WhoKnows

So, we scored 26 a game when CMC played with Teddy including two games against SB teams and we scored 21 a game because it was more diversified? I’ll take the 26 a game. Also, interestingly enough we had over 300 passing yards in 3 of 16 games and 2 of those 3 were in CMC’s 3 games. We also scored 30+ in 3 of 16 games and again 2 of those 3 were in CMC’s 3 games. Weird how the passing game was more effective with CMC playing and we scored more. We only had 2 300+ passing yard games with 30+ points and those 2 games happened with CMC who agin played only 3 games. Yep, the offense was much better off without CMC, SMH.

Picks don’t just drop a round dude. Not to a team like Chicago that is rebuilding. It’s not reality. They see that 2024 pick as a 1st rounder that could be high considering we have a rookie QB. The player they pick in the 1st is not going to be equivalent talent wise to a 2nd rounder this year. Yes, teams discount future picks but it’s laughable that you would equate the 2023 2nd we gave them to our 2024 1st. You’ve got to be crazy to think the Bears think they are close to the same, especially with 5th year options and potential huge difference in talent. Same with the 2025 2nd. That’s likely a starter level talent to them versus a 2023 day 3 long shot at starting talent. The Bears aren’t making the SB in 2023/2024 so they can take better talent picks that they’d rather have than lower talent picks this year. The team making the trade has to give up enough to make the other team give up that pick and usually the team getting the haul is rebuilding. Did you notice the Bears didn’t ask us for our 2023 4th instead of the 2025 2nd and didn’t ask us for another 2023 2nd instead of the 2024 1st? I sure hope you’ve noticed that the teams trading down tend to take future 1sts over current 2nds or later. Also, #1 pick is worth 3000 points in draft trade value charts. Pick 56 is 340 points. Sorry, 11%, I was rounding.

And it’s very misleading. When he played 3 games in 2020 we were 0-3 and when he was hurt we were 5-8, but that doesn’t tell it all. 2 of the 3 we lost with CMC were against the teams who made the SB and the other was the 8-8 Raiders. Lost by 2 to KC, 4 to the Raiders and got to down 7 against Tampa with 2 minutes but failed an onside kick. 2021 was a bigger sample size and we were 4-3 with CMC and 1-9 without him. So in those 10 games, we were 4-6 and 5 of the 6 losses were to teams .500 or better and 2 were SB teams. Without CMC we were 6-17.

CMC’s trade didn’t matter in terms of Young, we had plenty of picks including our 50% more valuable 2nd. CMC’s 2nd was a dime of value out of the dollar we gave up for Bryce. We still easily make the Young deal regardless of CMC.

The whole better without CMC talk is amazing. Again, there’s a valid reason why they call us the most obsessed fan base. As soon as a player leaves, even if they didn’t want to, they are an enemy and they made our team worse. CMC came from a dysfunctional team with Rhule as coach, of course he thinks the sun is shining brighter. He went from the playoffs his rookie year to watching Cam miss 16 games the next two years and get released. I watched a few SF games and it was obvious they were better with him. He started 13 games for SF including the playoffs and they were 12-0 before losing to Philly due to a bad non-challenge followed by having no QB. SF was 3-4 before CMC was the starter.

Lol. The late 2nd round pick was the lowest value piece of the trade. Chicago probably would have taken our 2025 2nd over that late 2nd. Let’s not exaggerate here. We got a late 2nd, late 3rd and some throw in day 3 pick(s) for CMC. That’s it. If we made the Burns trade and used those picks to get Young, sure, you could say that trade was great because it got us our future SB winning QB (knock on wood). CMC’s trade did not get us Young.

Our IOL right now doesn’t have the potential of the Ts. An upgrade at LG would be huge and frankly pulling a Humphrey in a future draft wouldn’t hurt either. Corbett played well but he’s coming off an ACL. Bozeman is average which is a better than what we’ve had but he’s not elite. BC is just OK. I still think back to the 2021 draft. The draftniks in here really nailed it with guys who ended up being key cogs to KC’s SB win. It’s gone but 2021 should have been a heavy OL draft considering that and QB (who sucked in that draft) were our gigantic holes. After watching Iky improve, just thinking about an Iky, Corbett, Humphrey, Smith, Moton OL makes me feel warm and toasty. Only would have cost us TMJ and a released LS to make that happen, but I digress and will come back to reality!

I don’t look at that lineup and feel like it is really solid. Our skilled positions on offense are overall below average. There isn’t a single true impact player. I see a lot of hop. Thank goodness we added FAs because after trading CMC and DJ, we had a terrible set of players to put around a rookie QB. Even though it’s greatly improved, we still don’t have a top tier WR, TE or RB. There’s no one that a DC worries about. I’m happy with Young and the OL although I do think it would be good if our IOL was upgraded and healthy. Feels like we have some depth there but again if we somehow end up with a top tier LG, it would really help. On D, I like Luvu, Brown, Burns and Shaq, but Tuttle, YGM and Haynes are easily replaced and in need of upgrading. CB is is a true weakness. Horn has to stay healthy. End of the season hurt players means unavailable for playoffs or playoff runs. Donte tore his Achilles and wasn’t great before that and the rest is terrible. The other note is that again, our depth is not good. Compare us to a contender like SF or Philly. SF in particular had tons of injury issues but they had depth that still got them wins. What if Brown and Burns are hurt or Iky and Moton? Last year we were pretty healthy until the last meaningless game. Could we survive a rash of injuries like the 2016 OL? We didn’t really survive that but we were still a bad K season away from 9-7 even with all the injuries in a much better division. We couldn’t come close to staying competitive if we had bad injury luck. Trading away so many picks the past couple of years and some bad picks hasn’t helped with depth.

Your edit was what I was going to post. The schedule makers absolutely analyze that stuff. Fan base and TV draws (top QBs or SB winner or solid team, etc.). No way the Jets get Black Friday game with Zach Wilson. The Falcons have a small fan base and have no draw. We have Bryce Young as the #1 pick. That matters more to schedule makers than us being potentially a game better than the Falcons.

Not sure I agree. If the Falcons are good this year it’s because they will do really well running the ball. That means they will be a boring game. We have Bryce Young who most people outside of Charlotte thinks is a midget and he was the #1 pick. I think way more people are interested in watching him succeed or fail whether or not they think we are better than the Falcons.

I’m not young but what? You think OTA people are going to make it hard to sell advertising? Sorry, but if you stopped watching the NBA or don’t watch TNF/MNF because they moved to basic cable/basic live streaming, you aren’t someone any advertisers care about. You are a rounding error if you are just OTA. I’ve got a giant antenna up in my attic that I moved from my last house when HDTV just started and OTA was all there was and it ran into my Dish box. I haven’t used that in 20 years.

Yep. So many predictions are based on past history, not hope or assumptions. The first blurb even says the over 7.5 wins seems like a good play but we’ve got 5 straight years of 7 wins or less. We didn’t improve our run stopping and Carr could easily outplay our rookie so the odds are what they are. It’s funny how we obsess like that other thread said and look at this as some sort of slight or insult to us when we’ve been a 5-7 win team for 5 years. It’s not a slight, it’s just math. Maybe they are teasing all the NFC South fans (minus Tampa) to get upset and bet the over because there’s little chance we all go over. Most likely 1 of the 3 will.

Good question and probably should have been asked before we extended Donte for way too much.

There in lies the rub. He wasn't on the field and we lost.

No chance. He wants the $90M extension that Lawrence just got. We have $35M in 2024 cap space and that’s without Burns, Chinn, Luvu, Chark and rookies. At least we won’t have a 1st round rookie to pay. That includes the little rollover we have left. If we want to keep Brown, we can’t spend that much at DT.

Eh, he still had decent weapons. Sure, he didn’t have 1 RB, but Mixon, Bernard, Perine and Williams combined for 1300 and 9 TDs. Higgins with 900 as a rookie is a solid WR. Boyd had 800. Green was past his prime but still 500+ as WR3 was more than our breakout WR2 TMJ last year. Add in 700+ yards receiving from Bernard and their TE. Burrow’s 2020 weapons were better than our 2022 weapons.

Future WR2? He was our WR2 in 2022. Only DJ had more snaps. After week 6, Robby was gone and in those 11 weeks, he had one game at 62% snap counts and 10 weeks of 85-93% snap counts. Again, this is why I think he may get buried barring injuries because after Robby left he was basically playing all game and got 24 receptions in 11 games. We’ve got way more mouths to feed in the passing game now even with DJ gone.

I’m also not negative on the season but I’m more optimistic about the new guys than a couple guys that people want to break out, but seemingly are buried a bit more. Last year there was no one in front of them if they succeeded aside from DJ. Now there’s a lot.

You said exactly that. You are implying that in half a season he had 39-354 and 5TDs. Sorry, but you are absolutely implying that if he had a full season he could be at 80-700-10TDs. I don’t see how you can’t read into the statement below as anything but that. Also, Thomas has been called the blocking TE. Fitterer said that when they extended him that they wanted to keep him because of his blocking. Personally, I see so many topics on TMJ and now a couple of Tremble and I don’t share the enthusiasm as they’ve both seemingly been knocked further down the depth chart and haven’t produced enough yet.

I know I’ve posted it before but I don’t think TMJ breaks out unless we have a rash of injuries. We lost DJ, but added a lot of targets in Sanders, Hurst, Thielen, Chark and Mingo. Something has to give for Marshall to break out. Same analysis trying to act like TMJ hasn’t been playing enough receiving snaps. DJ Moore averaged 900 snaps a years and guess what, we ran a bunch when he was out there too. The QB rating while targeting TMJ is also a bit misleading. His biggest issue is getting separation. Does anyone remember preseason when Shi smith scored a TD and Sam was laser focused on TMJ who didn’t separate and actually fell down on the route? Sam switched reads and found Smith. That was one of the reasons Smith started as WR3 before sucking and losing the job back to TMJ. Last year, TMJ got the ball for a nice gain each week while wide open and had his TD and nice gains in garbage time against Cincy (they pulled starters up 35) and the TD was after. I’d be ecstatic if somehow TMJ became a stud LSU WR for Young but the whole prorating stuff as if his 1069 snaps weren’t almost 20% more than DJ got every year, producing way more, doesn’t sway me. Unless you think he’s leapfrogging everyone else to be WR1, not sure how to predict a breakout when we have better targets overall compared with last year.

He’s not making me feel better. Acting like TEs spend 100% of the time catching and no time blocking is how Tremble’s numbers were prorated higher. Travis Kelce has averaged just above 900 snaps the last three years. Tremble has had over 1000 snaps the past two years. You can’t then say oh, if he was Kelce I can take those 1000 snaps and double the result because Kelce never blocks. I mean, Thomas has over 1100 snaps the past two years and has 39 receptions, the same as Tremble. In two years and 2100+ snaps Thomas and Tremble have 78-739. In the last two years on only 1800+ snaps, Kelce has 202-2463 and Kelce. Note that KC’s TE2 had more receptions than Tremble or Thomas last year. I know Kelce is a stud, but it’s very misleading to insinuate that Tremble would have 80-700 and 10 TDs if he was the guy. That’s quadrupling his stats when he’s already playing 50% of all snaps.

There is no way to tank at that point. Tanking <> telling players to lose. When you start your season with Curtis Painter or Weinke or Clausen without even signing a Teddy Two Gloves, you are tanking. Although, had we really wanted to tank last year, we should have just kept Rhule. That’s equivalent to a team with Clausen at the helm.

I’ll try one last time and then I don’t think I’ll ever mention it again. I don’t think you get tanking either and what @rayzor said in the post you quoted isn’t it either. First, it’s not once you stop winning you go into tank mode. That’s just when people in here know we aren’t making the playoffs so they root for a better pick. Sometimes it could have made a difference like 2021’s draft where us beating Haskins dropped us from 3rd to 8th. Yeah, we got Horn, but like Miami did, they used one of the 3 firsts they got from SF to move back up and get Waddle. If we lost that game, we could have had Horn and another 1st instead of just Horn. Second, not sure about the others but I played sports (only through HS because frankly I went to a D1 school with friends on the OL who made me feel small) and I coached a bunch of youth sports (won a few championships too). Those aren’t in the same world as the NFL. It’s honestly silly of you to even think a multi-billion dollar business is remotely like organized sports. There are typically no drafts or drafts based on picking out of a hat. You can’t tank a youth sport because you don’t get better draft slots and trading Jimmy doesn’t get you another 2nd round pick. Last, I have no problem discussing my 2020 tank plan. ESPN even had an article about how our 2020 team had the most turnover by far and we had preseason rankings all around the bottom. We lost Luke, Cam, Bradberry and Others and we had an entirely new staff. It was easy to see that we weren’t a playoff team. Brady in Tampa and Brees in NO was a recipe for two teams in our division being in the playoffs and if you looked ahead, you saw a huge opportunity to be a top pick in the draft which had Lawrence and Fields while knowing that Brady, Brees and Ryan were going to be gone in 2-3 years. By the way, I was 100% right on that call and thankfully we finally got a solid rookie while the others are still looking. 2020 was the year to tank. Instead we signed a bunch of FAs and spent a ton of cap we could have rolled over. We also wouldn’t have thrown away picks on shitty QBs, CBs and maybe got more comp picks (lost a 3rd signing Teddy). The tank would have been to get as many picks and save as much cap space while letting Will Grier lead us to Trevor Lawrence. No idea if we could have gotten there or not but we owned the tiebreaker and worst case we get Horn and an extra 1st plus all the comp picks and cap space to rollover. Here’s a fun one for you. With all the extra cap space and the extra first from SF, we could have easily gotten AJ Brown or Tyreke Hill. Another bonus to the tank. Instead, we wasted a few years being mediocre and gave up a lot of picks in the process. You can cry all you want but sacrificing a few wins in 2020 (all the young guys and rookies are still playing hard) would have us being a much more talented team right now even with the trade up for Young. That’s tanking, not hoping for a better draft pick in week 14 or asking players to not play hard.

Voice was bad and it was fine but it would have been nice to see some progression. It was all from the early SF game and he mentions how he got better, so show some plays near the end of the year where he cleaned up some mistakes.

Damn Brents looked slow. Mingo isn’t a burner 4.3 guy and Brents didn’t close an inch. Looked at the combine, yep not a fast CB and it shows. Had good agility skills but if the WR gets separation, it’s over.