Month: September 2014

Lesson Learned and Other Points of View

Bears

  • Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers your questions:

    “Why was Kelvin Hayden re-signed and not offensive line depth given the current situation? Did Phil Emery explain the thought process behind this? — @BDGDEB from Twitter

    “Good question. One area I thought the team might go with the roster spot after Marquess Wilson was shifted to IR with the designation to return was on the line. The other area I thought about was special teams. Emery has not publicly weighed in on the move. Perhaps the Bears want insurance in the event Kyle Fuller’s ankle injury crops up again.”

    Offensive tackle/guard Ebon Britton might be brought back after the first game. If they bring him back before that, they owe him a year’s salary. If they bring him back after that its week-to-week.

  • Quarterback Jay Cutler at the end of a very long article focusing on the dynamics in the quarterbacks room and on some philosophical points in regards to the scheme by Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune:

    “A lot of this stuff has worked for one year. We don’t really know if it works. Everybody in the media wants to say that we have all the answers. We don’t have all the answers. We’ve done it for one year. And really for probably eight or nine games. A half-season. So we’ve still got a lot of things to figure out.”

    Yes, I think they might have some challenges left. Certainly getting things right in the quarterback room is a good place to start and taking care of protection issues with the offensive line is a good thing to stress up front. But if I had to pick one major challenge that the Bears offense has on its plate its executing as a unit.

    The two biggest factors for success in the NFL are health and execution (i.e. 11 guys all doing their jobs correctly with no penalties and no mistakes). I saw very little of the latter during the preseason. Trestman, Cutler and company may well find themselves growing in a new direction as they focus their attentions in this direction in the coming year – executing plays that not just Cutler is comfortable with but that everyone is comfortable with and executing them correctly as back up personnel trot in and out of the starting line up.

    Things went pretty smoothly last year but that is very uncommon. The odds are good that the offensive personnel are going to face considerably more adversity this year. How they handle that will define them.

  • Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune makes a good point:

    “Running game will gauge right away whether the Bears’ defense has improved. Athletic quarterback EJ Manuel and shifty running backs [C.J. Spiller] and Fred Jackson will test the Bears’ discipline and tackling with some zone-read runs. ‘Guys like Spiller and Jackson, they’re so quick to be able to just — when you get out of your gap one second — they can jump, stop, cut and be right back in your gap full speed in no time,’ end Jared Allen said. ‘It’s just going to be disciplined football.'”

    This was a problem last year. We’ll see if anyone learned anything, especially the linebackers, pretty quick.

One Final Thought

Wiederer along with Campbell makes some good points in this video about the Lance Briggs problem early in the week. Briggs is obviously a child, handling the situation like a 16 year old girl trying to put one over on the doting old father, asking for a “personal day” knowing full well that Bears head coach Marc Trestman would trust him not to ask for it unless it was something on the order of a family problem.

Not any more.  The guess here is that Trestman learned something of a lesson about who he could trust.

Patrick Finley at the Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Bears will be naming captains game-to-game this year. Briggs was one last year when they were naming them for the season. It will be interesting to see how often he’s a captain this year.

Leadership? I Don’t See It. And Other Points of View.

Bears

  • Patrick Finley at the Chicago Sun-Times quotes Jay Cutler when asked about his 86 rating on Madden 15:

    “You guys are bored.”

    Amen.

  • Hub Arkush at chicagofootball.com asks some timely and relevant special teams questions:

    “The Bears are clearly planning on potential starters Chris Conte, Ryan Mundy, Danny McCray, Kyle Fuller, Shea McClellin and Jon Bostic to answer the bell in coverage.

    “While it’s not unusual to have a couple starters covering kicks, that many would be almost unheard of.

    “There are two questions here that beg answers from either Phil Emery, Marc Trestman or both. The first is what really was the plan and why it is so unsettled so late in the game.

    “The second is, is it possible the problem is that the bottom third of this roster, where your core special teams folks should come from, isn’t as talented as it was one, two or three years ago?

    “We don’t have the answers yet, but you certainly have to ask.”

  • Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune ranks the Bears 10th in the debut of his NFL Power Rankings. It sounds a tad high to me as I see a tough schedule and 8-8 or 9-7 written all over this team. But I can’t hardly blame anyone for being a tad optimistic this early and its not an unreasonable ranking. And if you are strong at the line of scrimmage, anything can happen. That’s where it all starts.

    He doesn’t have much respect for the potentially improved Vikings and Lions, ranking both in the 20s. We’ll have to wait and see on them but I’d be willing to bet at least one of those teams exceeds expectations. The Vikings might not have enough talent to be really good but there’s a whole lot to like about what’s going on up there.

  • Mark Potash at the Chicago Sun-Times says that Lance Briggs skipping practice to open a restaurant isn’t a big problem. But that didn’t stop him from telling it like it is:

    “While teammates like Corey Wootton and Tim Jennings have sacrificed their comfort zone for the team — Wootton playing inside last season in a contract year; Jennings, a two-time Pro Bowl cornerback, playing nickel this season to ease rookie Kyle Fuller into the NFL — Briggs refused to move to the middle whenever Brian Urlacher was injured. He preferred the comfort of a position tailor-made for his skills in a defense tailor-made for his skills.

    “Lance is very much into Lance.”

    You have to take Briggs for who he is and this excerpt pretty much nails it. The problem is that the Bears lack leadership on the defensive side of the ball and it looked to me like the team was looking to Briggs to fill the void both last year and this year. This episode shows how misguided that notion is. Briggs will be ready to play on Sunday but setting an example for others to make sure that they are ready to play takes a backseat to his own issues or, more probably, simply never crosses his mind as being his responsibility.

  • Potash continues:

    “The Bears haven’t announced starting safeties for Sunday’s opener against the Bills, but at this point, does it really matter? Ryan Mundy, Danny McCray, Chris Conte and rookie Brock Vereen are all in the same boat at this point – competent players who will make plays in a good defense and not make plays in a bad one.”

    My read on this is that the competition at safety isn’t over. The Bears know what Conte can do but didn’t get a good look at him in the preseason. So the bet here is that both McCray and Conte see time at free safety early in the season until someone grabs the job by the testicles and takes it. Its hard to say what Vereen’s status is at this point but it seems evident that the team thinks he needs development.

Elsewhere

“[Bills head coach Doug] Marrone can’t be too thrilled about the situation. Tension seems to be rising within the operation. On Tuesday, Marrone had an animated discussion at practice with Russ Brandon and [general manager Doug] Whaley. According to media on the scene, some harsh words were uttered and Marrone threw his arms in the air.

“Someone should be angry. The Bills had a chance to address the backup QB situation. Chad Henne, Matt Cassel and Shaun Hill were available, not to mention [Ryan Fitz[patrick]. So was Tarvaris Jackson, who is good enough to be No. 2 for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks but couldn’t get on the field in Buffalo.”

Sounds like Palmer landed in a happy place. I suppose its not a surprise that he has since been released.

  • I couldn’t care less about Michael Sam‘s personal life one way or another as long as he stays on the field and I have paid little attention to the story surrounding him. But Dallas is perfect for him. Its a defense that requires quick, penetrating linemen and Rod Marinelli will get everything possible out of him. He couldn’t have landed in a better spot.

One Final Thought

Drew Magary at Deadspin tells us why the Bears suck (Don’t worry. All the other teams suck, too.)

“Your coach: Marc Trestman, who has turned out to be pretty good! Sure, the defense is abominable, but look at all those deep passes that are actually completed! NICE. Trestman’s emergence as a sound football mind means we can now move on to the part where the Bears nickel-and-dime him at every turn, until he finally gives up and walks away.

Drew’s living about 20 years in the past. But it’s still pretty funny.