Morning after thoughts *WEEK 2 EDITION*

How awesome is Khalil Mack? When he's not making a play he's doing something to help a teammate make a play.

Through 2 games the Bears have almost a quarter of the sacks they had all last season. So many times we've said this defense just needed a legit pass rush to take the next step and look what's happened. 6 sacks by 5 different players including 2 strip sacks. Love it.

Safety play was better this week. Kyle Fuller was not better though...especially not in the endzone on that touchdown. He doesn't have a CB's instincts. I think Fuller is a safety in a CB's body. Or maybe he's just an idiot.

Roquan Smith is a really good open field tackler.

Nick Fatkowski should form a tag team with Janikowski and do something other than play football. What happened to this guy? Last season he looked quicker and had a nose for the ball. This year he looks fat and slow and lost.

Wanna know what multiple concussions do to your brain? Listen to Jason Witten for a full football game and you begin to understand.

About our QB...

Why does he look like Steve Young sometimes when he scrambles and other times he looks like a scared lost dog?

That first INT was god damn awful. The second one I don't fault him for completely. He should have thrown at least one more, maybe two.

A lot of high throws from Mitch last night. Overall his completion percentage was good but that's due to all the short throws. Not sure what his percentage was on throws past 10 yards but no way it was good.

Two weeks in a row the Bears drive down and score to start the game and then the offense mainly disappears for a huge chunk of time. I know they are still learning and growing and all that but that has got to improve.

Right now I'm more worried about Trubisky than I was the entire offseason.

Seattle sold out to the stop the run and that limited Howard but they still didn't call his number enough.

Nice to see AR get the ball a lot and nice to see Burton hit paydirt. That's what we signed those guys for.

Leonard Floyd played a lot better than a look at the boxscore will tell you.

Good win. Bring on the Cardinals.

 

These two points really have me worried.

Mainly, because this is exactly what the Packers did last week. They either went to a single high S, and brought the SS up to add another run defender in the box or brought both safties up 5 yards. Then they let the CB's play man using a lot of inside leverage.

What DC's are basically saying is "We dare you to throw the ball more than 5 yards, we don't care how good your receivers are, your QB can't get it to them."

 

I guess because they won I’m not as disappointed with Mitch’s performance this week.

I don’t think the first int was horrible he left a fifty fifty ball a tad short and the defender made a great catch while Robinson waited for it to come through his hands instead of fighting for it. I don’t know how the hit the safety put on Robinson after Robinson touched down the corner was not a penalty.

The second was a tipped pass. That shit gonna happen. Just horrible timing.

It sucks that Mitch had a nice intermediate completion for first down yardage negated by a penalty for the second straight week.

I felt Mitches quick passing game was much better this week than it was against the Packers so there is that.

No doubt about it Mitch has to start looking downfield more. And completing them. Hopefully that will come with more time in the offense. If not oh well at least the defense is fun to watch.

 

He stared own his receiver and telegraphed the throw.

Go to the 2:19 mark on the top video

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap30...t-we-learned-from-bears-victory-over-seahawks

 

Yes he stares him down and looks like to me that it was going to be behind Robinson regardless , and maybe picked that anyways .

 

What? It was play action or RPO he faked looked down the middle at Miller first then turned and threw immediately to a slanting Robinson. LB jumped and got a hand on it. DB made a nice diving catch. It was a bad play but let’s not make it out to be worse than it was. Wilson’s pick six more of what your saying here.

 

Did you watch the video? If you did then you are seeing something completely different than what I am seeing. It is a RPO, but his eyes are on his receiver even before the fake hand off and never come off.

Also, watch the LB's who tipped the ball, they're not even making a move on Trubs. They are just standing there watching his eyes and timing their leap.

 

It is an RPO but Trubisky never looks off his first read. He knows where he is going with the ball the entire time, presumably because it's his first read, and that's exactly where he goes with it.

It's a good defensive play. But Mitch does telegraph the pass. So much that there are actually two defenders staring him down and then jumping to try and knock it down.

 

This 2nd INT thing, its interesting cos the more you look at it the more complicated it gets in a way. But to try and keep it simple....

Even in my shitfaced state last night i noticed at the time there were a hell of a lot hands in the air on that play. Upon rewatching, the reason for that, basically, is cos the Seahawks brought their SS McDougald into the box and had him lined up right next to the MLB. I suspect this was done based on the Bears formation(Sims is in the backfield).

This play doesn't look great for the Bears from the get go. The Seahawks are set up to counter if the RPO goes to Howard(both Kendricks & McDougald woulda stuffed it), but having the SS where he is also means he is naturally gonna be right in Trubisky's throwing lane for his first read.

Its not that Trubisky locks onto Robinson with his eyes so much as he doesn't get off his 1st read when there's someone clearly in the way. Cos the MLB didn't tip that ball, the SS did. The play blew up cos the SS was in the box with a left(Bears right) alignment. It blew up for the reason many of us have mentioned, Trubisky isn't getting past his first read. This play is actually very worrying cos it clearly shows Trubisky isn't thinking out there, that ball should never have gone to Robinson with a defender in the lane.

The Seahawks do defend this play well, the 2nd and 3rd reads don't look open to me either. It looks like Sims is meant to be the safety valve flaring into the left flat. But they may wanna rethink this play, cos that would make Sims like the 4th read and Trubisky sure as hell aint getting that far into his progressions at this stage.

 

The Seahawks just flat out played it perfectly.

This is a spot on assessment of the play. You're not as stupid as I've always thought, I guess.

 

Having spoken ill of a couple players recently i think i'll start here.

- Did you like my reverse-jinx on Prince this week? Yep, highlight his 41games without a pick, what does he do? Makes a pick.

Seriously though, he had one of his better games imo. They targeted him and his off coverage a lot in the 1st half with Marshall. And Prince did go into halftime having given up 4catches for 44yards. But he did better than that number looks. Marshall had 7 targets by my admittedly unreliable count in the first half. And Prince battled well against a physically superior opponent, rarely making it easy.

Little surprised the Seahawks didn't keep attacking him in the 2nd, they didn't have much else, but Marshall went for 0 in the 2nd half so PA wins.

The pick6 was nice. I don't buy for one second PA commits to the route jump like that against a real WR. Rookie Penny prob could've stuck his break better too. But Prince got the job done so good work.


- Look who led the team in tackles, its Noquan! Keep that up and im gonna have to stop being a dick. The kid looks like a natural stat sheet stuffer, he was around the ball more than just those raw numbers too. And having got on his ass about playing time im pleased to report that Mr Smith reached and surpassed the 75% of plays i was calling for, finishing with 59 defensive snaps(89%). Good..... and about damn time.

Speaking of playing time, in case anyones interested a few more:

Tyler Gabriel - On the field for 95% of all Offensive snaps.
Anthony Miller - 56%(same as last week)
Kevin White - 3%
Dion Sims - 53%(thats double the snaps of last week, half the involvement tho)
Leonard Floyd - 59%
Bryce Callahan - 85%(he quietly had a good game)
Marcus Cooper - 0%

There's lots you can read into this, but generally im seeing this and thinking coaches are getting a lot of personnel decisions right. One more:

Tarik Cohen - 32%. That includes 5 touches for 25yards. Gotta say, both Cohen's playing time and how much he's seeing the ball surprises me slightly. I thought he would be much more involved than he has been in this Offense. Its still early i guess. But Tyler Gabriel isn't being the deep threat i thought he'd be. He's operating much closer to the LOS Cohen style.

Go Bears!

 

I never hold it against slow learners, just as long as they get there in the end ; )

 

In all seriousness i do have one question for you here:

If you pause that clip before the ball is even snapped i believe you'll see two defenders on the left of the Bears formation playing man, the CB on the right(bottom of the screen) playing zone, with one Safety playing single-high and the other crowding the box.

So my question is are we being a tad harsh on Trubisky here? How much of it on this play is him not doing his job right and how much of it is just a well laid trap by a D thats trying to confuse a young QB?

 

Still think this is too much for him.

Is it possible to give a guy negative playing time? Can we make him pay the team back past paychecks?

 

I said on the game thread that I wouldn't put that INT all on him. And I wouldn't.

That was a really good defensive play.

That is part of growing pains with a young QB you sometimes gotta accept.

I'm more pissed at the first INT and a couple coulda been INTs than I am that one.

 

Yeah, spot on assessments and follow-up reviews of that play from last night. Just watching it the one time through (I was reminded this morning, too late, that we now have the ability to rewind live TV), you could see a lot of that as potentially being the case, but needed confirmation from watching it again. Doing so, I completely agree. Those two defenders were both in the passing lane, and both watching Trubisky's eyes, reacting accordingly. The Seahawks were on it from the get-go, and there were no adjustments made to keep them from wrecking the play. It looks like an unlucky tip, but watching it again, it's obvious it's a lot more than that.

 

I agree about being more worried about Trubisky right now than I was at the start of the season. At the start of the season i figured he just has to complete the short passes and be average ish and our offense should do enough to allow the defense to carry us..... Well,Trubisky has been a lot worse than average ish. Hes made a couple really nice throws, like the Cohen toss and Miller touchdown last night. But On the whole he has been *bad*, to put it lightly. An absolute hindrance. I've still not given up on him, and I do agree that last year barely even counts as a development year. But Still, at the very least he shouldnt look as "out of his element" as he looks sometimes by now.

Aaron Lynch had a great game. It deserves being stated again. I dont know WTF this guy has been doing all offsesaon but he showed up last night and made some plays. I was impressed. I've always known he was a giant human being. But last night made me think "jesus that guy really is enormous".

Kalil Mack + Aikeem Hicks. Damn. That is all.

Taylor Gabriel was a nice surprise. I enjoyed see him get and succeed with those running plays. I've been concerned for a while that we vastly overpaid for a guy who is fast but not really a football player, just based on his numebrs in ATL. He looked pretty good last night, and he got open. Good to see.

On the flip side it turns out that maybe Burton is the guy who we overpaid based on athleticism rather than football ability. he made some nice plays last night, but I thought he could be a go to 7-14 yard chain mover and he just hasnt been that. I still like Burton and I've not given up on him at all, but i've gained a skeptical eye towards him. It doesn't seem like he is open beyond the first down marker very often, and he enjoys running backwards after the catch.

 

Exactly buddy, it did look like a lucky tip initially. But the more you break this play down the more it looks like a possible design by the Seahawks based on their own film study. Kinda hope Nagy has noticed this too.

As a side note: this is prob gonna happen when your operating a relatively small amount of your playbook, teams are gonna catch on. Cos i don't think Nagy has really opened it up yet on account of Trubisky.

 

Several guys have mentioned this now, he just looks bigger right? They wouldn't have simply let him get out of football shape.

Do you think the Bears, having drafted Smith but not yet traded for Mack, deliberately bulked Kwit up a bit this offseason so he could play OLB where he'd have more responsibility to set the edge in the run game?

Whatever it is it hasn't helped him. He was better than this last year.

 

Well since they have the tape on him doing so, and if they continue to bring those safeties up, why not take the top off the defense make them pay for it? At some point you have to dictate to the defense what you want them to do if you want to help the running game don't you?