Yikes that's bad. Matt Stafford had a record outing last night with a 156.1 passer rating in Week 1. Elias Sports said it’s the highest passer rating for a quarterback with a minimum of 20 attempts in his debut with a new team.
LINK "Los Angeles had 388 yards on offense, not an alarming total but ran only 50 offensive plays. The Rams averaged 7.72 yards per play, the fourth-highest average allowed by the Bears in the last 20 seasons. That figure includes four kneel-downs by Stafford. Remove those, and the Bears defense allowed 8.52 yards per play which would rank as the most in the last 20 seasons.
The pass rush didn’t get home. There was one sack and that came on a play when Stafford held the ball forever. Outside linebackers Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn had one assist each. At least Quinn was credited with two quarterback hits, but the contract he signed in March 2020 for $30 million guaranteed is going to go down as one of the worst free-agent buys over the last decade unless he turns it around.
The Bears have invested draft picks and millions on top of millions of dollars in order to create a destructive pass rush. It’s missing."
Post by mpbears68 on Sept 13, 2021 13:13:32 GMT -6
Yeah, not getting to the QB and especially allowing 2 huge bomb TDs to receivers so open they could have hopped into the EZ on one leg tends to hurt your yards per play allowed statistic.
Post by GrizzlyBear on Sept 13, 2021 16:04:14 GMT -6
Another thing that I've been preaching for a few years now. A great front 7 can make average DBs look pretty good. As awful as our secondary is, if somehow our pass rush could actually create some kind of pressure, we wouldn't be in this situation right now.
Go after Stafford hard and I guarantee you he wouldn't be able to throw these two 60 yard bombs.
Hicks, Goldman, Mack and Quinn really need to step up.
Yet people kept saying the O was worse then the D last night.
Def was the far larger issue, O was far from great but they did move the ball. Def needed to get 1 or 2 more stops and it might have been a game.
Cannot give up 2 50+ yard plays though, that isn't even an average def effort.
We have had this discussion over and over the last 2 seasons so lets dispense with it right now.
Last 2 years whenever the Bears lost and the O sputtered (almost every time), the retort was: "most of the money is on the defensive side so the D needs to play better". Every freakin' time.
There was some truth to that and no question the defense regressed from an elite unit in 2018 to a good unit in in 2019 to a so-so unit in 2020. I tended to view that at the time as a deflection of blame for the dumpster fire that Trubisky had become but okay I get it.
Now let's fast-forward to real time and where we are now in 2021. I'll be 100% clear so there's no future misunderstandings the rest of the year:
THIS DEFENSE ISN'T GONNA "WIN GAMES". IT IS AN AVERAGE UNIT AT BEST. PROBABLY WELL BELOW AVERAGE. THE FRONT-7 IS AGING FAST AND THE SECONDARY TOTALLY BLOWS. DROP ANY IDEA THAT THIS DEFENSE IS GONNA STOP ANY COMPETENT OFFENSE--IT WON'T.
That isn't some hot-take reaction after a blowout loss. We discussed it here all offseason and preseason. The Bears aren't gonna win many games this year without the offense scoring at least league-average (25 points) as the defense is no longer good enough to stop decent teams.
Yet people kept saying the O was worse then the D last night.
Def was the far larger issue, O was far from great but they did move the ball. Def needed to get 1 or 2 more stops and it might have been a game.
Cannot give up 2 50+ yard plays though, that isn't even an average def effort.
We have had this discussion over and over the last 2 seasons so lets dispense with it right now.
Last 2 years whenever the Bears lost and the O sputtered (almost every time), the retort was: "most of the money is on the defensive side so the D needs to play better". Every freakin' time.
There was some truth to that and no question the defense regressed from an elite unit in 2018 to a good unit in in 2019 to a so-so unit in 2020. I tended to view that at the time as a deflection of blame for the dumpster fire that Trubisky had become but okay I get it.
Now let's fast-forward to real time and where we are now in 2021. I'll be 100% clear so there's no future misunderstandings the rest of the year:
THIS DEFENSE ISN'T GONNA "WIN GAMES". IT IS AN AVERAGE UNIT AT BEST. PROBABLY WELL BELOW AVERAGE. THE FRONT-7 IS AGING FAST AND THE SECONDARY TOTALLY BLOWS. DROP ANY IDEA THAT THIS DEFENSE IS GONNA STOP ANY COMPETENT OFFENSE--IT WON'T.
That isn't some hot-take reaction after a blowout loss. We discussed it here all offseason and preseason. The Bears aren't gonna win many games this year without the offense scoring at least league-average (25 points) as the defense is no longer good enough to stop decent teams.
All that to try and again defend that shit ass effort on defense. No one, and I mean no one thought that they looked good last night, in fact as pointed out in this thread it was historically bad.
The Bears were never going to compete with a team looking to compete for a SB, 0% of people expected the O to score enough or the D to limit their O enough to win last night. BUT
There were two surprises last night. 1 that the OL protected the QB and opened run lanes, allowing the offense to move the ball and give the def rests, it wasn't just a 3 and out offense like last year. They weren't great but against the Rams they werent expected to be.
2 the defense completely shit the bed. That def since 2014 hadnt given up more then 2 50yd plus plays in a year. They did it in week one bc of 2 totally blown plays by the safeties. No one thought they were holding the Rams to under 20, but they didn't make them punt but one time in the first half, or even make them break a sweat.
Again no one expected the bears to be great or win, but of the O and D the worries were about the O. Did they do their job, no, but it was better then what the def did, and it's not an argument its obvious
Yet people kept saying the O was worse then the D last night.
Def was the far larger issue, O was far from great but they did move the ball. Def needed to get 1 or 2 more stops and it might have been a game.
Cannot give up 2 50+ yard plays though, that isn't even an average def effort.
The problem with the O was they couldn't throw pass 10 yards. In today's NFL you need to be able to do that.
The LA Rams def vs an OL on it's 3rd and 4th LT were not going to hold the ball for 3+ seconds to chuck the ball downfield. Their entire def is set up to make you take the short stuff and eat clock knowing their O will score quickly. The bears OL forces them to play into that. It was a terrible matchup. Which is why it was a consensus on who would win.