There were audible screams in the basement bar on Waverly Place. Zach Miller had caught a perfect Trubisky toss in the end zone but nobody seemed to notice anything but his leg. My God, his leg. On replay it was even worse. Maybe it was shown a third time on television, maybe it wasn’t. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t watching. I went to the toilet, disgusted.

When I came out of the bathroom, Miller’s season was over and somehow the NFL had determined they had enough visual data to overturn the touchdown. Not sure which of the two sickened me more.

Animated GIF version of the angle that Alberto Riveron used to try to explain his bad call of Zach Miller’s touchdown. A clear TD. pic.twitter.com/HVrsr6CAht

— Your Boy Roy (@yourboyroy) November 1, 2017

The Zach Miller Touchdown illuminated everything currently dragging down this great sport and formerly great league.

Forget about anthem protests. They’ll be a thing of memory in a few months. Forget about declining ratings. Television ratings are plummeting everywhere, and will continue to as cable companies lose their monopolistic grip on home entertainment. Forget about head injuries and CTE. People will always play this game and people will always watch.

What will bring the league down?

Injuries & Greed

Aaron Rodgers. Andrew Luck. Deshaun Watson. David Johnson. Dalvin Cook. Odell Beckham Jr. Julian Edelman. Joe Thomas. Jason Peters. JJ Watt. Eric Berry.

Read More …

The DBB team is evaluating the entire organization at this well-placed, exactly midseason bye week. The catch? Each of us is limited to ONE SENTENCE for each position group. Today we move to the men in charge.

Head Coach

Jeff: The Bears are significantly improved from last season, and the coach deserves a bulk of the credit, but their inability to run a modern offense could be the thing that sees him unemployed in January.

Andrew: Huge flaws in game management and preparation, but the Bears have improved drastically from Week One and the rookie quarterback is showing progress weekly and realistically, what more can we ask for? 

Data: John Fox would be a Hall of Famer if his career had started 30 years earlier.

DBB Grade: C+

General Manager

Jeff: Pace is 75% of the way to building the Bears into a legitimate contender but he faces a pivotal off-season in 2018, including a decision on the head coach with massive ramifications.

Andrew: The defense is stacked and it’s hard to blame Ryan Pace for what has happened to his wide receivers but a few bad free agent signings gave come back to bite him.

Data: Ryan Pace has had his hits and misses as GM, but you have to give him credit for building a great young defense from scratch.

DBB Grade: B

The DBB team is evaluating the entire organization at this well-placed, exactly midseason bye week. The catch? Each of us is limited to ONE SENTENCE for each position group. Today we switch to special teams.

Connor Barth

Jeff: Yes, the cupboard is bare at wide receiver due to injury but it’s been at kicker (and Mike Glennon) where the Bears have displayed their most glaring evaluative weakness.

Andrew: Barth just isn’t getting the job done.

Data: Connor Barth is terrible, but that’s something we’ve known since before he signed with the Bears 15 months ago.

DBB Grade: D

Pat O’Donnell

Jeff: Yes, I spend way too much time thinking about and studying punters but POD has improved his directional kicking, hang time and placement in 2017.

Andrew: Pat O’Donnell just might be having the best year of his career.

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The DBB team is evaluating the entire organization at this well-placed, exactly midseason bye week. The catch? Each of us is limited to ONE SENTENCE for each position group. Today we move on to the defense.

Defensive Line

Jeff: Impossible to say a negative word about this group, with Goldman arguably the league’s best run-stuffing interior lineman and Hicks mounting a serious campaign for Defensive Player of the Year.

Andrew: Hicks and Goldman are studs, Unrein is solid and Bullard and Robertson-Harris have both shown flashes.

Data: Akiem Hicks and Eddie Goldman might be the best interior DL combo in the NFL.

DBB Grade: A

Inside Linebackers

Jeff: This was the position of greatest depth on the roster and that depth has been severely tested through eight games. Christian Jones has looked like a new player in the absence of Freeman, Kwik and Timu. (Yea that’s two sentences but it’s my blog so go away.)

Andrew: Danny Trevathan is having a career year and young inside backers also making an impact.

Data: Chicago has gotten a surprisingly high level of play out of this group considering they’ve had to rotate through 5 different bodies here due to injuries and suspensions.

DBB Grade: A-

Outside Linebackers

Jeff: Bears ask their outside backers to do a lot, including extensive coverage duties, but this group will always be judged by their ability to get to the quarterback and they’re getting there to the tune of 11 sacks.

Read More …

The DBB team is evaluating the entire organization at this well-placed, exactly midseason bye week. The catch? Each of us is limited to ONE SENTENCE for each position group. Today we start with the offense.

Quarterback

Jeff: Trubisky is going to get 12 games of experience in close, competitive games – invaluable moving forward – and that’s all that mattered from the QB position in 2017.

Andrew: The present hasn’t been good, but the future looks bright.

Data: Mike Glennon is not good, Mitchell Trubisky is a rookie and the play calling has not helped either out.

DBB Grade: C-

Running Back

Jeff: Tarik Cohen’s versatility is exciting to watch but don’t sleep on Jordan Howard muscling his way to the rushing title as he’s only a hundred yards back.

Andrew: The best position group on the offense hopefully won’t be worn down by overusage.

Data: Jordan Howard must be getting sick and tired of getting hit behind the line of scrimmage.

DBB Grade: A

Wide Receiver

Jeff: This is just an awful collection of players.

Read More …

John David Mercer – USA TODAY Sports

Today could easily be spent on the particulars of the Bears 20-12 loss to the New Orleans Saints. We could talk about the ridiculousness of the Zach Miller overturn, a call that irrationally and irrevocably changed the outcome of the game, but Adam Hoge covered that brilliantly HERE. We could talk about another sterling defensive effort, marred by a few costly mistakes, but Adam Jahns detailed those HERE. We could talk about Connor Barth but, really, who wants to?

Yesterday wasn’t about the small things, however. Yesterday felt big picture.

The Bears – Ryan Pace, John Fox, Vic Fangio –  have built a championship defense. Not a decent defense or a good defense. A championship defense. And with a few off-season additions, it won’t matter who is coaching the unit. When the talent is that good and that deep you could bring Mel Tucker back and the Bears would still rank top ten in every meaningful defensive category.

[Note to Ryan Pace: Don’t bring Mel Tucker back. I was kidding.]

The offense is…the issue.

One couldn’t help wonder what Ryan Pace was thinking as he sat and watched his new team face his former team in the Superdome yesterday. It is well-documented how close the relationship between Pace and Sean Payton was during their time together and one has to believe there was some longing in the Bears GM’s heart Sunday.

Because the Saints offensive coaching staff was doing advanced mathematics at MIT. Their run game was varied and creative, using several formations and calls they hadn’t previously used this season. There was strategy in everything they did, with each early call having a late rationale. That’s not a wildly talented collection of offensive players but the coaching staff puts every one of them in the best position to succeed. Novel concept, huh?

The Bears offensive coaching staff was counting blocks at Wise Owl Nursery School in Belleville, NJ. (It is right between the McDonald’s and the bowling alley.) Read More …

The Bears played pretty evenly with the NFC South-leading New Orleans Saints on the road, but a series of missed opportunities (helped by one atrocious call by the officials) cost them the chance to enter the bye at 4-4.

Perhaps most important to Chicago going forward, the loss was a costly one for the Bears. Four starters left the game with injuries and did not return, including guard Kyle Long (hand), center Cody Whitehair (arm), cornerback Bryce Callahan (knee), and tight end Zach Miller (leg). We’ll wait to see how serious the injuries are, though I can say fairly confidently that Miller’s gruesome leg injury means his season (and likely his career) is finished.

Still, the best news to me from the game was that they kept fighting. When they went down 17-6 early in the 4th quarter, I expected them to roll over and quit, but from that point on the defense forced two turnovers, the offense scored a touchdown, and the special teams picked up a big return to keep Chicago in the game. The attitude on the team is changing, and the importance of that can’t be overstated.

Offense

• The Bears were forced to ask for a bit more from rookie quarterback Mitchell Trubisky this week, and we saw some of both good and bad, as should be expected from a young quarterback. We saw the talent leading to some big plays, and we saw the rookie mistakes leading to missed opportunities and/or negative plays. The overall stat line (14/32, 164 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 46.9 rating) looks ugly, but his performance was not that bad. Notably, Trubisky threw 2 touchdowns, but one of them was taken away by a terrible officiating call and one of them was inexplicably dropped by a wide open Jordan Howard.

Read More …

New Orleans Night Balcony, Original

2017

Player: Equanimeous St. Brown, WR, Notre Dame

Game: vs. North Carolina State (#14), 2:30 PM CT

Video

What They’re Saying

From a PFF prospect preview of ESB:

Notre Dame junior WR Equanimeous St. Brown, a 6-foot-5, 204-pounder, exploded in first season with a significant workload a year ago. Hauling in 58 receptions for 961 yards and nine touchdowns, Brown ranked No. 5 among returning Power 5 and Independent (FBS) wide receivers in yards per route run (2.69).

Dropping just three of his 61 catchable targets in 2016, St. Brown ranked No. 7 among that same group of wide receivers in drop rate.

St. Brown still needs to develop as a big-play threat on the outside to become a complete package at the next level. He ranked No. 42 and No. 46 in the 2018 draft class in deep pass yards and deep pass catch percentage last season, respectively.

I Think…

• Special talent. Truly special talent. But there’s no way to evaluate him in this Notre Dame offense that (a) runs for like 300 yards a week now and (b) starts a quarterback from my high school (P-R-E-P PREP! PREP! PREP!) who isn’t good at throwing passes.
• One thing the Bears will like is watching him run block 20 times a game. Because if he’s drafted into this Bears offense that’s a seriously valuable skill set. (Right now it’s the most valuable.)
• As always with wide receivers in the draft, nobody will know where he’s going to be taken until he runs. But ND lists this kid as 6-5, 203 lbs. That size with decent speed is lethal in this league.

Why Watch This Week

A good writer named Tom Shanahan cites commentary from a Raleigh radio host, Steve Logan, in a recent blog post:

But Logan thinks N.C. State can turn Notre Dame’s strong running game to its advantage. The Wolfpack have one of the top defensive lines in the nation, led by projected first-round draft pick Bradley Chubb at defensive end. The Wolfpack are ranked sixth, allowing only 91.3 yards a game.

“It can happen,” Logan said of an upset. “Notre Dame is generating 470 yards a game — 300 on the ground. That’s good news from this standpoint for Dave Huxtable, the defensive coordinator at N.C. State: He can bring his safeties in to stop the run. It’s easier to bring the safeties to stop the run and make somebody beat you throwing the ball as opposed to the other way around. This is where N.C. State has an advantage.”

Logan seems to believe this is a week Notre Dame may struggle to run the ball. If that’s the case, this is the week to tune in and watch their top receiving threat; a serious Bears prospect in the coming draft.

On this week’s pod:

• Jeff, battling illness, tries to explain what John Fox is thinking with his offensive approach. (Hint: If he doesn’t win, he doesn’t come back. So he’s trying to do that.)
• Cam Worrell on the Bears approach to Trubisky, whether players pay attention to the coach’s contract, why Eric Mangini was a “fraud” and how he’s coach a player on dealing with concussions.
• Reverend Dave eats dog with “Heroin LeBron” (and somehow gets the story back to the Bears).
• Music from the late Fats Domino!