How Bout Dem Bears?

Is this rock bottom or is rock bottom losing to the Broncos next week?

Why stop next week?

I have no words after that. To lose to that Broncos team at home at all is embarrassing, but to lose in that fashion puts it on another level entirely.

The Bears never fire in-season but this staff will test their resolve. I am interested to know if Kevin Warren has final say on firings or if it's still ultimately George running things. Warren has the same titles as Ted Phillips but Ted never had the authority to make those decisions alone.

I'm starting to wonder if Larry Borom is gambling against the bears.

The fields verdict may be a hot take, but the best you could possibly say is he's way too inconsistent to be a franchise guy. Terrible o line play today but it wasn't all on them

We have the worst staff in the league

Looking like a mugging

I have no idea what they are going to do with the QB situation. 99 years out of 100 it's not even a question who the starter in 2024 will be, but the Carolina pick complicates things massively. On top of that you have all the coaching decisions that need to be made. The defense has come on leaps and bounds over the past 2 months as the rookies & sophomores have matured on top of the Sweat acquisition, but is that enough to save Eberflus? He has hired 2 dud coordinators and lost multiple games in historically bad fashion this season.

If you bring back Flus he'll likely be in a "prove it" year, and if you trade Fields and draft a rookie you risk making the same mistakes made with Mitch & Fields by saddling a young QB with a coach on the hot seat needing to win now, so instead of doing that do you roll with Fields? If you roll with Fields do you bring Getsy back (despite being incredibly underwhelming at his job) just so the QB doesn't have to learn his 3rd offense in 4 seasons?

If Poles decides to trade Fields for a pick and draft Caleb or Maye then surely the best thing to do is clean house and bring in an offensive minded head coach to develop the rookie QB.

I don't envy the job Poles has trying to figure all of this out.

Same ole bears. Never able to do it when it matters. A great team to push a stone down a hill.

If we rob this game this post is going to look very stupid but going on the way we have allowed their offense to do what they want all day and the pressure we've allowed on Fields, I just don't see it

That's the trade the CBS mock had (or close to it) and it's awful.

If they are trading down they'll either go no lower than 3 and pick the best player in the draft (imo) in MHJ or Poles might be willing to go further down for a king's ransom if offered by someone, which is like 3 firsts, one or two mid round picks and a top player.

No way they are moving down to 5 for a 2025 first, some mid round picks and a mid receiver.

This was Fields' prove it year and he hasn't done enough to prove he is the long-term answer in my opinion. There are still too many unanswered questions and sticking with him is probably as much of a gamble as drafting a rookie.

His first season was wasted by the old regime and his second season was wasted by an incompetent OC, a shocking o-line and having to throw to guys who aren't even in the league this season. This year he has had better protection and improved weapons, but his reluctance to throw the ball is a killer, as is having to work with Getsy who runs one of the most boring, predictable offenses in the league. They would have to really dislike both Caleb & Maye to trade down and roll with Fields again.

I still think he can be a starter somewhere else and in the right situation potentially be a top 15 QB in the league or better. We should be able to trade him for at least a high 3rd due to that.

The only truly "wrong" decision the Bears can make right now is deciding to draft a rookie but keeping the current coaching staff. If they are going to draft Caleb or Maye then they need to fire everyone this week.

I don’t understand enough about NFL to know if Fields is good enough or not and if the coaches are good enough or not.

I do understand enough to know that the NFL is obsessed with bright shiny new things coming out of college.

That and firing coaches left, right and centre.

I’ve seen enough of Fields to understand that the lazy stereotypes of ‘can’t read through his full-field progressions’ etc are applied to him and most young QBs, and to be blunt, particularly black QBs.

Im not saying that’s your critique. It’s just a general observation in what is thrown around and it’s either you carry the team on your back in your ‘prove it year’ or you’re out!

If I was to guess a big part of the problem is that Bears and Fields himself don’t know if he’s a run first QB or a pocket QB.

I just think players usually improve with stability and time. And that’s not in the DNA of the NFL. At all, at all!

I would like harbaugh too but I'm discounting him because I just don't think he's likely to leave Michigan, especially given our tendency to cheap out

The bits I saw yeah the O Line didnt protect him. Pocket collapsing, LB had chasms of space to run through and the LT got bypassed a good few times.

Don't think its fair to criticise him as been slow to read the field v GB.

Madden game quote "He was standing in the hole waiting for something to develop …. and WHAP! He got developed."

Rumour is they're sticking with Eberflus. Thought he ran a terrible defense yesterday that stood off their receivers and left them open down the middle all night to make Love look like a star, it just wasn't the defense they'd run the last couple of months (Brisker said as much I'm an interview afterwards, but you could see it anyway, I know they were missing JJ but he's just one guy).

But I get it, they want continuity. But I bet any money they do the worst, most bears thing possible, ditch Fields (not a problem in itself but it means the new guy is under pressure straight away), draft a new QB who gets thrown in early to save the ass of a lame duck coach, who then gets fired disrupting that players development, bring in another coach who doesn't really trust that QB, but is stuck with him for another two years...we are possibly entering our third straight run of that cycle, and at that stage you have to say it is the defining characteristic of the bears.

I'm wondering if they could take a different tack: keep Fields (I doubt it going on the tone of his interview after the game, and if so, I understand it to done extent but bear with me), trade back and stock the offense for a change instead of just getting defensive guys, get in a competent OC, and draft a QB late in the first or early in the second who will be allowed to sit for a year.

But I don't think any of that happens. Fields will ship the blame and be sent on. They might trade back but they'll continue to emphasize defense, no competent OC will be drawn to work here as eberflus didn't have a clue about that side of the ball, and any QB they bring in (probably using the first pick) will be on the field with the first three or four weeks if there are any signs at all of us losing games.

I hope Poles surprises me. To be fair, he's done a lot right in the draft before, so he could do it again. He is the one thing I have some, limited, faith in about the organization right now.

So how bout dem new bears?

It was a reference to the lads picked in the draft!

Yeah same. Fingers crossed Williams turns out to be a good as billed, but the one thing I know about football is that no amount of punditry will ever really tell you anything useful about how well a quarterback is going to pan out. We'll see.

Hurray!

Watched it there, parts of it are a tough watch, with the rookies doing songs (I wish they'd ditch that now, it's a bit cringe).

It picked up when they went to the HOF game, so other episodes might be better, with proper pre-season games.

I gotta say, watching it, Eberflus kind of lacks charisma. You could see it even in that opening speech he gave, that start-of-season pep-talk, which should be a layup really, in terms of saying something motivating. It was kind of uninspiring. That's kind of a worry for me....I do think it's important that your head-coach have a bit of charisma, in terms of getting players to listen to you, follow you, run through a brick-wall for you.

Yeah, the Saban chat was good. He had some good insights, I really liked that bit where he was talking about developing Caleb Williams, and he said "people's tendency is to be average, it's survival". I thought 'he's right'....the Peyton Mannings, the Tom Bradys, they're the real exceptions, it's much more human-nature in fact to be average.

You could assume, because Williams has all this talent and was taken first overall, that he will have the same mindset and habits as Manning & Brady. I think Saban was saying 'don't assume that, don't take it for granted, it needs to be cultivated'. Very insightful psychologically.

Yeah we are in the exact same cycle as the bears always put themselves in. Keep a failing head coach, bring in a hot new QB in the draft. After a year where they don't do that well (bc new QB) fire the head coach and bring in a new one who changes up everything and gradually loses faith in the QB, or blames them while they become a failing HC. Drop the QB and keep the failing HC and bring in a hot new QB in the draft. And so on...

I really, really hope I'm wrong this time, but living in Chicago and hearing the "this is our year, this is our guy" talk again so soon after fields, I have a sinking feeling. Should have started fresh with Williams and a new offensive head coach. But we'll see. Of course if Williams is everything he's cracked up to be we are going to be great. Very good defense, excellent wide receiver room, there's really no excuses for us not to progress this year.

Did you guys watch the preseason game? I thought Williams was sensational. Really further along than I thought.

Yeah, it's only 4 completed passes out of 7, and it's only pre-season, but each one was a beauty. You got a bit of everything, the 3rd-and-long completion from the pocket to DJ Moore, the pass on the run to Cole Kmet, the little improvised dump-off. The run and slide to gain the first down.

The pass to Kmet was maybe the pick of the bunch, but I loved the 3rd-and-12 pass to DJ Moore. For how many years now has 3rd-and-long for the Bears meant they were punting? They may as well have just punted on 3rd down for the last few years for all the good it did them. So it was just kind of an amazing thing to see a 3rd-and-long conversion for a 1st down, that wasn't just chucking it up for grabs.