The carousel.

While many are expecting the 2021 offseason to be a busy one when it comes to quarterback movement, it’s worth wondering if the current pause in the carousel just might be permanent and if the Chicago Bears need to find their guy soon.

The pause is because of Deshaun Watson.

While he has requested a trade and, reportedly, insists he won’t play for the Houston Texans anymore, the Texans are still without a real good reason to trade him. Perhaps refusing to trade Watson would look bad for Houston but in the long run, if they refuse to move him, Watson will have to either show up or retire. The latter option would likely mean repaying some of his signing bonus. All signs point to Houston not budging, at least for the foreseeable future.

If Watson isn’t moved soon, Derek Carr surely won’t be. The Raiders would be idiotic to move Carr without a surefire upgrade in place and it certainly appears they don’t see Marcus Mariota as that upgrade. The 49ers are also likely to stand pat with Jimmy G, though the latter likely wouldn’t be seen as a surefire starting option anyway, given his injury history.

You can bet Russell Wilson won’t be traded and the Packers have insisted they won’t move Aaron Rodgers. (He wouldn’t be available to the Bears anyway, but could cause another domino to fall.)

So, where does that leave teams like the Bears and the Colts?

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I’ve been tracking explosive plays for a few years now because they have a strong relationship to points scored. To put it simply, good offenses produce plenty of big plays. Let’s look at how Chicago did in this department in last season.

Basic Overview

The table below shows how many explosive passes, runs, and total plays the Bears produced in 2020, as well as how those results ranked compared to the rest of the NFL. Explosive passes are those that gain 20+ yards, while explosive runs gained 15+ yards. All data is from Pro Football Reference, and explosive play data is from the Game Play Finder.

A few thoughts:

• If these results look awfully familiar, it’s because they are. The Bears were the least explosive team in the NFL in 2019 with 49 explosive plays. If you want to look on the bright side, this year actually showed a slight improvement, though they were still one of the least explosive offenses in the league.
• You can view the full results here, but Chicago’s totals put them right in line with teams like the Washington Football Team, Giants, Jets, and Bengals. Yuck.
• I found last offseason that there is very little year-to-year correlation for explosive plays. Based on this, you could argue that finishing horribly in this category 2 years in a row is random bad luck, but I’m more inclined to think it’s an indictment on the personnel and/or scheme.

Explosive Players

I also want to look briefly at who produced the explosive plays. I want to caution that I’ve found there is very little year-over-year consistency in these results, so a player having an explosive or non-explosive 2020 doesn’t necessarily guarantee it will repeat in 2021.

Let’s start with a look at the quarterbacks, and I want to note that passes here include sacks for a more accurate reflection of total pass plays.

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The NFL personnel man I refer to as [REDACTED] has been a friend of mine for more than a decade. He’s not a cultivated source. He’s a guy in a high-profile NFL gig and his family lives in my neighborhood. He’s also one of my most valuable resources in the league. So I asked him three questions.

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DBB: I won’t ask you to weigh-in on the Houston situation, or any other front office, but give me your general response to the Deshaun Watson availability.

[REDACTED]: Unthinkable. But based on what is happening down there, totally predictable. I will weigh-in on Houston. Nick (Caserio) aside, those are not good people running the program. Deshaun is above all a truly good person. He sees the caliber of individual leaving the organization and the caliber of individual staying and he knows which groups he belongs in.

As for the trade itself, I don’t envy Nick’s position. Three first round picks are nice but they’re not Deshaun, you know what I mean? You can hit on all three and not equal the value of a player of his status and ability. And none of the quarterbacks rumored to be in the packages back to Houston are half the player he is. Nick almost has to take this further along so he can convince his fans he had no other choice but to trade him. He has to exhaust his options.

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DBB: Many Bears fans believe Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy are in a “lame duck” season. I’m not one of those people, but it seems to be the general perception. You’ve been in a front office, in that spot. Can you describe the experience?

[REDACTED]: Yeah, it sucks. 

First thing, and I have told you this previously, nobody I spoke with believed Ryan or Matt was getting fired. And if they were, both would have been hired again within 12 hours if they wanted. I would have pushed hard for us to bring Ryan in but he’d more than likely go back to Sean. 

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Matt Nagy’s offense has had zero success against the Green Bay Packers. A lot of that blame falls upon the quarterback position, but not all of it. Nagy has known what he has at quarterback in each of the six meetings between the clubs and has not been able to compensate for Chicago’s historical deficiency. He’s tried the quick passing attack. He’s tried to force the run game. He’s tried the trick plays. Nothing.

They were mildly successful in 2018, splitting the games, and scoring in the 20s both meetings. 2019 was an abject disaster, totally 16 points in the two contests, and looking (somehow) even worse than that. The 2020 season brought no improvement, with a garbage-laden 25 in the first meeting and an impotent 16 in the regular season-defining finale.

The man running the defense in Green Bay for the entirety of Nagy’s tenure was Mike Pettine. And dominating Mitch Trubisky was apparently not enough for him to retain that role. This week, Pettine was hired by Nagy and new defensive coordinator Sean Desai as a senior defensive assistant, or something. It’s an amorphous position, without a definable role on game day, but one can assume Pettine is being brought into the organization for two distinct reasons.

First, he’ll be a veteran mind on which Desai can lean. Sometimes this kind of role can be a bit overstated but in this case, it seems appropriate. Desai has never called an NFL game. He’s never made halftime adjustments. He’s never been responsible for organizing the whole of defensive meetings during the week, or motivating the entire unit on game day. Having someone on your staff who HAS done all those things can not be considered anything other than useful.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, Pettine knows every flaw in Nagy’s approach. And it is this element that suggests another step in Nagy’s growth. The first resources Pettine will surely provide the Bears, and Nagy, are his scouting reports/game plans from their previous contests. What did Pettine view as Nagy’s (and subsequently Bill Lazor’s) play-calling tendencies? What did Pettine think the Bears offense was incapable of doing? What did Pettine view as the weaknesses of the good players on the offensive roster? For instance, how did they want to play someone like Allen Robinson? (Because whatever they did worked.)

And it doesn’t stop on the offensive side. Pettine can also lay out, in full detail, how the Packers have chosen to attack the Bears’ better half, their defense.

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Assuming the trade compensation is fair, would you want to see Carson Wentz starting for the Bears in September?

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) February 9, 2021

Two thoughts:

• Ten or eleven points is nothing to sneeze at. It’s hard to get that kind of majority in a Twitter poll on ANYTHING these days.
• “Fair” is the important word in the poll. Fans seem to be okay with the Bears giving Wentz the second chance he deserves, but they don’t believe that second chance should come at significant risk to the team.

(1) Are the Bears interested? Yes. But they are not interested at any of the rumored prices. Philly has not been offered a first rounder by ANY team and has not received a formal offer from the Bears AT ALL.

(2) Philly’s play here was simple. They decided to use Adam Schefter to pretend a deal was imminent and then use some of their local media to float potential packages. (The one that had the Bears giving up a first AND Tarik Cohen – who is far better than Wentz – was my favorite.) They had hoped this would create a bidding war between interested parties. It achieved the opposite.

(3) Would Wentz be an upgrade at QB for the Bears? That’s not a guarantee. And because it’s not a guarantee the Bears have to value him accordingly. If they ultimately consider a first rounder, a second or third has to return. There is no way to argue 2020 Wentz is worth even that much. The Bears, or Colts, would still be paying for the player that was, not the player that currently is.

The NFL Draft is always a crapshoot, but in 2021 the odds of hitting are even lower, making the picks – at least the early selections – less valuable.

We’ve heard the story hundreds of times. A team likes a player’s tape, brings him in, puts him on the whiteboard and falls in love. In some instances, teams fall in love at dinner meetings in which the player made the reservation under a fun name and then walked them back to his crappy Toyota.

Same old story. But that won’t happen this year.

According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, all teams are prohibited from timing, testing, interviewing in-person or giving medical exams to any draft prospects outside of a school’s pro day or an all-star game because of concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a ban on all private workouts, facility visits, dinners and film sessions with prospects.

Communication can be done virtually or at structured events, but teams don’t like that. They want to get prospects in their building, have them speak to position coaches and work them out to see if they can do the specific thing the team wants the player to be able to do.

This is particularly important for quarterbacks.

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This might be the most interesting Super Bowl in many-a-moon. A lotta star power. Two jolly, red-faced head coaches. The point spread hasn’t moved off three points, so the game is expected to be tight. The total has fluctuated between 56 and 56.5, so the game is expected to be high-scoring. And if those two things happen, we’re looking at an exciting Sunday evening.

Five Thoughts

• Something about this game reminds me of those classic Patriots/Giants Super Bowls. A high-powered offense on one side and a big-game quarterback/pass rush on the other. If the Bucs are going to beat Reid and Mahomes, they will need the same Shaq Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul that terrorized Aaron Rodgers in the NFC Championship Game. With Eric Fisher out, the Chiefs are exploitable along the offensive line.
• Early in the season, the Chiefs were not particularly threatening down the field. They dinked and dunked opponents to death. Don’t be surprised if they compensate for their issues upfront by taking a similar approach against the Bucs, especially early in the game. That could mean a lot of quick tosses to Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. Todd Bowles better have his boys in good tackling form.
• Usually you can identify a special teams mismatch in these games but there isn’t one here. Both kickers are reliable. Both punters are effective but used sparingly. The Chiefs are narrowly better in the return games. When games are perceived to be this evenly-matched, it may not come down to which specials unit makes a play but instead which avoids the big mistake at a crucial moment.
• Watch the weather forecast, especially if you’re planning to place any bets. There is predicted rain in Tampa Sunday but the belief now is that should be cleared out by the 6:30 PM ET kickoff. If it does rain, I tend to give an advantage to the quarterback who has seen everything and the steadier rush attack.
• One can not underestimate the achievement of Mahomes winning his second title. Rodgers hasn’t gotten to a second title game. Brees never got to a second title game. Peyton Manning went along for the ride to get his second ring. Mahomes is four quarters away from football immortality. Will he recognize that?

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