheer level of innovation in the offensive playcalling by the Packers, the way they keep innovating every week and coming up with novel ways of getting the match ups they want coming out of the back field, they are just light years ahead of our check-down passing and our end-around fakes and whatever other few plays we always seem to think will work this week, despite not working last week. It's a level I really don't think we are going to get to with the coaching staff currently in place, and if the coaches will never match the Packers, they really don't need to be in jobs in Chicago.

Totally agree - watching all the really good games of football at the weekend makes you realise just how far off the Bears are in terms of quality. Way off even in terms of making a plyoff let alone making a run at the SB. Both sides of the ball to. This team really is well well below average.

Bookies have the Bears 3.5 point underdogs for Thursday's game. Who'd have thought at the start of the season we'd be over a field-goal underdog at home to the Cowboys?