Yesterday, we explored the tackles, where Braxton Jones looks like a solid starter. Today, we will look at the guards.

Pass Blocking

The Bears had four guards play meaningful snaps last year, and the table below shows how they held up in pass protection compared to the 77 guards around the NFL who had at least 200 pass blocking snaps (Lucas Patrick did not have enough snaps to qualify, so his ranks are where he would have fit if he did). All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF), and true pass sets are intended to remove plays designed to minimize the pass rush, such as screens, play action, and rollout. Cells highlighted in green indicate they ranked in the top 25%, while red indicates the bottom 25%.

A few thoughts:

• Like we saw with the tackles, the Bears minimized the amount of true pass sets in order to protect an offensive line that they didn’t trust to hold up in protection. And like we saw with tackles, they generally had good reason not to trust the line, as there’s a whole lot of red and not a lot of green in this chart.
• Looking at individual players, the top three aren’t too bad. Nobody really stands out as being all that good, but they’re mostly around average to maybe a bit below average.
• Lucas Patrick, on the other hand, was horrible. I know he struggled through injuries last year, but he was legitimately one of the worst guards in the NFL.

Teven Jenkins got a lot of hype from Bears fans last year, but he seemed to struggle a bit as a pass protector, especially in true pass sets. Of course, it was his first season as a starter, so it’s possible that he improved as the season went on, like we saw from Braxton Jones yesterday. The table below looks at his performance when splitting the season into four-game intervals. Jenkins got hurt during the season in 2022, so he only played five games from Week 9 on, and those are all put into one sample.

Here you can see that some improvement was made as a pass protector, at least based on PFF’s grades. This is especially evident in the true pass sets, which is where Jenkins most struggled. Hopefully that progress can continue going forward.

Read More …

From the final whistle of the last preseason game to kickoff of the opener is a weirdly dead time in the NFL. Teams are full week one install and shrouded in secrecy. Nothing gets out of any building. DBB season previews, predictions, etc. will all be posted next week. This week, we slowly waltz into Labor Day weekend and the de facto end of the summer. Today, some links.

• Rosters will be cut down to 53 players by this afternoon and Courtney Cronin has her predictions here. There is very little drama at Halas Hall, as any young player with potential is going to be kept around, i.e., Jack Sanborn. The cut who felt like the “bubble boy” was Dazz Newsome and the Bears made that decision a week ago.
• If you’re not finished digesting the final preseason game, Kevin Fishbain’s game story for The Athletic was the best out there. (Outside of my own, of course.)
• I pride myself on knowing the names of local newspapers for every market in the country. But I had no idea there was such a thing as The Canton Repository. Here is a nice story from that publication on their hometown boy, Dominique Robinson, a player that has had a terrific summer for the Bears and will be part of their future plans. (His injury suffered Saturday could have an impact on the structure of that future.)
• If the Jets were trying to trade Denzel Mims, showcasing him Sunday against the Giants was a smart move. His 7-102-1 performance captured some attention and Mims is saying all the right things about his future. This is a player the Chicago Bears should certainly be considering, but only at an extremely low cost.
• ACTUAL BEAR NEWS: Sometimes clickbait demands to be clicked. “Vermont Woman Has Dog’s ‘Ninja Moves’ to Thank for Helping Save Her from Bear Attack” is one of those stories.
• Josh Schrock of NBC Sports discusses the emergence of Elijah Hicks this summer. From the piece: “I really like his movement skills,” head coach Matt Eberflus said. “Elijah’s really doing a good job. You’re focused on that in the open field and also in man-to-man coverage. Can he mirror and stay with guys and then also be stout? Because it’s a physical game when you’re playing man-to-man, and he can do that. Can he anchor and stay attached to the tight ends or backs or whoever he’s covering? But yeah, I’ve been impressed.”

And a special shoutout to Brandon Thorn for isolating some of Teven Jenkins’ work on Saturday night.

A couple really nice reps from Jenkins
– Stab, climb & cut-off of JOK at the 2nd level
– Snatch & finish pic.twitter.com/BBD2k6jCeL

— Brandon Thorn (@BrandonThornNFL) August 28, 2022

Good news on the injury front for the Bears running back room. Fullback Khari Blasingame, who had a brace on his left arm during the Seattle game, does not have the brace on today and is practicing. So is Khalil Herbert, who left practice early yesterday.

— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) August 21, 2022

Teven Jenkins and Larry Borom remain with the 1s during the first team period this morning.

— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) August 21, 2022

Some highlights from Bears practice today:

– Fields connected with Mooney for a long TD. Fields rolled to his left before hitting Mooney who got past Jackson.

– Fields had two long completions to St. Brown.

– Fields was intercepted by Morrow. Blackson tipped the pass.

— Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) August 21, 2022

Is there a position harder to look at with the standard NFL camera angle than right guard?

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) August 19, 2022

As is the want of DBB, we’ll approach this practice game quarter-by-quarter. And hopefully I will be able to stay awake for all four. (That is highly doubtful. With both teams sitting 20+ players, this is a more useless preseason game than most.)

Quarter One.

• Velus Jones looks like he’s going to be the return man. Showed a remarkable burst on the opening kickoff (before fumbling) and had a long punt return later. When you have that kind of speed on your roster, you have to use it, and the return game is a good way to start.
• First offensive drive, the Bears surrendered a lot of pressure. But Fields was genuinely quick to recognize it and get the football out of his hands. Remember, this is all vanilla game planning. Nothing the Bears ran against Seattle had anything to do with Seattle.
• Never overreact to the preseason. But Cole Kmet looks like he’s going to be a central part of this passing game.
• Just an eye test thing, but I think the Bears need to move Trestan Ebner ahead of Khalil Herbert on their depth chart. He’s got a better burst and he’s tougher to bring down. Herbert is useful but Ebner looks better as a runner.
  • Ebner didn’t make it through the first half healthy. Something to monitor.
• This game kicked off at 8:13 or so ET. By 8:43 all of the relevant Bears were out of the game. These games in August should all be early afternoon kickoffs.
• No idea how well Teven Jenkins played inside against the better Seahawks, but he didn’t seem to make any visible errors. (When Seattle moved to the backups late in the quarter, Jenkins leveled a few guys.)

Quarter Two.

• Trevor Siemian is having a nice summer for this team. You want a backup quarterback that can execute the offense and not be an automatic loss. Siemian is that.
• Do the Bears intend to use Trenton Gill on kickoffs?
• Big time whiff by Kyle Gordon on the long Homer run at the start of the second quarter. Happens. But needs to get corrected.
• Good reason to be concerned about Trevis Gipson. For a guy expected to start on the edge, he’s had a relatively unimpressive summer and was kept in this game far too long. Bears need pass rush production aside from Robert Quinn. Gipson need to provide a significant amount of it.
• Dante Pettis relieved Dazz on punt returns last week and relieved Velus this week. Seems like he’ll have a spot on this roster.
• A guy slid to end the half for Seattle. And then he looked shocked by the moment. That seems about right for these awful games.

Read More …

Playing preseason games on short weeks is absurd, and the Bears are actually acknowledging that absurdity by intending to play their starters less in the second preseason game than in the first. (Almost like these contests have very little value to teams, outside of financial.)

Still, we shall watch tonight. And there are a few things to watch.

• Teven Jenkins. In the last month, Jenkins has gone from potentially being traded to nursing a mysterious injury to third-string offensive tackle to starting right guard. That’s where he’ll line up tonight and it’s in the best future interest of this franchise for him to thrive at that position. A solid performance tonight likely lands him in the starting five upfront against the 49ers in a few weeks.
• Dazz Newsome. One would hope the coaching staff haven’t completely given up on Dazz as punt returner due to a single fumble in the first preseason game; that remains to be seen. But Dazz has been really good since botching that return, both in the remainder of that game and in practice sessions this week, even taking some first team reps with Justin Fields.
• The Jack Sanborn Show. On Saturday, Sanborn had fans on the lakefront saying, “Roquan who?” And with Roquan still sidelined due to a contract dispute, it’ll be interesting to see if Coach Flus moves Sanborn up the depth chart at all, perhaps into the realm of those first 6-10 plays? Doubtful, but it’s something.

Enjoy the second practice game!

Luke Getsy on trying Teven Jenkins at right guard: “The guards get stressed mentally more than the tackles in this system…that’s the strength of his game…we want to try that and see what that looks like.”

— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) August 15, 2022

Michael Schofield is another body, a perfect swing guard for this roster.

Teven Jenkins is an offensive lineman with first-round talent. This move likely would have been made a week ago if Jenkins were able to practice. Jenkins has the athleticism to play guard in this offense and 2022 will be better served seeing if he can adapt to that role, as opposed to sticking with a 31-year-old journeyman.

No practice for the Bears on Monday. So here are some things I wasted time reading on Monday.

• The Jahns and Fishbain practice report at The Athletic seems to suggest an order is forming along the offensive line and that order has Braxton Jones at left tackle and Riley Reiff at right tackle. If Braxton ultimately wins the job, and is on the blindside come opening day, he immediately becomes one of the two or three most interesting players on this roster in 2022.
• It feels like the drama surrounding Teven Jenkins has come to an end and the focus will now be back on the field. (Courtney Cronin details the whole ordeal here.) If Braxton is one of the most interesting players heading into this regular season, Teven is THE most interesting of the preseason. When will get into these games? Where will Getsy and Morgan play him? How will he respond?
• Unsung Tweet from Brad Biggs: “#Bears DC Alan Williams praises LB Joe Thomas – saying he is leading that group in takeaways. He has a shot to compete for strong side job and has been a previous core special teams player in the league.”
• With N’Keal Harry’s comeback derailed by what looks like a serious injury, I wanted to read more about the kid. Sometimes we fixate on the football player without paying any respect to the human being. Harry seems a very, very good young man. From a blog post by Bernd Buchmasser in 2019: “[I want to] give back in any way that I can,” Harry said during the photo op and Q&A session inside Gillette Stadium yesterday. “Definitely help my family, help some people on the island. I feel like with this platform I’ve been given, it’s my duty to do something good with it. God has blessed me to be in this position. So it would be a disservice if I didn’t give back and if I didn’t show appreciation, so that’s my biggest goal.”
• Somehow, I missed the report that Nicholas Morrow, and not Roquan Smith, would be the signal caller in the new defense, as that duty is exclusively handled by the middle linebacker. (Somehow = I didn’t look.) Patrick Finley in the Sun-Times wrote about this about a week ago. From the piece: “That’s a pretty standard thing, I think,’’ Morrow said. ‘‘I think the biggest thing is making sure we’re all on the same page and we’re over-communicating. Sometimes you get those young guys in there, and there are certain calls where it’s gotta be communicated consistently. Just getting that together is probably bigger than the calls, I think.’’
• ACTUAL BEAR NEWS: “Danvers residents are being asked to take precautions after a bear was spotted in the Massachusetts town on Sunday. A Danvers resident shared video from her Ring video camera that showed a black bear roaming across her driveway Sunday morning. The bear ended up scaling a short stone wall before moseying along.”
• Per Alex Shapiro at NBC Sports, the Bears coaching staff thought they’d get pushback for their H.I.T.S. program. But that hasn’t happened. “…the team’s response to Eberflus’ demanding philosophy got its challenge over the weekend, when the team was put through two long padded practices, with plenty of running around, in the hot sun. Cole Kmet said it was the toughest practice of his life. Khalil Herbert said players were “laid out” in the locker room afterwards. Yet, by all accounts, the players gritted through it.”

I wish people would go back and look at what the “camp stories” were in years past and notice how none of them correlate to anything that subsequently happens in the regular season.

• Teven Jenkins said, “I want to be here in Chicago, so I’m playing wherever they want me to play.” This is absolutely the best-case scenario for the team. Jenkins is talented and the Bears don’t have a ton of talent along their offensive line.
• Liked this Tweet from Kevin Fishbain: “Bears OC Luke Getsy on rookie LT Braxton Jones: “You get into the pads and there was zero intimidation. Going against Robert Quinn your very first one-on-one pass rush, right? It’s an intimidating thing. He stepped up and did a great job. He’s answered the bell.” If the Bears are going with their best five up front, Braxton will be in that group.
• Injuries to N’Keal Harry and Byron Pringle. Not good. The Harry injury sounds somewhat serious. (I think it was unlikely Harry was going to play a significant role in 2022 anyway but he at least provided something to watch in the practice games upcoming.)

Thoughts on “Man Caves”

I don’t get ’em. Never have.

The way I understand the man cave is you take a room of your house, usually in the basement, put a bunch of televisions in there, cover the walls with your memorabilia, and that’s where you go watch sports.

My first question is, why is this necessary? Why can’t you just watch sports on the same television you watch Turner Classic Movies? And what happens to the room when sports are not on? Is it the room empty? Isn’t that a massive waste of space?

But my other problem might be that I don’t have any memorabilia. I find memorabilia, quite honestly, stupid. Other than the original Super Bowl Shuffle album and my childhood Jim McMahon shirt, every other thing I have with Chicago Bears on it was given to me. I couldn’t fill the shelf in a linen closet with memorabilia, let alone a cave.

If you have to create a space in your house to get away from other people and just watch sports, why not just go to a sports bar? At least then you have someone else serving you the beer and food and there’s no clean up. Hell, you might even meet another likeminded human being and strike up one of those friendships people keep talking about.

Even the word “cave” denotes the neanderthal, man at his most primitive, reducing the (male) sports fan to his most base self. I must have own room to yell about football. Woman, you stay upstairs! One of the things I have cherished about my years at Josie Woods with Maciej, Reverend Dave, Steph, etc. is the conversations in the commercial breaks about soccer, politics, food, movies, whatever. If I ever had a “cave” in my apartment, I’d use the massive television to screen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg for my friends.

• Injuries, injuries, injuries. Coach Flus today confirmed that Thomas Graham will miss time. If it’s a hamstring issue, that’s usually 3-4 weeks conservatively. Again, this is an injury that is manageable on August 1 and less so on August 21. Hamstrings can nag all season if the player is rushed back too quickly. If Graham doesn’t play the opener, it isn’t the biggest deal in the world.
• Early Justin Fields Update:
  • Leadership qualities off the charts. Even ownership feels he’s taken control of the team.
  • Mechanics/fundamentals are coming along. Delivery looks far more compact. Decision to deliver still needs to quicken. (Offensive coaches thought a few of the practice “sacks” on Monday could have been avoided.)
• Al-Quadin Muhammad is having a very strong early camp. Does that mean anything? Not really. But the Bears need multiple guys to complement Robert Quinn in the pass rush department.
• From Courtney Cronin’s Twitter: “…Khari Blasingame came away with a highlight play for the offense, roughly a 35-yard leaping catch down the sideline during the team period. Impressive play.” Don’t be surprised to see Blasingame utilized a ton in the passing game.
• An excellent piece detailing the coaching foundation of Eberflus, by Colleen Kane in the Tribune.

As training camp progresses, there are a myriad of outlets to find information on the comings and goings at practice, specifically those paid to attend and report on the practices. What I’ll try to do is add some color to the proceedings here. Sometimes that will be in the form a longer post and sometimes – like today – just bullet points.

_______________________

• Adam Hoge was the first place I saw this telling quote from Jaylon Johnson, re: the new staff: “The way they hold us accountable is crazy, compared to what we’re used to.” At the end of the Nagy era, this became a major issue with ownership. They could not understand why Allen Robinson was continually given playing time while obviously having no interest in playing. They could not understand why Mario Edwards was continually given reps, mindless penalty after mindless penalty. One text from someone close to ownership wondered if the football team “lacked integrity”. They did.
  • And I am going to do my best to ensure that is the last mention of the previous regime. At some point you have to move on. The Bears did that in January. Bears fans have to follow suit.
• The signings of Riley Reiff and Michael Schofield are interesting, but I’m still interested in how the Bears intend to deploy Teven Jenkins. Several folks inside the building believe Reiff will start at left tackle and Jenkins best path to playing time is at right guard. (They’re paying Reiff to start. They’re paying Schofield zero guaranteed dollars.)
  • This could set the stage for a camp battle between Braxton Jones and Larry Borom at right tackle. But the Bears sincerely like Jones.
• Conditioning alert! Every Bear passed what is notoriously a pretty rigorous test. Roquan Smith has opened on the PUP list, suffering from what most economists call “light bank balance”.
• Schofield’s press conference was terrific. The guy seemed genuinely thrilled to be playing for his hometown team. He also admitted he wanted to be a receiver when younger because of Marty Booker.
• DBB appeared on Wednesday’s edition of The Irish Bears Show. You can see the entire appearance by CLICKING HERE.

Oh, and the Loch Ness Monster could be a real thing.