10 thoughts after the Chicago Bears found a new way to give another game away in the final minute — this time to a former undrafted quarterback making his first NFL start. Tyler Huntley was able to leave Soldier Field as the hero after the Baltimore Ravens claimed a 16-13 victory Sunday afternoon.
1. Flash back to the middle of October 2019: The Bears were in a rut and had just lost at home to the New Orleans Saints.
The final score was 36-25, but the game wasn’t nearly that close as the offense scored two touchdowns in garbage time to turn a rout-in-the-making into an 11-point loss.
Mitch Trubisky was forced to attempt 54 passes that afternoon, and when all was said and done, Matt Nagy was forced to answer for why the team handed the ball off only five times and the offense had a total of seven rushing attempts when adding in quarterback runs. The seven attempts set a franchise record for fewest carries in a game.
I reference this head-scratcher because this was about the time Nagy — in what was supposed to be a breakout year for the offense coming off the 12-4 season in 2018 — started referring to the search for an identity on offense.
Twenty-five months later, after another dispiriting home loss to a Ravens team that was missing MVP candidate Lamar Jackson — who limped into the stadium Sunday morning too sick to suit up and play — the Bears remain lost on offense and without an identity.
They figured they needed to run the ball better to establish an identity. They’ve blamed the offensive line and a former offensive line coach for the inability to do so. They’re running the ball pretty darn well these days — it wasn’t a great effort on the ground against the Ravens, but they have been solid all season — and the Bears still don’t have an identity on offense.
They can’t score, and that’s a fundamental problem — one that could ultimately get Nagy and his coaching staff sacked. In an offensive era, the Bears are averaging 16.3 points per game, which ranks 29th in the NFL for a program that is in Year 4.
It was another terrible finish by the defense as the Bears blew their second straight game by allowing the opponent to score in the final 30 seconds. That’s totally unacceptable, and the fourth quarter has been a problem spot for the defense all season. The Bears have allowed 94 points in the fourth quarter, which is 39.2% of all the scoring they have allowed.
But zeroing in on a terrible game for second-year cornerback Kindle Vildor and trying to identify who was responsible for completely blown coverage that allowed Huntley to connect with Sammy Watkins for a 29-yard completion to the Bears 3-yard line with 25 seconds remaining takes the focus off where it belongs: on an offense that remains broken.
Sure, Nagy should have done a better job managing timeouts in the second half, when he possibly could have had one or two in his pocket for the final drive when a Cairo Santos field goal could have forced overtime. Again, that takes the focus off where it needs to be: on an offense that is spinning its wheels.
Yes, there will be peaks and valleys, and sometimes the highs and lows will come in consecutive games for rookie quarterback Justin Fields, who was knocked out of the game after the first series of the third quarter with a rib injury that Nagy shed positively zero light on after the game. The hope was that coming out of the bye week, the Bears would be able to build on the momentum Fields and the offense discovered in the second half of the loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov. 8 at Heinz Field.
The Bears came out and put together a pretty snappy drive on their first possession. Fields hit Darnell Mooney on a beautiful pass down the right sideline for a 29-yard gain to the Ravens 34-yard line. Wide receiver Jakeem Grant, still not 100% with a hobbled ankle, went around left end for 11 yards, and then the Bears faced third-and-5 at the 16.
They were in the red zone, which had to have been an acute area of focus during the bye week for the coaching staff. An offense that has been struggling to score has to dial in on what’s working in the red zone, what’s not working and what the best plays are for the team’s personnel. What are the best positions in which to put the best players on that part of the field?
The answer in this case was puzzling, a toss crack to David Montgomery, who tried to get around the right side. The Ravens had the perfect call on — a blitz — and linebacker Patrick Queen stuffed him for a 6-yard loss. Santos came on and pushed a 40-yard field-goal try wide left, and the Bears missed an opportunity to put Huntley and the Ravens in an early hole.
This was a game of attrition, and we’ll get into all of the key players missing for both sides in a bit. In a perfect world, Allen Robinson would have been available for a key third down, but he missed the game with a hamstring injury suffered late in the loss in Pittsburgh. It was a great spot for tight ends Cole Kmet, who was targeted only twice, or Jimmy Graham, who was on the field for 11 snaps by my unofficial count. It was a great spot for Mooney.
It’s easy to play armchair quarterback or armchair play caller, but anything would have worked better than a run to the short side of the field. This had to be a bread-and-butter play, one the Bears starred during the week of preparation for a moment like this, and it blew up on them.
“I’ll have to look at the tape,” Nagy said, “but right there you could look at that and say, well, you throw the ball, you stay a little bit more aggressive. But that’s where we were, that’s the choice that we went with.”
Fields had a rough game against an undermanned Ravens defense that was missing its starting nose tackle, two of its top three cornerbacks and a starting safety from the beginning of the year. He completed 4 of 11 passes for 79 yards, was sacked twice and lost one fumble. Fields did run four times for 23 yards, but really the lone highlight was the nice shot to Mooney. He was inaccurate with some passes and didn’t look comfortable against one of the more complex defenses in the league.
Andy Dalton completed 11 of 23 passes for 201 yards. Sixty came on a bubble screen that Mooney took for a touchdown, and 49 came on the go-ahead touchdown pass to Marquise Goodwin with 1:41 remaining when the Ravens brought a zero blitz and the offensive line gave Dalton just enough time to get off a perfect pass. Add in a 23-yard completion to Goodwin against ridiculously soft coverage with 14 seconds to play, and that accounted for 132 of Dalton’s 201 yards. In other words, he didn’t have a lot going on.
Thirteen points doesn’t cut it in the NFL, especially with a defense that was missing outside linebacker Khalil Mack, defensive lineman Akiem Hicks and free safety Eddie Jackson. You can’t expect to win with that kind of production even when your defense is at full strength, but the Bears can’t score.
They got a season-high 27 points in Pittsburgh, and seven came via a special teams touchdown. They scored 24 against the winless Detroit Lions on Oct. 3 and 22 in a loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 31. Those are the only instances this season the Bears have eclipsed 20 points.
Entering the Sunday night game between the Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers, 15 teams were averaging 24.6 points or more. You could add a touchdown and a two-point conversion to the Bears’ current average and they wouldn’t join that group. That’s how far away Nagy and his offense are.
The Bears don’t have time to dig into the whys this week. They have to turn around and play Thursday morning against the Lions at Ford Field in another nationally televised game. That might be a blessing for Nagy and his staff because as terrible as the Bears have been with extra time to prepare — they’re now 0-4 coming out of the bye under Nagy and 0-8 in the last eight seasons — they’ve been pretty darn good on short weeks. More on that in a little bit.
But when you’re going over the many ways this game was lost — and there is a lot of ground to cover — don’t lose sight of the real issue here, the one Chairman George McCaskey has to notice on a weekly basis. The Bears were held scoreless in the first half for the seventh time in the Nagy era. They simply cannot enter a game with confidence they are going to put points on the scoreboard.
The Soldier Field crowd was hostile at the end. There were chants of “Fire Nagy!” and “Nagy sucks!” Everyone hears it. The Bears have lost five games in a row to fall to 3-7. If the draft were held based on the standings at the end of this week, the New York Giants would own the No. 6 pick via the trade for the Bears to move up for Fields. Whatever that pick winds up being, it will be worth it for the Bears if Fields develops into the quarterback they’re hopeful he can become. But the offense was busted before Fields arrived and it remains a mess, and asking for the whys week after week isn’t illuminating any solutions.
“You keep fighting,” Nagy said. “You keep believing in each other and you keep it real simple. You never stop fighting. That’s all you can do.”
2. Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai was in a tough spot this week down Khalil Mack, Akiem Hicks and Eddie Jackson.
But the Ravens were missing a legitimate MVP candidate in Lamar Jackson, and his replacement, Tyler Huntley, came into the game with no NFL starts and a total of 11 previous pass attempts. The Ravens also were without top wide receiver Hollywood Brown and left tackle Ronnie Stanley, and they’ve been without their three top running backs all season. In other words, advantage: Bears.
Huntley should have been the quarterback who looked overwhelmed by the situation. He should have been the quarterback forced into multiple turnovers. He should have been the quarterback who looked lost on third down. As it was, he threw only one interception, and that came on a dandy of a play by strong safety Tashaun Gipson when he basically wrestled the ball away from tight end Mark Andrews.
The Ravens converted 7 of 16 third downs, and Huntley didn’t appear fazed by the six sacks he took behind a patched-up offensive line as Robert Quinn worked replacement left tackle Alejandro Villaneuva repeatedly.
That was the 42nd time since the sack became an official statistic in 1982 that the Bears have totaled six or more in a game. It’s only the fourth time they’ve lost a game with six or more sacks and the first since 2007, when they had six sacks in a 37-27 loss in Detroit.
“Well, it’s sickening,” said Quinn, who had 3½ sacks to give him 10 on the season. “I’ll just put it that way. It’s a punch to the gut. We had the lead. The Ravens had the ball, it was on the defense to close it out and we didn’t do that. Yeah, it’s a gut punch.”
The run defense did a nice job once again against a Ravens offense that entered No. 1 in the league on the ground even with the slew of injuries at running back. The Ravens had 34 rushes for only 123 yards, a 3.6 average. Desai has to be pleased with that. Take out one 19-yard scramble by Huntley and the Ravens did next to nothing on the ground.
But given a chance to seal the game late — just like the last time the Bears played Nov. 8 in Pittsburgh — the defense, in particular the secondary, was awful. Cornerback Kindle Vildor was called for a 21-yard pass interference penalty on the first play of the drive from the Baltimore 28-yard line with the Bears ahead 13-9. That moved the Ravens to midfield. It was Vildor’s second pass interference penalty of the game and his fourth since Week 7, including one that was declined against the Steelers.
Vildor was playing off the ball against a stack set, so Rashod Bateman got a free release off the snap. Bateman gave him a hard outside release off the ball, stuttered and then took the route vertical. He was trying to widen Vildor to get an inside path, and Vildor overplayed it. He got his head turned around but then panicked and grabbed Bateman, an easy call for the officials.
There was no need to panic as safety Deon Bush was sitting over the top. Vildor knew he overplayed the stem — Bateman did a good job of selling it — but when he whipped his head around, he needed to go play the ball. Instead, he grabbed Bateman enough to draw a call.
Huntley hit Devin Duvernay for a 21-yard gain on the next snap, and just like that, the Ravens were at the Bears 30-yard line with 1:21 remaining, two timeouts and the clock stopped. Time was no longer an issue for the Ravens, who went at Vildor time and time again during the game.
This was another error in a critical moment. The Bears were in Cover-6 — playing quarters coverage to the boundary versus a bunch set and Cover-2 to the field. The Ravens were trying to influence and occupy the cornerback. They ran Bateman on a deep curl route, and that grabbed Gipson. Inside linebacker Roquan Smith did a nice job walling off and carrying tight end Mark Andrews.
The nickel cornerback, Marqui Christian, widened and had Duvernay on a wheel route and running back Devonta Freeman to the flat. He collided with Duvernay and went right to the flat, and the wheel route by Duvernay should have gone right to Vildor. He got high in his pedal, high in the transition and didn’t get there in time. He was playing over the top of the curl and had to see the play faster, whip his hips faster and be under control and drive on the ball to make the play. He was too late.
The Bears got the Ravens backed up to third-and-12 from the 32, and the Ravens had a bunch set to the right with Sammy Watkins, Andrews and wide receiver Tylan Wallace. Vildor and Christian appeared to discuss the situation just before the snap. The Bears blitzed Smith, and DeAndre Houston-Carson rushed late when Freeman remained in to block to block Smith. It was Cover-1 with the pressure. The Bears had three defensive backs for three wide receivers in the bunch.
This is where it was a total bust by the defense. There was complete confusion pre-snap. Watkins was the point man and released on a rail, running a seam route down the sideline. Three defenders drive to Andrews and Wallace. Christian took Andrews on an over route. Gipson and Vildor both chased Wallace on an under route, and Watkins was left uncovered running a vertical route. All three defenders chased inside.
“They came at me, man, so I was just going through my reads and they just happened to drop (Watkins) and he was wide open,” said Huntley, who was hit by outside linebacker Cassius Marsh just after he released the pass. “I was happy that I saw him. I wish I would have (given) him the ball quicker and the game would have probably been in our hands a little quicker, but it all played out how it played out.”
Said Bears coach Matt Nagy: “I’ll have to find out what kind of coverage breakdown there was. They ran a couple good chunks there with the DPI and that one there as well. I’ll have to look at that later.”
Breakdowns like that in the secondary?
“Can’t happen,” Nagy said. “Can’t do it.”
But the Bears keep doing it.
Bush came over in time to tackle Watkins at the 3, and the Ravens used a timeout with 25 seconds remaining. Freeman ran in for the game-winning score on the next play.
Two games. Two defensive breakdowns in the final minute, as the Steelers won on a field goal. Two games that would be the difference between 3-7 and 5-5.
“I didn’t really see who it was, I just saw a guy wide open,” inside linebacker Alec Ogletree said. “Usually those kind of things happen with miscommunication and just not being detailed at the end. A lot of games in this league are won or lost really by you beating yourself. I mean, most games are lost and you lose them by not being detailed and doing your job.
“That’s kind of where we are … as far as that play, and I thought we played well all game. And like I said, right at the end at crunch time is where you have to be at your best. Today, we didn’t go out there and finish the job like we needed to.”
3. After all of that, the Bears got the ball back on their 25-yard line with 22 seconds remaining and needing a miracle to force overtime.
They were out of timeouts. Matt Nagy went through all three earlier in the quarter, first burning one before a fourth-and-1 play from the Bears 49-yard line. Nagy had a headset issue — his communication equipment malfunctioned — and the Bears initially sent the punt team on the field. After a timeout, they ran out the offense and David Montgomery was stopped for no gain on a direct-snap wildcat play.
The Bears used their second timeout before a critical fourth-and-6 with 1:48 remaining.
“That’s a crucial down and distance to make sure you’re 100% ready for what you need,” Nagy said. “The clock was running down. For that one, you’d love to be able to keep it because if you don’t get it, I think there was 1:48 to go and you have two timeouts. So if for some reason you don’t get that, you’ve got two timeouts and can still get the ball back. And so that was one where we just felt like, with the clock running down, we felt rushed before we snapped it. We wanted to be smart about that. It ended up working.”
It didn’t work until after left tackle Jason Peters was flagged for a false start, backing the Bears up to fourth-and-11. The Ravens brought the house against Andy Dalton, and he had just enough time to unload a pass to a streaking Marquise Goodwin for the go-ahead touchdown.
The Bears led 13-9 and it made sense to go for a two-point conversion and push the lead to six. But the kicking unit came on the field at first and there was confusion, so Nagy used his third and final timeout, taking advantage of a roughing-the-passer call on the touchdown to move half the distance to the goal line and have a two-point try from the 1. It was the correct call, but the execution — requiring a timeout to do so — was flawed.
“We’re at a point where you have the celebrations, you have the guys going back and forth,” Nagy said. “And also knowing you’re up those four points where we were. You want to be able to make sure you have everything you need personnel-wise and going for it, etc. There was also the penalty. Do you move it half the distance, make it from the 1? Do you use it on a kickoff? So there was a lot of stuff going on at that point. So that’s why we used (the timeout), to be able to make it a six-point game.”
The explanation makes sense. The game management was poor, and that’s why the Bears were left without any timeouts when they really could have used one or two. Would it have made a difference? I doubt it. Will Nagy be beat up for poor management in the fourth quarter? Probably. My point is to keep the focus where it needs to be: The offense is a mess. The game management stuff only changes the discussion when the fundamental problem is the offense not scoring points.
4. Offensive coordinator Bill Lazor had some really interesting comments Thursday.
They provided food for thought about the development of young quarterbacks and the track you’d like to see them on when picturing success. Lazor talked about the need for young quarterbacks to be aggressive. It’s the kind of thing that would make a lot of old-school thinkers shudder. An aggressive young quarterback, especially a rookie, would be prone to a bunch of turnovers, right? The game has evolved, though, and the successful offenses are the ones that generate explosive plays, the kind that involve some risk.
When you look back on the four years the Bears had with Mitch Trubisky, he wasn’t aggressive very often. There’s a reason the Bears would rank near the bottom of the league in yards per pass attempt, and at least a portion of the time, Trubisky was focused on protecting the football and that limited his ability to make big plays. Conversely, Justin Fields has shown a desire to push the ball downfield, especially of late, although this game wasn’t a great example and he left early with the injury.
“You want to minimize the turnovers, right?” Lazor said. “You have a better chance of winning the game if you have zero turnovers. If you go through the year with zero turnovers, you probably don’t have enough big plays out of it, so there’s that balance. You want an aggressive player. You can’t play cautious. So there is that balance, and when a guy comes into the league or when you first start coaching a guy, you have to find where is he on that scale, that spectrum of being aggressive and being too cautious.
“Then you just kind of work it and tweak it and there’s no one simple answer to it. The fact that a rookie will make the throws when guys are covered, to me, is a positive and it helps you get more big plays. I know we’ve talked about it in here. We need more big plays. So we need him to make the throws, and some weeks you’ll play against zone teams where there aren’t going to be as many as those. The windows maybe are tight but different than when you play man (coverage) teams and guys are going to be ‘NFL open’ at the most. You don’t expect them to be open.
“So I’m encouraged that he’ll make the throws, that he’s not hesitant, that he understands what it’s going to look like when it’s time to pull the trigger, and I think it’s only going to get better. And as he plays with the same guys over and over, he’ll also learn from them: What does it look like when this receiver is matched up one-on-one with the corner and is going deep? And I can throw it out the other side? Some of that is just being with the guys too.”
Lazor said in his experience, when a quarterback comes into the league and is conservative, it’s difficult to break him from that mold. Of course, finding an aggressive-minded quarterback who isn’t reckless is tricky, and no one should know that better than Bears fans.
“My history would tell me that it’s very hard to talk a guy into losing caution,” Lazor said. “If he’s cautious, he’s going to have a hard time getting a ton of production in the NFL. If he’s reckless, you’re going to turn the ball over a lot. But if he’s aggressive and smart and willing to be coached, then you feel like, ‘OK, we can help him find just that right area.’
“In the old days … you could play ebb-and-flow football, and Bill Parcells wrote in his book, ebb-and-flow football, you punt it to them and they punt it to you. It’s gotten to a point in the NFL you could only win those games if the other team is trying to do the same thing. So (with) cautious quarterbacks, it’s harder and harder in the NFL today.”
Parcells recently chatted with Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe about the development of New England Patriots rookie quarterback Mac Jones. Parcells is the last Patriots coach to use a rookie quarterback when he played Drew Bledsoe in 1993.
“(Jones) is taking care of the ball and you had control of the game from beginning to end,” Parcells said. “You can’t ask anything else of a quarterback. If you can play like that, you’re going to win a lot of games. I really think they’ve got a good chance. I really do. You don’t want to get a rookie quarterback in a situation where they are playing from behind all the time. It’s hard enough when you’re a veteran to do that. For a rookie, it’s really hard.
“The main thing you want to emphasize is the game’s about the ball. You’ve got to take care of the ball. You want to emphasize not being careless and not gambling at the wrong time.”
Jones has done a really nice job under offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels in New England. He has a 94.7 passer rating, 14 touchdown passes and eight interceptions. He has completed 70.2% of his passes. Fields had the one lost fumble Sunday to give him three for the season, and he has thrown eight interceptions, three coming in the meltdown loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For the most part, he has done a good job of taking care of the football.
“I completely agree with the logic behind what Lazor said,” a veteran NFL personnel man said. “It goes back to the explosives. You’ve got to get explosive plays, and Checkdown Charlies don’t get explosives. There’s such a fine line. Fields is a talented kid. I’ve seen some tape on him this year. If they can channel it, they might have something. There’s probably not enough data sets right now to see if he can toe that line of being aggressive but not reckless as a pocket passer. Everyone knows what he can do with his legs. It’s interesting because he looks like he’s getting better.”
With a rib injury now that could be problematic, especially with a short week before the Bears face the Lions, we’ll have to see what Fields looks like next time he’s available.
5. Justin Fields strikes me as a pretty tough customer.
He certainly had that reputation at Ohio State, and it has been on display early in his NFL career. That being said, it’s easy to imagine the Bears having to roll with Andy Dalton as their starter against the Lions. The next three days might not be enough time for Fields to adequately heal up, especially with the Bears wanting to protect their future.
Maybe it’s just a bruised rib — that’s what NFL Media reported Sunday night — and he can come back quickly, but I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting any kind of public announcement from Matt Nagy in the next 24 to 36 hours.
“I’ve been through a lot (the last nine weeks),” Dalton said. “There’s a lot that’s gone on from starting the year to the injury to not playing, and it’s one of those things — I lean on my faith. I knew that God had me here in Chicago for a reason. Football is part of it. There’s more to it. Being the good teammate, being a guy in the locker room that guys can lean on and staying ready for the next opportunity. And that’s, I feel like, what I’ve done.”
The Bears would lose the threat of a multidimensional quarterback if they have to play Dalton. He wouldn’t add to the good rushing totals. But maybe the passing game could click a little more efficiently. Unfortunately, he won’t have any real practice time this week to get on the same page with the receivers and knock off some rust. He’s a veteran, though, and should be able to respond.
“Everybody has to have the quick turnaround,” Dalton said. “That’s the big message for this team. You can’t let this game affect Thursday. We have to move forward. We have to get ready to go and enjoy the game on Thanksgiving.”
The only way to enjoy it is to emerge with a victory.
6. Of all the plays in the Nov. 8 game in Pittsburgh that have been dissected many ways, one that hasn’t been reviewed is the encroachment penalty against the Steelers with 1:52 remaining on Cairo Santos’ extra point that gave the Bears a 27-26 lead.
It’s the kind of play that could aid the Bears in weeks to come as they used the Steelers’ aggressive rush tactics to draw the penalty. The Steelers have one of the better field-goal block units in the league, and they got a block earlier this season against the Green Bay Packers. They are known to key on the holder, and the Bears used that against them.
Usually, holder Pat O’Donnell cues the snap from Patrick Scales by opening his right hand, signaling he’s ready for the ball. In this instance, the Bears went on a two count, meaning O’Donnell opened his hand, closed it and quickly opened it again. This drew almost the entire right side of the Steelers line across the line of scrimmage before the snap. The Bears applied the five-yard penalty on the kickoff, giving Santos an easy touchback.
“They were keying Pat’s hand and we saved it to when it mattered,” special teams coordinator Chris Tabor said. “Helps me get a touchback, and then when they’re offside, on the next one now they have to key the ball and now they cannot come quite as aggressive and quite as fast and I’m going to get the ball off and I’m going to make it. That’s opposed to them getting a great jump and beating me just enough. That is why we saved it.
“If people will watch it, the Steelers outside guy (Cameron Sutton) is looking (at O’Donnell’s hand). The four inside guys, they’re all looking at the holder. They’re not looking at the ball at all. They’re watching the hand. That is why so many of them jumped offside. We knew that and we had been saving it. On the first couple, they were close enough I wanted to save it for when I needed it. I could tell on the early ones, they weren’t doing it.
“I said something to (Steelers cornerback) Joe Haden before the game: ‘I know you guys like that hand key, Joe-Joe. You be careful.’ He said, ‘Oh, Coach Tabes, I know you know.’ When they jumped offside, he was on the end nearest our sideline and his side wasn’t going. When it happened, he looked over at me and I winked at him. He just shook his head with a smile like, ‘You son of a gun, you got me.’”
The benefit for the Bears is the Ravens saw this on tape when they prepared for Sunday’s game. The Lions will see it this week when they dive into film study. The Arizona Cardinals will see it. They will all know it’s a tool the Bears can break out at a critical point in the game or on a long field goal to see if they can get 5 yards closer. Or maybe on fourth down with less than 5 to go, where a penalty would result in a first down and bring the offense back on the field.
“It’s a trick in the bag,” O’Donnell said. “We knew the Steelers were a team that watch the hand key and they were really good coming off the edge. Tabor said we should pull it out and we did. As you saw, everyone completely jumped. They were completely looking.
“It’s something we practice. The next opponent will see that we use multiple hand keys, and so they have to slow down their rush a little bit. It gives Cairo just a little bit more time.”
7. During the bye week, I attended the South Carolina-Missouri game in Columbia, Mo.
With seats close to the action at Faurot Field, I was struck by how much smaller, less developed and slower the players were than the ones you see on Sundays in the NFL. Yes, some of these guys are still teenagers, but when you watch the NFL on a weekly basis for a long time and your exposure to college athletes is mostly limited to seeing the cream of the crop annually at the scouting combine, it was eye-opening. Granted, I was watching two programs in the second tier of the SEC this season, but it’s still the SEC and it got me to thinking about the challenges college scouts face on a weekly basis while scouring the country for talent.
“When I was a college scout,” one senior personnel man said, “I was based in the office at our facility, so I was seeing a lot of our home games and saw us in practice, and every time I went out, the first three days — and I was going to Power Five programs, Clemson, North Carolina, South Carolina — I was like, ‘Oh, my god. Am I at the pee wee game?’
“It really blows you away when you go from watching the NFL to seeing the college kids. You go and see a college game, the pace of the game is so much slower and you’re looking at seniors and juniors and you’re saying, ‘These guys have no shot. They’re not on the same planet.’ It’s amazing.”
So what’s the key to sorting through the college prospects and finding the ones who have a chance to stick in the NFL?
“I don’t think anyone has cornered the market on that deal,” the personnel man said. “In my experience, if the guy doesn’t jump out at you as a legit prospect, he’s probably an average guy that cycles himself out of the league in two, three years, plays a role and maybe is a (special) teamer. I’ve always thought your first- and second-round players, they walk in the door and you’re like, ‘Yep, he’s one.’
“Guys blossom and bloom and turn into late developers and put on weight and do all of those things, but if you’re like, ‘I don’t know, let’s wait and see what he does in his second year,’ chances are he’s just going to be a guy and you’re looking to draft over him. When you scan the landscape, that is the majority of what you see. The guys that smack you in the face, those are the guys that are going to be players. I scouted Khalil Mack at Buffalo, and you saw him and you were, ‘Oh, my god!’
“I lean on the testing numbers (from the scouting combine and pro days). You have to have a good sense of these are the numbers that play in the league. Every team has a position standard and parameters for these drills, the three-cone and all of that stuff. It helps guide your eyes when you’re like, ‘I think this guy is kind of stiff, but I don’t know.’ Then you see the short-shuttle and three-cone times are horrible and it confirms what you were seeing. You need all of those indicators.”
A veteran national scout said identifying the prospects after the elite college players who pack first-round mock drafts is what makes the process complex.
“That’s what takes so long,” he said. “The great players are great, but watching those middle-tier guys and trying to decide if they’re going to make it or not, it takes a long time. A lot of it has to do with who they are as a person. That is what separates guys and that is ultimately what it comes down to if they’re not elite in some capacity athletically, from a strength standpoint, from a body standpoint. Who they are determines whether or not they are going to achieve whatever the maximum is for them.
“A lot of who they are comes down to how hard they play, how smart they are and the technique that they play with. When I say who they are, it’s not how good of a person they are but how hard they work, how smart they are, all of that stuff. That’s the hard part.”
Nearly every team brings its scouts to training camp — at least for a portion of it — so they can see the types of players the team is seeking at each position, allowing them to interact with the coaching staff and have a better understanding of what they are looking for. Sometimes it helps to see a regular-season NFL game along the way as a point of reference.
“It brings you back to ‘this is what it really takes,’” the national scout said.
Most teams will begin gathering for preliminary draft meetings in December. Some draft boards will start out with as many as 350 or 400 names. That leaves a lot of work to be done because when it’s said and done, the pro department will assign a roster-worthy grade to only about 125 players. That’s all part of a very inexact science.
8. The Bears’ lack of success coming out of their bye week under Matt Nagy has been well-documented.
They lost the previous three years before blowing Sunday’s game. What the Bears have done well under Nagy is perform on a short week of preparation. They are 3-0 playing on a Thursday coming off a Sunday game, and that’s of note with their trip to Ford Field this week to face the Lions on Thanksgiving.
Granted, two of those three victories also came against the lowly Lions on Thanksgiving in 2018 and 2019, but the Bears beat the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20-19 last season on a short week.
Expanding it further to include Sunday games coming off a “Monday Night Football” appearance, the Bears are 5-1 on all short weeks under Nagy. The only loss came last season when the New Orleans Saints defeated the Bears 26-23 in overtime at Soldier Field after the Bears had played a road game against the Los Angeles Rams on the previous Sunday night.
What explains the difference for the team’s success on short weeks when it has struggled with extra time to prepare? Both offer a small sample size, so it’s difficult to tell, but teams don’t have time to overthink game plans or strategies on short weeks, especially when they are playing on a Thursday after a Sunday game.
The Bears no doubt have some initial prep work for the Lions already completed. They already faced them once this season. They will have to lean on what they know works for them. Perhaps that will be productive.
9. The Bears got some really good play out of Danny Trevathan for a long time, but the second contract he signed with the team in March 2020 looked bloated then and has proved to be a mistake.
The Bears placed Trevathan on injured reserve Thursday, his second stint on IR this year with a knee injury. It’s certainly fair to wonder if he has played his last snap for the team.
Trevathan, 31, played in the preseason finale at Tennessee, and then the Bears placed him on IR before the season. He wasn’t injured against the Titans, but he simply wasn’t moving the way the team wanted to see and the hope was some downtime would do him good.
Trevathan returned in Week 5 to play 10 snaps in the win in Las Vegas and was used in spot duty the following week against the Packers, when he had nine snaps. In total, he was on the field for 77 snaps over the previous five games and had a season-high seven tackles in the loss in Pittsburgh.
The Bears saw Trevathan struggle from the start last season, getting exposed in pass coverage, and it made the three-year, $21.75 million contract he signed look like a bad deal. The contract will pay him basically $14.6 million over 2020 and 2021, and it was structured such that the Bears really couldn’t get out of the deal after Year 1. It would be surprising if they don’t release him this coming offseason.
Trevathan has had a heck of a career after the Denver Broncos drafted him in the sixth round out of Kentucky in 2012. He won a Super Bowl with the Broncos and was considered a glue guy for the locker room when Bears general manager Ryan Pace signed him in 2016 free agency, bringing in a player coach John Fox knew well from his time in Denver. Trevathan was at the heart of the highly ranked defense in 2018, when he had 102 tackles with eight stops for a loss, two sacks, two interceptions, one forced fumble and six passes defensed.
But the Bears fell into the trap of not knowing when to cut ties with a veteran player, and they placed too great of an emphasis on the intangibles he provided and not enough on the game tape when they re-signed him before he entered free agency in 2020. There’s no way any other team would have paid him that much on the open market.
The Bears are fortunate they were able to add Alec Ogletree off the street in early August. He hasn’t been great but he has filled a real need, and he’s a veteran player who won’t get caught out of position too often. What the Bears really need is a young player with athleticism to slide in next to Roquan Smith next season, but that probably will be down the list a ways when it comes to team needs for 2022.
10. Had a lot of fun running back through memory lane with members of the 2001 Bears who went 13-3 in the final year of the NFC Central.
It was a project worth diving into because that was such a special team for a lot of reasons. For starters, it was full of characters with a great mix of veteran savvy and leadership and emerging young talent. What made that season so special is that, for just about everybody, the success came out of nowhere.
All four division rivals had a higher over/under total for wins in the Las Vegas sports books before the season. The Bears were 4-12, 4-12, 6-10 and 5-11 in the four years leading into that season, and top personnel man Mark Hatley exited in the spring, replaced by general manager Jerry Angelo. It looked like it would be a year of transition, and then the Bears started winning … and they just kept winning.
“Those guys took the field and really they never doubted themselves,” coach Dick Jauron said. “People say, ‘Yeah, you won a lot of close games.’ (The Bears were 8-0 in games decided by seven points or fewer.) We could have been 16-0, right? We lost three close games too. If you are saying we should have had more losses, I don’t know. Maybe we should have had three more wins.”
Said defensive coordinator Greg Blache: “One thing I always knew when I walked over to the stadium in the morning, we were going to fight somebody. I knew that for a fact. I couldn’t promise you the score at the end of the ballgame, but I never, ever worried about them competing. And as a coach that is huge because I had years since where you go to the stadium and you’re thinking, ‘Is this kid going to flake out on me today?’ or, ‘Is this guy going to pull up with the loser’s limp?’
“That crew, they pushed and governed each other, but they had fun — they had fun at practice, they had fun in games, the offense and the defense complemented each other. That was by far the most fun I had coaching in the league. Without question. All of the personalities. It was such a collection that it was fun to watch them in action.”
Said center Olin Kreutz: “It was crazy. The team just kept believing we were going to win somehow. We’re not that good but we’re just going to (expletive) win.”
If you missed the story, it ought to bring back plenty of great memories. Carve out a little bit of time for it.
10a. Press box statistics credited inside linebacker Roquan Smith with a game-high 17 tackles. He was all over the place. That is the number we will have to go with. The Bears for quite a while now have declined to share the tackle statistics they compile after coaches review game film, as if it’s some kind of proprietary information that must be guarded at all costs.
Since 1987, the Bears have had only four other instances of a player recording 17 tackles in a game. Smith was credited with 13 solos and four assists. Here are the other big games:
- Jerrell Freeman, Sept. 11, 2016, 23-14 loss at Houston, 9 solos, 8 assists, 17 tackles
- Brian Urlacher, Dec. 5, 2010, 24-20 win at Detroit, 10 solos, 7 assists, 17 tackles
- Jamar Williams, Dec. 6, 2009, 17-9 win over St. Louis Rams, 13 solos, 5 assists, 18 tackles
- Brian Urlacher, Oct. 16, 2006, 24-23 win at Arizona, 11 solos, 8 assists, 19 tackles
Coaches’ review of film credited Urlacher with a career-high 25 tackles in that memorable victory over the Cardinals. We’re going to have to go with 17 for Smith. Still a heck of a game.
10b. For the third time in the Matt Nagy era, the Bears had two wide receivers top 100 yards in the same game. Darnell Mooney caught five passes (on a career-high 16 targets) for 121 yards, and Marquise Goodwin made four catches for 104 yards. These were the previous 100-yard doubles by Bears receivers under Nagy:
- Dec. 15, 2019, 21-13 loss at Green Bay: Allen Robinson (7 catches, 125 yards) and Anthony Miller (9 catches, 118 yards)
- Nov. 11, 2018, 34-22 win over Lions: Robinson (6 catches, 133 yards) and Miller (5 catches, 122 yards)
The last time a Bears receiver had more than 16 targets was on Nov. 16, 2014, when Alshon Jeffery had 17 (11 receptions, 135 yards, one touchdown) in a 21-13 win over the Minnesota Vikings. The team record is 22 set by Chris Penn on Nov. 16, 1997, in a 23-15 loss to the New York Jets. Penn made seven catches for 85 yards and one touchdown.
10c. The Bears were in this game for a few reasons. Lamar Jackson didn’t suit up. The Ravens didn’t tackle on a bubble screen to Darnell Mooney. And once again, a Ravens defense that has been prone to giving up big plays was let down again on Marquise Goodwin’s 49-yard touchdown against a blitz. It’s not like the Bears outschemed a short-handed Ravens team. This was a two-touchdown game if Jackson was healthy, maybe worse.
10d. The Bears opened as 3½-point favorites over the Lions (0-9-1)at Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas for Thursday’s game at Ford Field.
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