Quick Game Comments: Raiders at Bears 10/22/23

Offense

• D’Onta Foreman dropped a third and long dump off in the first half and it occurs to me that maybe that’s why the Bears don’t like playing him as much as you might think they would. He might not be a good pass receiver and he doesn’t play special teams.
• Bagent is far and away most comfortable throwing to Tyler Scott. I would guess they spent a lot of time on the field together in camp. Whenever Bagent got in trouble it looked like he looked Scott’s way.
• Bears really ran the ball well. Foreman is a very good downhill runner and he seemed fired up. The Bears ran for 4.6 yards per carry.
• On a related note the offensive line blocking was superb for the most part. With the exception of Maxx Crosby the Raiders were having a hard time getting off of blocks.
• Bagent was definitely helped out by the good running game. It helped the Bears keep the Raiders pass rush under control. Bagent is also reasonably mobile which made him hard to track down.
• Also credit to Bagent for acting out those run fakes. It bothers me that so many quarterbacks don’t get anywhere near the running backs on those. He helps everyone out when he acts those out well.
• Most importantly Bagent looked like he belonged out there. He was cool under pressure. Didn’t make many mistakes. He looked competent.
• On the down side, Bagent is not the most accurate quarterback and he often made passes harder to catch than they should have been. He also always rolls to his right. Teams are gong to start game planning around that.
• Color man Mark Sanchez also did a good job of pointing out that Bagent doesn’t like to step up into the pocket. He will abandon it, often to the right, instead. Sanchez called him “jumpy” in the pocket. I think he’s right.
• The Bears were 8 for 13 on third down. That’s Excellent.

Defense

• Credit to the Bears defensive line. They did a good job at the line of scrimmage. There wasn’t much room to run for the Raiders. I think it say s something that the Raiders came out in the second half determined to run the ball. They recognized that the Bears were shutting them down and it was stifling their offense.
• Brian Hoyer’s timing with his receivers was a bit off today. He was fairly consistently behind his receivers.
• Tyreek Stevenson might have a bad reputation with the referees. He’s getting some tough calls. The pass interference in the second quarter wasn’t much and its not the first time this year I thought that the referees were being a bit tough on him.
• The Raiders evidently really liked the match up of Devante Adam on Tyreek Stevenson. They fed him the ball four times in 6 plays constantly on their first possession. They completed three of them. They weren’t quite as aggressive with it later but the Bears were rotating coverage his way pretty often.
• The Raiders were 2 for 9 on third down. That’s pretty good for an improving Bears defense.

Miscellaneous

• Credit to the coaching staff. The Bears looked ready to play today.
• The Bears elected to receive but what they did with it was puzzling to me. Why take the ball is your first pass is going to be a wide receiver screen and your second play is going to be a run. Aggressively taking the ball first and then calling conservative plays doesn’t jibe with me.
• Similarly, I had a bit of a problem with the way that the Bears handled the clock at the end of the first half. They let the clock wind down rather than taking their time outs. I see where they were coming from. They were starting deep in their own half, and they didn’t want to hand the ball back to the Raiders with decent field position and any time left on the clock. That’s fine, but the play calling didn’t match the plan. It was reasonably aggressive and, even more, it paid off. The Bears made their way to almost to mid-field before the drive stalled. They may have done better with it and they had a bit more time. It was a very weird confluence of time management, and play calling that I didn’t understand.
• Too many Bears penalties in this game. There were 9 for 110 yards, some of them in critical situations. They would have hurt them against a better team.
• Tremaine Edmunds had his 2nd interception in 2 weeks. Notably Yannick Ngakoue got into the path of the pass with his hands up and helped disrupt the receiver’s concentration. Two interceptions by Jaylon Johnson in the fourth quarter, one for a touchdown, were also very helpful in putting the game away.
• Devante Adams drop in the end zone about 3 minutes into the 4th quarter was a huge play in this game. A touchdown there puts the Raiders two scores down. To my great surprise the Raiders took a field goal rather than going for the touchdown on fourth down. Absent a bunch of major mistakes by the Bears, that drive was the game.