Week 2 - Bears 17, Giants 14: Buy one Half, Get Another Half... someday

 Had you turned the game off at halftime, you would've been forgiven for thinking it was a 30+ point blowout in the Bears' favor. Maybe they pulled Trubisky after the gap hit four scores and threw in Nick Foles for kicks? Hell, maybe they threw in whoever the hell was third-string QB these days. Did anybody buy Matt Barkley a seat to the game? Is David Fales still... Fales-ing? Maybe somebody knock on the door of the nursing home that cares for Todd Collins? Lord knows in 2020 an NFL field is safer than any nursing home. Damn, I need to stop drinking so much during the games if I'm gonna try to write anything cohre;jak

Anyways, you'd be forgiven for stone cold soberly tuning off at halftime and thinking the Bears won in a blowout, seeing as the Bears defense shut out the Giants offense, while the Bears offense steamrolled the Giants defense, scoring 17 before the half and slapping them repeatedly with several more near-scores.

Instead, inane coaching decisions and the receivers playing soft lead to a game that looked way closer in the box score than it ever should've been. A heroic defensive players' performance made up for Nagy shitting the bed and refusing to stick with what was working all first half, while Pagano's "up two scores? Let's go straight into Prevent all second half" defense ended up being a bad call. It was a weird-ass game. What is it with Nagy's teams and an inability to cover two halves of a complete game? Wait, is that why he wears half a hat? Almost certainly. Anyways, on to the Good, the Bad, Looking Ahead, and of course, our BWF Awards ceremony.

The good

The offensive line

Maybe it was folding up and cremating Kyle Long’s career in favor of a man whose body has working ligaments numbering in the double digits. Maybe it was the team once again shamelessly kicking offensive line coach Harry Heistand to the curb and shitting on that curb repeatedly for the second time this decade, along with his Rashaad Coward build-a-bear of a starting lineman project. Maybe it’s Coach Juan “The Hispanic Ryan Pace” Castillo. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Whatever it is, the Bears offensive line has gone from one of the worst in the league last season (average time of pressure was 29’th overall last season with an absurd 2.37 seconds) to downright terrific over the two games so far. Trubisky's had a damn sweet amount of time to throw courtesy of an O-line that looks 90% new with a whopping 1 new starter. They’re opening up holes for David Montgomery wider than Matt Patricia. Trubisky's somebody who's super rhythm and confidence-dependant. Having great line play like we’ve seen gives him enough time to have comfort in the pocket, allowing him to have more confidence in his reads, ending up in better footwork which subsequently gives more accuracy, which results in more accurate balls and more chances for Anthony Miller to drop even more touchdowns. Great place. Great times.

David Montgomery

The dude just shakes off tackles like Kellen Davis used to shake off surefire completions hitting his hands. A lesser writer would say that he’s the Bill Cosby of runningbacks in that you’ll never take him down with the first hit against him. A better writer wouldn't have ever have let a draft of that joke see the light of day. Here we are.

Darnell Mooney:

Holy shit. I don’t even want to say it out loud, except I do. Darnell Mooney! (It’s fun to say) Hey - did the Bears actually draft a good wide receiver in my lifetime? This is a Haley’s Comet-type event (Cole Kmet-type?). This has happened once, maybe twice that I can remember. With this kind of draft mojo, next thing you know he’ll have competent quarterback play from a QB we drafted.

As a lifelong Bears fan, it just doesn’t make sense but I’ll take it. The guy’s quick, he’s got great hands, he’s connected with Trubisky both in and outside the structure of the play. He high-points the ball and goes strong at the catch point. If this dude ends up being able to stay healthy (lookin at you Jeffrey/*sob* Meredith/*double-sob* Knox) he could be the best wide receiver drafted by the Bears in my lifetime.

Let's go ahead and look at all-time Bears receiving leaders and OH GOD—

Despite us being in a modern-day passing offense boom, there are two players in the top-10 for Bears receiving yardage who were drafted in the past 20 years. One of them is the departed Alshon Jeffrey, and the other is a runningback (still, love you Matty. We didn't deserve you). Mooney has a real shot of cracking the top ten by the end of his rookie contract.

Is it sad that we’re reacting this way after two games? Sure. Is it sad that it’s a realistic possibility? Moreso, yes.

Trubisky

    Someday, I pray for a world where people are willing to go more than ten seconds at a time without shitting themselves in a rage over the fact that Patrick Mahomes was still on the board when Mitch Trubisky was drafted, as if every other team but the Bears totally knew there was a future-Hall-of-Fame QB available but were cool with letting him slide to the tenth pick.


    Sadly, that day hasn’t come, so even though Trubisky’s been an average-ish QB, the same fanbase that called for Josh McCown to start is going to rile themselves up into a rage-orgy over Trubisky not playing like a Hall-of-Famer every game. Regardless, Trubisky played fine-ish. He made mostly good decisions, was mostly accurate, found his guy when they were open, bought time with his feet when they weren't, and made plays in and out of the structure. Hey, speaking of which, should we be worried that the team has had more success scoring after Nagy’s plays breaks down than when they’re going? Shades of Mike McCarthy? No? Okay cool.

The bad:

Danny Trevathan

    Somewhere out there (admit it, you heard Fievel too) is an extremely swole accountant working for a local family firm, sitting beneath a pile of papers towering over his meaty lats as he shakes his head in the disbelief that the simple life isn’t as simple as he thought. My point is, this is obviously a twin-switching scenario where Danny T has swapped places with his Prince-and-the-Pauper-esque doppelgänger to try a new, slower life, because that’s the only reason why the Bears could field a man who looks nearly exactly like Danny Trevathan in every way, but 30 pounds fatter and a third of the speed. Who else could look so convincingly like prime Danny Trevathan while playing like 2012-era Urlacher?

Coaching the entire second half

    Despite his signs of unadulterated genius, from sporting his bald dome through a visor through 30° below Chicago winters, or flaunting such intellectual life mantras as “Be You “, Matt Nagy has not shown himself to be a smart man. The Bears offense looks about how you expect from a toddler handed Andy Reid’s playbook - individually brilliant plays called at the wrong times in the wrong situations for what amounts to a random series of plays that don’t build off each other or attack specific weaknesses in the defense. We know this, and we try not to let it bother us, and we fail, which is why I spent most of the second-half screaming into a pillow. The moment the offense had a turnover, Nagy decided to not take another deep shot ever again. Some say, he's still out there, waving his Denny’s menu of a play sheet and demanding to throw more 5-yards slants. 

 

    Nagy, the way you prevent turnovers is by reducing the number of defenders around the ball. You do that by stretching the field, by pulling apart zones and keeping the defense off their toes. When you start calling every single pass within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage, you create traffic and opportunities for turnovers. Especially when you consider that Trubisky was playing well, throwing accurately, and beating the Giants secondary, allowing them to get help from their linebackers only negated one of the Bears biggest advantages. The Giants had committed a linebacker to spying on Trubisky in the middle of the field. If the Bears had continued to pull the defense apart with deep shots, the linebacker would’ve been worthless. Instead, by calling most of the offense in the short game, they let the Giants use their linebacker as a two-for-one deal. Now he’s spying the QB and doing his linebacker job in coverage of playing short passes. This is emblematic of Nagy's coaching – things that "makes sense" or are what your “supposed to do“, but don’t actually work, and definitely don’t attack specific weaknesses of the opposing team. Instead, Nagy took a 17 point shutout going into the second half, what could’ve been a decisive blowout and a mark of the 2020 Bears as having arrived, and squandered it into a needlessly close game that probably ruined any goodwill the team was feeling.

Looking Ahead:

    We play the Falcons next week, who're coming off of what is probably the most heartbreaking choke job in franchise history. I seriously can’t imagine a time where the Falcons could feel worse about giving up a lead like that. Couldn't even.


    Truth be told, the Falcons look very beatable. As great as Matt Ryan is, the Falcons have the injury report of a team that pissed of Old Testament God AND I truly do believe the Bears are just getting going. Trubisky is who is he is as an inconsistent but talented mid-tier QB, which is enough to win games if the rest of the team is clicking. The offensive line and rushing game looks like it's making my antidepressant prescription obsolete. Hopefully one more week allows Darnell Mooney more comfort in the offense, Trubisky more time to train with Coach Filippo, and Danny Trevathan more time to shake off the 70 pounds of Cold Stone he put on in the off-season.

Starting 2-0 is rare. Doing it while having a damn good defense and an offense that looks like it's set to get better and better is unheard of around these parts. 2020 has been weird, so let's just enjoy a Bears team that, if nothing else, will be interesting to watch. Bear Down.