Trubisky - C Some good. A perfect throw to Miller on the dropped TD. Some bad, basically the entire second half. Same old Trubs. A-Rob - D With all the distractions that he caused this week, he pretty much laid an egg today. Very disappointing. Partially at fault for that 2nd INT and otherwise a non-factor. Miller - F Easily could have been the goat had we lost this game. Dropped an easy TD and another key 3rd down in the second half. Sadly the last two weeks sum up his career. All pro one week, literally disappears the next. Nagy - C I liked the simple, non-cute, balanced play calling of the first half. Hated the RPOs in the second half and the 3rd/4th down play calls on our final drive. LBs - D- Collectively the worst unit on the defense. DL - D Not much pressure at all. The sacks were more due to good coverage, outside of the one time where Pagano blitzed. They got absolutely mauled on that 4th and goal play where the Giants scored their TD. They suck at defending the run. Miss Goldman. Kicker - C- That last FG wasn't close. Pineiro or Santos? At this point I don't care.
The long drive for a TD sucked but anytime you hold an NFL team to under 300 yards of total offense get 4 sacks and 2 turnovers you can not call that anything other than a strong defensive performance. You bitch about them getting man handled on the 4th and goal play to give the Giants their one and only TD. Think about that. The Giants only got 1 TD the whole game and they needed a 4th down to get it. For the second week in a row the running game looked good. How about an A for Montgomery who had a hell of a game. Is it so hard to like your favorite team just a little.
Mitch - Gotta give it to him, he made some great throws. One INT wasn't on him. As sharp as he looked in the first half, second half he was awful/vintage miss wide open guys bad. RBs - Monty was great. Cohen was 'meh' and Patterson had good and bad runs. Oline - Everybody except Daniels had a good day. Ifedi had a stupid penalty...Mitch took a couple really stupid sacks when he had decent protection (sans when Daniels was getting blasted into the backfield by the DT) WR - Bad. That's part in that the Giants did some things right. Dropping TD passes isn't excusable. Darnell Mooney was refreshing at least. DLine - They need Eddie Goldman back. They were ineffective a lot of the game sans Hicks. Snacks Harrison is sitting at home waiting for a call. At this point, he'd be a better NT than what the bears are using instead of Goldman. Edges - Solid. Would be much nicer if they could get more pressure... ILBs - Roquan was decent. Trevathan played like a turd again. CBs - Says a lot when in a 1 possession game at the end of the 4th quarter while driving, the Giants picked on Kyle Fuller, not the rookie. Solid game for Johnson. Buster Skrine is painful to watch. Safety - I'm 50/50 on the Ejax PI call. He could have been more subtle about popping the guy, but he has every right to play the ball. Bush had an okay play here and a bum play there. Cairos Santos - Barf. Nagy - Overall not bad. A W is a W no matter who...Maybe after you get back to back gains of 10+ then 25, try play action...
Oh give over man. You know we are a realistic bunch here. Yeah, they needed 4th down, but they also drove it 95 fucking yards dude. That's not good. The D was lights out in the first half for the most part and nowhere near as good the second half. Rather than whine about negativity, give some grades? Pick some players/positions and grade them honestly, particularly where you disagree with blang above and defend it. And be real, you know all of us are Bears fanatics. There's no way we'd still be here talking about it otherwise. I'll even get you started with some positivity about the defense, that I don't think Blang will disagree with (though go for it if you want): Secondary - A- : They gave Hicks his sack, and with how much time the QB was given they did pretty well in coverage. The biggest ding here was Jackson's penalty which kept the Giants drive alive. Johnson again had a moment or two, but overall he is looking sharp. I think we may have something there. I'll also throw some love to Kmet catching his first pass, and Grahams big grab in the first half too. Oh, and Montgomery's something out of nothing TD run. From Blang's above grades, I will disagree with the Kicker statement of Pinero of Santos? I'll take Pinero. Santos is only here because he's on IR anyway. Punt Unit - D : Why was it that when the Giants punted, Cohen would dive away from the ball even if he could have easily fair caught and saved us some yardage? And how in the hell were they covering the punt so well? Everytime "megapunt" booted the ball, the Giants got at least 10 yards running back, catching with no one around. I'd be curious to see the stats here, because my drunken eye says they were not good.
I agree with most of blangs grades. For the DL i would inch them up to a C-. They look pretty good on the stat sheet, sub300 total yards, 4sacks, 5QB hits, 1 FF and a 1st half shutout. But the 2nd half wasn't good and you have to factor in the opposition was an OL that got smashed the week before. OL- Id give them a B-. They had their hands full with that Giants DL and there were plenty of runs that didn't get much. Pretty much everyone took an L on plays at some point but i thought they kept fighting well and they simply kicked ass on that final Offensive possession. There would prob be more on the scoreboard to show for their efforts if others around them had done their job. WR's, missed throws, bad playcalling all took place in the 2nd half otherwise maybe we'd be talking them up a bit more. Edit: Meant to add Nagy. B-. This would've been a B or even B+ but he gets marked down purely for not calling some PA at the end when it was crying out for it to ice the game. Other than that i thought he called a good game for the most part and is def taking the Offense in the right direction. Edit Edit: Anthony Miller F-. Miller played like a bum yesterday. Dropped TD he should catch, dropped catch on 3rd down that killed a drive. Pretty sure i saw him running a wrong route in the 1st half which is something you see from him practically every game. Way too undependable, his swings between good and bad are large and frequent.
That 4th down was the only goalline run of that series and they blew the Bears right off the ball so a midget could score inside. This is an OL that averaged 0.4ypc last week and got generally humiliated. Surely you'd agree thats not a good look.
First off we are an overly pessimistic group here. Not debatable. Especially Blang. Good person, overly pessimistic fan. Offense. Over all I give the group a C. 17 points 4 sacks, 2 TO’s. Not good against a bad team. Trubsisky B In a game where his top two WR’s acted like they were allergic to the ball I like that he is spreading the ball around and finding the check down more than I can ever remember. He still misses here and there and takes too many sacks. Is this his best. I hope not but it’s not close to his worst. Montgomery A 127 total yards and a TD. This is what I envisioned for this kid. Was as good late as he was early. Miller/Robinson F These two are supposed to be a dynamic duo. 3 catches on 12 targets for these 2. Nuff said. Defense. Overall a B+ Only because of the lack of talent they faced. Sub 300 total yards, 2 takeaway and 4 sacks. Robbed of a pick 6 IMO. Danny T D. This dude looks done. Everyone can see it. Luckily he wasn’t put in position to hurt the overall play of the D too much. Pagano has been subbing Bush for him on passing downs. He needs to be replaced. If only we had a young up and comer on the bench...hmmmm. Bush B+ Getting more and more reps as Pagano has been playing more Dime to make up for Trevathan’s suckage. And he’s been playing well. R Quinn A Strip sack to start your Bears career off. Gotta like that.
Coming from you, this probably reaffirms that my post is spot on. They're on their heels too often in the second half. I think the safeties played well yesterday. Fuller was mostly good and same with Johnson. Skrine was mostly bad. You conveniently forgot that I was the first one on this board 2 years ago after the Mack trade to predict we would win 11 games and go to the playoffs. Ignore my posts if you want, I don't care. Or tell me why I'm wrong. This board is so quiet after the game ends and I'm still sitting at home thinking about the game. Trying to start a little discussion here.
If I wanted everything candy-coated I'd visit the echo chamber that is the Bears website. I rather enjoy the hypercriticality here. While a win is a win the truth still often hurts, and there can always be room for improvement. I get it though bigrob you like to focus on the positives as I do when it comes to my life, but not when it comes to Bears football. I'm sure this group would be ripping the 85 Bears apart too, and that's okay. There is no room for complacency when it comes to pro football, none.
Ok ok calm down. I gave the post an F because I felt it was a little harsh coming off a win. I didn’t attack you or insult you. For the record I think your posts are always informative and well thought out You bring a lot to the table here and that should be commended even if I rarely agree with your opinions. You gave both the DL and LB D’s. I just don’t see that and I would like some examples of what they did to deserve that grade. Who are you giving the OLB’s to the line or the backers? Should we just call this the front 7? Go back and watch the game again. Especially the 95 yard drive. I credit that drive to Pagano playing too soft and Daniels doing a good job of escaping. The Giants got rid of the ball fast dinking and dunking down the field. And the front still forced the issue at times. Sucks giving up the TD after forcing a 4th down but that doesn’t erase the rest of the day.
Everyone's calm except you as you whine about us being an "overly pessimistic group". I also didn't attack or insult you and there are no hard feelings from my end. I am glad you disagree with me and am glad to hear your takes, wrong as they are most of the time. Wish you would create more threads than you do. That's why we're here. With LBs, I'm thinking more of the ILBs: Roquan and Trevathan. I saw Roquan making a couple good tackles in the run game but otherwise was a nonfactor against the run and pass. The dude was a playmaker once upon a time. What happened? We've all highlighted how Trevathan has clearly slowed to the point how he's making zero impact. DL, yeah I highlighted the goal line play because it was one of the few times the Giants actually lined up to ram it in from short yardage all day, and the line was completely manhandled there. Otherwise Saquan looked like he was off to a productive day before he got hurt. Quinn made his presence known immediately and that was great. The remaining sacks we had were either due to good coverage or when Pagano blitzed, which he should have done a lot more of with the Giants clearly in pass happy mode during the second half. The pressure is too inconsistent given the amount of money we've invested there.
Wrong adjective. If you call stuff and get proven right far more than your proven wrong that isn't pessimistic, its realistic. This is the most realistic, and knowledgeable, board you'll ever see, it just so happens that the team you support is the definition of mediocre. And blang is as realistic as it gets. We know that cos every single year he's no more than 1 game out from predicting what the team's record will be and he usually bullseyes it in fact. You try doing that. You're a kumbaya type of fan rob, you'd rather sit in a circle holding hands singing about how its not gonna rain when all the while there's thick black clouds gathering overhead. And thats ok, im not saying you have to change. Hell the Browns board is full of them. But it does cloud your judgement and leads to you being wrong more than the rest of us. Im sure you'd consider yourself "optimistic" rather than a clueless slurper. I would too. If we were all say Ravens or Steelers fans you would have a serious point. But fact is our team's the Bears.
I’ll tell you what happened. We changed DC’s. Fangio had these guys playing way more aggressively. I don’t know if it’s how he calls the game or his overall philosophy but the D has played too soft since he has taken over. Trevathan is done. Another mark against Pace. Last season we had 4 legit MLB’s. Now we have 1. Two are starting for other teams. So there is that.
For what it's worth, there's a weekly show on NBCSports Chicago wherein Olin, Briggs, and Alex Brown say all of the things that we do on here. I just discovered it a few days ago, and it's very cathartic to hear greats baffled / concerned by the same things we see. I'm not saying I haven't been overly cynical by this team at times, just saying that the same frustrations are shared very openly by guys who can be trusted to see it right. I appreciate all of the discussion here, always, regardless of rose colored glasses or doom and gloom. It's all good to me.
Can’t really argue with you here. I wasn’t always a Kumbaya kind of fan. Back in the CBS days I was as hyper critical as anyone. Shit drive me crazy so I took a different approach and went ultra optimistic. Root and hope for the best until the team proves me wrong instead of assuming the Bears will Bear it up and hope to be pleasantly surprised. That shit went out the window when Pace took Trubisky over Mahomes and Watson and it proved to be what it is. I will NEVER forgive him for that. And from here on out this team will have to earn every inch of respect out of me know matter who is hired in the future.
Will never forget how the first play of his career Fangio blitzed Roquan and he sacked Erin. I agree the talent we have on D is being misused. Fangio knew what he had and let Roquan do so many things. And remember how well he utilized Callahan? I'd like to see Pagano replaced after the season if his passive approach holds for the rest of the season. However the talent is good enough to probably keep us in the top 10 and will make him look better than he is.
Ev said what I would've, the word is realistic vs. pessimistic. Speaking for myself, come game day I get hyped up and hook up the kool aid intravenously. Which means I'm let down all the more when they shit the bed even if it's what I logically know is going to happen. However, when I come to the boards here, it's not the hype train, I can go to reddit to get homers wanking off about 19-0 like the Bears Super Fans (or the pessimistic dudes that just say "Mitch Sucks" with no reasoning). I come here to talk honestly about the Bears. Not overreacting talking heads, honest assessments on this team. I'm thrilled they are 2-0, don't get me wrong, but by the same token, there are some glaring holes we've seen in the first few weeks. The question becomes are they correctable, and will they correct them? I actually don't disagree too much with your grades either, though I feel I would knock Mitch's grade down a touch. Yes he wasn't helped out with Miller dropping passes, etc, but he also still has trouble seeing all the field and making smart decisions - you even call this out on the Picks thread.
