Let me walk you behind the DBB curtain.

Every Monday, for about 5-6 hours, I watch the Short Cuts presentation of every NFL game played on Sunday through the digital Sunday Ticket package. If you have the time, this makes the exorbitant cost of that package somewhat worth it, as you find many of the national narratives surrounding these games are just wildly inaccurate. (It is amazing how many games are decided by big drops and even bigger penalties but we never hear about those things.)

During these sessions, I take specific notes on all future Bears opponents. I’m not trying to get an advanced degree in this stuff; these are aren’t thorough, multileveled notes. But if I see a team struggle to defend a certain concept Week One, I will note it. If the team struggles with that concept again Week Four, I note it again. Alas, when the Bears play this team, I suggest they involve this concept. It’s that simplistic.

But the Bears never do it.

Any of it.

And it’s exhausting.

Because I am not Nate Tice or Robert Mays or Brian Baldinger. I have made it a point over the years to avoid being too technical when writing about football. How much do people really want to read about sluggo routes and robber technique? Do you really want to read about why dagger concept is more effective against Cover 2 than Cover 1? I value the X and O writers tremendously; they make us all smarter. But I’m just far more interested in the big player, making the big play, in the big moment. That’s what makes me want to write about the sport. (That’s what really, in a sense, makes me wanna write about anything. I’m far more interested in Tevye battling against the crumbling of religious/cultural tradition than in learning how he supports his family selling milk and cheese to poor Russians. Mays would be giggling through his podcast, discussing Tevye’s wagon/mule overhead.)

What do the Bears need to do to beat the Niners?

They need to block them. They need to tackle them. They need to catch the football. They need to hit Garoppolo. The Bears are underdogs at home to a two-win mess of a team. They need to play like they’re embarrassed by that fact. If they do these things, no matter who their coach is, they’ll be 4-4 Sunday afternoon. If they don’t, their season is over.

Yes, I have moved on from Matt Nagy as the head coach of the Chicago Bears. (And hopefully George McCaskey will do the same soon.) The Bears are not going to out-scheme any remaining opponent on their schedule. But they can still outhustle and outwork them. They can still give their fans something to care about on Sunday. They can still win games despite the ineptitude of the fella on their sidelines.

So let’s see it. Because I’ve got a bunch of Steelers notes for next week and I’d like to use them.

#Bears Pro Bowl pass-rusher Khalil Mack is not expected to play this week, per @MikeGarafolo and me, as the team will allow his ailing foot to rest. Giving him three weeks while on Injured Reserve to heal and rehab is being discussed. A significant blow to the Chicago defense.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 27, 2021

While doom and gloom is popular amongst Chicago Bears fans, media and bloggers, it’s hard to argue the team scoring convincing wins over two AFC division leaders is bad. At 3-4, the Bears have played a brutal schedule, including three teams with one loss, two with two losses and a Cleveland Browns team that fell off only recently due to some injuries. (Football Outsiders ranks their first seven games as the hardest played in the league and their remaining 10 the third hardest.) As terrible as the Bears looked against Tampa Bay, the reality is the team still has a good chance at making the playoffs this year if they’re able to win the next two games.

This week, the Bears welcome a San Francisco team coming to Chicago for a noon start. Then they head to Pittsburgh for Monday Night Football before the bye week. There’s no reason the Bears can’t be 5-4 entering their bye. Both teams offer favorable matchups, with quarterbacks who can’t really attack deep and a lack of perimeter playmakers. Both teams have decent defenses, but nothing like Tampa Bay and maybe not even as good as Green Bay.

Looking at how the middle of the backend of the NFC playoff field is playing out, it will probably only take nine wins to make the playoffs this year. Eight might even do it with tiebreakers. The Saints have the six seed at 4-2. The Vikings and Falcons are both 3-3. The Bears and free-falling Panthers are 3-4. If the Bears can win their next two, beat Detroit, Seattle, New York and split with Minnesota then they’re gonna be in.

But they’ll need improvement from the quarterback position.

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Stat #1

The Chicago Bears have now played three of top five teams in the NFC. The combined score of those three games was 96-31.

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Stat #2

The top five teams in the NFC are Arizona, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Green Bay and Dallas (in no particular order). Their yards per game, when averaged, is 404.26. The Chicago Bears are averaging 255.4 yards per game.

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Summary

In a league that is designed and officiated for maximum offensive output, the Bears are simply not playing modern NFL football. And they have zero chance to compete with the league’s best teams consistently until they do so.

So here’s Adam Jahns.

There are 10 games left but there is only one question that should matter to the McCaskeys right now: Is rookie quarterback Justin Fields in the best hands?

My column from Tampa (deals available in the link). https://t.co/URZZQdT2no

— Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) October 25, 2021

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

But let’s be honest: it’s quite difficult to like the Bears in this spot. The Bucs are inevitably going to score a bunch of points and the way to beat them is to score more. Does anybody believe a Matt Nagy offense can win a shootout, even with a rookie quarterback who looks like he’d thrive in that situation?

The Bucs are scoring 32.5 points per game. A great Bears defensive effort should be able to keep them in the 24-8 range. So the Bears will need 30. Do they have it? Doubtful.

HughesReviews: The Velvet Underground

I’ve always thought the great documentaries fall into two categories. The content docs captivate you with information. Alex Gibney is the master of this form (Enron, Client 9, Going Clear, etc.), but the binge-worthy, true crime doc drug – of which I must admit an addiction – has elevated the medium from high art, coffee shop conversation to pop culture phenomena. (Tiger King felt like the most talked about documentary in the history of the country.)

The form docs are a trickier enterprise. Whether it’s Errol Morris’ interrotron locking into the eyes of Robert McNamara or DA Pennebaker’s fly-on-the-wall witnessing Elaine Stritch’s cast recording breakdown or Barbara Kopple’s penetrating look at the coal miners of Harlan County, the form docs seem to change the way we look at the world by changing the way that world is framed for us, the viewer. (Great recent examples are 2019’s American Factory and Minding the Gap.)

The great music docs almost exclusively fall into this latter group. Sure, The Sparks Brothers was an intriguing look at an intriguing band, and History of The Eagles was endlessly entertaining, but ultimately those films are limited by how much the viewer actually cares about the work the band produced. (In both the aforementioned cases, my level is somewhere near zero.) The great music docs – The Last Waltz, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Stop Making Sense – captivate you with the originality of their storytelling.

What is so stunning about Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground is how intimate the experience feels. (It definitely helps that I saw it in a theater and not on my couch, with the ability to pause and take piss breaks.) The filmmaker’s decision to rest the faces of his subjects on screen for extended periods of time had a near-hypnotic effect. You find yourself studying Lou Reed and John Cale as younger men. You find yourself searching their faces for clues to a puzzle that’s never been solved. And all the while they are mapping out their journeys to the band. It’s thrilling.

I’ll write more about this film in the year-end piece. But I want to use this space to encourage you to see the film. (It is on Apple+ if you can’t find it in a theater near you.) Whether you like the band or not – and I do not – it’s one of the more remarkable documentaries every produced.

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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are favored over the Chicago Bears by anywhere from 12 to 13.5 points, depending on the sportsbook of your choice. But this is not an unwinnable game for the Bears. There’s a path. Will they take it?

[Note. This space will operate like Robert Quinn’s positive Covid test on Monday will keep him out of this game.]

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Split Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Offense:

• Abandon the run.
  • This is a team that salivates at the thought of an opponent running the ball on first and second down. It allows their pass rush can tee off on third and their terrible secondary to take a deep breath. The teams that have had offensive production against them have taken the opposite approach.
    • When the Cowboys scored 29, Zeke and Pollard totaled 14 carries. Dak Prescott threw for over 400 yards and 3 touchdowns.
    • Sony Michel was given 20 carries by the Rams against the Bucs and totaled 67 yards. (The Rams had a pretty significant lead in this game.) Matthew Stafford threw for 343 yards and 4 touchdowns.
    • This is a game where Marquise Goodwin and Damiere Byrd should log snaps and see targets. And it would be a nice opportunity to throw the football to Jimmy Graham a few times.
  • Jalen Hurts was terrible throwing the ball against Tampa but his legs became a serious weapon as the game progressed. This is another reason to run this game plan through Fields. When it’s not there, let him run. His legs might be their only productive option on the ground.
  • It would also be nice to see Fields with the ability to throw the football away on an EARLY down. On third downs, he’s trying to force the issue to keep the chains moving. But on first down he should be far more willing to fling a ball into the sixth row if there’s nothing available downfield.

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Hit Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Defense:

• Pressure up the gut.
  • There’s no reason to belabor the point. Tom Brady has been playing in the NFL since the 80s and people have been writing the same stuff since the 80s. The only way to make him uncomfortable is to get him off his spot; pressure him up the middle. This will be far more difficult without Quinn.
• Tackle the quick toss.
  • Brady’s been as accurate as any quarterback in the league this season and he has brilliant short-yardage options in Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, Leonard Fournette, Gio Bernard, etc. If the Bears continue to tackle as they have, especially at the safety position, it’s hard to imagine the Bucs not going 70 yards for a score on what looks like an innocuous 5-6 yard slant.
• Take one away with JJ.
  • Sean Desai has a difficult decision to make with Jaylon Johnson. Where does he deploy him? If he chooses to take one receiver away, that receiver should be Evans. Godwin and Brown do more of their work underneath the defense. Evans is the homerun hitter. Preventing the homerun might be the key to keeping this game competitive.

When it comes to Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy, the Chicago Bears have to keep both or neither.

It was this calendar year that Ted Phillips and George McCaskey attempted to sell the fan base on the collaboration that would occur between the team’s head coach and general manager. The men were now on equal footing and, more likely, Pace was no longer the top football mind in the organization. Reports about the Bears investigating Nagy’s good friend Mike Borgonzi as a possible replacement for Pace didn’t come from thin air. Pair that with Louis Riddick’s insistence that it is no longer Pace’s show and it’s logical to conclude that Nagy signed off on keeping Pace.

But now another season has began and the Bears offense is still bad.

Pace won over fans because he’s seen as the roster builder and that approach led to the Bears landing Justin Fields. The reality is that it was Nagy who was doing the legwork on Fields and had the final say in picking Fields over Mac Jones. But nobody cares about reality during the course of a season. The Bears offense is the worst in the league and both the GM and head coach have blame to share.

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Herm Edwards said it best, and for the most part he was right. When you line up to play a football game, the primary objective should be to score more points than the other team. That has certainly been the approach of Matt Nagy, at least offensively, through the early goings of the Justin Fields era at quarterback. The Bears have identified their best approach to winning as play good defense, run the ball consistently, and ask the quarterback to make a play or two at pivotal moments.

But is this the right approach for the Chicago Bears moving forward, especially over the difficult four-game stretch to come? The answer is unequivocally no. And it all comes down to self-evaluation.

Forget the complexity of QBR and DVOA and all the other analytics flooding your Twitter feed. Let’s objectively look at each position group on offense for the Chicago Bears and assign them either a + (plus) or a – (minus). Let’s leave quarterback out. Plus means they’re good. Minus means they’re not. Simple.

[Side note: these evaluations are based on current usage and production. I think Damiere Byrd is a good NFL wide receiver but he’s not being used at all so what can you do?]

• Running backs: +
  • David Montgomery is one of the better backs in the league, Damien Williams is a terrific change of pace option and Khalil Herbert looks every bit an every-down back. (And don’t forget Tarik Cohen is still in the wilderness.) This has turned into as good an RB room as there is in the league.
• Offensive line: –
  • They are a good run-blocking unit but they’re incapable of protecting the quarterback in obvious passing situations. In this modern NFL, that’s a must.
• Tight ends: –
  • Cole Kmet finally flashed in the passing game Sunday. But they have Jimmy Graham making $7M to block once every other week. When you factor in the supposed importance of this position in this offense, it’s something of a disaster.
• Wide Receivers: –
  • Darnell Mooney is going to be a player for years to come. Allen Robinson is ordinary. The rest of the group can be found on practice squads around the league at this production level.

So if you’re Nagy and Bill Lazor, of course you’re going to be run-first, run-always, run-forever. The only two real positives on your offensive roster, around the rookie QB, are the OL’s ability to run block and the backs behind them. But this approach only makes logical sense if the primary objective is to squeeze out as many wins from the 2021 season as possible. And that should no longer be the primary goal. It should never have been the primary goal.

The goal has to be Fields.

They need to get more out of him every week.

They need to ask more of him every week.

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