Bears @ Commanders - Day After Thread

[skinsinparadise]

I like this below. I've done plenty of my own amateur X's and O type takes about the team but am hung up some on the psychology of the top brass and coaches.

I am big into Jayden. I think the team is at best a 500 team without him. I like Quinn as a HC. I don't agree with the Rivera comps. Among other things Rivera was delusional, and by some accounts lazy. Quinn from what I hear works his ass off. I've heard the same about Peters that he works his ass off and is competitive as heck.

But look i am good at my job. But I've had stretches where I get hot at my job, I start to feel infalliable, and it naturally makes me a bit more complacent, something jarring happens to awaken me and I refind my edge.

So many games are won at the margins. That losing that edge even just a bit I think can make the difference from winnng or losing.

And while this team didn't lose the SB. It feels sort of close to that same vibe from last season, where you came super close, but just short of the promised land. I think there is a natural edge for a SB winner to show they can repeat. But a team that comes a little short, especially if its an upstart team like this one -- I wonder if they sort of lose their edge in the expectation that off season additons are enough to take them over the hump.

Super Bowl Loser's Curse: Is the Hangover Real?

We analyzed over 20 years of data to see if Super Bowl Losers really underperform the next season. Here's what the numbers say.

betiq.teamrankings.com

Super Bowl Losers: Falling Short of Expectations​

Let’s start with performance. The 20 Super Bowl Losers from 2004 to 2023 averaged -1.09 wins vs. their preseason win total line the next year. In plain terms, the market expected them to be elite again, and they weren’t. While 13 of these 20 teams returned to the playoffs (65%), that came with significant underperformance.

...the Super Bowl Losers had the worst performance relative to expectations of any of the previous year’s playoff participants on average.

​

 

[NoCalSkins]

re: The Roster

I think last season's results kind of skewed the perception of how much work this roster truly needed after what was handed to the front office by the Rivera era. Jayden Daniels turning out to be JD5 so quick in his career definitely accounted for a couple season's worth of progress in half a season's time. The problem is once the rest of the NFL had time to adjust and really dissect what this team did successful last season, coupled with a tougher schedule, it has become clear that this roster on paper is not up to par with most playoff (and beyond) caliber teams. That doesn't mean they still won't find a way to get into the playoffs this season once they get healthy because I don't think the Eagles are anywhere close to the team they were last year and the Cowboys & Giants also have too many question marks. The division is going to be a dogfight; however, I see it more unlikely that a wildcard is coming out of the NFCE unless two teams from the division get on a super-hot streak in the next month.

Jayden Daniels is already good enough to deliver this franchise & fan base a trophy, but even the best QB's do need help. Last night against the Bears was a good example of the margin for error still being very small for this squad. Good, even great QB's have bad games, or maybe to be more fair, bad moments in games, but good teams have the ability to overcome those moments and pick their QB up. Right now the team is still very dependent on Jayden Daniels playing lights out, and in this league, which is so very much week-to-week, you need a team that can win in different ways. Take the Eagles from last season, their offense wasn't winning them a lot of games at the beginning of the season, but that defense kept the wins rolling regardless. Very rarely are one-dimensional teams going to excel over the course of a season and deep into the post-season. Getting to the NFC Championship with the roster makeup this team had was pretty extraordinary to be honest.

 

[Darrell Green Fan]

Regarding the first part of your response -- Sure, maybe. But last year's success largely fell on Jayden to play near perfect for the team to win. Really no room for error.

I don't think the season is done whatsoever. I just mean that it is concerning the defense is so bad 70%-80% of the time and they don't seem to have an answer.

Well then we need Jayden to return to that level. I love the guy but he had 2 turnovers, was lucky he didn't have a 3rd and again an intentional grounding penalty. As I had expected defenses have taken away his designed runs around the edge, they need to figure all of this out.

Why on Earth are they not playing Jordan Magee? It's so obvious that this defense lacks speed. I have no idea what happened to Frankie Luvu this season but this is also killing them, we expected him to be a real impact player.

 

[Kel Varnsen]

Yeah, there aren't a lot of guys out there which would be a lot better at this point though, if any.

Also, while the game might have been different if he hits the kick, the same could be said for not turning the ball over 3 times.

The fact this was a 1 point loss when you commit 3 turnovers is a statistical anomaly. Typically if you turn the ball over 3 times, you get blown out.

The guy who just beat us last night was out there looking for a job until this week. Chances are, he will be on the street when Santos comes back.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

The guy who just beat us last night was out there looking for a job until this week. Chances are, he will be on the street when Santos comes back.

Yeah. Maybe I'm just scared of going into kicker rotation purgatory again.

I do wonder if he just had a rocky start, and now he's back to basically normal. If you just take out the GB game, which is a Thursday game and the entire team had a bad night, he's 9-11. Which isn't awful, it's 81%. I know you can't dismiss a game out of hand, but the entire team had voodoo pins in them that night.

Since then he's gone 2/3, 4/4, 2/2, 1/2. Which again, isn't terrible.

 

[Ghost of Sarge]

Man, it makes me cringe to say it, but dallas is going to light this defense up. Our only hope will be to outscore them.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

Man, it makes me cringe to say it, but dallas is going to light this defense up. Our only hope will be to outscore them.

Eh. You never really know with division games.

Also, the defense typically has a good week after a bad week. Which means good against Dak and Dallas and ... bad against Mahomes and KC.. (crosses self.)

So, Mahomes might break the single season passing record in one night against us....

 

[McD5]

When your team gives up 7 rushing touchdowns in one single game against the Eagles in the NFC Championship, and it's not your number one priority in the following draft and free agency period?

You're going to have issues.

And the kicker has to go. We're the only team in the league who still holds their collective breath when our guy tries a 50 yard chip shot.

Draft one in the 5th or 6th round. Enough of this crap.

 

[Kel Varnsen]

Yeah. Maybe I'm just scared of going into kicker rotation purgatory again.

I do wonder if he just had a rocky start, and now he's back to basically normal. If you just take out the GB game, which is a Thursday game and the entire team had a bad night, he's 9-11. Which isn't awful, it's 81%. I know you can't dismiss a game out of hand, but the entire team had voodoo pins in them that night.

Since then he's gone 2/3, 4/4, 2/2, 1/2. Which again, isn't terrible.

Those numbers don’t look too bad. It still sucks he’s 4-7 from 50 plus when that is becoming a chip shot around the league. Consistent kickers are becoming a weapon around the league. I just don’t think we have one.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

Those numbers don’t look too bad. It still sucks he’s 4-7 from 50 plus when that is becoming a chip shot around the league. Consistent kickers are becoming a weapon around the league. I just don’t think we have one.

I don't either. But kickers are wonky. We need a better kicker. However, I don't really envy running through 4 kickers like we did last year either.

It's probably a thing for the off-season. If you just take from the Green Bay game on, and Gay continues that production, then he's fine for the remainder of the season.

 

[Neophyte]

Every team, every coach, and every player has games they want back. I'm guessing nearly every guy in Ashburn is in that boat today, except maybe Luke McCaffrey and Tress Way.

Yeah, Gay missed a FG. While I'm not quite ready to start calling 50 yarders "chip shots" like some of you guys, I do recognize that the league was above 71% on them last year. I do have to wonder how many of those were made in the swirling winds seen inside Northwest Stadium last night, though.

Daniels was less than amazing on 2 plays. Every QB has those days once in a while. I'm less concerned with picking apart his performance last night than I am seeing how he responds this next week. He took responsibility, time to move forward.

Bill has lost 2 fumbles in 2 weeks. I kind of felt like I understood last night's fumble though. He was off balance and trying to spin back the other way to make something out of what was nothing. Part of the reason he has this job is his ability to make something out of nothing. I don't want him to stop. We might all keep in mind that he played one game last year and really hasn't been a full-time back anywhere in about 20 months, and that is on top of still adjusting to NFL speed.

Joe Whitt - stickier topic for me. He doesn't tackle and I'd be more inclined to knock the position coaches for their guys not tackling than I am the DC. I'm also considering the fact that Ben Johnson is one of the best offensive minds in the game today, had 2 weeks to prepare for us, and might have been a little motivated after Whitt's defense did more than enough against the Lions in the playoffs. It looked to me like we had a good call on several of the Bears' "big" plays but the guys on the field didn't get it done. All Whitt can do is call the play.

Without those 3 turnovers by the offense, no one is talking about Whitt's defense today because we won. I'd say it's the same with Gay's donk off the upright but all NFL fans love to dunk on the kicker so...

And you guys who think the sky is falling because for 2 weeks in a row we have gotten help from yellow laundry...please let that go. For how many years have we not gotten the rub of the green from the refs? I'm hard pressed to look at any of the penalties in either game and find them to be lousy calls. The other team made those mistakes, just like we made mistakes that turned the ball over 3 times. It's part of the game.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

Every team, every coach, and every player has games they want back. I'm guessing nearly every guy in Ashburn is in that boat today, except maybe Luke McCaffrey and Tress Way.

Yeah, Gay missed a FG. While I'm not quite ready to start calling 50 yarders "chip shots" like some of you guys, I do recognize that the league was above 71% on them last year. I do have to wonder how many of those were made in the swirling winds seen inside Northwest Stadium last night, though.

Daniels was less than amazing on 2 plays. Every QB has those days once in a while. I'm less concerned with picking apart his performance last night than I am seeing how he responds this next week. He took responsibility, time to move forward.

Bill has lost 2 fumbles in 2 weeks. I kind of felt like I understood last night's fumble though. He was off balance and trying to spin back the other way to make something out of what was nothing. Part of the reason he has this job is his ability to make something out of nothing. I don't want him to stop. We might all keep in mind that he played one game last year and really hasn't been a full-time back anywhere in about 20 months, and that is on top of still adjusting to NFL speed.

Joe Whitt - stickier topic for me. He doesn't tackle and I'd be more inclined to knock the position coaches for their guys not tackling than I am the DC. I'm also considering the fact that Ben Johnson is one of the best offensive minds in the game today, had 2 weeks to prepare for us, and might have been a little motivated after Whitt's defense did more than enough against the Lions in the playoffs. It looked to me like we had a good call on several of the Bears' "big" plays but the guys on the field didn't get it done. All Whitt can do is call the play.

Without those 3 turnovers by the offense, no one is talking about Whitt's defense today because we won. I'd say it's the same with Gay's donk off the upright but all NFL fans love to dunk on the kicker so...

And you guys who think the sky is falling because for 2 weeks in a row we have gotten help from yellow laundry...please let that go. For how many years have we not gotten the rub of the green from the refs? I'm hard pressed to look at any of the penalties in either game and find them to be lousy calls. The other team made those mistakes, just like we made mistakes that turned the ball over 3 times. It's part of the game.

Post of the week candidate right there

 

[SkinsNumberOne]

Whether it is personnel or coaching was a little unclear to me, but tackling was starkly different in this game - the Bears would tackle us pretty consistently I thought (not perfect of course), and the Commanders would have a lot of mistackles. I imagine there were a couple of guys on their O (like Swift) who were just generally better at breaking, and then a couple of guys on our D (like Quan) who were generally bigger culprits. The end result looked kind of bad though, I thought. It was a good job putting up 24. I wish our D did a better job but it is tough to defend such short fields. Although they let up 25 I find it tough to blame the D wholly with 3 turnovers given up. Of course, on the flip side - 0 takeaways. As DQ said, we get one INT out of those "close calls" and the game is very different potentially.

It's a tough loss, and actually the Bears probably won the way they envision themselves winning:
- win TO battle (don't turn the ball over; generate takeaways)
- score on TOs as consistently as possible
They have an O and a D that can do that with "some" consistency I think. Too bad we didn't just manage that "one more" stop or that "one fewer TO" to whatever else could have gotten us the W! On to Dallas. We beat DAL, this season still looks like it has good promise. A lot will hinge on this next game now, though. Big difference between 3-4 and 4-3 with a division loss to boot; however, long time fans should not count the team out even at 3-4. We've seen this team put crazy runs together with worse teams, I feel like. I am going to look for improvement throughout the season as my bigger benchmark.

 

[CuredFromBatteredFanSyndrome]

Without those 3 turnovers by the offense, no one is talking about Whitt's defense today because we won. I'd say it's the same with Gay's donk off the upright but all NFL fans love to dunk on the kicker so...

The vitriol would be less, but the criticism is still valid.

It’s easier to give Jayden a pass on the turnovers, as he historically takes very good care of the ball. It’s reasonable to believe this performance won’t soon be repeated and the facts support that.

Unfortunately, the facts aren’t so kind to Whitt’s defense and Gay’s inability to consistently make kicks.

The facts are that Whitt’s unit ranks near the bottom of the barrel in many critical categories. With many guys now on their 2nd year in his system and no help on the way.

The facts are that Matt Gay ranks 35th in FG %.

I understand the narrative that dunking on the kicker is easy, but it’s warranted.

 

[SkinsFTW]

After watching several shows Tuesday and Wednesday it is pretty hilarious how most of the so called "experts" are talking about how Caeb Williams showed them something, because the Bears won a game that literally came down to our own QB fumbling, our kicker missing a FG, a dumb fumble by our RB, and JD throwing a pick. Without any one of those 4 errors we win the game and they are instead talking about how Caleb Williams is inaccurate and probably the 3rd or 4th best QB from the 2024 draft.

I'm not even sure if they watch football games.

It's like they just look at the stat sheet. Yeah, if you look at the simple stats, he didn't turn the ball over, he's only getting sacked 2 times a game this year, the Bears are 3-2, he must be legit lol.

 

[SkinsNumberOne]

After watching several shows Tuesday and Wednesday it is pretty hilarious how most of the so called "experts" are talking about how Caeb Williams showed them something, because the Bears won a game that literally came down to our own QB fumbling, our kicker missing a FG, a dumb fumble by our RB, and JD throwing a pick. Without any one of those 4 errors we win the game and they are instead talking about how Caleb Williams is inaccurate and probably the 3rd or 4th best QB from the 2024 draft.

I'm not even sure if they watch football games.

It's like they just look at the stat sheet. Yeah, if you look at the simple stats, he didn't turn the ball over, he's only getting sacked 2 times a game this year, the Bears are 3-2, he must be legit lol.

I have long concluded that a LARGE majority of "experts" do exactly what you said. They don't spend the time it takes to watch every game. In theory that would be their job (at least to some degree), but no, I definitely do not believe that is happening - and maybe it's unreasonable to expect it for every game, certainly. So, in the end, they rely on two things: 1) probably they are influenced by what they hear to some amount, and 2) the stat line and maybe a cursory look at some other readouts/stats (not the generic box score for someone who may take a bit more time or have a better research team). With #1, you get an echo chamber effect which we can definitely see. With #2, you can see some good takes but they miss exactly what you are pointing out, CW is far from being a good QB here, you can't tell from a stat line how often he goes to his third read, how often he *is pressured* (unless it's advanced stats) - that is where the really good QBs show up.

CW isn't there yet. This game did nothing to show him as a good or really good QB.

 

[Voice_of_Reason]

The vitriol would be less, but the criticism is still valid.

It’s easier to give Jayden a pass on the turnovers, as he historically takes very good care of the ball. It’s reasonable to believe this performance won’t soon be repeated and the facts support that.

Unfortunately, the facts aren’t so kind to Whitt’s defense and Gay’s inability to consistently make kicks.

The facts are that Whitt’s unit ranks near the bottom of the barrel in many critical categories. With many guys now on their 2nd year in his system and no help on the way.

The facts are that Matt Gay ranks 35th in FG %.

I understand the narrative that dunking on the kicker is easy, but it’s warranted.

I'm willing to give the kicker a bit of a break only because I think everybody deserves one bad day, and he had a very bad day in GB. Since then, though, he's only missed 1 kick. That's a positive trend.

I'd like to see if he can keep that trend going. If you miss 1 kick in 3 games, that's about the best you can hope for.

I do think they should have brought in competition, and I think they should look elsewhere next year. But for now, I think going 6/6 the last 2 weeks buys him a little longer before I start getting grumpy with him.

Whitt, I don't know what you can do at this point.

 

[SkinsFTW]

I have long concluded that a LARGE majority of "experts" do exactly what you said. They don't spend the time it takes to watch every game. In theory that would be their job (at least to some degree), but no, I definitely do not believe that is happening - and maybe it's unreasonable to expect it for every game, certainly. So, in the end, they rely on two things: 1) probably they are influenced by what they hear to some amount, and 2) the stat line and maybe a cursory look at some other readouts/stats (not the generic box score for someone who may take a bit more time or have a better research team). With #1, you get an echo chamber effect which we can definitely see. With #2, you can see some good takes but they miss exactly what you are pointing out, CW is far from being a good QB here, you can't tell from a stat line how often he goes to his third read, how often he scrambles (unless it's advanced stats) - that is where the really good QBs show up.

CW isn't there yet. This game did nothing to show him as a good or really good QB.

On first take Smith earlier spent 20 minutes arguing with Chris Russo about Caleb Williams and whether he is legit or not. Russo must actually watch the games. Which is impressive because he also watches the baseball games too.

Russo says that JD is much better than Williams and it's not even close. He thinks CW is a bad QB because he actually watches the games. Smith disagrees and makes excuses for Williams like "he's already had 3 head coaches, he's already had 4 offensive coordinators" without acknowledging the fact that all of that is because Williams sucks. He throws out a stat, which is hilarious because we all know that it's a BS stat, the stat is "When tied or trailing CW has a 103 QB rating 6 TD's and 1 Int." That stat makes several of our former QB's HOFers. How amazing, CW is great in garbage time or when his opponent is fumbling away the football game. Russo is sitting there wincing and biting his lip because he probably can't believe the idiocy he has to listen to haha.

Then Peter Schrager, who I used to think was actually pretty good, argues with Russo saying that CW was "absolutely the reason that the Bears won" after Russo said that the best thing he did was hand the ball off to Swift. Schrager says that Williams has more pressure on him than anybody else in the league because they got Colston Loveland and Luther Burden in the draft, to go with Moore and Odunze, Swift and the OL upgrades. He's gone 3-2 and Peter Schrager doesn't know what else CW could have done. Is he a fucking moron or what? JD has a 7th round RB who likes to fumble, top 2 WRs out and a 36 year old TE and STILL would have beaten the Bears with all of their talent present if he didn't fumble, the RB didn't fumble, or the kicker makes all of his kicks.

If any of those things happen Schrager and Smith would have spent 20 minutes agreeing with Russo and telling us that despite all of those weapons he just isn't getting it done.

I think I need to turn off my TV, these people are stealing my brain cells.

 

[SkinsNumberOne]

Yeah I read your post like 3 times to try to figure out the logic. Thanks for all of the details, I was curious about what was said, but wow - there really doesn't seem to be any connection to reality in what was said. At all. I mean, even then, the words they used are so easily picked apart. That's just a pathetic defense of CW, and why? Why are they so invested in pushing that story? Seems strange. I am not even saying CW is good or bad, because I don't watch the Bears play enough to say anything - but MNF showed nothing on CW being good or bad. It just showed the Bears D was able to take advantage of some stupid mistakes. CW certainly wasn't "bad enough" to choke those opportunities away totally, but as you said, the game was close in spite of a 3-0 turnover margin, including some really fortuitous field position. Overall, if you want to give the Bears credit, you'd say "opportunistic D" and "few serious mistakes on O" - but you wouldn't be talking about the amazing QB at all unless you didn't watch the game.

 

[HOF44]

Look at this play by Quan. Where the hell he going???