Category: San Francisco 49ers

Double Digit Interception Goal for Amukamara Is Admirable, Probably Not Realistic

Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune reviews the Bears situation at cornerback:

“Projected on final roster: 6-7.

“Roster locks: Kyle Fuller, Prince Amukamara.

“Good bet: Bryce Callahan.

“On the bubble: Sherrick McManis, Marcus Cooper, Cre’Von LeBlanc, John Franklin.

“Practice squad candidates: Kevin Toliver, Doran Grant, Michael Joseph, Rashard Fant.

“Camp depth: Jonathon Mincy, Nick Orr.”

“Fuller, whose roster spot seemed to be in jeopardy at this time a year ago, turned in an encouraging performance in his contract season. He had 22 passes defensed, second most in the league, and had interceptions off Jimmy Garoppolo in Week 13 and DeShone Kizer three weeks later.

“Fuller’s reward? That hefty four-year contract and the full confidence of his teammates and coaching staff.”

“Biggest question: Is Amukamara serious?

“Heading into his eighth NFL season, the 29-year-old veteran has set a lofty individual goal for 2018. Ready for it? “I’m really looking for a 10-pick season,” Amukamara said last month.

“This from a corner who has seven career picks and none since intercepting Kirk Cousins in September 2015. For Amukamara, that was 37 games and two teams ago.”

A couple thoughts here:

  1. If the Bears are keeping 6-7 that means that all of those players who are “on the bubble” could make the squad. Not much in the way of competition at this position, which looks like its going to be the least interesting in training camp when it starts next week.
  2. Amukamara’s goal of getting 10 picks is admirable but not realistic for two reasons.
    1. The Bears play a lot of man coverage. That means Amukamara is playing with his back to the quarterback a lot. Unless the Bears are planning on changing their philosophy, which they almost certainly aren’t, this is going to work against all of the cornerbacks statistically in this area.
    2. Though Dan Durkin at The Athletic calls Fuller the Bears’ “top cover corner”, I’m going to mildly disagree.  Despite the fact that Fuller had what almost everyone thought was an excellent season last year, teams continued to throw at him instead of Amukamara for most of 2017.  Fuller’s 22 passes defensed actually tied for third in the league, not second.  Amukamara’s seven passes defensed wasn’t even in the top 95.

      One of the more interesting things to look for this year is to see if that changes. Most teams find success by rapidly adapting as the season rolls on but I sometimes wonder if ideas about certain players die hard. After 2018 opponents review the 2017 tape in the offseason, Amukamara may see more action on his side of the field this year.

      Having said that, I’m not holding my breath.For most of the year last year

      Amukamara still looked like the better cover corner and one that seems to be vastly under rated by the general public outside of Chicago. If opponents still agree with that, he still isn’t going to get as many balls thrown his way. That respect is well-deserved but it’s going to hurt him statistically.

Interesting Points From a Well-Done Mock Draft

As I wrote earlier in the month, I participate in a yearly mock draft with representatives from the 31 other teams. Though not any better than most mock drafts in terms of the specifics, this draft has annually done a pretty good job of predicting general trends in terms of what kinds of players will go where.

The initial draft was run in late March just before my post and indicated that four quarterbacks would go before the Bears pick at #8 overall. This would have been an ideal scenario for the Bears. Unfortunately, die to events that took place just after that time, it was decided to re-draft. Although the results weren’t quite as good for the Bears, it is still of interest to take a good look at what happened. Here’s the way the first 7 picks broke down:

1. Cleveland Browns Samuel Darnold QB USC
2. New York Giants Saquon Barkley RB Penn State
3. New York Jets Baker Mayfield QB Oklahoma
4. Buffalo Bills Josh Rosen QB UCLA
5. Denver Broncos Bradley Chubb Edge NC State
6. Indianapolis Colts Quenton Nelson OG Notre Dame
7. Tampa Bay Buccaneers Derwin James S Florida State

This did not leave me with a lot of palatable choices.

The way I see it, this draft has three really good players: Barkley, Chubb and Nelson. The best of all worlds is if one of these guys falls to the Bears. That’s unlikely to happen, even if four quarterbacks do go in the top seven, which didn’t happen here. The best chance the Bears have is that the teams in front of them decide they don’t value offensive guard enough to take one that high and Nelson drops to them. I’m not holding my breath.

The rest of these non-quarterbacks from about the 4th best player to about the 15th best are the same guy – talented but very flawed.

I considered three players at this pick. Ultimately I went with Tremaine Edmunds. Edmunds is big and athletic and, at only 19 years old, he has a ton of upside. With a father that was an NFL All-Pro tight end, he also has the blood lines. The drawback is that he wasn’t all that productive in college, having only 5.5 sacks last season. That’s a little disturbing if you are drafting him as an outside pass rusher, which I am.

Many will argue that I should have taken Georgia linebacker Roquan Smith here and I did think about it. Smith has good speed and good instincts and he’s a particularly popular pick amongst members of the local media. What few of those media members point out is that Smith played last year at 225 pounds. That’s really small and it showed in his play as he had a hard time taking on blocks against the run. And that was in college. In fairness, he’s gotten himself up to 235 pounds but he’s still going to be very under-sized and I couldn’t bring myself to take a risk on him.

The third guy I considered was Alabama safety Minka Fitzpatrick. Not taking Fitzpatrick may have been a mistake on my part because I like him a lot. He played at Alabama with current Bears safety Eddie Jackson and, like Jackson, is probably as pro ready as you can be. I think Fitzpatrick has the highest floor of the three players I seriously considered.

There were two drawbacks:

  1. Like Jackson, he’s really a free safety. I still think either he or Jackson would be an upgrade over strong safety Adrian Amos. But Fitzpatrick isn’t a perfect fit.
  2. He’s not known for having good ball skills, having had only one interception in 2017.

I had something special in mind when I considered Fitzpatrick – the big nickel defense. This is a nickel defense but with a third safety instead of a third cornerback. Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio had good success with this formation when he was with the 49ers. At the time he had Jimmy Ward to play that third safety spot but he really hasn’t had anyone like that since he’s been with the Bears. Fitzpatrick might fit this defense to the as the versatile third safety.

In the end, I kept it simple and went with the best player at a position of need: Edmunds. But it wasn’t a slam dunk.

Other interesting things to come out of this draft that fans might want to keep an eye on Thursday night:

  1. Our reps avoided drafting quarterback Josh Allen like he had the plague. He dropped to the Redskins at #13 overall. I get it. The lack of accuracy is scary. But I’ll be surprised if this guy doesn’t go in the top 6 picks.There is a reason guys like Allen rocket up the board the minute coaches start to get involved in the draft process. The scouts look at the whole package and evaluate what they see. But there’s no doubt about the fact that there are all kinds of coaches in the league who are saying, “Look at that arm! I’m a great coach and I can fix the rest.” In fact, if I read Cleveland head coach Hue Jackson right, he’s pushing for Allen as we speak. I can’t see general manager John Dorsey letting him have his way with Sam Darnold on the board, though.

    Football coaches are not known for their humility. Four quarterbacks in the first six picks. It may take at least one trade for it to happen but it still looks to me like it’s practically a lock.

  2. Five guards went in the first round, which is practically unheard of. Admittedly the position has become increasingly important as coaches have given more value to the idea that quarterbacks have to be able to step up into a clean pocket. I’ll be interested to see if Isaiah Wynn, James Daniels and Will Hernandez find their way into the first round. It seems to be a high position of need for a lot of teams.
  3. Only two defensive tackles, no tight ends and, even more surprising, only one offensive tackle in the first round. Again, practically unheard of. These are evidently extremely weak positions in the draft along with wide receiver. Lots of teams with big needs here are going to come up short unless there’s a lot of talent in the later rounds that I’m not seeing.
  4. It’s going to be really interesting to see where Denzel Ward falls. Out mock has predicted the Packers at 14. That’s pretty low. Most seem to think he’s going in the top ten. I have my doubts. At 5’11″ you’d really like him to be a couple inches taller.It says here Josh Jackson goes before Ward. We’ll see.
  5. Courtland Sutton went ahead of Calvin Ridley, who dropped to the Seahawks at #35 overall. This is going to be another interesting situation to watch. At one point, Ridley was going to the Bears at #8 in a lot of mocks. I wonder if his fall in our mock reflects how our respective teams actually feel.The wide receivers in this draft are really weak. It doesn’t look like any of them really has the stuff to be a #1 guy. I think we’ve valued them correctly and some people are going to be surprised.
  6. Vita Vea went to the Dolphins at 11. For the Dolphins that’s a reasonable pick because they’re going to need a run stuffing defensive tackle without Ndamukong Suh. But having said that, he brings very little pass rush having made only 3.5 sacks in 2017. I wonder how many teams are going to want to draft a guy like that in the first round. He’s going to be a guy to watch.
  7. Marcus Davenport fell to the Lions at #20 overall. I saw him going earlier than this. He’s raw and from a small school but see my comment about coaches in comment #1 above. I’ll be surprised if he gets that far.

Should be a great night.

Quick Comments: 49ers at Bears 2017-12-03

Defense

  1. The Bears went from playing the best team in the NFC to the worst but it looked the same at the line of scrimmage early. The Bears were dominated. They struggled to stop the run and they couldn’t get a pass rush. They never really got much penetration against the run all game.
  2. I’ll cut them a little break on the pass rush. The Bears seemed to think that the best way to play the 49ers new quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was to drop 8 into coverage and rush three. It wasn’t working too well early to my eye and apparently the Bears agreed. They started to blitz more in the second quarter and, naturally, started getting more pressure.
  3. I thought it was interesting to see the 49ers occasionally go to the hurry up with a quarterback that supposedly wasn’t up to speed with the offense. Generally speaking I thought Garoppolo did a pretty good job with it.
  4. I found this game to be extremely frustrating to watch as the bears struggled to get off the field. The 49ers dominated the time of possession and dissected the Bears zone defense pretty much as easily as the Eagles did last week, holding the ball about twice as long as the Bears. In fairness, it was bend and don’t break and the 49ers settled to field goal after field goal and I suppose giving up 15 points could be considered to be a successful game. But it looked like the Bears were trying to hang around and let the 49ers stop themselves rather than stopping them with aggressive play.
  5. Like a lot of teams before them, the 49ers went right at Kyle Fuller and avoided Prince Amukamara.
  6. The 49ers started to attack the middle in the passing game in the second quarter. That makes sense given that the Bears were starting Chris Prosinski, who they re-signed just this week.
  7. The 49ers had good success rolling Garoppolo out. He’s more mobile than he looks and he throws well on the run. You’d like to see the Bears do that more with Trubisky.
  8. Garoppolo is also extremely accurate and has a pretty good arm. I’m impressed.
  9. Lamarr Houston got a sack and all I could think was “Don’t blow the knee. Don’t blow the knee.”

Offense

  1. The Bears relied heavily on the run and the short pass early. They seem to have rediscovered the slant pass as they successfully threw several early.
  2. The Bears concentrated heavily on passes over the middle. I don’t know if that’s a nod to Trubisky to keep the play in front of him and limit his reads or if they just think the 49ers are weak there.
  3. Dontrelle Inman looks like a find. He looks better than a #4 receiver which is what he was billed as. Of course, we wouldn’t know what a good #2 or #1 looks like around here anymore.
  4. Trubisky generally looked more accurate today which was encouraging.
  5. Trubisky struggled to find open receivers. How much of that was him and how much the receivers was hard to tell. The replays often showed open men. You wonder if head coach John Fox hasn’t made him gun shy in an effort to prevent turnovers.
  6. Neither Charles Leno nor Bobby Massie had a great game today. Both allowed pressure and Leno had a damaging holding penalty in the fourth quarter.
  7. This was a pretty miserable offensive game for the Bears. They struggled to get first downs, struggled to block the edges and struggled to get open. It was tough to watch.

Miscellaneous

  1. Andrew Catalon and James Lofton were your announcers. The broadcast was a bare bones affair without much of the detailed analysis of replays that we often see. The network seemed to be more focused on bringing back historical footage of both teams than in providing insight into the current game. Lofton didn’t teach me a whole lot. Overall, nothing special.
  2. The Bears had punter Neil O’Donnell kicking off. That’s unusual but he did a pretty good job. At the same time, it led to speculation that new kicker Cairo Santos was having trouble with his previously injured groin.

    Tarik Cohen had an amazing 60 yard punt return where he reversed field. That was worth the price of admission.

    Cohen had another wonderful return in the fourth quarter that was brought back due to a block in the back. It was a bad penalty away from the ball by Ben Braunecker.

    Generally speaking I wasn’t impressed with the 49ers discipline on the coverage teams. They also looked slower than the Bears. Or at least too slow to keep up with Cohen.

    Cohen, on the other hand, had an amazing game both offensively and on special teams.

  3. A Charles Leno holding call killed a Tarik Cohen 25 yard run in the second quarter. Having said that the 49ers killed themselves with repeated penalties in the first half with 6 for 43 yards.
  4. Drops
  5. Kyle Fuller got a big interception in the first quarter. Fuller was itching to get one as he’d gotten a couple good breaks on the ball on passes before that.
  6. “Tough to watch” pretty much sums up this game. Most of it was simply watching the 49ers offense operate against a Bears defense that didn’t seem real interested in the kind of aggressive play that might have stopped them. Special teams weren’t bad even considering the kicker apparently had a bad groin. But the Bears offense was more miserable than usual and couldn’t move the ball.

    This was generally ugly, ugly football. It doesn’t look like the kind of football most of the rest of the league is playing. It certainly doesn’t look like the kind of football a team on the rise is supposed to be playing.

Vic Fangio May Not Be With the Bears Much Longer and Other Points of View

  • Pete Dougherty at packersnews.com thinks Jason Spriggs might be near the end of his tenure in Wisconsin.

    At this point, Spriggs might have to move to guard to try to salvage his career. Regardless of where he plays, you have to think the Packers will bring him back for his third training camp just to be sure. But unless he improves a lot this off-season, he could get cut after only two years with the team.

    If that’s how it turns out, Spriggs will have been one of the biggest swings and misses of the Thompson era. It’s not just the fanning on a second-rounder. That happens to the best of them. But Thompson traded two extra picks – a fourth and a seventh – to move up nine spots to get him.

    The statement is significant because the Packers may well have traded up to get ahead of the Bears, who “settled” by trading back and drafting budding potential pro bowler Cody Whitehair.

    For once the Bears may have come out ahead on that one.

  • Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer was none to happy with the officiating in Minnesota’s Thanksgiving match up with the Lions:

    “We almost lost our composure a couple times,” Zimmer said. “We study each crew going into the game. I told them it could be like this today. They’ve got to play clean, smart football and (long, awkward pause] . . . I shouldn’t say anything else.”

    I was pretty bad. There was a non-call on what was obviously pass interference committed on wide receiver Stephon Diggs and there was a taunting call on quarterback Case Keenum where he was getting up after a sack and he flipped the ball in the direction of Lions defensive end Ziggy Ansah that wasn’t much better.

    Mike Florio at profootballtalk.com danced on the line of accusing the NFL of intentional bias:

    [W]hile I’m a firm believer that the fix is never in, moments like this make me wonder whether the ratings dip has resulted in an unspoken message to give calls to a team that is on the verge of getting blown out, in order to help avoid it. And if I’m wondering, other people are, too.

    I don’t believe that. But I’m honest enough with myself to understand that is largely because I don’t want to believe it.

    The NBA is known for giving the leagues stars the benefit of the doubt when making calls and, as a result, I haven’t watched a full professional basketball game in many years. If the NFL ever did even hint that biased officiating would be acceptable to keep a game close to boost ratings, it would be the end of the league, at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

  • Adam Jahns wonders if defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is getting a free pass for the poor performance of his defense over the last two games:

    Fangio’s defense didn’t deliver the win it should have against Packers backup quarterback Brett Hundley at Soldier Field. Instead, Hundley completed 18 of 25 passes for 212 yards, a touchdown and a 110.7 passer rating — his best mark this season — in Green Bay’s 23-16 victory.

    As quarterback Matthew Stafford was passing for 299 yards and two touchdowns against the Bears in the Lions’ 27-24 victory, the Ravens’ defense played like a top-10 defense should against Hundley in Green Bay. He was intercepted three times and sacked six times. The Ravens held him to a 43.6 passer rating.

    The disparity in Hundley’s performance made the Bears’ most disappointing loss of the season look even worse.

    In fairness, the defense only gave up 27 points in the loss to the Lions. I consider 24 points to be average.

    Fangio’s game plan was to switch up in the coverages in order to confuse Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford. It didn’t work as Stafford either did a better job than anticipated or offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter did a very good job of anticipating the coverages. Either way, the Lions got themselves into the right play and took advantage of the Bears zone coverages way too often.

    No one is perfect and Fangio is still one the best defensive coordinators around. It will be tragic if the Bears lose him in the off-season as he becomes a free agent when his contract is up. Fangio wanted to take the defensive coordinator job in San Francisco last season but the Bear blocked the move. They won’t be able to block it this year if the 49ers decide to make a switch. The Raiders also recently fired defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. and they may not stick with replacement John Pagano.

    Bottom line, the odds of Fangio staying look pretty slim at this point.

  • Rich Campbell at the Chicago Tribune reports that defensive end Leonard Floyd will go on IR:

    Floyd played 90 percent of the Bears’ defensive snaps in the first nine games, to that point achieving his goal of improved availability. But Thursday’s transaction will bring his two-year career total of missed games to 10.

    While its disappointing that Floyd didn’t make it through the whole season there was a major piece of good news in all of this. Floyd didn’t suffer a single concussion.

    Floyd suffered two concussions in the space of six weeks last year and the frequency of those things doesn’t go down. The Bears claimed that better tackling technique would solve the issue but I was frankly skeptical. Personally, I thought his career was in real jeopardy. But the Bears were evidently right and Floyd seems to have beaten the problem.

Was Releasing Gould a Mistake? Depends on Your Point of View.

Brad Biggs at the Chicago Tribune answers more of your questions:

I was baffled when the Bears cut Robbie Gould and felt it would come to haunt them. Now it seems obvious it was a mistake. Your thoughts? — @stewart_errol

Gould has been excellent for the 49ers this season making 17 of his 19 field-goal attempts. Gould missed two extra points in the preseason finale of 2016 for the Bears, one of which was blocked, and you should recall there were some key late-season misses for him in 2015. Connor Barth hasn’t been as good as the Bears would like and we’ll have to see if he can straighten things out in the second half of the season. I’d imagine it’s more or less a week-to-week proposition for him at this point. I’d also say that the Bears have made bigger personnel mistakes than at kicker. They’ve got bigger need-to-fix projects right now than kicker and it’s not like there are necessarily great options on the street. As I pointed out in 10 Thoughts following the Saints game, the kicker to keep an eye on right now is Cairo Santos. Unfortunately, he’s not healthy as he recovers from a groin injury that led the Chiefs to release him.

I’m sure a lot of fans still have this question. From what we could see, Gould was an excellent kicker and no one could possibly look at the situation and say the Bears did the right thing.

But here’s the deal. Fans don’t see everything. In particular, they don’t see what goes on in the locker room. And that might have had a lot to do with Gould not being in Chicago.

Gould was the Bears longest tenured player which probably made him set in his ways, as people who are in the same job for a long period of time are apt to be. To add to that, Gould was definitely opinionated and was not shy about sharing it.

The guess here – and it pure speculation – is that Gould had an attitude and one that special teams coordinator Jeff Rogers didn’t particularly like. The Bears had (and have) a young team and they undoubtedly wanted their players exposed to the right influences.

It’s possible that, for whatever reason, they didn’t deem Gould to be the right guy to have around. In any case fans, who are on the outside looking in, are unlikely to ever find out exactly what that reason was.

Quick Game Comments: 49ers at Bears 12/4/16

Defense

  1. The 49ers came out mixing it up but it was evident form the beginning that they were going to be much better running the ball and before long that’s what they concentrated on. The blocking up front in terms of this aspect of the game was excellent.One of the questions of the day was whether, with Jerrell Freeman and Danny Trevathan out, Nick Kwiatkowski and Jonathan Timu would be able to stop Carlos Hyde and the 49er running game. The answer as far as I could see was “no”. Thought Kwiatkowski made the occasional play, both linebackers were generally were well blocked and they certainly struggled to play downhill and attack the line of scrimmage. Yards per run.
  2. The blocking was not excellent when it came to the pass rush and the Bears got good pressure on Colin Kaepernick. The Bears had 5 sacks and 4 quarterback hits through three quarters on Kaepernick. They had six for the game including the one for a late safety on Blaine Gabbert.
  3. The 49ers had Timu spotted as a weakness in coverage right off the bat and they were targeting him by sending the running backs out wide as receivers. It looked to me like it might have worked better on a day when the passing game was clicking. That might be womething we see other teams do in the future.
  4. Akiem Hicks had 10 tackles and two sacks and was all over the place. He kept the Bears in the game almost single handedly in the first half.
  5. Colin Keapernick has been performing at very high level. It’s hard to say that his performance today was consistent with that. Kaepernick entered the game with 8 TDs compared to just 2 INTs and his passer rating was 96.0.The problem is that neither team threw the ball much in the first half so Kaepernick was largely reduced to a runner. Of course, he’s athletic and he did a decent job of that.

    In the second half when both teams threw the ball more, Kaepernick’s accuracy was pretty awful. He either missed, underthrew or overthrew a number of wide open receivers in the snow and cold weather. I’d say he took a step back. At the end of the third quarter, the 49ers had -21 yards passing and Kaepernick was 1 of 5 for 4 yards. He was replaced by Blaine Gabbert in the fourth quarter.

    The Bears might have won this game doubly by losing if Kaepernick had looked good. Not would it have put them into a position to draft ahead of the 49ers in 2017 but Kaepernick’s performance would have been one more reason for the 49ers to believe that he’s their future answer at quarterback and it would have given them one more reason not to draft one in the early rounds.

    As it is, the question of what the 49ers will do at the quarterback position next year remains up in the air.

  6. There were pre-game reports that Willie Young might not play due to a knee injury. But he did play and, like the rest of the front seven when it came to the pass rush, he played well doing his part to get pressure on Kaepernick. He had a sack.

Offense

  1. Like the 49ers, the Bears came out running the ball against one of the worst run defenses in the league. It seemed evident from the beginning that was the plan.Of course, the problem with that plan, as with the 49ers, is that you have to execute. The Bears were constantly finding themselves in situations where it was third and long due to penalties and mistakes.
  2. There was almost no passing for almost the entire first half. Then the Bears went into the two minute drill and suddenly they come to life, pass their way down the field and take the lead at half time by scoring a touchdown making it 7-6. Apparent this is Matt Barkley’s specialty and they should run the offense like that all the time.
  3. Perhaps the best quality that Barkley possesses is that he seems to know where the ball needs to go and he gets rid of it quickly to the right spot most of the time. Barkley doesn’t hold on to the ball long. It was hard to say after the first half that he showed that again today just because there was so little passing. But where they did throw, especially I the second half, he generally looked like he did when he was at his bet last week.I thought outside linebacker Willie Young’s quote on Barkley was interesting. Young was a seventh round pick and a long shot to be in the league as long as he has been.

    “Guys like me are few and far between. But if we get an opportunity, the only thing we know how to do is take advantage of it. Whatever happens after that, happens. I play on the edge. I honestly feel like [Barkley] played on the edge also.”

    Despite that, I have to believe that Barkley’s physical limitations probably will keep him as a backup in the NFL and my impression is that is what the Bears see him as. But if they have only found a solid back up, at least it puts them one step closer to having a plan for the position as a whole.

  4. After dropping last week’s game winning touchdown and then another easy catch for a big gain early in the second half, you had to wonder if Josh Bellamy was going to collapse under the weight of his own failures. But he didn’t. He came back to make a nice catch on the same drive that he dropped the ball, setting the Bears up on the 49er 11 yard line. He then made several nice catches on the next drive, one of which brought them to the 49 six yard line. Both drives resulted in touchdowns.
  5. Credit the Bears patchwork offensive line for doing a decent job protecting Barkley. He was only sacked once.
  6. One of the younger players that has caught the Bears attention is tight end Daniel Brown, an undrafted free agent with the Ravens last year. Brown is a pass catching tight end who is a converted wide receiver. He had 3 catches for 24 yards last week in place of Zach Miller and 2 catches for 13 yards this week. Perhaps his best play was when he drew a pass interference call in the endzone that set the Bears up on the 49er one yard line near the end of the half. They scored the touchdown.You get the impression that the Bears think they’ve found something in Brown (he played in 54 of the 81 snaps last week) but its too early to tell whether he will pan out. So far so good.

Miscellaneous

  1. Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, Laura Okmin were your announcers. I thought that Johnston did a good job of providing insight into what was really a dog game no matter how you look at it. Kudos to this team for not simply phoning it in.
  2. It wasn’t a good game for Bears special teams. It started on the opening kick off where the 49ers returner bobbled the football but still got beyong the 25 yard line and didn’t get better from there.A blocked punt resulted in the 49ers getting the ball on the Bears 4 yard line. Fortunately the 49ers are as undisciplined as the Bears are and an unsportsman-like conduct penalty pushed them back to the 19. The 49ers settled for a field goal. Paul Lasike also dropped a kick off that ended up leaving the Bears deep in their own territory near the end of the first half.
  3. The Bears didn’t do too badly with only 5 penalties.  But the 49ers had far too many with 11 and some, like the pass interference in the end zone that set up the Bears first touchdown, were very damaging
  4. Jordan Howard entered the game leading the league with 7 dropped passes this season. So its good news that he didn’t drop any today that I thought he really should have had. Despite making some good catches as mentioned above, Bellamy still had two bad drops. That really has to stop. The 49ers had some awful drops in the second half as well.
  5. A fumbled kickoff return by Deonte Thompson gave the ball to the 49ers the ball at the Chicago 37 yard line. This was immediately following the blocked punt that handed the 49ers a field goal. So not a good sequence.  Other than that, turnovers weren’t much of a factor this game except that the Bears, one again, didn’t get any.
  6. I thought it was interesting that the 49ers came out “cold” in this game in more than one way. After playing well against the Dolphins last week, head coach Chip Kelly chose to keep them in sunny Orlando where the temperatures were in the 80s to practice all week. Meanwhile, the Bears were practicing in game conditions at Halas Hall. You have to wonder if Kelly’s decision to keep the team in the warm temperatures in Florida factored into the team’s slow start in this game as it was laye din some ugly winter weather.
  7. There were over 13,000 no shows for this game and frankly it looked like it was more than that on television. I guess that’s hardly surprising in cold weather with two of the worst teams in the NFL facing off.I’ve seen it suggested that the Bears don’t care that much about the low attendance because the tickets are already sold. I don’t know what the split is with the Chicago Parks District but I have to believe that the lost revenue from parking and concessions is significant.

    You can bet your life that they care about that.

  8. For those of you who are looking to see if John Fox gets fired after the season is over, you can stop. He and Ryan Pace look to me like they’re joined at the hip. Yes, I know that statistically Marc Trestman’s Bears did better but Trestman lost the locker room and that had more to do with his departure than anything else. All indications are that’s not the case with Fox and unless something changes, he’s not going anywhere.
  9. The Bears are actually a better team than the 49ers when healthy. But you could argue that mediocre teams need seasons like this to get better. With all of the injuries that the Bears have sustained, they are probably going to end up with a higher draft pick than their roster would otherwise dictate. In the end, whether you are elite or not depends on your ability to get impact players. And those are much easier to find at the top of the draft.
  10. I don’t like suggesting it but there were indications that the 49ers flat out gave up late in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter in this game. There were a lot of lapses in concentration, a lot of drops, a lot of bad defense being played out there. You have to wonder how much of the problem with that team is simple lack of heart.Fortunately the young Bears don’t seem to have that problem. They seem to hang in and play hard no matter the situation. In this case it served them well as they played a team that had been playing well in tough weather and played better than they did.

Bradford to the 49ers? No Way.

Martin Frank at delawareonline.com speculates that the 49ers might be interested in trading for Sam Bradford:

“Chip Kelly always liked to use the phrase ‘open competition’ to describe the battle for the starting quarterback when he coached the Eagles, whether it was true or (mostly) not.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if [Eagles general manager Howie] Roseman puts the franchise tag on Bradford, then swings a deal with San Francisco to get back the second-round draft pick that Kelly traded away to get Bradford?

“After all, if the 49ers quarterback job is truly an open competition, then Kelly must not be completely satisfied with what he has. Any ‘football guy’ can see that.”

I can’t believe Frank is serious. Kelly has a good quarterback for his system in Blaine Gabbert already and if Gabbert doesn’t work out, there’s the highly athletic Colin Kaepernick to coach up and compete for the job.

Sure, if Bradford were free on the market and the 49ers could get him for some minimal amount of money, they might give him a shot at the job. But a second round pick for a mediocre quarterback that’s going to cost you $18 million a year? No chance.

Vernon Adams Is a Name that Bears Fans Should Know Going Into the 2016 NFL Draft

Michael David Smith at profootballtalk.com comments upon the outstanding showing that Orgeon quarterback Vernon Adams put on at the East-West Shrine Bowl:

“Adams has a lot going against him in the eyes of the NFL: He’s only 5-foot-11 and 195 pounds. He played only one season of big-time college football after transferring from Eastern Washington to Oregon, and he got hurt that year. He hasn’t played in a pro-style offense.

“But Adams was outstanding on Saturday, completing six of nine passes for 191 yards and three touchdowns, and also adding two rushes for 24 yards. Former Falcons head coach June Jones, who coached the West team in the Shrine Game, said on NFL Network after the game that he believes Adams has NFL talent.”

“NFL Media’s Mike Mayock believes Adams could be a fit for the 49ers. Although Chip Kelly didn’t coach Adams at Oregon, the Ducks continued to run an offense similar to Kelly’s, and when Adams was healthy he played very well in that offense.”

Sure the 49ers are a possibility. But its the Bears that you need to keep an eye on. When general manager Ryan Pace was with the Saints, they traded for Drew Brees and signed current Kansas City backup Chase Daniel as an undrafted free agent. Both men are 6’0″, only an inch taller than Adams.

If Pace likes what he sees, given that the Saints drafted their quarterback of the future last year with the selection of Garrett Grayson, there isn’t a general manager in the NFL more likely to discount Adams’ size and roll the dice on him.

Will Trent Baalke Be the Owner, Too?

Anyone wondering what the problem is with the 49ers need wonder no longer. Darin Gantt at profootballtalk.com comments:

“Trent Baalke’s apparently doing more than delivering players such as defensive backs Jimmie Ward and Jaquiski Tartt for the 49ers.

“He’s apparently coaching them up, too.

“Though they have a complete and (allegedly) functioning coaching staff, Ward and Tartt say that Baalke’s often on the field during practice giving them tips.”

Here’s Baalke’s employment history from Wikipedia:

“1998–2000 New York Jets
Personnel Scout
2001–2004 Washington Redskins
2001–2003 National Scout
2004 College Scouting Coordinator
2005–present San Francisco 49ers
2005–2007 Western Region Scout
2008–2009 Director of Player Personnel
2010 VP of Player Personnel
2011–present”

Do you see defensive backs coach in there anywhere? Do you see coach of any type in there anywhere? And yet Baalke considers it to be his job to do it.

The problem with teh 49ers isn’t retirements and it isn’t bad luck. It’s Baalke. He’s a megalomaniac, control freak who took one of the best teams in football and tore it apart brick by brick. He’s now undermining the coaching staff full of “Yes men” that he put together to coach the motley crew that’s left.

As a Bears follower I don’t care that much. But as a football fan I’m offended and the sooner this guy finds his way to the unemployment line, the better off we will all be.

Another Challenge for Jay Cutler

Dan Wiederer at the Chicago Tribune takes us through some of the numbers relevant to Sunday’s match up with the Redskins:

“46.6: Jay Cutler’s rating in two career starts against the Redskins, both losses. In 2013, Cutler left a 45-41 loss late in the first half after suffering a torn groin muscle. Cutler also threw a pick six in that game. Three years earlier, he threw four interceptions – all to Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall – in a 17-14 loss at Soldier Field. Cutler’s numbers against the Redskins: 29-for-48, 309 yards, one TD pass, five picks.”

This will be another watershed game for Cutler.

Two games ago on Thanksgiving Cutler took advantage of the opportunity to show critics like myself that he’s a different quarterback this year. Similar to that game, Cutler will be able to show that he can perform in situations this year that he has previously collapsed in. It doesn’t help that he’s coming off of his worst game of the year (18 completions of 31 attempts for 202 yards with a passer rating of 64.2). It was one in which he was more than usually erratic, especially on deeper throws.

Like all Bears fans, I wish him good luck in defeating the demons that have haunted him in days gone by.