Bears appear to have a serious culture/locker room/chemistry problem. Chase Claypool’s effort looked like he didn’t want to be there. DJ Moore was only targeted twice - he caught both, meanwhile Claypool was also targeted twice and caught zero. Justin attempted 37 passes and only three of them were beyond 10 yards
Not in direct response to you, Dry. But anyone, Bears, Buckeye or football fans in general that want to tag along. I was hoping to address both of those points here.
I fully agree and see the Bears Oline being hit and miss at best; but there are also plays when Justin has the pocket, route combinations and time to make throws he simply fails to pull the trigger on. The first being the down field passing.
This play is something that coaches across football have been doing the past 5-6 years and is all the rage. Getting your off ball receiver in a pre-snap motion to reset or push defensive assignments. It can affect the run fit as well, getting the front 7 out of their correct gaps. We called this the 'Z'. Some times might call it the H or the F even, but it's generally the off ball receiver.
Also the umbrella coverage you see so much of. But this was a great call by the CHI coaches to get the motion to push coverage from Jaire being the primary on DJ Moore based on that motion.
I put this all in red, but even as this functions as a pure half field read (despite the boundary dig actually being viable at one point) The Bears get what they want in match quarters, Justin has the clean wall in front of him. This is that time to drive the ball downfield and to the numbers. You also have DJ Moore who you have to trust will make it to the spot you're throwing. I understand that's Jaire downfield, but the timing and placement of your throw beats this coverage.
DJ has really separated, but instead of pulling the trigger, Justin falls to his outlet receiver. IMHO the #2 in this progression because the motion to clear out is just to do that - and against one of the best CB's in the league. It wasn't a viable route barring J.A. slipping and falling down.
It's a completion, can't argue against that. But as the saying goes "Missed the forest for the trees"
I don't have all the answers. But I'd suspect Justin being this damn risk averse involves him not trusting what he's seeing, not being as studious to his opponents tendencies as he should, and not trusting his own gifts as a passer. Or there's the other possibility that he see's these things, but can't process and understand them as quickly as he needs to. Again, there was no reason to not feed DJ this ball. And while I get it's only one play, it was a microcosm of his problems at times. Couple that with the Bears Oline, and it's a perfect situation to have an offense that can't effectively drive the ball downfield.
To compound that, they didn’t call enough designed QB runs.
One more before I go - the QB running game.
A small thing I did notice, any time Cole Kmet is pulling or on that sift block in a split zone, he has this nasty habit of staring at where he's going.
While this has the same look as a split zone, with the backside Y kicking out the end, this actually functions as a Y lead with a built in QB read away from the Y lead. (Y and the RB being on the same side in all...)
Kmet gets ahead, flowing down the line looking to lead through the hole (B gap) If that weakside edge pins himself in, he can carry outside, bend it and look to pick off a LB. Either way, it doesn't matter because the end man on the line, the read man, crashes to the RB pretty hard.
Not sure what prompted Fields to give this and not pull it. Your receivers are looking for blocks like this was a QB read the whole way. And discounting the rotating safety, this was 1 on 1 outside where Justin had to make one man miss to pick up yards with his feet.
Instead that same backside edge he was reading just kept crashing down the line and blew up up Herbert after he tracked him down.
The QB running game can't hum when Justin doesn't act on the right reads. They have a quality target in DJ Moore, but getting him involved is dubious at best when you have spotty pass pro and a QB that simply can't get the ball to you when it's there for the taking.
That's not an endorsement of Matt Eberflus either, far from it. The Oline, while not a complete 2022 dumpster fire, isn't all that much improved. The receiver situation isn't the most ideal, but not the worst (Claypool really needs to go) The defense allows long drives and doesn't give plus opportunities for their offense and young QB to get extra drives at putting up points. D'onta Foreman is a mind-numbing healthy scratch. A bigger RB that could be a 1000 yard rusher with the touches. The Bears coaches not turning to that potential workhorse to help keep their young QB healthy is another failure on their part.
Overall, given his demeanor the last couple weeks, and toss in what we've seen from Claypool, and I think the Chicago coaching staff and Justin are about mutually done with one another. I don't see much of a way to salvage this relationship.
