Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune reports the both Jay Cutler and Lance Briggs will remain out on Monday. Briggs's absence for a seven week extends his recovery time past the four to six week period which was anticipated when the injury occurred.

Head coach Marc Trestman is undoubtedly being cautious after Cutler tried to come back from his groin injury early against the Lions only to injure his ankle. However it's worth noting that the low temperature downtown will be 8 degrees on Monday night and it's possible that the Bears would like to have neither coming back for their first game from injuries in such cold weather.

The popular thing right now is to run down the Bears defense, blaming it for the vast majority of the team’s problems.  So naturally, as is my wont, I’m going to go the other way.

According to the latest statistics on NFL.com, the Bears injury-riddled is, indeed, ranked 28th in both points allowed and yards allowed.  However, looking at the last 5 games, only the Rams game stands out as a total disaster with 41 points allowed.  The others are the Packers (20), the Lions (21), the Ravens (20) and the Vikings (20 in regulation, 23 with overtime).

Shouldn’t the vaunted and improved Bears offense be expected to score more than 20 points in a game?

Its not just a cliche.  It does, truly, take a village to build a total loss.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune highlights another interesting point.  He quotes Bears running back Michael Bush on why he wasn’t used in short yardage situations on Sunday:

“’I don’t know,’ Bush said. ‘I guess it wasn’t the personnel for me. They were holding 75 (Kyle Long) so that is why he couldn’t get off. That is what it looked like. They just made a good play, the Vikings. They haven’t switched anything up here, not to my knowledge.’”

The Bears offensive scheme seems to rely a great deal on pulling offensive linemen and trap plays.  I’ve noticed situations, particularly short yardage situations, in a number of games where an offensive linemen is actually held by the defensive lineman opposite him to prevent him from getting to the play.  Kyle Long seems to be particularly susceptible to it.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the Bears do about this in future contests.  It may be a defensive strategy that you just have to live with but there may be techniques to prevent it from happening, particularly if the offensive linemen are made particularly aware of the problem in certain situations.  Again, I’d say Long is the man to keep an eye on.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune discusses the decision of Bears head coach Marc Trestman to kick a long field goal on second down rather tHan risking an offensive mistake to run plays to get closer:

“Here’s the biggest problem: Trestman’s explanation expressed zero faith in his offense. If he doesn’t believe in his offense, you sure can’t. I am sure he will have well-thought-out talking points when he meets the media Monday afternoon at Halas Hall. I can’t think of an explanation that will make sense to me.”

I won't say that Trestman's decision was wrong. If kicker Robbie Gould makes that kick, we probably aren't discussing this.

But what I will say is that Trestman's confidence not just in the offense, but in the whole team is obviously shaky. You might say that the biggest problem is that his confidence should be shaken. Right now he can't depend upon his offense to get half a yard on third down. He can't depend upon anyone to run or defend a play without committing a penalty. He can't ever depend upon eleven guys to all do their jobs correctly on any given down.

The real problem for Trestman is that this is a vicious cycle. The team is a reflection of its head coach and the head coach is a reflection of the team. When Trestman shows a lack if confidence, the team is less confident and continues to play poorly.

Bottom line, Trestman needs to suppress these negative thoughts in the future and stay aggressive because playing with aggression is the only way to win football games. You can only continue to play the game to win and hope that those around you eventually raise their level of play to match your faith in them. Because if you don't, your lack of success is almost guaranteed.

Defense

1. The Bears came out with 8 in the box on first down and stuck with their base package for much of the game. Its seemed evident that they were determined to stop the run.
2. Problems with gap discipline once again popped up and resulted in some big Viking runs. Its very disappointing that this hasn't been cleaned up. I'm going to lay most of the blame on the linebackers and safety Craig Steltz.
3. The defensive line, on the other hand, came to play. The pass rush was quite good. I could, perhaps, have asked for more penetration agains the run.
4. Julius Peppers stood out with a good effort.
5. Jon Bostic did not. He's still over playing the ball and, as a result, he's having a tough time getting off of blocks.
6. Third quarter. The Bears stop the Vikings about half a yard short of the goal line. Instead of refusing a Viking holding penalty, Bears head coach Marc Trestman choose to accept it, setting up a third and eleven instead of fourth and less than a yard. He obviously feared that the Vikings would go for fourth down and, even worse, feared that they'd score on it. That tells you where he's at with the defense right now.
7. The majority of the passes are still going Zack Bowman's way. I won't say that he held up poorly but Jerome Simpson burned him all day.
8. I'd still like to see this defense do better on third down. It just seemed like they gave up play after play when they needed a stop.

Offense

1. The Vikings also came out determined to stop Matt Forte and frequently stacked the box. Like the Bears, they weren't entirely successfulas Forte had a reasonably good day.
2. They threw in a few different twists, however. They seemed to like the delayed blitz with their linebackers and, when they weren't doing that, they were dropping into coverage in n effort to ake away the middle of the field from Bears quarterback Josh McCown. McCown doesn't have a tremendous amount of arms strength and he's not as comfortable throwing outside the numbers. It was a good plan.
3. McCown really struggled with his accuracy today. Een some of th eballs that were caught wern't well thrown.
4. Both Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall had their usual stellar games. There's no way that Jeffery should have been in single coverage with no help over the top on the third quarter touchdown. I can only assume that the safety was very late getting over or Vikings defensive back Chris Cook was playing Jeffery too close. Jeffery also made an unbelievable catch for his second touchdown in that quarter.
5. Just as I was wondering whatever happened to sending Forte out into a pattern, the Bears did it near the end of the third quarter. Good call.
6. Despite Matt Forte's success, I still thought the Vikings got too much penetration and got too much pressure on McCown too often. I'd like to see better.

Miscellaneous

1. I watched this at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Missouri. All I can say is that if you took the Bears fans and the (obnoxious) Vikings fans out of the middle of the room, it would have been half empty of football enthusiasts.
2. Bad job by the FOX crew for not getting a replay of the pass interference against Martellus Bennett and the personal foul on Brandon Marshall, both on the same play and both disputed by Bears players.
3. I understand that Corderrelle Patterson is very talented and very dangerous. But does he really call for pooch kickoffs? Am I the only one who thinks that Devin Hester should be able to beat the licker on his own on a return?
4. Both teams had too many penalties (again). A pass interference n Martellus Bennett eliminated a first down. Jon Bostic gots a debatable (but still stupid) taunting penalty which was extremely costly in the fourth quarter, giving the Vikings a fresh set of downs near the Bears goal line. The Vikings had an interception with was nullified by an offsides penalty. And, of course, they had a fask mask in overtime that cost them a game winning field goal. How would you like to be a Vikings fan watching Chris Cook contacting an official? That will be a well deserved suspension.
5. The game was relativley clean of drops.
6. Josh McCown lost an extremely costly turnover deep in Bears teritory in the fourth quarter as he tried to throw a desparate shuffle pass while going to the ground. Fortunatley he was bailed out by a Khaseem Greene interception.
7. You got the feeling going into this game that it was going to be a defining moment in the season. You could sense the urgency as even Pro Bowl linebacker Lance Briggs broke the relative silence he has maintained since his injury. Both he and members of the media called out the defense for not showing heart and, if its not quite on target, I'd say calling them out for having a lack of brains and discipline isn't much better. Unfortunately, playing with more urgency doesn't necessarily equate to playing a lot better. In this case, though they weren't as bad as last week, many of the Bears problems persist. These include too many penalties, poor run defense and a certain degree of trouble on the offensive line. Perhaps you could call this incremental progress. But I was still disappointed to see the Bears lose to a team so decidedly inferior to their own in a contest they so badly needed to win.

Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune summarizes the Vikings revolving door at quarterback:

“[Christian] Ponder entered his third season as the undisputed starter, then struggled during an 0-3 start with more turnovers (seven) than TD passes (two) and a completion percentage of .590. Two days after a 31-27 home loss to the Browns in Week 3, the Vikings announced Ponder had a fractured rib and inserted [Matt] Cassel, a 31-year-old veteran, as their starter for a Week 4 game against the Steelers in London.

“Cassel threw for 248 yards with two TD passes in a 34-27 win across the pond and retained the starting spot after the bye week. But the Vikings also complicated matters by signing [Josh] Freeman off the scrap heap on the Sunday of Week 5, just a few days after his unceremonious exit from Tampa Bay. So after Cassel struggled in a 35-10 home loss to Carolina, Freeman got the nod to start the following week against the Giants.

“Then, he delivered one of the more abysmal quarterbacking performances in recent memory, misfiring on 33 of 53 passes against the Giants, failing to lead a single scoring drive and throwing a costly red zone pick in an embarrassing 23-7 loss to a previously winless opponent. Two days after that debacle, the Vikings announced Freeman had concussion-like symptoms and spun the wheel back to Ponder, who has had uneven results in the five games since. He’s 1-3-1 in those starts and didn’t finish a Week 10 win over the Redskins (shoulder injury) or a Week 11 loss in Seattle (benched).”

“Overall, Ponder is 13-20-1 as a starter during his career and just hasn’t been able to clear the inconsistency hurdle.

“Perhaps worst of all: he shows flashes of promise – leaving him in NFL quarterbacking purgatory. He’ll likely never be good enough to be a major difference-maker’s but has been just good enough in spurts to tease at a potential breakthrough.”

This last paragraph struck a cord with me because it's so consistent with what I see in Jay Cutler. Though most seem to think that Cutler will be resigned for at least one more year in the offseason, I'm not so sure about whether he is the long-term answer here even after most of a year as the starter under offensive head coach Marc Trestman.

All agree that Cutler has talent. The real question is how much success a “see it, throw it” quarterback who is incapable of throwing with anticipation can have in the NFL. Of the top quarterbacks in the league, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rogers, none do it this way.

There are times when I think its possible. Then the Bears play a team that comes out in tight man coverage where the windows of opportunity are extremely narrow, Cutler looks awful and I think, “They've got to go in a different direction.”

It doesn't help Cutler's case that back up Josh McCown has looked so good hitting wide recievers quickly, in stride, thowing the ball before they come open. It shows you the possibilities that are there if Cutler could just learn to do it.

Most think there's no compairison between Cutler and Ponder, two totally different quarterbacks. But I feel the same way about both. There are flashes where I think they're the answer. And there are games when I'm sure they aren't.

Can the Bears see football heaven under Cutler? Who the hell knows.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune reminds me of a point I've been meaning to make as he answers your questions:

“Why is Marc Trestman emphasizing Jay Cutler has a high ankle sprain? Is it to stress his groin is fine? — @bbuddhas from Twitter

“Probably because he’s gotten a high number of questions about what is wrong with Cutler. There has been a lot of misinformation out there about Cutler but he is sidelined with a high ankle sprain. The groin might not be 100 percent but it is good enough for him to play on and has been.”

Yes, that's possible. But I think its more likely that Trestman is convering for a medical staff that gave Cutler the go ahead to play on a bad groin too soon. As many others have noted Cutler was grabbing his groin not his ankle in that last game.

You'll note that he's been much more cautious about letting Cutler come back from the “high ankle sprain” than he was coming off of the graoin injury. That's probably because he's learned to fully trust neither Cutler nor the medical staff. As well he shouldn't.

Rick Morrissey at the Chicago Sun-Times tells us that we shouldn't be surprised that the run defense stinks:

“The term of the moment in the NFL is ‘‘run fits.’’ It refers to defensive players being in proper position to make tackles on running backs in the gaps between offensive linemen. The Bears aren’t good at it, and no amount of teaching is going to make up for the fact they don’t have the athletes to pull it off. And you know what that means: a lack of ‘‘gap integrity.’’ I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

Morrissey makes some good points in this article. But this isn't one of them.

First, I also had never heard the phrase “run fit” until this year. My assumption was that this was a term that new defensive coordinator Mel Tucker brought in with him. I've avoided using it just because I hate to go along with the crowd in an effort to sound like I know what I'm talking about. But I'll probably eventually give in.

Second and most importantly, what disappoints me and so many Bear fans like me about the defense isn't that the Bears “don't have the athletes to pull it off”. If the problem was that the Bears players were just getting blocked out of the play, I could live with that. I wouldn't like it and I might look for fundamental improvements to make the players as individuals better, but I could accept it as reality. You can only coach up a lack of talent so much.

What bothers me is that so many of the break downs are mental. It's not that the guy gets pushed out of his gap. It's that he's not in his gap or that he's managed to lean just enough in the wrong direction that he's basically done the offensive player's job for him.

Add in the penalties and what you are left with isn't just a team that lacks talent. It's a team that isn't playing to the potential that the talent they have provides. This is a much worse crime.

Many if not most of the Bears problems can be coached. And the Beas need these players to start listening and responding to that coaching. Otherwise the guess here is that many of them being in the last year of their contracts, they won't be around very long after the year is over. Nor should they.

Packers left guard Josh Sitton tells WSSP radio in Milwaukee exactly what he thinks of the Lions. Via Rob Demovsky at ESPN:

“Sitton was asked whether the Lions might try to knock out Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers with a hit if Rodgers were to play on Thursday. Rodgers is not expected to return this week from his broken collarbone.”

“'Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any question about that,' Sitton said. 'They go after quarterbacks. Their entire defense takes cheap shots all the time. That’s what they do. That’s who they are. They’re a bunch of a dirtbags or scumbags. That’s how they play, and that’s how they’re coached. It starts with their frickin’ coach. It starts with the head coach, [Jim] Schwartz. He’s a d—, too. I wouldn’t want to play for him. It starts with him, and their D-coordinator and their D-line coach. They’re all just scumbags and so are the D-line.”

Couldn't have said it better myself. As an opponent, I wouldn't have said it. But as a fan who likes to see the game played reasonably cleanly, I couldn't agree more. They're a blight on the league.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune runs through the subtleties of holding the ball for a kicker with punter Adam Podlesh:

“In perfect conditions, like the Bears had Sunday in the Edward Jones Dome, Podlesh tilts the ball slightly toward himself and a little toward the goalpost. With the wind blowing hard last week, he tilted the ball more toward himself. In a situation where the wind would have been blowing the opposite direction, Podlesh would have held the ball straight up. He never tilts the ball away from himself because a soccer-stryle kicker like [Robbie] Gould could strike the top of the ball with his ankle if he did that.

“'You never want to tilt the ball that way with a right-footed soccer-style kicker,” Podlesh said. “But what we’ll do is I’ll put it just straight up and that will help hold it up the opposite way. When you do this (tilting it toward himself or leaving it straight up), it will usually give you about 10 to 15 more yards without the ball breaking. So, it will stay on line 10 to 15 more yards depending on how hard the wind is until it breaks and starts moving.'”