10 thoughts after the Chicago Bears needed all 60 minutes to finally reach the end zone with a score that was too little, too late in a 17-9 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night at Soldier Field.
1. This was the 31st game, playoffs included, the Bears have played during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’m not sure there has been a crazier week at Halas Hall, with the possible exception of the upside down events last month before the Thanksgiving Day game at Detroit. Credit to the Bears for showing up and putting together a gritty, gutsy and tough effort on defense with the entire starting secondary sidelined against a pretty darn good Vikings offense.
It is certain to be a week defensive coordinator Sean Desai will not forget anytime soon. Desai was sidelined early in the week, placed in COVID-19 protocol along with offensive coordinator Bill Lazor and special teams coordinator Chris Tabor. Desai said Friday he was optimistic he’d be cleared in time for the game, and players learned Sunday he’d be in the booth at the controls of a defense that’s had an up and down season.
The Bears did a marvelous job against the Vikings’ three-headed monster of quarterback Kirk Cousins, running back Dalvin Cook and wide receiver Justin Jefferson. Cousins completed 12 of 24 passes for only 87 yards and was picked off once by Deon Bush when Jefferson got tangled up with nickel cornerback Marqui Christian and fell down. Cook carried 28 times for 89 yards (3.2 average) with a long gain of 10. The Bears forced Minnesota to punt seven times, including its final five possessions. Jefferson was targeted 10 times and caught four passes for 47 yards, one of them a 12-yard touchdown for the first score of the game when the Vikings schemed him open against Bush.
The Vikings totaled only 193 yards of offense and were 5-for-17 on third down, meaning there weren’t many series where they went from first or second down to first down again. The Bears got after them with the pass rush: Robert Quinn and Akiem Hicks each had two sacks and linebackers Roquan Smith and Alec Ogletree played well enough that Minnesota couldn’t do too much damage against a predominant split safety look on the back end to protect recently benched second-year cornerback Kindle Vildor and rookie Thomas Graham Jr., who had spent the entire season on the practice squad.
Final word on availability came Sunday when the team learned at Halas Hall that cornerback Jaylon Johnson and strong safety Tashaun Gipson were the 13th and 14th players to be sidelined by COVID during the week. Earlier in the Week 15 prep, cornerback Artie Burns and free safety Eddie Jackson entered the protocol, as did Duke Shelley, who would have been the nickel cornerback if his hamstring was OK.
“There was no panic in the room at all,” said Bush after the game, almost more confident than you can imagine. “We really wanted to come in and show that we could play.”
Bush, a backup, made his 11th start. The rest of the secondary was unproven and this game could have had the look of a preseason affair for the Bears. But it didn’t.
Teez Tabor, who played alongside Bush at safety, was a draft bust for the Lions, making five starts for them in 2017 and 2018. He didn’t play in an NFL game the last two seasons. He made six tackles. Vildor, thrust into a starting role to begin the season, was finally benched late last month after a particularly rough patch. He played well. Graham, a sixth-round pick, was an easy cut for the Bears when it came time to trim the roster. He’d experienced a rocky training camp working his way back after opting out of the 2020 college season at Oregon. More on Graham in a little bit.
“We hear a lot of stuff — backups, practice squad players out there,” Bush said. “They’re about to come tear us up. We take offense to that because we feel like we can play. We really just huddled in this week, came together, studied extra film, made sure we were prepared for the opportunity. I really give credit to guys like Thomas Graham, Kindle, Teez, Marqui. They all put in so much work and happy to see them get the fruits of the labor, especially Thomas.
“Just wanted to go out there and not really prove to anyone else but prove to ourselves.”
Bush called it a “great game plan by Coach Desai.” “It was a great boost to have him back out there,” he added.
Being able to stop Cook from gashing the front against a seven-man box was really the key. He had some nice runs and was at 44 yards at halftime, the kind of start that sometimes can lead to bigger production as the game wears on. But the Bears were able to shore up some of the cutback lanes he found early and bottle him up. From there, they did a good job of preventing Jefferson from having a big game and that was twofold — making Cousins uncomfortable in the pocket and sticking with Jefferson in the secondary.
“A lot of credit to Sean and that defensive coaching staff and the players,” coach Matt Nagy said. “Those young kids that came out there, you could feel from the beginning they weren’t overwhelmed by anything. Dalvin Cook and Justin Jefferson are two of the better players at their position in this league right now, and Kirk Cousins I have a ton of respect for and I think he’s a hell of a quarterback.
“For our defense to come out and get the amount of three-and-outs that we got, man, that’s impressive. That’s what probably is what’s frustrating, is that you come into this game and you know you’re depleted in the secondary and you figure, ‘OK, we’ll see what happens,’ with them trying to throw the ball on you and do different things, and then we can go and score points on offense. But when you don’t score in the red zone and we had turnovers and penalties, that hurts you.”
Here’s a timeline of how the wild week went for the Bears. Since returning from Lambeau Field in the wee hours of the morning on Dec. 13, it’s been one hit after another as COVID-19 has wreaked havoc with the roster.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Monday:</mark> Placed DL Mario Edwards Jr. on reserve/COVID-19 list.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Tuesday: </mark>Placed CB Artie Burns, NT Eddie Goldman, OLB Sam Kamara on reserve/COVID-19 list.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Wednesday:</mark> Placed RT Larry Borom on reserve/COVID-19 list.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Thursday:</mark> Placed FS Eddie Jackson, WR Allen Robinson, TE Jesse James, LB Joel Iyiegbuniwe, RB Ryan Nall, WR Isaiah Coulter on reserve COVID-19 list. Nagy also announced coordinators Bill Lazor, Sean Desai and Chris Tabor entered COVID protocol. Additionally, seven players were held out of practice with a non-COVID illness.
“I talked to some of the guys this morning (and said), ‘You’ve got to understand that this is the world we live in right now,’” Nagy said Thursday. “These are the rules we’ve got to play by, and everybody has to know that at any given moment you’ve got to be ready because it’s the next-man-up mentality, not just for players but for coaches too.
“In these type of moments what you’ve got to do is try to really stay positive, take care of your body, stay together and realize that we’re not the only ones right now in that (situation).”
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Friday:</mark> Activated OL Elijah Wilkinson from reserve/COVID-19 list. Placed QB Andy Dalton, CB Duke Shelley on reserve/COVID-19 list.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Saturday:</mark> Activated NT Eddie Goldman from the reserve/COVID-19 list.
<mark class=”hl_orange”>Sunday:</mark> Placed CB Jaylon Johnson, SS Tashaun Gipson on reserve/COVID-19 list.
Monday: Nagy announced early in the morning Desai had cleared protocol and would run the defense.
The Bears didn’t have any more players placed in protocol Monday, but they also didn’t have any players cleared to return. So, they went into the game with 14 players sidelined, a list that included six starters — right tackle Larry Borom, wide receiver Allen Robinson and the entire secondary. Did Nagy hold out hope over the weekend that he’d get some bodies back with the league’s newly revised protocols?
“No, not necessarily,” he said. “There’s the different rules that they have and the different numbers they have and you can test in and get back and all this. There’s a lot going on there.”
2. I think another 1 ½ sacks would really mean the world to Robert Quinn.
I don’t know that you’re going to hear him attach a whole lot of emotion to it, but I’m willing to bet he’s be pretty fired up. Another 1 ½ sacks would tie him with Richard Dent for the single-season record in Bears history at 17 1/2. Quinn picked up two sacks in the Week 15 game to give him 16 and leave him 1 ½ behind T.J. Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers for the league lead. Another 1 ½ sacks would make Quinn the 39th player in league history to reach 100 in his career.
“I guess it’s a decent individual season,” Quinn said when asked about closing in on Dent’s 1984 mark. “Sucks we really can’t (celebrate). The record just changes. For me, it changes the whole feel about it, but I mean, I don’t know, it’s good company to be in, I’ll put it like that. Just tough to celebrate when you’re not really doing well.”
Quinn is on a heater. He has 10 ½ sacks over the last six games with at least one full sack in all six games. Even at his best earlier in his career, he was never that consistent. Quinn had an NFL-high 19 sacks in 2013 for the St. Louis Rams. They came in bunches that year. He didn’t have a stretch of more than three games in a row with a sack and was shut out in five games. Opponents are able to dial in on him now with Khalil Mack on injured reserve, and he’s still winning regularly.
So it was no surprise the 31-year-old was named to the Pro Bowl on Monday night, the third time he’s been honored in his career. It doesn’t sound like something he’s given a lot of consideration to.
“I guess back to performing like I expect myself to,” Quinn said. “I guess respect from my peers for voting me in. I’m just trying to do my job as best I can so I can keep one. It’s simple for me.”
Quinn said he found out about the Pro Bowl when he crossed paths with Nagy near the elevators at the team hotel.
“He was like, ‘Have you heard?’” Quinn said. “And I stopped and said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he told me, and I’m like, ‘OK, cool, see you at the game.’ You know, that was pretty much it.”
Back to Dent’s single-season record. The Bears have played 14 games, so Quinn could potentially pass Dent in less games or the same number. Quinn might not be chasing the record books in the Jan. 9 season finale at Minnesota with the benefit of a 17th regular-season game. It’s astounding when you consider how Quinn’s season went a year ago.
3. It was another brutal offensive game for the Bears, which has pretty much become the norm this season.
The final numbers for Justin Fields are misleading. He was 26 of 39 for 285 yards and one touchdown, a 19-yard pass to tight end Jesper Horsted on the game’s final play. It wasn’t a particularly good night passing the ball, and Robinson was sidelined and Marquise Goodwin (foot) couldn’t suit up, and then Jakeem Grant (concussion) was knocked out of the game. So, Fields was missing players he’s accustomed to playing with — and it’s not all on the rookie QB.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a game quite like this before. The Bears reached the Vikings 31-yard line on seven possessions and got to the Minnesota 21-yard line on six of those possessions. But they scored only nine points and were at three points until the clock reached :00 and Horsted hung on for the touchdown right at the goal line. The offense was pathetic in the red zone. The Bears turned the ball over on downs three times, with one effort looking like a Keystone Cops affair. Running back David Montgomery lost a fumble and Cairo Santos had a 49-yard field goal deflected at the line of scrimmage. Whatever could go wrong did go wrong in the red zone, where Fields has had his issues.
“Offensively, moving the football but just not being good in the red zone for different reasons,” Nagy said. “Whether it’s penalties, whether it’s — any of it. We have to understand that you have to score in the red zone. Field goals do you no good. Missed field goals do you no good. You need touchdowns. That’s what this came down to.”
That’s been the case so often this season and explains why the offense can’t match a solid outing when the defense is able to deliver one. Fields continues to be one read and go a lot of the time. He’s taking some back sacks at times, and that was on display here again. The Vikings didn’t pressure nearly as much as the Bears expected preparing for this game. I suspect that is because they didn’t want to create rush lanes for Fields to escape in for big gains, especially on critical downs. Fields still managed 35 yards on five carries, but he didn’t break Minnesota with a big run and my bet is coach Mike Zimmer wanted to make Fields prove he could win throwing the ball.
It’s just a giant collective letdown offensively. Fields said he feels most comfortable outside the pocket and that’s evident when you watch him play. He said the no-huddle stuff has clicked for him. Keep in mind the Bears drove 80 yards for a touchdown against some super soft Vikings’ coverage that was giving up the underneath throws.
“I think outside the pocket, I think I do pretty well there,” Fields said. “I think when we do no-huddle plays, I think our offense is very efficient doing that just because we know those plays. It’s literally no thinking. We line up and run those plays, and I know where all the answers are to whatever coverage they give us to those hurry-up offense. I think that kind of gets our offense in a rhythm.”
Maybe there’s a place for that in the weeks ahead, but you can’t expect this offense to suddenly click and turn it on for 60 minutes. Not against a good defense anyway. It’s not going to happen.
4. Thomas Graham Jr. kept it real after the kind of NFL debut he would have had a hard time dreaming about the last couple months as he toiled on the practice squad.
The sixth-round pick from Oregon had three pass breakups and seven tackles after learning Sunday that the team’s top cornerback, Jaylon Johnson, would miss the game in COVID-19 protocol.
Asked about what it was like he was placed on waivers in late August, Graham said, “Personally, once I got cut, I was butt hurt.”
Who knows? Maybe a kick in the butt helped Graham navigate the path. He credited a couple folks along the way, including Johnson, who he has known since high school when they attended camps in the Fresno, Calif., area. Johnson would often work with Graham after practice, offering tips on press man coverage techniques. Graham also credited defensive quality control assistant Ronell Williams as well.
“I knew that I didn’t show everything I needed to do during camp,” Graham said. “I made mistakes and I think the one thing that I didn’t do that they wanted me to show was consistency. That’s one thing I showed through my whole college career was a consistent corner that can go out and make plays in and out. During camp and preseason, I didn’t do enough of that. And I felt and they felt I needed to develop and it was kind of a hard truth. I took a year off of football. It was hard. Me and Ryan (Pace) talked about it. He gave me film to watch of other corners that are similar to my game. Ronell played a big part in that just helping me after practice with meetings and it was a roller coaster for me, and I’m not going to act like it was easy. It wasn’t an easy moment for me. Just eventually my confidence started growing, started making more plays in practice and I just knew whenever your opportunity comes, you’ve got to take advantage of it because God is only going to give you this chance once. It’s about what you do with it.”
Safety Deon Bush also took notice a while back.
“Now, everybody knows about him,” Bush said. “He’s been a baller. The world just didn’t know about him. Everybody sees him as a practice squad guy but he didn’t get his opportunity. Big ups to him.”
Graham broke up a pass for Vikings tight end Tyler Conklin in the end zone in the second quarter. If he had turned his hands around, it might have been an interception.
“It was a max protection look,” Graham said. “I was expecting a corner. But if someone tries to sell a route too hard, they’re not running that route. So, he tried to sell the corner too hard. He broke in. I stayed back. We knew when they get into the red zone, they like posts. They just tried to hit it off a corner-post, tried to get me off my leverage. I got there and should have turned my hands over this way to get the pick. I’ll take the pass breakup.”
Film study is just one of the things Graham has picked up from Johnson.
“Just being a professional,” Graham said. “You know who is professional as soon as you meet them and he’s one of them. He’s going to be about his business, he doesn’t care, he’s going to get his job done. He executes 99% of the jobs you put in front of him. Learning from that teaches you how to be self-disciplined, how to learn how to focus and just kind of be a better man for yourself.”
What’s next for Graham? We’ll have to see. I’d think the Bears would like to play him some more in the final three weeks. Keep in mind, this was a lot of Cover Two and split safety shells to protect the cornerbacks. So the degree of difficulty is going to go up as Graham is asked to do more. On Monday night, the moment wasn’t too big for him and he played more than well enough to earn more opportunities.
5. When your highest-paid players don’t perform as your best players, it can lead to problems.
Not necessarily on any given Sunday but over the course of the season — and the Bears are now 14 games in — it can really drag a team down. That’s clearly one of many explanations for the team’s struggles before a rash of players in COVID-19 protocol put holes in the roster. It’s a big reason the Bears fell into a five-game losing streak in October and have been unable to turn things around, now sitting at 4-10 and left to play out the string.
The Bears have 11 players with a salary cap hit of $5 million or more for 2021. Two of them — outside linebacker Khalil Mack and inside linebacker Danny Trevathan — are on injured reserve. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Bears have not gotten value this season for their investment from more than three of the 11 players: outside linebacker Robert Quinn, inside linebacker Roquan Smith and left guard Cody Whitehair. Maybe the flexibility free safety Eddie Jackson provides Desai on the back end would make him a fourth player for that list, but he’s not the impactful player he was before his second contract.
Here’s a look at the list of the team’s top cap figures this season and their contract status:
- Allen Robinson: $17.98M, unrestricted free agent
- Khalil Mack, $14.65M*, signed through 2024
- Akiem Hicks, $12M, unrestricted free agent
- Robert Quinn, $11.29M*, signed through 2024
- Eddie Goldman, $7.8M, signed through 2023
- Nick Foles, $6.67M, signed through 2022
- Roquan Smith, $6.05M, – signed through 2022
- Jimmy Graham, $5.34M*, unrestricted free agent
- Cody Whitehair, $5.2M*, signed through 2024
- Eddie Jackson, $5.09M*, signed through 2024
- Andy Dalton, $5M, unrestricted free agent
- Danny Trevathan, $5M, signed through 2022
Italics denotes player is on injured reserve, * denotes the team restructured the contract in 2021 to lower the cap hit to this figure and push more money into future years
6. Here are the 10 players that right now are scheduled to count $5 million and more against the cap in 2022.
- Khalil Mack: $30.12 million
- Robert Quinn: $17.1 million
- Eddie Jackson: $15.1 million
- Cody Whitehair: $12.3 million
- Eddie Goldman: $11.8 million
- Nick Foles: $10.7 million
- Roquan Smith: $9.7 million
- Danny Trevathan: $5.9 million
- Tarik Cohen: $5.8 million
- Andy Dalton: $5 million
These are their cap numbers right now, and obviously a ton can happen between now and the start of the new league year in March — and then even after that. Roster moves will definitely be made, perhaps one or two involving players on this list, and the team can always tinker with cap numbers to lower them and kick money into 2023 and beyond when the salary cap should shoot up considerably.
This list is troubling from the standpoint that Smith is probably the only player you can say is ascending in his career. I’m not overlooking what Quinn is accomplishing this season or what Mack, when healthy, can do. But they’re on their back nine.
This is another reminder of why it’s going to be a fascinating offseason for the franchise once it gets to the point that roster movement begins. I fully expect the Bears to release Trevathan. Foles has a guaranteed $4 million roster bonus and a $4 million base salary. I could see the Bears eating that roster bonus and moving on from him. Dalton is not under contract, but the team designed his one-year deal to spread out the cap hit. Goldman and Cohen could be potential cuts. It’s way too early to speculate on that, but they’re far from locks to be on the team in 2022, especially with those bloated numbers. If the Bears are in a full rebuild, it would not be a surprise if they don’t want to pay two pass rushers over the age of 30. That is a long way of saying this list will probably look significantly different by the end of March, but it’s instructive when you are taking a look at the roster and trying to read the crystal ball.
You would feel a lot more comfortable if the Bears were coming off of consecutive 10-win seasons and could justify some high cap hits for aging players by saying, “They had to take a shot at it with some of these higher-paid guys.” Mack, of course, was playing well before his foot injury. Four players on the list were drafted by the Bears and extended by the team. Goldman hasn’t played well, and that’s not completely surprising considering he opted out last year and there were legitimate questions if he actually wanted to resume his career. Jackson hasn’t played as well since his extension. Whitehair has been a steady lineman, and the ink wasn’t even dry on Cohen’s extension when he tore his ACL in Week 3 last season. He hasn’t played since.
7. The Bears have a fumbling problem with Justin Fields.
His 12 fumbles are the most in the NFL. The rookie had two more in this game and lost one when Vikings cornerback Cameron Dantzler knocked the ball free for a takeaway. Derek Carr of the Las Vegas Raiders and Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals have 11 fumbles. Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys has 10. Jared Goff of the Detroit Lions has lost six fumbles — the most in the league — and Fields and Prescott are next with five.
“(Dantzler) did a good job of trying to make contact and get the ball out,” Matt Nagy said. “Justin understands ball security. He’s smart with that and he’s going to continue to learn. He is a weapon at times with being able to use him in the zone run game, which that play was. He was reading the end and he pulled it. Then those guys are going to come for the football, so we’ve just got to be smart. He’s the first guy that knows it. He knew it when he was coming off the sideline. Again, there’s going to be highs and lows throughout it, but that’s a part of that. You just have to balance how much you do that.”
According to a national scout with a team that was evaluating quarterbacks in the top half of Round 1 back in April, his team’s records show Fields’ hands measured 9 1/8 inches. You can get lost heading down a rabbit hole discussing the hand size of quarterbacks. It’s overrated as an issue for quarterbacks, but it’s still an issue.
Joe Burrow joked about his hand size during the pre-draft process in 2020. His hands measured only 9 inches. As a general rule, teams prefer quarterbacks to measure 9 ½ inches or more. The bigger the better.
“Like anything else, it’s something but not everything,” the scout said of QB hand size as a piece in evaluation. “It certainly plays a factor.”
I’m not saying small mitts are leading to fumbles for Fields. I am pointing out that 9 1/8-inch hands would land him likely in the bottom quarter of the league’s starters. And the Bears will tell you they need him to clean this up moving forward because the ball is coming out too often.
8. ESPN analyst Louis Riddick has known Matt Nagy a long time.
They worked for the Philadelphia Eagles at the same time. Riddick made mention of the Thanksgiving week drama when the coach’s status was reportedly decided on but the team did nothing to clear the matter up, allowing it to spin out of control. Riddick called it “bad business” to leave Nagy hanging like that. Reality is it allowed it to become a complete distraction for the football team.
Does this affect the Bears moving forward? No one is going to turn down an interview with the club based on this event alone. But it’s not a good look and it hasn’t been forgotten.
“After the rumors he was going to be fired and they let that story run out of control without answering it is mind-boggling,” another GM said via text.
9. How good have the Bears been on special teams this season?
They rank No. 3 in the league in Football Outsiders’ rankings entering Week 15, trailing only the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs. It’s no surprise the Ravens are atop the league considering coach John Harbaugh’s background as a special teams coach. He was the coordinator in Philadelphia when Dave Toub broke into the NFL and learned that area of the game. Chris Tabor, of course, learned from Toub, so it’s an interesting dynamic and there is a history between the three coaches.
Before the game, Jakeem Grant was announced as a Pro Bowl returner. That’s the third different returner to make the Pro Bowl under Tabor and the fourth consecutive year he has helped produce a Pro Bowl returner. Cohen was in the Pro Bowl in 2018 and Cordarrelle Patterson earned the designation the last two years. Grant, acquired via trade in early October, becomes the latest. All of them are super talented return men, but they need 10 well-orchestrated guys along with them to make it happen.
The Bears got a good challenge from the Vikings, who were No. 6 entering this week. The biggest problem was Damiere Byrd muffed a punt return after Grant went out with a concussion, a costly turnover. The deflected Santos field goal will knock the Bears a bit. But Darrell Williams deflected a Minnesota punt as well to help with field position. Pat O’Donnell also hit a 72-yard punt.
Tabor has his hands full juggling special teams with so many roster moves. Special teams coaches are accustomed to the trickle-down effect that creates moves for them on a weekly basis. For instance, when top special teams player DeAndre Houston-Carson (out for the season with a broken forearm) started playing more in the sub packages on defense, Tabor had him for one or two phases. He had to adjust and call on other players. With wholesale roster moves, it’s forced him to put unproven players in positions they’ve practiced but haven’t played much (or at all) in games. For instance, when Vildor was penalized for running out of bounds last week at Green Bay on punt coverage, an infraction that nullified the recovery of a muffed punt, it was only the third rep he’d had in a game.
“We talk about the depth each and every day and if things change, you know, I have essentially my board right here and we just start talking it through,” Tabor said. “We know who the people are that will be up and who is going to play and then obviously looking at their skill sets, those players if they are coming from the practice squad, obviously have been going against us all year. So, when we’re coaching our stuff in the room, I’m also coaching those guys also. Now, it might be, ‘Hey, I need you to do this because that’s how Green Bay or Minnesota does it,’ but watch this player right here. This is a guy we have to stop, check out his moves, you can add this into your game.
“We’ve seen some good development from some guys to where we’re saying, ‘OK, now, you know what, I’m going to play you in this spot because of this skill set and because of that, this is what I expect you to get done.’ And make it crystal clear for them and then let them be the player that you think he is and if you do that he gives you a chance to be successful.”
10. Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre are tied for most touchdown passes in Green Bay Packers’ history with 442 each.
This isn’t to turn this into a Bears-Packers thing, but when I saw Rodgers tied Favre Sunday in a one-point victory at Baltimore, it got me to wondering how long you have to go back to find the last 884 touchdown passes by the Bears. It’s been a remarkable run for three decades in Green Bay beginning with the arrival of Favre in 1992. You’d have to go back a much further than three decades to count up the last 884 touchdown passes for the Bears. Beginning with Fields’ 19-yard touchdown pass to Horsted against the Vikings, you have to go all the way back to a 41-yard scoring pass from Virgil Carter to Dick Gordon in a 42-21 loss to the San Francisco 49ers at Kezar Stadium on Dec. 6, 1969, to track the Bears’ last 884 touchdown passes. Truly amazing.
10a. Former Bears quarterback Mike Glennon made his third consecutive start for the New York Giants Sunday in a 21-6 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. He’s been filling in for Daniel Jones, who was sidelined with a neck injury. Glennon threw three interceptions and was pulled late in the game and replaced by former Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm, the starter for the Bulldogs when Fields transferred to Ohio State. Odds probably aren’t good, but it’s at least worth wondering if Glennon will start against the Bears in the Jan. 2 game at Soldier Field. Giants coach Joe Judge said Monday morning the team would at least consider turning to Fromm this week.
Glennon started for the Jacksonville Jaguars last season when the Bears won 41-17. This season, Glennon has completed 69 of 129 passes (53.4%) for 673 yards with three touchdowns, seven interceptions and a 53.5 rating. Glennon has lost eight consecutive starts. His last victory in that role came Sept. 24, 2017, in the Bears’ 23-17 overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
10b. Left tackle Teven Jenkins was penalized for holding, a false start and retaliating after the play for a personal foul. That’s seven penalties for Jenkins now in not even eight full quarters of football. After the personal foul, the sentiment I got on Twitter was it was great to see him stand up for his quarterback. Taking a personal foul, which can set an offense back 15 yards (in this case it was half the distance to the goal), isn’t a great idea for an offense that really struggles to move the ball and score. He’s got to figure some things out and will have two road games in loud stadiums in the next three weeks.
10c. Don’t dwell on the penalties for too long. The issue here is an offense that isn’t working. Stay big picture.
10d. Kirk Cousins is now 2-9 as a starter on “Monday Night Football.”
10e. The Seahawks opened as a 7-point favorite over the Bears for Sunday’s game at Lumen Field at Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas.
10f. The Bears were set to play on a short week at Seattle, and now the Seahawks will be on an even shorter week as their Week 15 game with the Rams was pushed back to Tuesday night because of COVID-19 issues on the Rams. In the meantime, Los Angeles has started to get some players back and the Seahawks have begun losing players to protocol. Seattle currently lists six players on its reserve/COVID-19 list, including wide receiver Tyler Lockett. Two practice squad players are also in the protocol.
Source: Berkshire mont
Be First to Comment