Bears 12.0

[Dominator83]

Certain things like getting sacked a lot, pre snap reads and post snap processing time, those tend to be features difficult to discard. Ben will need to coach around. Give Caleb less decisions to make on his drops than he had last season. Less field to scan, because he’s going to get frozen. My prediction months ago was that by and large Caleb would be pretty similar this year to what we have seen from him to this point. That was before Ben Johnson was hired though. See what he can do. Things like deep ball accuracy should be easier to work on. In between broken plays, a strong play action/run game, getting Caleb to take check downs and to be more accurate on deep balls will help a lot. I can’t believe we are having this stuff on our menu again.

FWIW, these are the same types of things Bears fans have lambasted past coaching staffs for doing for both Caleb and Fields in the past. I don't know what the right answer is to these things, but Bears fans have historically always been upset by not giving the QB a chance when you try to simplify things for them. Not that we should care what Bears fans think vs what generate the best results. Fans are rarely in position to fully understand what that is (I'm sure not anyway).

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

Goes a bit further back than 2018. Jay Cutler had like 4 or 5 seasons in a row with a new OC. He wasn't as good as we thought he was, but the Bears did play a hand in ruining him too. The year before arriving here in only his 2nd season as a full time starter, he threw for 4500 yards. Never sniffed that here

[MAQ]

FWIW, these are the same types of things Bears fans have lambasted past coaching staffs for doing for both Caleb and Fields in the past. I don't know what the right answer is to these things, but Bears fans have historically always been upset by not giving the QB a chance when you try to simplify things for them. Not that we should care what Bears fans think vs what generate the best results. Fans are rarely in position to fully understand what that is (I'm sure not anyway).

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

Goes a bit further back than 2018. Jay Cutler had like 4 or 5 seasons in a row with a new OC. He wasn't as good as we thought he was, but the Bears did play a hand in ruining him too. The year before arriving here in only his 2nd season as a full time starter, he threw for 4500 yards. Never sniffed that here

Jay Cutler was every bit as good as we thought he was. He was never, ever developed. We saw raw talent and toughness...imagine if someone guided him for the first 10 years of his career the way mahomes has had Andy ried...

[TheJordanRule]

FWIW, these are the same types of things Bears fans have lambasted past coaching staffs for doing for both Caleb and Fields in the past. I don't know what the right answer is to these things, but Bears fans have historically always been upset by not giving the QB a chance when you try to simplify things for them. Not that we should care what Bears fans think vs what generate the best results. Fans are rarely in position to fully understand what that is (I'm sure not anyway).

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

Goes a bit further back than 2018. Jay Cutler had like 4 or 5 seasons in a row with a new OC. He wasn't as good as we thought he was, but the Bears did play a hand in ruining him too. The year before arriving here in only his 2nd season as a full time starter, he threw for 4500 yards. Never sniffed that here

At the end of the day, Jay Cutler was damn good though. After he was gone to Miami, I ended up missing his presence and performance on our roster. I know Jay was streaky sometimes, but when he got hot there was no one who could outduel him. He was a gunslinger matching freaking HOFers step for step ala Aaron Rodgers, and back in 2010, which doesn't feel that long ago, he was the missing X factor. Our offense was not high octane after they hit him and hurt him. We don't lose the NFC championship if that stupid play doesn't happen. And I often wonder what Jay would have done if we gave him some decent protection from the OL. I mean we ended up just straight up dumping him, but Jay could still play right down to his final day in uniform.

[fleet]

Not liking all the rumblings about having issues about both tackle spots, particularly left tackle.

The new o-line coach just called out both the left and right tackles, oye. I think they’re pushing all the buttons, and with that, there are also legitimate issues.

Think it’s more creating competition to see who rises and how they respond to the pressure. I like it too.

It’s one thing to create competition in camp. Its another to call guys out in media. There’s genuine frustration going on. I don’t have a problem with it either. But if everything was going well, we wouldn’t be seeing this all this stuff.

[TheJordanRule]

You know, while we're at it, Mitch wasn't that bad either. Why on earth did we straight up dump these good QBs onto the open market? Most teams I know get compensation when they lose a good QB. Is throwing them away always the best we can do?

[MAQ]

You know, while we're at it, Mitch wasn't that bad either.

Nah, mitch was bad.

[Dominator83]

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

Goes a bit further back than 2018. Jay Cutler had like 4 or 5 seasons in a row with a new OC. He wasn't as good as we thought he was, but the Bears did play a hand in ruining him too. The year before arriving here in only his 2nd season as a full time starter, he threw for 4500 yards. Never sniffed that here

At the end of the day, Jay Cutler was damn good though. After he was gone to Miami, I ended up missing his presence and performance on our roster. I know Jay was streaky sometimes, but when he got hot there was no one who could outduel him. He was a gunslinger matching freaking HOFers step for step ala Aaron Rodgers, and back in 2010, which doesn't feel that long ago, he was the missing X factor. Our offense was not high octane after they hit him and hurt him. We don't lose the NFC championship if that stupid play doesn't happen. And I often wonder what Jay would have done if we gave him some decent protection from the OL. I mean we ended up just straight up dumping him, but Jay could still play right down to his final day in uniform.

He had no OL and no receiving core. The talent was brutal. That sunday night game vs the Giants he ate 10 sacks in the 1st half and they weren't even blitzing! Then i remember a Monday night game at Detroit, when he had to stick out a stiffarm while dropping back on every snap. Bad receivers, bad line, bad coaching. all of the above

[Bulls69]

You know, while we're at it, Mitch wasn't that bad either.

Nah, mitch was bad.

He was very bad he couldn't read a defense to save his life.


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[Dresden]

Cutler had some good receivers- Brandon Marshall, Martellus Bennet, and a few others. That was one of the best group of receivers we ever had.

[dice]

Tea Leaves have Braxton Jones is your starter .

How good coaches get on players who are not playing at elite levels all the time:

1. Tell the player individually

Still not up to standard?:
2. Tell player in front of team

Still not up to standard?:
3. Tell the media about the players needed improvement.

Still not getting it? Theo Benedict, get in there, because he has done it the right way and earned at shot with the 1s. Likely Canadian eagle can’t block, Sweat and Grady but sends the right message.

Braxton starter:
Ozzy - swing tackle so need to get him reps on right side.
Kiran - Roushar likes him early in camp but hasn’t been healthy, so Braxton and his 40plus starts gets the nod.

think i heard the same from thayer today

[dice]

This seems like an overstatement to me. Monty is not better in Detroit than he was here. Detroit is a better team, to be sure, but it's not like Monty was unproductive as a Bear. He's the same guy. Fields didn't pan out in Pittsburgh last year. If you think on his third team he's suddenly going to resurrect his career, well, I just disagree.

Odunze seems like he's going to hit. Kiran, IMO, is too early to tell, but last. year was not good. Roschon is not unplayable - I don't know where that is coming from - but he's also unremarkable. Velus and Scott are misses, to be sure.

From a draft perspective, it's not that Poles hasn't hit on offensive picks, he just hasn't made a lot of them. Only 8 of his 26 draft picks have been used on offensive players. They are:

Caleb
Odunze
Kiran
Wright
Velus
Jones
Kramer
Carter

Only two of those picks, relative to their draft position, can really be viewed as failures at this point. That doesn't seem to be an abnormal hit rate to me.

From a trade perspective, he's been a mixed bag. DJ Moore trade - good. Chase Claypool trade - bad. Keenan Allen trade - meh. Allen was productive and a good security blanket for Caleb last year, but you traded a pick for a guy you didn't end up wanting to re-sign.

In free agency, it's also a mixed record. I feel good about the moves Poles made to shore up the offensive line this past offseason, but obviously it's too early to tell. The UDFA signing of Bagent is an obvious hit. Nate Davis was a big miss. Lucas Patrick was a miss.

He's definitely not been amazing at identifying offensive talent, but not a total failure, either. You wonder these days if Ben Johnson will actually be the bigger offensive personnel voice (I assume he will be).

I think that's a more objective and balanced look at what Poles has done. He's had misses, but so has every GM. I think it's the first 2-3 rounds of the draft that are the most important, and he's had a decent record there, adding players like Darnell Wright, Gordon, Brisker, Tyrique, Odunze. The jury is still out on Caleb, Loveland, and the 3 seconds he had this year. But assuming most of them work out, that is a pretty solid core. And the people that are so damning of Poles never seem to mention the single best thing he's done- turning Bryce Young into Caleb, DJ Moore, Wright, Stevenson, Burden and Taylor....oh, but that was just dumb luck.

Yeah, people love to say the Bryce Young trade was just luck, but that's ridiculous. The luck component was that the future first ended up being #1 - that's a better outcome than would have been predicted, but the rest of the haul was so great that the trade would have still been a coup even if the pick last year was #5 or whatever.

the caveat is that the bears could reasonably have taken stroud

anyway...the #1 was traded for DJ on reasonable contract and a few valuable picks. in comparison to the recent history of similar trades leaguewide, it looked pretty good at the time and still does. how well the draft picks received pan out doesn't speak to the wisdom/execution of the trade itself

[dice]

Certain things like getting sacked a lot, pre snap reads and post snap processing time, those tend to be features difficult to discard. Ben will need to coach around. Give Caleb less decisions to make on his drops than he had last season. Less field to scan, because he’s going to get frozen. My prediction months ago was that by and large Caleb would be pretty similar this year to what we have seen from him to this point. That was before Ben Johnson was hired though. See what he can do. Things like deep ball accuracy should be easier to work on. In between broken plays, a strong play action/run game, getting Caleb to take check downs and to be more accurate on deep balls will help a lot. I can’t believe we are having this stuff on our menu again.

FWIW, these are the same types of things Bears fans have lambasted past coaching staffs for doing for both Caleb and Fields in the past. I don't know what the right answer is to these things, but Bears fans have historically always been upset by not giving the QB a chance when you try to simplify things for them. Not that we should care what Bears fans think vs what generate the best results. Fans are rarely in position to fully understand what that is (I'm sure not anyway).

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

teams drafting #1 are usually in dysfunction. none plan to fire their coach a year later. should they start fresh w/ new coach as a default approach? maybe. harbaugh would have been a more than reasonable choice

[fleet]

Caleb believes in Caleb

Read on Twitter

[Susan]

Bears fans at this point should fully understand that drafting a QB to a lame duck head coach and then asking them to learn a completely different system in year two is a recipe for disaster.

This is literally the third time that you've had a second year QB being asked to have to completely redo his fundamentals and on top of that learn a complete new system.

Bears fans aren't a bunch of damn morons without an ounce of historical context - we've seen this song and dance multiple times now and the lack of continuity has been a major factor in the slow development of their QBs since 2018. You can look around the NFL and point to the coaching staff disfunction of other young QBs (Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, even Mac Jones had his development stifled by switching OCs in year 2) and see that the Bears "plan" since 2018 is clearly not the ideal plan to develop a QB.

Not sure our methodology did those guys any favors, but the last two guys look like they simply aren't that good. I don't think they were a different coaching setup away from being successful, though that question is always a chicken or an egg thing. Lack of developing a QB is also a reason head coaches tend to get fired regardless of whether the issue is with the coach or the QB.

Situation matters, having a plan and following it is key to anything in life and in each instance they had the plan blow up in their face by October.

Then the second season it's been a completely new plan with a completely new coaching staff.

It's been a complete organizational failure.

[Susan]

Caleb believes in Caleb

Read on Twitter

He really lacks the maturity to be a leader at this point in his life.

[nomorezorro]

[molepharmer]

Good news on injury front.....Shemar Turner is in pads for the joint practice against Bills.

Caleb looking good in 7 vs 7; 9 of 10 completions, mostly short quick passes

[TheJordanRule]

You know, while we're at it, Mitch wasn't that bad either.

Nah, mitch was bad.

He was very bad he couldn't read a defense to save his life.


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How can you say that brother? Mitch was a Pro Bowler in 2019. We gave up on Mitch almost immediately after that glorious year when we should have focused on improving the OL and receivers situation instead. I know we passed up Mahomes to get him, and Mitch was never gonna be Mahomes, but he was a young star QB in his own right at the time we decided to go our separate way away from him. In hindsight, I just think that we were too damn impatient. He was good to the point of reaching the Pro Bowl at such a young age. What else did we want from him? He's still a record holder at the QB spot for our franchise. Wasted potential, if you ask me.

[TheJordanRule]

Goes a bit further back than 2018. Jay Cutler had like 4 or 5 seasons in a row with a new OC. He wasn't as good as we thought he was, but the Bears did play a hand in ruining him too. The year before arriving here in only his 2nd season as a full time starter, he threw for 4500 yards. Never sniffed that here

At the end of the day, Jay Cutler was damn good though. After he was gone to Miami, I ended up missing his presence and performance on our roster. I know Jay was streaky sometimes, but when he got hot there was no one who could outduel him. He was a gunslinger matching freaking HOFers step for step ala Aaron Rodgers, and back in 2010, which doesn't feel that long ago, he was the missing X factor. Our offense was not high octane after they hit him and hurt him. We don't lose the NFC championship if that stupid play doesn't happen. And I often wonder what Jay would have done if we gave him some decent protection from the OL. I mean we ended up just straight up dumping him, but Jay could still play right down to his final day in uniform.

He had no OL and no receiving core. The talent was brutal. That sunday night game vs the Giants he ate 10 sacks in the 1st half and they weren't even blitzing! Then i remember a Monday night game at Detroit, when he had to stick out a stiffarm while dropping back on every snap. Bad receivers, bad line, bad coaching. all of the above

Damn, 10 sacks at the half. That's how we treated this man. And I completely ignored all of the adversity when I was younger, just thinking Jay was just some mediocre guy. Well, it's so many decades later, and we're still hoping that one of these kids we draft will eventually match his production someday. Sad.

[Susan]

https://chicago.suntimes.com/bears/2025/08/14/bears-training-camp-caleb-williams-book-bill-belichick-sean-payton-concerns-usc-ryan-poles-nfl

Payton saw something similar. Despite seeing “all the elements of a prodigy, including the vibe of being a legend in his own mind,”

Payton’s worries went beyond completion percentage.

“His primary concerns with Williams are existential,” Wickersham wrote. “Williams has yet to be broken in his life.”

Payton liked Williams’ arm, but—per Wickersham—questioned the QB’s processing speed and how he’d handle failure,

"Legend in his own mind" is precisely the vibe of somebody that would re-post that video. Dude won 5 games last year.

Listen, I hope I'm wrong but to me as just a person who's been paying attention to this dude for 3+ years now it appears he completely lacks humility and shifts blame away from himself when tough times hit.