DawgTalkers.net Forums The Archives 2021 NFL Season Looking Back: Browns 26 Bears 6 What I saw Chicago Bears

Baker looked erratic at times... especially the beginning, but the Bears front was giving us fits all game.

That was as tough of a front as we'll face all year. I don't see any team giving us more fits than they did.

Hicks can still play. That's for sure.

Pay close attention to Bakers footwork you'll find the reason for some of the throws he made that had you scratching your head..

Still by and large he played well, but he sorta reverted at times to old habits I am sure the coaches are talking to him about it?

I saw that, too. He leaned heavily on his back foot on a few passes that sailed over their targets. I know that AVP is a big footwork guy, so I have to imagine it was/will be a point of emphasis this week.

Let me ask you this. If an opponent is ranked #24 against the pass and #5 against the run, do you still propose we rely on the run? Or do you try to expose your opponents weakness and rely on the pass to open up the run?

You see, I've always been a proponent of exploiting the weakness of your opponent. We have great weapons in both the run game and pass game to do either depending on who we are facing.

Solid thinking for a solid attack. Sensible and logical. But there is also an old-school approach that wants to challenge the strongest guys on defense, the newer approach to run right at their toughest position player because they may well run you down from behind or pursue incredibly. Some of it was especially against "monster" defenses. Go after the monster and see if it is all the monster it is cracked up to be. It seems counterintuitive, but it is pure football. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, yawn, heard it. But what if you can shatter its strongest link? It follows that you should be able to do many more things to many more people in many ways.
Never underestimate opponents. But do not give them too much credit, especially unchallenged and unearned credit. Prove the monsters are indeed monsters. We didn't manage to win all up and down the line. But we did measure them and wear them down.

I guess one can choose to accomplish the same goal in the most difficult way possible or they can use an opponents biggest weakness to exploit them.

My example really had nothing to do with overestimating your opponents. What is described is taking the facts and statistics at hand (statistics based on actual NFL performances) to decide the easiest way to exploit their weaknesses.

I mean you can use a hand saw to cut down a tree but it's much easier to use a chain saw.

When you use analytics you try to look at the evidence at hand and exploit those numbers to reach your goal. Taking the hardest approach to accomplish your goal is not the intended purpose.

Hunt runs like each time he has the ball it will be for the last time.

Baker and his footwork and accuracy go completely off the rails when under pressure. The Bears knew that and took advantage of it and it showed.

That's interesting and hopefully something to improve on ... I'd be interested to see that same group of stats for other QB's. I imagine some are a lot better - I'd imagine a lot are equally affected. I think it's definitely an area where 6'1" comes into play and has an impact.

I was just going to ask that.

Placements don't tell the entire story IMO...

I remember a couple defenses who were godawful against the run.

But the pass defense looked good via placement...

But what was telling was...

what it really meant was that teams didn't need to throw on that Defense and didn't because they could control the clock and rn all up and down the field.

One thing we need to take in to account with the completion percentage is there are number of passes just tossed away.

You don't have as many passes under pressure as you do without, so just chucking away 2-3 balls a game is a large part of the lower percentage. Even 1-2 can show a significant increase in percentage.

Additionally, Baker started off bad and then kind of recovered. Those first couple drives of ours (4th downs and all) were kind of a cluster, and Baker looked erratic. His completion % after those first drives was real low, but he did bring it back over the rest of the game.

I think that adds a little context to the numbers.

Indeed, and I should have said decrease in completion percentage.

What is the timeframe of these stats? Is this the first 3 games of this season? Last year? His whole career?

After reading your entire post you seemed to sell the fact we do both the run and the pass well and can adapt to either depending on the opponent and the game situation. Then at the end of your post you seem to indicate to do what we do best. I think we have so much talent in both the passing game and the running game there is no "best".

The problem with info graphics is there is no point of comparison to other players.

But I suspect that Baker has done better than Lawrence, Wilson, Jones and Fields.

Well if he wasn't outplaying a bunch of rookies who all went to pretty bad teams, then I would say that is a pretty big problem.

they even put the word "analytics" in there without there being any analysis.

In a nutshell, much of these "advanced" stats are just as poor at painting a picture, and just as poorly used, as all the old standard stats.
No statistic, without context, ever tells anyone anything meaningful.

I saw Greg Olsen and thought: "He could be Sam Darnold's Dad. Very similar looking guys.

I saw Billings not get a snap.

I saw Baker & OBJ have some connection...not Higgins-like, but definitely there. OBJ's 1st, 1st down and the back-shoulder throw.

I saw the Bears selling out to stop Chubb, but have little answer for Hunt. Was Roquan Smith spying Chubb?

I saw a Browns D that smelled blood in the water.

I saw Baker start 9/16 and end 19/31. He did just what we needed...albeit with a couple quakers that are unusual for him. I think his shoulder hurts more than he's letting oh.

I saw a FG kicker who left me not a nervous wreck.

I saw way too many OLine penalties.

The stat that I would like to see, is Air Passing Yards. (Passing yards - Yards After Catch)

The QB dumps the ball off on a screen, the player runs 80 yards for a TD, well those are all passing yards and it looks like a bomb on the stat sheet.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Higgins-like" but I have hardly even seen Higgins. So far for the season Higgins has had 4 receptions for 51 yards and no TD's. Baker and OBJ connected for better stats than that in one game.

But I'm certainly hoping based on that one game that Higgins starts looking more "OBJ-like".

I'm just referencing the trust that Baker has in Higgins - not referencing production at this point.

Baker has made some great throws to DPJ as well that shows Baker has confidence in him as well.

Baker makes a lot of "anticipation" throws...oftentimes the Higgins targets are those type of throws. Getting "there" with a guy with OBJ's physical talents will be a great thing to see.

Higgins made some tough catches in the Bears game. His usage has been going up each week, IIRC (granted, tough for it to go down).

Higgins has never been a huge production guy, but thinking back to last year.. it just seems like when we had a critical 3rd and 8 to sustain a drive, he got targeted a lot in those types of situations. He was definitely a quality over quantity WR and made quite a few clutch catches.