The good, the bad, and the Trubisky

I would take a game like this (10-3) over a 38-35 win anytime.  

Not sure how good the Bears offense is, but the Packers D came to play.   I think it’s easy to forget what a good defense can look like and I know it’s early but the Packers were very solid defensively.  

Regarding the Packers offense, I was not that surprised they struggled.  Chicago has an elite defense and the offense is going to need some time to gel.   In the long run I think they will be just fine. 

Lots of positives namely the Smiths, the two new safeties, a healthy Kevin King out there, JK Scott (damn!) and Martinez. 

The OL needs some work and wasn’t excited about all the penalties but getting this win was a big deal.   A road victory against the team you will most likely be battling for the division is huge.  It’s almost like 2 wins. You figure out a way to beat the Vikings next week and that would be a great way to start the season. 

Somebody can play defense......

Also, from twitter:  Every trubisky incompletion is better when you remember the bears traded up from the third spot to draft him second overall in the draft with Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.

++

Second biggest play of the game

JK SCOTT #BamaProduct pic.twitter.com/jsk9OikJzm

— #FlashSZN (@ftbeard_17) September 6, 2019

Pakrz posted:

vitaflo posted:

Heads up play of the game was Rodgers not taking a timeout and taking the delay of game.  It meant we kept our timeout and allowed MLF to challenge that horrible Bears "catch" later in the game.

If Rodgers would have tried to take a quick timeout when he noticed he wasn't going to get the snap off it could have been an entirely different game.

Yep.  At the time I was pissed... turns out Rodgers is much smarter me.  

He was also giving Opie more room on the punt.

++++++  No more BearBite sightings for an entire year.   TBSS!!!!!

I was frustrated with Scott last year-thought he was a wasted pick-he was the MVP yesterday...That Bears Defense is stifling-so that win is a sweet one---I see Ha Ha had 5 tackles, I don't remember them-

El-Nuke-the-Hurricanes-Bong posted:

Second biggest play of the game

JK SCOTT #BamaProduct pic.twitter.com/jsk9OikJzm

— #FlashSZN (@ftbeard_17) September 6, 2019

I like how Collinsworth is trying to setup the dramatic return.  Seriously, it was ridiculous how badly the NFL and NBC were scripting this as a Bears coming out party for the 100 season.  It just fits a lovely narrative. 

One problem Goodell, they still have to play the games and you can't fully control the outcome yet.

The good?  DEFENSE!  It was so dang sweet to see the defense win a game for the Packers.  And the excitement on the sidelines towards the Angry Bald Man was also good to see.  

Any win over the Bore is a beautiful thing.  Doesn't matter if it is by one point or 50 it is just fine by me.  Oh and any misery the FIBs experience makes it even better.

Johnson posted:

I was frustrated with Scott last year-thought he was a wasted pick-he was the MVP yesterday...That Bears Defense is stifling-so that win is a sweet one---I see Ha Ha had 5 tackles, I don't remember them-

 

The most movement I have seen out of Ha Ha, in the past two years, was when he tried to recover the ball after it hit the ground and bounced off the Packer receiver's toe.

Great game. Defense looked like everything we hoped for, and offense looked like everything we expected, after wisely not playing all pre-season.  

Biggest positives:

—that the team was mostly all there and healthy (except EQ and the ILB’s). 

—defense looked well-coached and assignment sure for the most part. 

—Bears fans booing their own team in the first half. The joy that sound brought was magical, like Christmas morning for a kid or something. 

—Bears punt returner having to turn around to chase down Opie’s 63 yarder.  Boom!

Negatives:

None. Seriously, even the penalties and ineffective offense were entirely expected and worth not having risked the starters to injury in the pre-season. 

Obviously can’t read too much into Week 1 of the NFL, but the season is off to a promising start.

And an extra 3 days to get ready for the Queens!

Jimmy Graham also played his best game as a Packer in this win over Chicago. A nice TD catch in traffic, hurdling the Bears defender on another play. He looked as if he were having fun, too!

+ Defense had a solid game.  I was a little concerned they might run out of gas when the Bears were moving the ball rather quickly until...

+ AAmos comes up with a timely pick. He had a very good night. This is looking like a great off-season move.

- Agree with the concerns about the pre-snap issues on offense at the line. However I look at this as part of the learning curve when you install a new offense. You would like to see this worked out in preseason but that’s not reality. 

I'm thinking Zimmer and his staff are stocking up on Depends, right now, after seeing our Defense play. 

As clunky as the offense was last night, it still generated enough on field time to make sure the D wasn't gassed.  It also helped the D did it's job and got off the field most of the time. 

mrtundra posted:

I'm thinking Zimmer and his staff are stocking up on Depends, right now, after seeing our Defense play. 

I expect them to already be in bullshit cheapshot mode.  Zimmer is no different than guys like Greg Williams.

As far as coaching, he's reverse McVince, glorified DC.

Brak posted:

Best sign?  MLF outcoached Nagy, whom I believe is a very good coach.

A good coach who needs to get out of his own way.

No negs from C-Boy. Just a huge win…

EDIT: Something occurred to me towards the end of the game. I cannot remember seeing this team play a game 'sound' in all phases. Solid special teams (was JK the MVP?), limited missed tackles, etc. Really the only reminder of the M3 regime was the bad challenge by Pretty Boy. Very refreshing…

I apologize in the prediction thread for saying it would be a low scoring game with an aAlexander INT clinching the win. Should have said Amos. My bad.

Aside from the win, it was so satisfying to see all those schmucks from the pregame show be dead wrong...except for Mike Tirico...the only one of the group who has no expertise at any level of football. 

_

MLF's challenge.

+

He knows he made a mistake and will learn from it.

“I was pretty upset with myself,” LaFleur said, via Michael Silver of NFL Media. “I saw the play live and felt like he pushed off, but it’s got to be clear and obvious for them to overturn it — and clearly, it wasn’t clear and obvious enough. I felt pretty sick. That was a big play. It could have hurt us. But thankfully, our defense bailed us out.”

For me, the only negative was the number of sacks Rodgers took. They're kind of inevitable but there are only so many chances before one causes some damage.

When a defense has a murderous pass rush like the Bears, the short passing game is the first casualty. Dbacks squat on those short routes, forcing the (smart) QB to hold the ball and avoid the interception. The downfield passing game is still the best part of the offense.

+++ Rodgers 18-4

michiganjoe posted:

_

MLF's challenge.

+

He knows he made a mistake and will learn from it.

“I was pretty upset with myself,” LaFleur said, via Michael Silver of NFL Media. “I saw the play live and felt like he pushed off, but it’s got to be clear and obvious for them to overturn it — and clearly, it wasn’t clear and obvious enough. I felt pretty sick. That was a big play. It could have hurt us. But thankfully, our defense bailed us out.”

I think the defense playing so well was probably the catalyst for him taking a risk. I foresee him being willing to take more risks this season knowing the QB he has and the defense. I hope we go for it on as many 4th downs as possible.

POSITIVES

- Game didn't look too big for MLF.  Nice not to see McCarthy's dopey look on the sideline.

- Entire defense/ Pettine .  They are going to pick off a lot of passes this year.  We easily could have ended up with two or three picks.

- Graham, Rodgers, MVS.  If Favre was playing this game he would have started chucking up interceptions in the first quarter.  Love how Rodgers protects the ball.

- Scott with incredible punting. 

NEGATIVES

- Pass protection (though this is probably the best front seven in the NFL).

- MLF challenge

grignon posted:

For me, the only negative was the number of sacks Rodgers took. They're kind of inevitable but there are only so many chances before one causes some damage.

When a defense has a murderous pass rush like the Bears, the short passing game is the first casualty. Dbacks squat on those short routes, forcing the (smart) QB to hold the ball and avoid the interception. The downfield passing game is still the best part of the offense.

 

And this was a big negative for me (related to this), was the broadcast.  I thought Collinsworth and Michaels were AWFUL.  They didn't do any sort of breakdown why this was happening (receivers covered up?, OL just beat off the line quickly?, miscommunication?).  Collinsworth was just blabbing about "one of the best in the NFL" players and little analysis.  Blech.

This isn't a defense of Trubisky AT ALL.

That said, holy shit, Nagy didn't do him any favors.

In a game where the Bears were never down more than 1 score, Nagy called 12 running plays in total, and the last 33 plays were passes.  The last called run by Nagy was with 10:20 left in the 3rd quarter.  

Never down more than 7.  That's unreal.

Grave Digger posted:

Aside from the win, it was so satisfying to see all those schmucks from the pregame show be dead wrong...except for Mike Tirico...the only one of the group who has no expertise at any level of football. 

Of course, Trico prefaced his pick by saying he thought the Bears would win but he wanted to get the lead on the other pickers.

--- Imagine how much less the Bears would have scored if the Packers starters had played during the preseason.

the hypocrisy of the media. the 2nd year bears offense was bad because of poor play calling and fundamentals so the Packers defense looked better than it actually was. Meanwhile the Packers in the 1st game with a brand new offense was bad because of the vaunted Bears defense. No credit at all to the Packers defense. Screw them. Just do the same thing against the Vaunted vikings offense next week and maybe the world will take notice. 

50k Club posted:

grignon posted:

For me, the only negative was the number of sacks Rodgers took. They're kind of inevitable but there are only so many chances before one causes some damage.

When a defense has a murderous pass rush like the Bears, the short passing game is the first casualty. Dbacks squat on those short routes, forcing the (smart) QB to hold the ball and avoid the interception. The downfield passing game is still the best part of the offense.

 

And this was a big negative for me (related to this), was the broadcast.  I thought Collinsworth and Michaels were AWFUL.  They didn't do any sort of breakdown why this was happening (receivers covered up?, OL just beat off the line quickly?, miscommunication?).  Collinsworth was just blabbing about "one of the best in the NFL" players and little analysis.  Blech.

Yes. This game would have been better to watch with Tony Romo doing the color commentary. Michaels is fine. 

I would have liked some comments on why the Packers one TD scoring drive was so different than the others. 4 plays, 4 completions, 74 yards and a TD. Why did Rodgers get time to throw a pass 55 yards downfield when the rest of the game he could barely complete his drop before being overrun? Collingsworth commenting the safety wasn't in that part of the field was interesting, but it wouldn't have made any difference without the protection? And then, why couldn't the Packers replicate that protection/play calling later? That's what I want to hear about. Saying Mack is good is something a middle schooler could tell you. 

Thanks in large part to Za'Darius Smith (six pressures, one sack) and Preston Smith (three pressures, 1.5 sacks), the Packers pressured Mitchell Trubisky 17 times, a total that the Packers topped only once last season according to ESPN Stats & Information. The Packers also combated playing without ILB Oren Burns (torn pec) by using safety Raven Greene in that spot in base and nickel packages. Rookie ILB Ty Summers did not play on defense, only on special teams. Here are the defensive snap counts from Thursday’s 10-3 win over the Bears:

Rob Demovsky, ESPN Staff Writer

Happy for the win as I will be the first to say that I truly believed the Bears would pull this out.  I figured with the Pack having a new offense facing the Bears strong defense, I gave the Bears about a 65% chance to win this one.  The things that turned that around were the Pack's overall good pressure on Trubisky all night and the fact that the Bears made some unforced mistakes that helped the Pack's defense out.

The coaches will have a lot of things for their guys to work on getting ready for the Vikes but it's better to find all those warts during a huge road divisional win than find them out during a loss.

Best play of the game:  Scott's incredible punt towards the end that really made things tough on the Bears to come back.

Worst play of the game:   On the Pack's final series where they tried to ice the game with another first down, Rodgers and Valdez-Scantling screw up the timing on a short pass that leads to an incompletion stopping the clock in the Bears favor.  Honestly, I want them to either work on that play 1000 times next week or find another play and perfect it to use in late game lead protection situations.  That was a terrible time to mess up a fairly simple pass like that, not sure if Rodgers was just inaccurate or Valdez Scantling didn't run the route right.  You can't miss that though, just an awful play at that time which fortunately did not come back to bite them. 

Anyone notice that the only true lb that played last night was Martinez?  Just thought that was interesting. 

Thought Raven Green played well. Another scrap heap contributor.

One other observation...that "wasted" challenge on offensive pi was not wasted. From watching the flow of that game there was a growing frustration on the part of our dbs that the bears receivers were pushing off. They were. Mlf threw the flag and from my perspective this led to the officials calling that push off that brought out the flag on what would have been a big play on the offensive pi on the bears late in the game. That is why wetting the bed in these game threads isn't worth the plastic sheets. 

Raven Green, another one of those awful UDFA. 

Good observation- it also gave them a minute or to to catch their breath. They were increasing the tempo and it was working. The hurry up was preventing the personnel groupings from changing, so that breather was as much for the D to rest as it was on the challenge itself. 

Source says overnight TV rating from last night’s Packers-Bears game is really good - up around 14-15% from last season. It should come in around a 15.3 or so.

— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) September 6, 2019

That can't be right PBOI, the talking heads have been saying this was the "stupidest match-up". It should have been NE v Pitt. "THIS IS THE NFL'S FAULT - THEY GOT WHAT THEY DESERVE!!!!"

The Bear's Brain Trust (sic) may have had as much to do with the Pack victory as the effort the Green & Gold put in:

0 - Number of carries for Tarik Cohen.
1 - Number of carries for David Montgomery in the second half
53 - Number of dropbacks for Mitchell Trubisky.

Bears fell into the trap.