Week One - Bears vs Packers.

[RJ_11]

59 minutes ago, Sugashane said:

Exactly. Plus Howard seems (though I have no stats to verify it) to run better out of the shotgun as well. Other than Whitehair's snaps it seems to be best for everyone.

Yeah he does. A friend of mine had Warren Sharpe's 2018 football preview with him at the weekend and was reading the Bears' section of that. Can't remember the exact numbers but they said last season Howard averaged about 6 ypc in shotgun and 4 ypc under center.

And FWIW, yeah get me on the move Daniels to C and Whitehair to LG bandwagon (think we've all been on it since April). Those high snaps are completely throwing off the timing of the whole offense.

[Sugashane]

1 hour ago, RJ_11 said:

Yeah he does. A friend of mine had Warren Sharpe's 2018 football preview with him at the weekend and was reading the Bears' section of that. Can't remember the exact numbers but they said last season Howard averaged about 6 ypc in shotgun and 4 ypc under center.

And FWIW, yeah get me on the move Daniels to C and Whitehair to LG bandwagon (think we've all been on it since April). Those high snaps are completely throwing off the timing of the whole offense.

Ah, nice. I was hoping JAF or someone with access to more detailed stats (or isn't as lazy, whatever you choose) wasn't going to come in with proof that I was 'bass ackwards.' lol

[JAF-N72EX]

9 hours ago, Superman(DH23) said:

The base offense is shotgun.  Unless you want to completely throw away the rpo offense this team has been built for.  Either Whitehair needs to improve the snaps or he had to go to lg, but we arent going to blame the coach for calling the offense they have spent 6 months installing.

First of all, there's no such thing as shotgun based offense. Almost every team in the league run more plays out of the Shotgun formation nowadays regardless of scheme. 

Nagy's base is a spread offense and the RPO is just a concept that largely relies on the Shotgun, but it is not solely dependent on it. Nor is the RPO going to be ran on every play either. The Rams ran RPO plays last year and they ran 58% of their plays from under center. WAY higher the league average (42%). Atlanta went to the Super Bowl in 2016 and they ran some RPO's as well while running 61% of their plays from under center. Again the RPO is only a concept, not a scheme.

And nobody suggested to throw anything away. Stop with the exaggerations. I simply said adjustments needed to be made and they were not. That does not mean throw away the play book mid-game just because Whitehair can't snap a ball, that would be ridiculous. You can work around it, and one way to do that would've been to make the adjustments at half-time and run less plays from the shotgun formation. Kind of like other teams who run a similar offense like KC and PHI did during their games this week.

Team % of plays
TM - Under Center | Shotgun
1st Half
PHI- 7% | 93% <-------------This team won
KC - 12%| 88%<-------------This team won
CHI- 25%| 75%<-------------This team lost 

2nd Half
PHI- 21%| 79%<-------------This team ran 14% less plays from shotgun in the 2nd half than they did in the 1st.
KC - 31%| 69%<-------------This team ran 19% less plays from shotgun in the 2nd half than they did in the 1st.
CHI- 18%| 82%<-------------This team ran 7% MORE plays from shotgun in the 2nd half than they did in the 1st.

^Whats wrong with this picture here.

Nagy made it easier for the defense to identify what he was doing on offense going into the 2nd half and could have killed two birds with one stone. Make the half-time adjustments to keep the offense unpredictable by running less plays from the shotgun formation while also masking Whitehair's snap issues. Just my opinion.

[JAF-N72EX]

2 hours ago, RJ_11 said:

Yeah he does. A friend of mine had Warren Sharpe's 2018 football preview with him at the weekend and was reading the Bears' section of that. Can't remember the exact numbers but they said last season Howard averaged about 6 ypc in shotgun and 4 ypc under center.

And FWIW, yeah get me on the move Daniels to C and Whitehair to LG bandwagon (think we've all been on it since April). Those high snaps are completely throwing off the timing of the whole offense.

I like Warren, he's a sharp guy(no-pun intended) but his SR % is a little flaky.

I think either your friend mis-read something or you may have mis-understood him. Whatever the case, Howard only ran the ball 35 times last season from shotgun formation vs 242 from under center. So keep that in mind. 

Here are the numbers.

Jordan Howard (2017)
UC - 242 Att, 946 yards, 3.9 ypc, 23 10+ yard runs, 6TD
SG -   35 Att, 166 yards, 4.7 ypc, 09 10+ yard runs, 3TD

Tarik Cohen (2017)
UC - 69 Att, 294 yards, 4.3 ypc, 7 10+ yard runs, 1TD
SG - 17 Att,   88 yards, 5.2 ypc, 4 10+ yard runs, 1TD

League Avg/Totals (2017)
UC - 8,585 Att, 33,352 yards, 3.9 ypc, 809 10+ yard runs, 240TD
SG - 3,596 Att, 15,669 yards, 4.4 ypc, 381 10+ yard runs,  87TD

[JAF-N72EX]

More nerd stats for the hell of it.

CHI	Shotgun DVOA	Rank	Shotgun Yd/Play	Rank	Not Shotgun DVOA	Rank	Not Shotgun Yd/Play	Rank	Dif DVOA	Rank	Dif Yd/Play	Rank
OFF	-6.10%	21	4.2	28	3.90%	12	5.5	14	-10.00%	23	-1.3	28
DEF	0.70%	17	6.6	22	-91.80%	1	1	1	92.50%	30	5.6	32

Bears defensive DVOA in the 1st half ranked 1st in the league with a -124.2% rating. (Last season, the highest rated defense in a single game were the Ravens in week 1 with a -89.5% rating.)
Bears defensive DVOA in the 2nd half ranked 32nd in the league with a + 76.50% rating. (4th Q DVOA was + 176.40%). That's depressing.

Bears offensive DVOA in each Q. Ouch.

1st Q	2nd Q	3rd Q	4th Q
+43.30%	-102.50%	-0.40%	-13.10%

[beardown3231]

Not sure where to put this, but Wagner showed up on the injury report today and KJ Wright’s been on it, and just now Seattle signed Mychal Kendricks & Schefter is saying he will start on Monday.

[Superman(DH23)]

10 hours ago, WindyCity said:

Mitch's 4th quarter

1st Down: Howard 5 yard run
2nd Down: High Snap Howard 4 yard run
3rd Down: Sims runs a 6" route

I have no issues with what Mitch did here. This drive should have kept going if Dion Sims did not suck.

FG Drive

1st-Howard 8 yard wheel route compleition
2nd-Howard 1 yard run
3rd-Trubisky runs the lead for a 1st down

1st-Howard 0 yards
2nd-Trubisky 8 yard run after Wilkerson pressure
3rd-Cohen 7 yard run

1st-Howard 3 yard run
2nd-Howard 0 yard run
3rd-Trubisky scrambles right and completes 12 yard pass to Miller

1st-Howard 22 yards

1st-Blown Snap lose of 3
2nd-Howard 8 yard run
3rd-Trubisky misses the wheel route on what was an incredibly stupid play call

-Trubisky converted 3 3rd downs on his own
-He had 1 bad read and incompletion on the drive.
-There were 7 off target snaps on the drive

-The drive was 14 plays, 61 yards, took 6:50 seconds off the clock, and they kicked a FG to go up 6. That should win the game with this defense. Most teams would kill for that in a 4th quarter where they are leading.

Mitch did not play poorly in the 4th quarter, he played poorly in the 2 minute drill.

The wheel route wasnt a bad call.  They got the exact look they were looking for, you had Tarik Cohen being single covered by an edge olb.  I'll take that matchup everytime.  Collinsworth actually did a good job calling out how that guy did an excellent job to stay in coverage with Cohen into the endzone

[WindyCity]

13 hours ago, Superman(DH23) said:

The wheel route wasnt a bad call.  They got the exact look they were looking for, you had Tarik Cohen being single covered by an edge olb.  I'll take that matchup everytime.  Collinsworth actually did a good job calling out how that guy did an excellent job to stay in coverage with Cohen into the endzone

Based on the situation it was the wrong call. Run on 3rd down kills more clock and then you can throw on 4th down if you want.

Stopping the clock and kicking a FG was like putting it on a tee for Rodgers.

Normally I would agree with you, but in this context it was different.

[chisoxguy7]

58 minutes ago, WindyCity said:

Based on the situation it was the wrong call. Run on 3rd down kills more clock and then you can throw on 4th down if you want.

Stopping the clock and kicking a FG was like putting it on a tee for Rodgers.

Normally I would agree with you, but in this context it was different.

Exactly this. Horrible situational game management. It was a high risk, low reward decision.

[TankWilliams]

15 hours ago, beardown3231 said:

Not sure where to put this, but Wagner showed up on the injury report today and KJ Wright’s been on it, and just now Seattle signed Mychal Kendricks & Schefter is saying he will start on Monday.

How is Kendricks not already suspended? 

[beardown3231]

4 hours ago, WindyCity said:

Based on the situation it was the wrong call. Run on 3rd down kills more clock and then you can throw on 4th down if you want.

Stopping the clock and kicking a FG was like putting it on a tee for Rodgers.

Normally I would agree with you, but in this context it was different.

And I agree with you also. A wheel route that deep in that part of the field to a 5'6 player with a rangy OLB on him is difficult enough but in that situation it was especially challenging to comprehend. Next time, they can run that where Cohen can get even more open with more room to throw.

[Superman(DH23)]

On 9/14/2018 at 9:22 AM, WindyCity said:

Based on the situation it was the wrong call. Run on 3rd down kills more clock and then you can throw on 4th down if you want.

Stopping the clock and kicking a FG was like putting it on a tee for Rodgers.

Normally I would agree with you, but in this context it was different.

I could see that, and that would probably be my call as well.  But the play itself got the exact look, and the exact coverage it was designed for, so I can't fault the call to much.  We sometimes forget the guys on the other side get paid to make plays as well

[Uncle Buck]

One thing to remember is that Nagy is technically a "rookie" as a head coach too.  He will get more accustomed to everything as he gets a little experience.  I still like the Bears' chances to make the playoffs this year and without a doubt next year.

[Sugashane]

1 hour ago, Uncle Buck said:

One thing to remember is that Nagy is technically a "rookie" as a head coach too.  He will get more accustomed to everything as he gets a little experience.  I still like the Bears' chances to make the playoffs this year and without a doubt next year.

Exactly. It is easy to make a knee-jerk reaction but it is one game, against a HOF QB. This is only his 7th game calling plays. He might have been Pace's number one guy but growing pains were still expected. This is one, hopefully it sticks in the back of Nagy's mind so he can keep the pedal to the metal from here on out. 

 

Fangio needs to know when to break his usual protocol too. When you take Rodgers' mobility away and still don't try to send extra pressure, you help compensate for a major part of his game that he couldn't rely on. 

[JAF-N72EX]

1 hour ago, Uncle Buck said:

One thing to remember is that Nagy is technically a "rookie" as a head coach too.  He will get more accustomed to everything as he gets a little experience.  I still like the Bears' chances to make the playoffs this year and without a doubt next year.

I got nothing to add to this except that you guys had better beat the brakes off of them. ANYONE but the Packers can win the division.