2021 NFL Season Thread

[Chisoxfn]

25 minutes ago, nitetrain8601 said:

Leftwich to Jax

Makes a lot of sense. Smart, low risk hire for an org needing change. The fact he used to be there and dealt with that injury etc and he's lucky enough to inherit a young team that despite Meyer being a fool has a QB who a year ago was viewed as a generational type talent.  

[Chisoxfn]

It is kind of crazy to think - but Bears could hire their coach as soon as tomorrow. End of the day tomorrow we will get to see if Poles is extending search at all. He met with Caldwell today, no clue on whether they even interviewed Allen, and have Colts DC and Quinn in house tomorrow. 
 

Fact Quinn pushed off/delayed his Broncos interview so he could meet with Bears makes me think Quinn is announced at some point tomorrow and we will see a joint press conference on Thursday. 

[Chisoxfn]

One thing to note: Quinn and Eberflus are both 4-3 guys. Not sure what that means for certain personnel or not. I presume Roquan and Mack are studs in both and technically Quinn I believe had some of his better years in a 4-3 as well. Quan would be the MIKE in a 4-3 right? 

[Tony]

1 hour ago, Chisoxfn said:

One thing to note: Quinn and Eberflus are both 4-3 guys. Not sure what that means for certain personnel or not. I presume Roquan and Mack are studs in both and technically Quinn I believe had some of his better years in a 4-3 as well. Quan would be the MIKE in a 4-3 right? 

Seeing what Quinn did without Mack for a lot of the season….I’d be looking to see what the market looks like for Khalil and if the Bears can’t get some draft capital back to start getting the O-Line rebuilt. 

[Chisoxfn]

6 minutes ago, Tony said:

Seeing what Quinn did without Mack for a lot of the season….I’d be looking to see what the market looks like for Khalil and if the Bears can’t get some draft capital back to start getting the O-Line rebuilt. 

If it were me I would deal both. If they were real lucky get a 2nd this year and one next year for Mack and maybe you can get a 3rd and a future 2nd for Quinn. Probably not realistic but both are old and won’t be a part of the peak Fields era (or if Fields isn’t the guy whomever the next attempt is). I may overstate the return here - Mack might still get a first (league tends to pay big for pass rushers). 

Mack is a steal for acquiring team since bears take the brunt of the cap issues too. If I could do that and somehow sign either a good tackle or center even better. There are both on marker and than I feel better about one of Borom or Jenkins being on the other side. Saints have good tackle that might be available. 

 

[Chicago White Sox]

?

[bmags]

7 hours ago, Tony said:

Brett Veach has someone like Andy Reid he can lean on as a football mind in KC. 

Les Sneed has been GM for over a decade now with the Rams. 

The Ravens installed Eric DeCosta as GM in 2019....but Ozzie Newsome still has an office down the hall and is there as a veteran presence in the room. 

My issue is with the last regime, you had Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy together, both never holding these titles, this was both their first go at it. They reported to Ted Phillips, a guy that has no business touching anything that relates to football. On top of it, unlike most sports owners, George really has no corporate background to speak of and has never ran a successful anything, let alone billion dollar company. He was simply handed this role by mom. 

I know you've been on this crusade lately that the Bears are being treated unfairly in the media and everyone is being too hard on them, but I'm not going to apologize for wanting and expecting more from the charter franchise in the NFL. 

Um, no. 

We both feel like George is a bad owner of a football team but want a great football team. I think your solution of having George try to implement a much more complex structure where he decentralizes power across the organization and hires multiple people is going to be less likely to be successful than just hiring one person and getting out of the way.

Pair a young GM with a veteran football mind they can lean off of? Congratulations, you have created Ryan Pace and John Fox. 

The Ravens set-up is possible because they had the best executive of his era. The Bears can't recreate having Ozzie newsome (though rumor is they tried)!

I'm sure if the Bears installed a long-time, experienced GM with unquestioned credentials as president on top of this hire we would have all applauded George for installing Bill Polian as President.

Your own scenario concludes that people have trouble disagreeing with the ultimate decisionmaker, but want a GM that can relay ideas off of a President who controls his employment. That just makes the President the new GM and the GM the assistant GM.

It's just a people problem. If you get an amazing coach like Payton, he can be given personnel power and your structure of a young GM with someone to relay ideas off of works. But if you force a coach on him like John Fox, the structure is a problem. 

But bringing in experienced people isn't a bad thing, it's just the idea of putting a position over the GM I dislike. You could add in Scott Pioli or Bill Polian as a senior consultant and it gets you what you want. Put him above Poles and it's bad. Poles should have structural decisionmaking power over those people.

Ultimately it's George's fault that he sicced Fox on Pace to start, but it's Pace's fault his inner circle was a mediocre inner circle. By accounts of those whove talked to him, Poles wants to know everything and talk to everyone. Pace thought he knew everything because he knew Drew Brees. Hopefully that works with Poles, or it leads to analysis paralysis and weak decisionmaking. We'll see.

[Balta1701]

2 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

?

Is that the same Dan Quinn who was reported as the favorite for the Bears job yesterday?

[bmags]

I like that Poles has representation (repp'd by Athletes First, which is where Trace Armstrong leads the coaching side). That should lead to some additional contacts or should mean he had some pretty good info coming his way.

I wish there was a place that rostered all of the reps for these guys. Flores is with Select and Daboll is with PSR (who also reps Schoen). I guess it's not common for GMs to have representation (Pace didn't), so maybe that adds a layer of research for him.

 

[Chisoxfn]

1 hour ago, Balta1701 said:

Is that the same Dan Quinn who was reported as the favorite for the Bears job yesterday?

Yes - but I don’t reallly understand how they got that metric. How do you define the talent that was coached up to drive that stat? 

[bmags]

3 minutes ago, Chisoxfn said:

Yes - but I don’t reallly understand how they got that metric. How do you define the talent that was coached up to drive that stat? 

I think you could probably do something with DVOA rankings and expected wins. I know the 2020 Falcons (which he was fired mid season) had one of the best DVOA rankings of a 4-12 team behind only a Jim Schwartz lions team.

Performance wise it was hard to want quinn, this is more offloading my preferences to this hive NFL mind that all seem to really like Dan Quinn as a head coach. 

His defensive talent really was atrocious, and was only held together when Keanu Neal, Jones and Jarrett were healthy. They regressed to 30th this year, so it wasn't that group underperforming.

But ...everyone in the league just talks about how players love to play for him and coaches love to coach for him. Is this just Jack Del Rio pt. deux? I don't know, you have to give Quinn horses, clearly. But it was a good sign that he immediately got back and formed a top defense.

[maloney.adam]

 

[Chisoxfn]

37 minutes ago, maloney.adam said:

 

If he had Fangio or someone exciting as a DC and some good young talent set to be his OC/QB guru - I could get pretty excited with Caldwell to be honest.  

[bmags]

30 minutes ago, Chisoxfn said:

If he had Fangio or someone exciting as a DC and some good young talent set to be his OC/QB guru - I could get pretty excited with Caldwell to be honest.  

I really liked Desai, I don't think anyone could have done much more than him with that defense other than Belicheck. 

But if you did get Caldwell, I would be pumped if he could get Patrick Graham from the Giants. But Desai and Graham are similar. 

Heres my baseline for Desai that's important to note: The bears had awful pass defense, but I'm pretty sure we are going to look back at our 2021 cornerbacks the way we did at the 2017 receiver corps. Such horrible depth.

Good things he did:

- Can't find it, but saw that he had either the most or second-most "disguised coverages", when you have kindle vildor, best you can do is disguise heavily
- While this could lead to being burned a lot, I fully believe that led to more of the pressures. He bought just enough time to help his line get home, but if they didn't it was probably a touchdown unfortunately.
- Thomas Graham Jr looked awful in preseason then looked like a real cornerback at the end of the year. Trevis Gipson leaped this year. I think he may be good at developing talent.

I still wouldn't do Caldwell though.

I came here actually to post this, because I was excited by it:

 

The concern I bought into with Leftwich is the guy will have the same issue Nagy did - he has only worked under Arians. He won't have a staff. That's where I wonder if he and Poles hit it off if they can leverage the Trace Armstrong network of coaches, work on getting a vet DC and strong veteran offensive coach like a Bevell to help.

Nagy when supported by an amazing D coach damn near worked. Staff is a big part of this, and Quinn and Caldwell would bring it. It's tough man, not a great set of coaching candidates.

[Jack Parkman]

I could get behind Caldwell. Not so much with Quinn and Eberflus. 

If they go Caldwell, I'd hope he and Poles pick his OC with his successor in mind as I think he's only going to coach for 3-5 seasons. 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Jack Parkman

[maloney.adam]

 

[Chisoxfn]

12 minutes ago, bmags said:

I really liked Desai, I don't think anyone could have done much more than him with that defense other than Belicheck. 

But if you did get Caldwell, I would be pumped if he could get Patrick Graham from the Giants. But Desai and Graham are similar. 

Heres my baseline for Desai that's important to note: The bears had awful pass defense, but I'm pretty sure we are going to look back at our 2021 cornerbacks the way we did at the 2017 receiver corps. Such horrible depth.

Good things he did:

- Can't find it, but saw that he had either the most or second-most "disguised coverages", when you have kindle vildor, best you can do is disguise heavily
- While this could lead to being burned a lot, I fully believe that led to more of the pressures. He bought just enough time to help his line get home, but if they didn't it was probably a touchdown unfortunately.
- Thomas Graham Jr looked awful in preseason then looked like a real cornerback at the end of the year. Trevis Gipson leaped this year. I think he may be good at developing talent.

I still wouldn't do Caldwell though.

I came here actually to post this, because I was excited by it:

 

The concern I bought into with Leftwich is the guy will have the same issue Nagy did - he has only worked under Arians. He won't have a staff. That's where I wonder if he and Poles hit it off if they can leverage the Trace Armstrong network of coaches, work on getting a vet DC and strong veteran offensive coach like a Bevell to help.

Nagy when supported by an amazing D coach damn near worked. Staff is a big part of this, and Quinn and Caldwell would bring it. It's tough man, not a great set of coaching candidates.

I like Desai as well - so I wouldn't have an issue if we stuck with him, but I only throw out other names because no matter what I feel like the HC has to get assistants he trusts.  If that is Desai awesome - he seems like a bright young coordinator...same with Graham. I am also good with someone like Fangio who probably doesn't get another HC role and you know he is really good at what he does.  

[bmags]

44 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

I could get behind Caldwell. Not so much with Quinn and Eberflus. 

If they go Caldwell, I'd hope he and Poles pick his OC with his successor in mind as I think he's only going to coach for 3-5 seasons. 

If Caldwell is here 3 years and Fields is awesome under him, I don't feel like it's a problem. If he's just Cutler level or worse, then it's an issue.

[Harry Chappas]

For some reason Caldwell feels like a John Fox move but I like Quinn.  

I have no rationale for liking Quinn other than the recent success at Dallas.

I'd like Quinn as HC and Caldwell as Asst HC and OC especially if they like his plan for Fields. 

[Chisoxfn]

I do think, whether Poles believes in Fields or not, the HC he brings in has to be 100% in on Fields and developing a culture to maximize his success. Just like I think Poles has to do as much too (whether he buys into Fields as a sure thing or not - he has to build a team to maximize the chances for a young QB to succeed (knowing he can always flip in a new young QB if Fields doesn't end up being the guy).  

But whomever the HC is - has to be 110% in. Everything they do has to be around making the most out of Fields. Not jamming some other offense or something else around him. It has to be about building the right unit for Justin Fields (and the Bears) to excel.  While Caldwell doesn't excite me - I genuinely believes he has a passion to coach Fields and it sounds like he has spent a lot of time around a vision for designing an offense built around him. I still think I would love Daboll and just hope quietly Daboll has that same passion but didn't want to overplay that hand knowing that with uncertainty when he first interviewed with Bears - he had to keep his true enthusiasm close to the vest - because he knows he has a good fall back option with the Giants.  

I really want to read that Poles met with Daboll. Just seems crazy to hire a HC when you have a young QB like Fields, without meeting with the #1 offensive based candidate out there..and I would probably say the same about Leftwich.  

[bmags]

 

35 minutes ago, Harry Chappas said:

For some reason Caldwell feels like a John Fox move but I like Quinn.  

I have no rationale for liking Quinn other than the recent success at Dallas.

I'd like Quinn as HC and Caldwell as Asst HC and OC especially if they like his plan for Fields. 

Yeah, I can't really get behind him. There is a writer at WCG with a full throated support of him which was impressive.

But I went back and was reading on "in the moment" stuff from his time in Detroit. He actually had a lot of turmoil with his offensive coordinators. Joe Lombardi sucked, and still sucks -bad hire by staley, Cooter saw success, but is insane and also couldn't run the ball, they were a terrible running team. 

Stafford did become much better with turnovers, just like flacco under him. But they were in the back half of offense for 3 out of his 4 years. 

I'm out.

 

[maloney.adam]

 

[maloney.adam]

 

[Texsox]

I wish I understood better how coordinators work with the head coach. I'm my mind the head coach should hire great coordinators and kind of get out of the way. So here I'm more concerned with who the HC brings in as the OC than what they are bringing in themselves. 

Am I way off in that?

[maloney.adam]