(Photo of Trask by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

If the Bears win Sunday, they are unlikely to be choosing one of the top four quarterbacks in this coming draft. (And I have had several personnel folks tell me that might not be the worst thing for them long-term.) So looking at that next crop of QBs is probably a more apt exercise at this point. Today will be a good opportunity to look at three them, two for the second time in this space.

3:00 PM CT

ACC Championship Game

Clemson vs. Notre Dame

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Trevor Lawrence is going to be the first pick of the draft and stabilize a Jets franchise desperate for stabilization. But ND quarterback Ian Book is going to be an interesting option for teams in the middle rounds. Eric Edholm of Yahoo found an interesting comp for Book:

I texted a Midwest scout who has seen Book’s success as a college QB and watched him grow as an NFL prospect. Who does Book remind the scout of?

Jeff Garcia, he told me. Not the name I was expecting, but it makes sense.

Garcia was far from a roundly beloved prospect coming out of San Jose State in the early ’90s — like Book, branded too small, too hectic, too not NFL. For that time, anyway. And it took him five years of success in the CFL and a visionary in Bill Walsh (who had returned to the 49ers’ front office) to see Garcia’s NFL potential.

Book’s road to the league shouldn’t be quite as circuitous because it appears that he’s only helped his draft stock and could push for a spot in Round 4 — or even higher. It will be fascinating to see which team drafts him, perhaps a club such as the Pittsburgh Steelers that will need to find its eventual starter or one such as the Houston Texans or Kansas City Chiefs, who have their current starter but might want a backup to groom with similar skills to their almost irreplaceable stars in Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.

Book’s deep-ball effectiveness has improved dramatically from his first few seasons, and even — despite fewer downfield attempts — from a year ago. He still has issues throwing intermediate and deep toward the sidelines but has developed the kind of hip torque and arm strength to get the balls to their targets more readily.

Like with Jalen Hurts a year ago, Book holds onto the ball too long. That won’t fly as readily in the NFL; he has to speed up his clock and not assume his brilliant offensive line and his own athleticism will keep him safe.

Overall, it’s hard not to love and appreciate the strides Book has made as an NFL prospect over the past few years. And with a potential playoff spot looming for the Irish, there are more tests awaiting.

7:00 PM CT

SEC Championship Game

Florida vs. Alabama

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Both quarterbacks in this game – Kyle Trask and Mac Jones – are projecting to be drafted somewhere between pick 15 and pick 50. And it’s safe to every that every NFL eye will be on both tonight.

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears…

…and after a few weeks in the darkness of Quitsville, I’m back!

The Stakes

The Bears are 6-7. And this might be the most important game ever played by a 6-7 team.

If the Bears win Sunday, they’ll be 7-7, with Jacksonville on deck. (8-7) That’ll bring the Packers to town, with Tim Boyle likely starting, and a playoff spot likely on the line. If the Bears win Sunday they will be playing meaningful football for 17 weeks at a minimum. That’s how the late Giants owner Wellington Mara defined a successful season. And knew a bit about football.

But winning, especially with another superior offensive effort, would also continue to change the narrative around the head coach. Nobody is firing a head coach who is eight games over (minimum) in his first three years. And if the quarterback pitches another triple-digit quarterback rating? How could the narrative around him not alter slightly as well? Wouldn’t the Bears have to start considering a 2021 prove it deal?

Now if the Bears lose Sunday, their season ends. If they lose Sunday and deliver another lackluster offensive effort against the Vikings, Matt Nagy and Mitch Trubisky go back under the bright interrogative lamps of media and fans. (Hard to imagine Ted Phillips and Ryan Pace won’t be there regardless of these final games.) A loss flips the fourteen-day hourglass and the sand shuffles through on January 4th. That’s when we’ll find out who among the leadership is coming back in 2021.

It’s all at stake Sunday.

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One of the strangest games of this NFL season. A myriad of thoughts.

• Dan Bailey didn’t just miss three field goals and an extra point. He missed the four kicks by a combined hundred yards. This looked like Chuck Knoblauch throwing to first base. Kevin Na not being able to “pull the trigger” at TPC Sawgrass. Mike Zimmer was quoted postgame, “If you guys want me to fire guys for making a mistake here or there, we wouldn’t have any players.” So it seems Bailey will kick again Sunday. And that’s a win for the Bears.
• Bailey’s missed kicks were essential. Five minutes into the second quarter, the Vikings were dominating the game and had almost nothing to show for it. What should have been a 10-0 lead was a 6-0 lead and it took only one perfectly-thrown Tom Brady pass to Scottie Miller to erase that lead.
• There’s no reason to write about Dalvin Cook and Justin Jefferson. They are the two best players on this team and stopping this offense starts with them. But they’ve added a few wrinkles.
  • Irv Smith Jr. was brilliant versus Tampa. He was actually better than his stats because there wasn’t an easy catch in the four he made. Cousins is clearly looking to him as the safety valve option.
  • Seems Gary Kubiak is starting to move to more two-back sets, with C.J. Ham at fullback. And Ham is becoming a weapon in the passing game from that position.
  • Kirk Cousins had five carries for 41 yards against Tampa. But the Vikings actually called a draw for him on 3rd and short and a few times he didn’t wait for the play to breakdown. He just took off. Cousins ain’t gonna be confused for Lamar Jackson any day soon, but his legs are becoming a significant asset for the Vikings.

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Two weeks ago the Chicago Bears quit, in primetime, against their oldest rivals.

A week ago the Chicago Bears collapsed against the Detroit Lions, squandering a double-digit lead in the final minutes.

These were two of the worst weeks for a Bears head coach since Aaron Kromer turned rat against Jay Cutler and Marc Trestman pathetically refused to fire him. They were two weeks that felt like the end of Matt Nagy’s tenure with the team. The offense was showing signs of life but the defense seemed in freefall. How could the locker room hold up? How on earth would Nagy survive?

And now Houston was coming to town, bringing with them the star quarterback the Bears ignored in the lead-up to the 2017 NFL Draft.  And while revisionist historians now want to paint the Texans as the Washington Generals, take a step back. The Texans were 4-4 under Romeo Crennel. In the last month they had beaten Belichick, crushed Detroit on a short week and fumbled away victory over the Colts on the one. This wasn’t some pushover. The Texans were FAVORED to win Sunday at Soldier Field.

And instead, Matt Nagy’s Bears delivered their most inspired, complete performance of the 2020 season. They buried Houston. For many fans, this is too little, too late. They’ve seen enough and they want Ted Phillips, Ryan Pace, Matt Nagy, the janitorial staff, the lady who runs Bears Care and two curators at the Field Museum fired.

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[Note: The following is an analysis of the last three games played by the Chicago Bears offense. Yes, it is understood that much of the offensive production in Green Bay occurred in “garbage time” but when it comes to this offense, we can’t really leave that production out of the discussion.]

Against the Packers: 363 yards, 25 points, 242 yards passing, 121 yards rushing.

Against the Lions: 407 yards, 30 points, 267 yards passing, 140 yards rushing.

Against the Texans: 436 yards, 36 points, 267 yards passing, 169 yards rushing.

So the averages over this three-game period are 402 yards, 30.3 points, 258.7 yards passing, 143.3 yards rushing.

• Only one team in the league – Kansas City – averages more than 400 yards per game.
• One four teams – KC, Green Bay, Seattle, Tennessee – average more than 30 points per game.
• 258 yards passing per game would land the Bears 13th in the NFL for that category. Many of us argued that if the Bears could be in the top half of the league throwing the football they would be a surefire playoff team.
• 143.3 yards rushing per game would land the Bears 7th in the NFL for that category, and three of the teams they would trail (Baltimore, Arizona, New England) feature a running quarterback as a primary weapon.

Is this production a mirage? Or has Matt Nagy finally pushed the right buttons?

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears…

…but this is a team in complete freefall.

A Personal Note

This blog started in 2005. But 2006 was the first year things were taken seriously around here and that coincided with a magical run to the Super Bowl. From that season until Jay Cutler’s injury in the middle of 2011, it was a pleasure writing about the Chicago Bears daily. They weren’t perfect, by any means, but they were interesting.

But from then until now – with the exception of the 2018 mirage – it has been exhausting. Just think about all the mistakes this franchise has made:

• Jerry Angelo was not a great GM but the team went to the NFC title game in 2010 and were 7-3 before their starting quarterback got hurt in 2011. The team decided THAT was the time to fire Angelo? (I wrote then that it was not and was slaughtered for that opinion.)
• They hired Phil Emery, a candidate on very few radars. (Folks close to Ted Phillips have told me this is the most distinct regret of his time with the Bears.)
• Emery fired Lovie Smith after the 2012 season. Lovie was 11-5 in 2010, 8-8 (Hanie) in 2011 and 10-6 in 2012. And was fired.
• With reigning Coach of the Year Bruce Arians sitting in a hotel room, desperate to coach Cutler and the Bears, Emery hired CFL legend Marc Trestman to lead the Bears. It didn’t look like all that bad a choice in year one. Year two was a different story. Kromer rats out Jay to the media, then confesses. Jay is benched for Jimmy Clausen and Reverend Dave and I are forced to sit through it live.
• Bears hire Ryan Pace. Pace hires John Fox. Is that the coach he wanted?
• Pace drafts Trubisky over Watson without so much as meeting with Watson. Fox admits he was kept in the dark during this process. What’s odd about that? I KNEW THEY WERE DOING THIS THE MORNING OF THE DRAFT! But again, my connections are at the President/ownership level.
  • What both of these decisions show clearly is the Bears are not functioning as a single organization. They are separate entities, with separate intentions, trying to weld those intentions into a cohesive plan. And that doesn’t work in the NFL.

Mistake after mistake after mistake. Exhausting.

Fun Christmas Song Performances: Volume I

I’m in Christmas mode. (And I have no interest in writing a breakdown of Texans v. Bears. Honestly, who cares?) Here are some fun performances of great Christmas songs. I’ll add a few more to this list over the next few weeks.

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Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin, A Very Murray Christmas

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As a research exercise, I decided to compile playoff appearances from across the league for the decade 2010-2019. Here’s the breakdown. The teams in bold won the Super Bowl. The teams italicized lost the Super Bowl. And some, you’ll notice, did both.

10: Patriots

8: Seahawks, Packers

7: Chiefs

6: Ravens, Steelers, Texans, Saints

5: Broncos, Bengals, Colts, Eagles, Falcons

4: Panthers, Vikings, 49ers

3: Lions, Cowboys

2: Bears, Rams, Cardinals, Washington Football Team, Bills, Chargers, Titans, Giants

1: Jaguars, Raiders, Dolphins, Jets

0: Bucs, Browns

Thoughts on the numbers:

• 13 teams made the postseason five or more times in this ten-year span. They won nine Super Bowls, with the Pats taking three. This league is about sustained success – getting into the tournament as often as you can and then getting hot in January.

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