How Bout Dem Bears?

DA COACH!

padraig_f wrote: »

Enjoy the season, folks. Whatever happens, it can't be as bad as last season.

Yeah for all the ongoing troubles I think we could surprise a few people. Probably not today though. If be happy if we kept within ten points of them or thereabouts (and not by getting a few handy garbage time scores). Would also love to see cutler light them up on a few plays, packers fans are the most smug shower of hoors about him. They're not wrong... But still...

SameOleJay wrote: »

Enjoy it boys. We're all in it together.

Hahaha I don't think expectations have ever been so low going into a season.

A loss but any positives?

Forte was immense and big bonus with Ashlon playing.

aaronm13 wrote: »

Very encouraging but some terrible decisions within the 10 yard zone cost a win. Season might not be a bust if they can push on from this.

agreed very promising - but the next few games are a rough spell, Cardinals, Seahawks & at Chiefs 3 of next 4 games...

So very high possibility we start 1:4. But a lot of positives, as they said in commentary prior to the INT, if you offered Fox a 1 score game deep into the 4th Q he'd have taken it. That Packers teams is a good side and hell we ran the rock well - refreshing... I would question 1st & goal @ the 2-3y line and didn't just pound it in there each time...

I went into yesterdays game not expecting much and was really hoping not to be embarassed. In the end we had a chance to win that game. Some bad decisions down by the goal line. Cutler looked decent, took care of the ball very well, even the INT couldnt be fully attributable to him. Bad throw on the 4th and goal never gave Royal a chance to get it. As for the defence, it did not look horrible. The pass rush, whilst it didnt get to Rodgers, it did force a few holding calls and forced Rodgers to scramble a few times so it did get some pressure. I was impressed with Amos, for a fifth rounder he looks a good pick. Overall i have better hopes for the season if we can get out of this horrible initiall schedule intact

Happy with Sunday. Just a very well coached side with limited players functioning well and our few quality ones excelling.

The sequence on the goal-line was shocking and a black mark against Gase. The lack of pass-rush Fangio's big problem. I'm seeing the corners catch a lot of flak but I'm taking the tight coverage and excellent catches over the red sea parting we had in years past against 12 with Jennings and co. Let's wait and assess them in future weeks.

Credit to Green Bay, they'll walk the division. Matthews is exceptional.

kennyb3 wrote: »

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/09/14/gb-chi-grades-aaron-rodgers-continues-to-impress/


Seem we gave up a lot of pressure - 18.

Their grading of Ducasse definitely matches the eye test - he was on the ground a lot, and I mean a lot.

We need a guard and fast.

I would have won big money if I had suggested Shea McClellin would have been the Bears highest ranked player in 1st game of season at the end of last year!!!

Ducasse a huge worry, I think Long will improve at tackle, but it doesn't help if the guard next to you is getting creamed... It really highlights how vital the two tackle positions are...

kennyb3 wrote: »

You certainly would have! I think PFF is limited though. McClellin made a lot of tackles (think he is credited with 9/10) but too many of them seem to be after 4/5 yard gains rather than for a loss or at the line. He still can't get off blockers and get there early. Still it's a lot better than the past 3 years and is somewhat promising.

This is always going to be his big problem


He's never had and never will have a football brain.

Ask him to stand still and block the run - fine
Ask him to try shoot a gap and make a tackle - fine
Ask him to blitz - fine

Ask him to read a trick play or maintain cover for a period of time - no hope!

Agreed - but 1st game at ILB against the best QB in the league, with a new defence - not bad.

That clip is brilliant though, can you ever imagine Urlacher or Briggs looking like that!!! Didn't catch the whole game - did Bostic see any game time? Any justification of roster spot???

+
Bushrod- did not expect a good game out of him. Very encouraging
Slauson- He’s been such a good signing
Marty B- One of our best players, I don’t think that’s any doubt anymore
Shea- If he turns out mediocre it’s exponentially more than I expected
Forte-The indispensable part of the offense for near a decade now. Looks in great shape.
Wilson- Getting anything from him would be a nice bonus

-
Allen- As good as done. Sub-packages only please
Ducasse- What did we expect really.
McPhee- He wasn’t bad but clearly not a primary pass-rusher. We really need Young and Houston to step up
Long- Not concerned… he’ll get it together

We are who we thought we were I guess. All hope was lost when Cutler went to the locker room.

Don't even want to talk about Kyle Fuller. I really thought he was a gem early last season but he deserved to be benched today.

padraig_f wrote: »

Strange what's happened to Fuller alright, looked so good the first half of his rookie season. It wasn't just Bears fans either, I'm sure he won some award around that time, defensive player-of-the-month or defensive rookie-of-the-month.

New Bears podcast I came across with Adam Hoge and Adam Jahns:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/intentional-grounding-from/id1027584309?mt=2

Very good reviews of the games. The fact that the week 2 review was very listenable says something.

It's balanced and they're not foaming at the mouth or whatever, and giving some credit where it's due, as with Kyle Long who has really performed admirably since been thrown in at the deep-end at RT and then picking up an injury in week 1.


Da Bears Blog wants Fales to start:
Starting Jimmy Clausen a Mistake for Chicago Bears

I'm a fan of his blog, but disagree here. As bad as Clausen was, he still gives you a better chance to win over someone who's never played an NFL snap. And I just don't agree with giving up on the season after week 2. We may be going nowhere, but I still think you play to win. After you're mathematically eliminated, then you can try Fales. Besides I'm not sure it would do him any favours throwing him in against the Seahawks' defense.

Your last point there is the main one for me. Fales was on the practice squad for a reason, and however bad Clausen is, he still beat out Fales. As well as that he deserves a chance to start, if the coahces are serious about him as a backup. But most of all, throwing Fales to the wolves on Sunday would be an enormous setback, if the intention is that he will ultimately develop as a player.

Anyway we haven't a snowball's of winning this game. A lot of expectation that we run the ball a lot, obviously, but ultimately unless Clausen can get something going in the passing game, the lanes will never open up. It could be an extremely long day.

But personally, I think a lot of Bears reaction to the bad start to the year has been utterly overblown (and a lot of the "start Fales" stuff is from people who were anti-Cutler zealots that until Sunday were calling to "start Clausen" until they saw what that actually entails. In other words, it comes from people myopically incapable of recognising that Cutler for now gives us by far and away our best chance of winning). I think most of us pretty much expected an 0-3 start, the only question was going to be how badly that start would go. With Cutler starting, we have looked the best we have been on offense in two years. There will be wins when he comes back, and I think the alarm bells about power rankings and other such nonsense can be ignored, at least for the moment. We have one of the most badly banged up offenses in the league right now, missing its QB and the receiving corps.

The D is still a wreck at the moment though. I'm just not sure why fans expected anything else. That is a three year fix up, and until we've had a couple of drafts, I'm not going to make any judgments.

On the other hand, number one draft pick could be cool...

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

I think most of us pretty much expected an 0-3 start, the only question was going to be how badly that start would go. With Cutler starting, we have looked the best we have been on offense in two years. There will be wins when he comes back, and I think the alarm bells about power rankings and other such nonsense can be ignored, at least for the moment. We have one of the most badly banged up offenses in the league right now, missing its QB and the receiving corps.

I agree I expected us to be 0-3. We overplayed week 1 and under played week 2. We are probably somewhere in between. They are 2 very good teams.

The area that concerns me though is the D - it flat out sucked in both games - no sacks, minimal hurries or QB hits (McPhee had a few week 2), QB's putting up huge ratings, load's of TD's (4 at half time last week).

We just genuinely lack talent and playmakers.

The other thing that concerns me is the lack of a plan re RT & RG and how that's played out. Ducasse is plain awful. That shouldn't have happened.

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

The D is still a wreck at the moment though. I'm just not sure why fans expected anything else. That is a three year fix up, and until we've had a couple of drafts, I'm not going to make any judgments.

On the other hand, number one draft pick could be cool...

I expected better because we a) spent money on defence in FA (McPhee & Rolle) and b) hired a defensive HC and a top DC.

If it's truly a 3 year fix can they stop patching over it with short term fixes and just pick rookies who can develop. Again they spent a 7th pick and 71st pick on offensive players (and Grasu is about to red shirt the year by looks of it). Just spend all the picks on defence if it's that bad. The offence is moving the ball anyway but the defence needs to get off the field and stop handing out TD's.

I like Pace - I liked his draft (a lot in spite of what i say above), I like that he didn't go nuts in FA but I wish one god damn Bears Gm would take a long term perspective and actually let us suck if we suck rather than patching it up each offseason with a few vets so we can continue on the path to middle of the road (or below) mediocrity. Save the cap space for when we actually find some talent so there is zero contract problems when it comes to re-signing them.

If you ain't going to be around in 2/3 years get off the field. I don't even want to see Jared Allen on the roster let alone the field. It's the same with Alan Ball etc. What's the point? Oh yeah lets finish 5-11 rather than 4-12, meanwhile a youngster rides the bench for another year and we continue to miss out on Aaron Donald's and Leonard William's because we win those pointless games. It's frustrating as hell!

That's not defeatist - it's just intelligent, if you don't want to continue being a middle of the road team. We've been doing this for 3/4yrs now all the while our talent pool is getting weaker and our results worse. You put guys out there, see what you have and try find players for the future rather than having to spend another picks next year to do the same.

padraig_f wrote: »

I notice Dan Durkin has an article today which seems to back this up:
Durkin’s Playbook: Spotlight’s On Kyle Fuller

I suppose the plus side is it looks fixable, but you'd want to see some progress fairly quickly.

Good read that and nice breakdown thanks. Always good to read in depth analysis rather than the usual mainstream stuff in espn and nfl.com.