Bear(ing) the News – A Chicago Bears Blog

Sorry these are late. Somebody tried to hack into my account and WordPress shut me down yesterday.

Defense

• The Bears did a pretty good job of stopping the run in this game (4.0 yards per carry). They’ve done well the last few weeks with this, which is pretty good considering that they’re without Eddie Goldman (COVID opt out) and Roy Robertson-Harris (IR).
• I thought it was interesting to see Houston come out of halftime and the conclusion that they had drawn was that they had to run more. They did because they weren’t doing it enough and you have to do it no matter how much success you are having. But it wasn’t because they were going to have more success with it. In any case the Bears were glad to watch them run clock and do it.
• The Bears got plenty of pressure on Deshaun Watson. His mobility was very evident in avoiding it but there’s only so much he can do. The guy has literally nothing around him.
• Big, big game for Khalil Mack. Big fumble recovery. Big forced fumble. Pass deflection. And, of course, a sack for a safety. Unfortunately Robert Quinn was not on the score sheet again.
• I was glad to see the Bears playing more aggressive man-to-man defense again. the soft zones weren’t working and they weren’t producing interceptions, which I assume is why they were doing it the last couple games. The Houston offense in the first half was Watson dropping back, finding no one, avoiding a sack and running the ball.
• Some good plays from Duke Johnson for the Texans this game. He’s a quick, speedy back with some moves.

Offense

• To me, the biggest question of the game was whether the Bears were going to run the ball effectively again. They did (7.3 yards per carry). The new offensive line blocked very well and David Montgomery looked good again. However, it must be said that the Texans are close to last in the league in rush defense. The Vikings will pose a bigger challenge. This is the way they’re going to have to win games.
• I don’t think Cordarella Patterson is the runner Montgomery is. I don’t think he’s got the vision. I was cutting too much inside when I thought that there was room outside. I’ve been generally supportive of him. But I think Montgomery should be getting his snaps.
• What was really good was that the Texans were packing the box, knowing the Bears were going to run. That’s a good sign. Even a bad team can often stop you when playing is such a way.
• I kind of liked the play calls in the passing game and I kind of didn’t. I saw more of the easy throws that allowed Trubisky to be reasonably successful in 2018 and he was on the move more. But I’d like to see them go down field more. I understand why they’re doing it. Trubisky is who he is. I just wish they could do better.
• I thought Trubisky got good protection this game. Again, nice job from the new look offensive line. What took them so long to get some of these guys out there?
• I’ll be interested in the snap counts for this game. I saw a lot of Jimmy Graham, who had a good game. Perhaps not as many for Cole Kmet, though we did see a fair bit of him as well.

Miscellaneous

• Because I’m out of town I watched this game on Gamepass. So the announcers got a break from me today and I didn’t listen. Or, perhaps I got a break from them. You’ll have to tell me.
• Penalties were even between the two teams (6 for the Texans and 7 for the Bears). That’s too many for a team that’s going to have to run the ball effectively to win most weeks. Their margin for error is too small.
• The Bears didn’t turn the ball over. Houston lost two fumbles. That’s usually a pretty good indication of how the game went.
• Hated the throw back uniforms. Hated them.
• This was a nice bounce back game for the Bears. The offense looked a lot like it did last week but they got help from a defense that was more aggressive in coverage and did a nice job. But this Texans team was really miserable. Much worse than I thought, even given the statistics which told me what they were. The Bears will have a bigger challenge next week against the resurgent Vikings in their building. I think that’s where we’ll find out what they’re made of as it will be a mist win game for both teams.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

Assuming the Bears hire a new coach next year, why haven’t they given David Toub a serious look as a head coach? He has the best resume by far out of any head coaching candidate and he is well-regarded by many former Bears players. Why hasn’t any team hired him as head coach? — @jojopuppyfish

General manager Phil Emery interviewed Toub after Lovie Smith was fired and Emery cast a wide net to find the Bears’ next coach. Toub didn’t get any consideration when John Fox or Matt Nagy were hired. Could he resurface eight years after that previous interview as a possible candidate for the Bears? That probably depends a great deal on who is in charge of making the hire. Toub has a ton of experience, but as we’ve seen for a long time, NFL teams are hesitant to turn to coaches with special teams backgrounds when hiring a head coach. It happens every once in a while. A lot of teams are looking for a coach they believe can make something magical happen with the quarterback or the offense. Toub is 58, so while he’s not too old, his shot would have to come relatively soon. Maybe his name will pop in the cycle this time around. He’s certainly more than deserving of consideration.

I have always been in favor of hiring an offensive head coach because I’ve always believed that finding good, creative offensive minds is harder than finding good defensive coordinators. Once you find one, the best way to keep from losing him is to have him as your head coach. There’s basically no promotion that another team could offer and no way they could force you to allow them to interview your guy in that situation.

Most of the league has agreed with me over the last couple years. Most of the head coaches hired were young, offensive coaches with a background in coaching quarterbacks. It just makes sense.

Having said that, This isn’t a hard and fast rule. Many, many successful head coaches have come from defensive backgrounds (Bill Belichick anyone?). And a few have come from backgrounds as special teams coaches. The most prominent current head coach from such a background is John Harbaugh and there are very few I could name that are better.

Toub is probably the best special teams coach in the league. And that is for the best possible reason. It isn’t because he’s all that clever with special, brilliant plays (though he’s had his share). It isn’t because his schemes are so much better than other special teams coaches (though they’re pretty good). Its because, like all special teams coaches, he’s taking the guys at the very bottom of the roster and getting the most out of them And he’s doing it better than anyone else.

Toub’s players execute better than the other team’s players week after week. They do their jobs in a fundamentally sound way at crucial times season after season. And that, more than anything else, defines what a good NFL coach needs to be able to do.

It is true that if you hire a good special teams coach as your head coach you are basically dooming yourself to an eternal search for good offensive coordinators. The minute you find one, he’ll be gone. And that’s a problem.

But unlike the young head coaches that are trending around the league, Toub has been around. He’s 58 years old, not 38. Kansas City is his third professional team and the only reason there haven’t been more is because he’s been so successful.

In his 20 years as a coach in the league Toub’s gotten to know a lot of guys. He’s got a lot of contacts to draw upon to hire a staff and, even if he’s hiring a guy he’s never worked with, he knows what a good coach looks like. And he knows what a good player looks like, too. Probably better than the Bears current GM,Ryan Pace, who was hired 6 years ago at just 37 years of age and probably better than Bears head coach Matt Nagy, who was hired at just 39 years of age.

It’s so easy to become enamored with creative play calls with catchy names like “Santa’s Sleigh”. It’s so easy to believe that you have to hit a home run and find “the next big guy” before everyone else does. But the core quality of every head coach in the NFL is the ability to prepare players and get the most out of them.

Fundamentally, execution, regardless of the situation, regardless of the play call, regardless of whatever adversity the team faces, is the basis for success for every NFL team.

And if you are looking for a guy who can get his players to execute, it looks to me like Dave Toub might be the right guy for the job.

Rick Telander at the Chicago Sun-Times calls upon GM Ryan Pace to comment on the current sad state of the team:

The times cry out for a big statement from the man who orchestrated this mess afield, from the man who hired coach Matt Nagy, traded for high-priced defender Khalil Mack, picked quarterback Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 draft and brought in Nick Foles as a hopeful but failed offensive savior.

If the Good Ship Bears is sinking, the man who built the hull, loaded the cannons and hoisted the mainsail ought to stand on the pier and tell us what the hell is going on.

Mr. Pace, sir?

I understand why Telander is writing this. If I were in the business of selling newspapers, I’d want comments from as many people associated with the organization as I could get from Virginia McCaskey down to the janitor. And I’d want them no matter what the situation was, winning or losing.

Gotta fill all those pages with something to satisfy the insatiable demand for more content from fans all over the city, right?

The problem is that Pace and the McCaskeys have to think about what’s best for the organization first. And what’s best isn’t for them to comment right now.

The Bears, like every NFL team, need one voice at any one time. The players need one message and they need to be listening for it from one guy. During the season, that has to be the head coach. They can’t be worrying about what the GM or the owner said about their performance, either as individuals or as a team. They can’t have mixed messages floating through their heads from different people who, though they all think that they are on the same page, express things differently with different potential interpretations.

They need one, unified message from the guy whose job it is to turn things around and to turn them around right now. There’s time enough later to worry about what the guy who has their future in his hands thinks. Right now, he’s irrelevant. Their job is concentrate on doing their jobs and to win games. The best way to do that is listen to the coaches and perform.

And, honestly, what is Pace going to say? We all know its going to be a bunch of word salad that comes down to “We mis-evaluated the situation”. And, boy, did they ever. They mis-evaluated the talent on the offensive line, they mis-evaluated the quarterback position, they mis-evaluated the pass rushers that they threw money at, and, above all, they went all in after mis-evaluating where this team was in terms of its readiness to compete for a championship.

We know all of that. We don’t need to hear them say it. Yet.

For now, Nagy has a job to do. He needs to be able to do it without any interference from Pace or ownership or anyone else. He needs to be the one voice of the franchise. There’s an entire off-season to talk about the rest.

And, hey. We need content to fill all those pages with content then, as well, right?

Offense

• The Bears open no huddle to try to get some momentum going. It kind of worked. They got a field goal.
• The Bears were mixing the run and pass pretty well. Lions were not apparently stacking the box against the run and the Bears took advantage and ran pretty well against him. I won’t say the line opened huge holes but there were enough cracks there for David Montgomery to sneak through. The Bears building upon their limited success against the Packers to execute an improved running game was the most encouraging thing to come out of this game. They occasionally did a nice job of executing play action off of it, too. This is their path to success.
• The coaching change didn’t do anything to improve the Lions tackling. It was pretty bad in spots.
• Trubisky still didn’t have great accuracy on some of his throws, especially the ones outside the numbers. But that’s no surprise.
• The Bears offense once again failed to score in the third quarter. I don’t think there’s anything more for me to say here that hasn’t already been said.
• The Lions started to blitz a lot in the second half. Matt Nagy or Bill Lazor or whoever responded with some good play calls to counter it (screens, short passes into the voids in coverage, etc…).

Defense

• Roquan Smith struggled in coverage. In fairness, the Bears expect a lot out of their linebackers. Covering a wide out on a shallow cross from a dead stop is a tough ask.
• Adrian Peterson still looked good at times but I’d say the Bears did a decent job against the run for the most part. Welcome back Akiem Hicks.
• Bears are tackling much better than they were against the Packers. So they appear to have straightened that out in a hurry. The defense did looks very motivated, at least as first, to put that miserable Packers effort behind them.
• The Bears were stunting an awful lot on the defensive front in an effort to get pressure on Matthew Stafford. I don’t think it had much effect. There were stretches where the Bears really struggled to get pressure.
• The Lions started to run the ball better midway through the first quarter. Their line was getting good movement on the Bears up front.
• Some of the Bears pass coverage was pretty bad. It was very loose at times and there was a lot of space for the Lions receivers on some of the plays. I almost wonder if there were some broken coverages out there. Combined with the occasionally poor pass rush, it was an ugly look sometimes.

Miscellaneous

• Kevin Kugler, Chris Spielman and Laura Okmin were your announcers. Okmin always does a good job and Kugler seems to be adequate. But I was underwhelmed by Spielman. I don’t think I learned anything from him.
• Special teams weren’t very special but there isn’t much critical to say. Which probably means good things for both sides.
• Great Cordarrella Patterson return to start the game
• Cairo Santos missed the extra point on the first touchdown. That’s a cheap way to end a consecutive kicks streak.
• Matt Prater missed a rare extra point as well on the Lions first touchdown.
• The Bears were kicking off short all game. I’m not entirely sure why. The coverage was decent and perhaps it made a marginal difference in starting position.
• Drops really didn’t affect the game much.
• There weren’t that many penalties for the Bears but one penalty is all it takes to kill a drive with this offense. The Bears had a drive going midway thorough the third quarter. Holding Charles Leno and the drive was dead. Instead of being up by 13 or 17, they give the Lions life and the ball with more than 7 minutes left. There’s no margin for error with this team.
• One thing Mitch Trubisky had to do with less than 2 minutes left. One thing. Hang on to the damned ball. And he couldn’t do it.
• This is what bad teams with bad quarterbacks do. There were a lot of encouraging things about this game. The run game was good (4.5 yards per carry). The defense limited the Lions to less than 3 yards per carry. Heck, they scored 30 points. But this is what bad teams do.

Colleen Kane at the Chicago Tribune thinks the Bears will win Sunday in their match up against the Detroit Lions after the Lions fired GM Bob Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia:

The Lions might be fired up by the recent regime change. But I think the Bears defense is going to be even more motivated after the shoddy performance against the Green Bay Packers in Week 12. Mitch Trubisky was 4-0 with 12 touchdowns and an interception against Matt Patricia’s Lions teams. If Trubisky can cut out the mistakes, he should be able to have another decent one even with Patricia gone. The Bears will pull off a win for the first time since Oct. 18.

Most of the writers I’ve seen agree with this prediction but I pulled this one because, although it mentions the boost that the Lions might get from the leadership change, it focuses on the state of the Bears.

Too many of the writers in town are treating this like the game should be a slam dunk. I’ve heard it said repeatedly that, “If the Bears lose to the Lions on Sunday, then we’re having a whole different conversation about this team.” because they should be so much better that losing to the Lions is some sort of inexcusable and inconceivable thing. I even heard one writer repeated say on a podcast, “Thanks heavens the Lions are in the Bears division.”

A loss Sunday might change the conversation but lets be clear about one thing. The Bears have had some recent success against the Lions but those games have been close. There isn’t and really never has been all that much that separates the two teams. It’s just that the Lions do some of the little things that losing teams do just a tad bit more frequently than the Bears. But on any given Sunday, these teams aren’t separated by that much. Add the boost new interim head coach Darrell Bevell provides and this is a game the Bears could very easily lose.

Having said all of that, this game isn’t about the Lions. As far as I’m concerned it is entirely about the Bears.

The Bears are coming off of a miserable performance against the Packers last Sunday. The defense, in particular, played uncharacteristically poorly. The real question is, “How will the team bounce back?”

All we’ve heard from head coach Matt Nagy since this streak of losses began was about how the culture at Halas Hall will see them through. Members of the media, who very obviously like Nagy and like his style in handling them, have defended him to the extent that they can by saying, “Well, at least by all appearances, he hasn’t lost the locker room.” And the players have certainly said the right things.

But that all changes if the Bears don’t win this week.

Will the Bears defense respond to last week’s debacle by tightening up and coming out determined to leave that terrible game behind them? Can the Bears build offense upon what little encouraging signs there were for them on Sunday and run the ball effectively against a mediocre Lions run defense?

If the Bears lose this game, it won’t be because they blew it against a team that wasn’t nearly as talented as they are. And it won’t be because the Lions got a little boost from the regime change there. It will be because the Bears didn’t bounce back effectively from a terrible loss to the Packers on Sunday that should have provided all the motivation they needed to play well enough to win.

And that will, indeed, entirely change the conversation on Monday.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

I keep hearing guys say “run, run, run the ball.” Didn’t they try that during the early Mitch Trubisky development stage and teams just packed the box and dared Mitch to beat them in the air? — @nfrankie5

The Bears have to have success running the ball. They have to be balanced on offense. They have to keep defenses off balance. They need to be able to set up play-action and bootleg opportunities for Trubisky. Absolutely, they have to run the ball more effectively. Maybe, just maybe, the success they had in Sunday’s loss in Green Bay can carry over to this week’s meeting with the Detroit Lions at Soldier Field.

Biggs is right on here. The only hope the Bears have, especially under the conditions at Solder Field in December, is to run the ball.

And I truly believe that this was the game plan on Sunday against a Packers defense that not only struggles to defend the run, but has a defensive coordinator who actually doesn’t believe it’s necessary.

That’s not an exaggeration. Mike Pettine is known to believe that explosive plays in the passing game are what lead to defeats. Despite the lesson taught him by the 49ers in the playoffs last year where they ran over the Packers in an ugly loss, he really doesn’t believe a team can win by simply running the ball and that they have to pass. If you can stop that, you’ll come out on top on the score board.

And the pathetic thing is that he’s often proven right, as he was at Lambeau Field over the weekend.

The Bears almost certainly came out of the bye week thinking that the way to get back on track was to play complimentary football. That meant getting Trubisky under center and to start by running the ball. And it looked to me like it might have worked. From veteran columnist Dan Pompei at The Athletic

• The offensive line reshuffling — Cody Whitehair to left guard, Sam Mustipher to center, Alex Bars to right guard and Germain Ifedi to right tackle — wasn’t all bad. They might have stumbled onto some solutions there.
• It was a rough night for Charles Leno Jr., who looked like he was playing hurt.
• If every player on the Bears’ roster performed like David Montgomery , that’s a W. He’s never run better.

The problem is that when you try to execute such a plan, you are also leaning on your defense to hold the score down. When that didn’t happen, the game plan flew out the window. With the Bears behind, they were forced to pass and play right into Pettine’s hands. And that put the contest into Trubisky’s hands. Game over.

But that didn’t mean that the game plan was flawed. It just didn’t work on what turned out to be a miserable night for the defense. That shouldn’t happen in most games for the Bears. In most games with an ordinarily very good defense playing to its potential, a patient, down hill run game that opens up play action passing almost certainly seems to be the way to go.

Let’s put it this way. Would you rather see the Bears play like they’re the Chiefs and try to throw the ball all over the field in an effort to work a pass first offense that they don’t have a quarterback to execute? Head coach Matt Nagy would almost certainly love to do that. But I think he’s smart enough to know that the conditions aren’t right for it and to adjust to what he has.

Will the Lions pack the box if the Bears find success running the ball? Man, I hope so. Because that would be a huge improvement after what we’ve seen in the last 6 games with Nick Foles in the shot gun where teams did nothing special to stop an anemic Bears rushing attack.

I don’t know if the Bears would pass the ball better in such a situation. But it would almost certainly mean seeing inline tight end Cole Kmet and running back David Montgomery matched up on linebackers. And that can do nothing but help.

So sorry, Frankie. My message to the Bears is to “run, run, run the ball.”

Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times quotes Matt Nagy
on why he thinks quarterback Mitch Trubisky may be improved as he takes back the starting job for at least one more week against the Packers:

Don’t be surprised if Trubisky does the same some day.
But probably not here. Trubisky returns with a worse supporting cast then when he was benched. And while you can’t blame Nagy for his positivity, his support of Trubisky just rings hollow at this stage:

“I was really impressed with his huddle mechanics.”

“I like the way that he’s practiced this week.”

“I’m very impressed with how he’s grown week to week … I’ve seen a change in him and for the good. It’s a good feeling. It comforts you. It’s exciting, because you know how good of a kid he is.”

That last sentiment didn’t pass the smell test.

None of it passes the smell test.

Trubisky says that he was “blind-sided” when Nick Foles took the job from him in week 3. He says that it has served as motivation and that he has focused more on improving.

But didn’t we hear the same thing all off-season when Trubisky was supposedly upset after they signed Foles and he was competing for his job? If Trubisky was truly capable of focusing more and improving his performance, wouldn’t it have become apparent in training camp? Or in the first three games of the year when he looked exactly like he did in 15 games last year?

It’s true that sometimes sitting on the bench clears your head as you watch the other guy play and you think about the things that you could have done better. But after so much time of being the same guy, I’m not holding my breath waiting such a thing is going to happen here.

Trubisky has the look of a guy who needs a fresh start in another town and with a better offensive coaching staff in a low pressure environment where he can sit and get better as a back up for a season or two. If you ask me, he looks like a great project for Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints.

In any case, I’m not buying any of it.

If the Bears offense is going to improve, it will be because the running game improved. And that will help Trubisky far more than any professions of renewed motivation or more “good feelings” from his head coach.

Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times quotes Robert Quinn on the substandard year he’s having sacking the quarterback:

“My season? I’ll be honest, it’s been very average. Not up to my standards,” Quinn said. “We’ve got six more games left — anything can happen. I know how I prepare. I know how I train. Statistically it just hasn’t been my season. Effort, charisma, all that stuff’s been there. It’s just getting the numbers up that we’re all looking for.”

“If I knew [what was wrong], I’m sure [the problems] wouldn’t be there,” [Quinn] said. “I don’t know. It’s just been one of those years. Just hasn’t been one of my best years, but we’ve still got a chance [to make the playoffs]. And even though my performance [is below standard], we’re still holding together as a great defense. It’s not all just about me.”

I would guess that one big problem for Quinn is that the team hasn’t been playing with a lead very often. Most sack artists pile up statistics at the end of games when they know the other team has to pass. At such times, Quinn can just cut loose and rush the quarterback full bore with no need to worry about anything else. But there hasn’t been much blood in the water for Quinn or Khalil Mack or any of the other pass rushers this year. That’s not an excuse because there are no excuses. But it probably does explain a lot.

Like virtually everyone who addresses Quinn’s issues, Potash also inevitably brought up a comparison to Leonard Floyd, who has seven sacks with the Rams this season. The Rams defensive coordinator in Brandon Staley, who coached linebackers under Vic Fangio when he was the Bears defensive coordinator.

I can hardly blame the Bears for letting Floyd go. He under-performed and wasn’t worthy of keeping while playing here. Yes, he’s playing better with the Rams but Staley has undoubtedly done what Fangio did for Floyd his rookie year. He schemed pass rushes that were specifically designed to give Floyd a free rush at the passer. The disadvantage to doing such things is that it takes defensive players out of position to make a play if the offense doesn’t do exactly what you think they’re going to do. It also basically takes the other pass rushers out of position for a sack as they are usually sacrificing themselves for Floyd.

Fangio eventually stopped doing this, preferring to let multiple pass rushers have their shot and, especially with Mack on board, Chuck Pagano has followed the philosophy as well. Floyd was and is far less suited to that sort of situation as he struggled to beat offensive linemen one-on-one.

All that being said, Quinn has been a $70 million bust and a costly mis-evaluation for GM Ryan Pace. Pace went for broke this year and signed Quinn to a back loaded contract with only a $6.1 million cap number for 2020. But that number balloons to $14.7 million in 2021 with $24 million in dead cap if they cut him. Which, of course, they won’t. Instead, they’ll try to renegotiate and push the problem off into future years.

So, bottom line, Pace has tied himself to a player who can’t do the same thing Floyd couldn’t do – take advantage of Mack on the other side to rush the passer one-on-one. Right now, it looks like yet another personnel blunder for a GM who, along with his head coach, has made too many already.

Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune quotes NBC announcer Mike Tirico, who will be calling the game on Sunday night, on televising the Bears-Packers rivalry in prime time:

“It’s the Bears and the Packers. I know I’m going to get a good, tough game. It’s going to be cold. Fingers crossed, it snows at Lambeau. It’s a chance for 3½ hours to get yourself out of the malaise that has been this year … and just kind of escape. You almost feel like the world’s normal again.”

Let me tell you something, Mike. If you are looking to shake yourself out of a malaise, watching the Bears offense is only going to make things worse.

A lot worse.

I have this vision of television executives sitting around board room table and cackling while raking in cash generated by Bears fans. Meanwhile young, potential football fans all around the rest country blow rasberries as they turn their TV off.

Honestly, at what point does the league finally step in and say, “Look, you can’t do this. We’ve got the future of the game to think about and watching the Bears makes the baby Jesus cry”?

Like most of the rest of the country, Bears fans are wondering just how bad the team has to be to be flexed out of prime time. Why can’t they just be saved the additional embarrassment and have their team stink in anonymity at noon?

It’s bad enough that all over Chicago, our own eyes are being forced to bleed. Must we blind the rest of the country, as well?

Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times has ten things he’d like to say about the Bears:

Willis is listed at 6’1″ for Liberty. That’s a tad bit short for the SEC and, needless to say, for the pros. But pro scouts haven’t paid as much attention to height as they used to with the success of quarterbacks like Russell Wilson. That’s particularly true for guys like Willis, who, like Wilson, is a dual threat quarterback in the mold of a Kyler Murray.

In nine games, Willis has just under a 68 percent completion rate this year with 15 passing touchdowns, one interception, and nine rushing touchdowns. He has 700 rushing yards.

Willis is a winner, too. The loss to North Carolina State was the first of the year for the Flames, who are now 8-1.

So why would he be available for the Bears? Well, Liberty isn’t exactly a team that plays a lot of Power Five competition. Willis also wasn’t considered to have a particularly strong arm just coming out of high school, let alone college. And worst of all Willis is just a one year starter. That would be a tough pick for a team that just got burned taking Mitch Trubisky, who the Bears drafted under similar circumstances.

Every once is a while Liberty pops up on ESPN. I’ll probably stop changing the channel now every time I see them and start paying attention.

Who knows? GM Ryan Pace obviously is out of tune with the rest of the NFL in that he seems to believe that every quarterback he likes is being over drafted. He also obviously drafts more for immediate need than he does with an eye towards the future at the most important position in sports. That is, of course, in contrast to, say the Green Bay Packers who compete every year by making the position a priority regardless of need.

But precisely because of this past history, Pace has put himself into a position of desperation this year. He’ll have to take a quarterback and the rest of the league will know that he has to. Willis could be the one he’s forced to choose. We’ll see.