Everything. That’d be a 4 year, $48MM deal. Way more than CJ2K and Williams and right behind APs deal. Sorry, I love Forte but he’s not worth anywhere close to that. If he were a goal line monster and money in short yardage I might entertain the discussion, but he’s a between the 20s back.
It’s not even close to the 2nd most important position. That GMs swap RBs like they change underwear drives that point home. You need to have one, but they tend to be easier to find than just about any other position on the field. It’s all about positional scarcity, and RB has the lowest scarcity of any position.
The shelf life of RBs provides ample motivation for RBs to hold out and demand deals, but it’s provides tremendous disincentive for GMs to hand out big deals without significant protections in it. I suspect you could draw a pretty strong correlation between a teams success and the amount of money invested in RBs, and that wouldn’t be a positive correlation.
He definitely deserves a raise, but you don’t get paid for past performance. If he wants to front load his deal and take a big bonus, that’s fine, but what he’s earned to this point means nothing. The only thing that matters is what his projected value will be for the duration of a new deal. That the Bears have been WAY under the cap for the past 4 years pretty much shoots the argument that Forte’s deal played any part in acquisitions in the ass.
And that drives the point home. He’s playing great but I’m still not sure he’s a Top 5 back. He struggles too much in the redzone to make that claim, and I think his proportion of the Bears offense is a flaw in the Bears scheme more than it’s a asset of Forte’s. The Bears can afford to pay him, they have the cap space, and they have a long tradition of rewarding their own guys. Forte will get paid well so long as he’s being reasonable, the Bears have no history of playing hardball with productive guys they drafted and are good clubhouse guys. They reward their own and tend to hang on too long to name guys. That a deal hasn’t been done makes me suspect that Forte is pushing for some number that’s unreasonable. If so, the organization has to do what’s best for it. The last thing I want is for Forte to get a monster deal and then get released when he comes back to earth and that $8-10MM per year is just not reasonable for a top 15 back.
Kevin Smith re-signs with the Detroit Lions. If you believe Jim Schwartz, they weren’t planning on signing him, but he looked so damn good in the workouts that they had no real choice.
It’s nice to see him get another shot, and Morris and Williams ahead of him on the depth chart are no great shakes. The bad news is that it’s looking more and more like Jahvid Best will be out a while. Who could have guessed he’d be an injury risk?
Peterson is slated to make $100 million over 7 years, and the contract is structured in such a way that he’ll probably earn 90% of it.
I suppose it’s fair to say that he’s not much good at the goal line, but let’s face it: nobody has to worry about anything other than him at the goal line. For Forte’s whole career the Bears’ goal line options have been “run” and “throw to Greg Olsen”. When you play on a team with mediocre tight ends and tiny little receivers and shitty quarterbacks you see 9-man fronts at the goal line.
I’ve watched the Pack my entire life but I’m terrible at identifying defensive schemes. What is GB’s base defense and what type of coverage schemes are they using these days?
Ostensibly a 3-4 defense, but it’s morphed into something very unconventional. Capers runs a lot of 2 down sets and a even the occasional 1 down set. I don’t think they’ve stolen the UFO scheme just yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s been mixed in occasionally. Clay Matthews always plays in a 2 point stance but he lines up as a stand-up end on the line so often that they might as well be called a 4-3 defense.
The coverage schemes are a little harder to deduce and Hamlet or one of the other deluded cheeseheads might give a better answer, but they are expected to play a lot of man-to-man bump and run. That’s been traditional in 3-4 schemes, particularly the Jets/Steelers/Ravens flavors of the scheme. The Packers seem to play a lot of zone defense and run a fair amount of the old zone blitz. They also play Woodson as a Joker and allow him to freelance a lot.
Personally I think their coverage schemes are the root of their defensive issues. They just play too much zone and are far too complex on the back end. More press man coverage would be a benefit, but they need to get Matthews off more than they have this season.
The complexity was there last year, too, and everything worked rather well. I blame the loss of Cullen Jenkins for some of their current woes; they just aren’t getting pressure with the 4-man rush.
Nick Collins is a 3 time Pro Bowler and one of the top 4 safeties in the game today. He makes the defensive calls, gets guys in the right place, and plays well as an individual (21 int’s) and makes those around him better. Losing him to injury has really hurt the secondary, even moreso than Jenkins. Charlie Peprah, (Collins’ replacement) is just as likely to get an int as give up a big play TD (he did both on Sunday). Also, Tramon Williams, Charles Woodson, and Morgan Burnett have also been dealing with injuries.
The lack of an interior pass rush is also a big deal. With Jenkins gone, they had planned on having Mike Neal take over and he … got injured (but of course). BJ Raji isn’t playing as well as he can, and Capers has been blitzing more to create pressure.
But, they’ve come up big in the red zone, get the big turnovers, and are in the top 10 defenses in scoring (if not yards). In Dom we trust.
There are a lot of websites that go really deep on this stuff. However, defenses are so fluid and vary game-to-game so much that trying to put a template on a team can be a fruitless effort.
It’s pretty common, especially on passing downs, to see them with four men on the line of scrimmage, but only one or two of those guys (like Raji and / or Pickett) in a three-point stance. You’ll see Matthews and another outside linebacker, like Walden or Zombo, lined up in (or near) traditional “defensive end” positions, but in upright stances.
Speaking of offenses, have you noticed a difference in the Bears’ offensive coordination of late?
I ask because I heard that the Broncos were toying with the idea of adding read option plays for Tebow. It seems to me that this year, for one of the first times I can remember, there is a lot of adjusting the coordination to the QB’s talents rather than the system dictating how the QB plays. Chud in Carolina for Newton, maybe with Tebow in Denver. I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything to indicate that Martz is moving the offense to a offense like they had in Denver for Cutler. Cutler is at his best when he can play backyard ball, where he can run around and use his big arm to throw to whatever guy he sees open. Are the Bears moving to that kind of play calling?
The only real difference is the ability of the O line to run block. They are run blocking really well, the tight ends have been playing better in those unbalanced sets. This is making everything else work. Martz is being smart about getting Forte the ball in space and in a lot of orientations. Forte seems to have gained a step and we’ve been seeing him actually win the edge regularly. Tough to know where the credit for this lies. Martz’s playcalling has improved, Tice’s blocking schemes are working, the new additions on the line are way more athletic and aggressive than what we’ve had before, Forte looks healthy and dynamic. It’s a pretty good mix.
The passing game still struggles a lot. Martz’s running the same complex reads and quick hitting routes. The effective running game has helped keep us out of long downs so we haven’t had to rely on the 7 step drops as much. When we are going with a 7 step drop, the defenses have to respect the screen game and slow play Forte. Cutler is playing well, but it’s still not the right system for him. They should be playing way more play action and using more bootlegs and sprints.
That said, I’m becoming far more convinced that the issues have less to do with Martz and Cutler and the line than it does with our WRs. They are simply never open, especially on those hot routes and crossing patterns. Martz’s system doesn’t have a progression of reads, it’s more of a isolation scheme with pre- and post-snap quick reads. Often we have the right play call, but our WRs aren’t winning enough of those 1-on-1 matchups in space forcing Cutler to improvise and hold the ball too long.
I think Cutler would be a machine in Chudzinski’s scheme and Shanahan’s reliance on play action fit really well. The Bears aren’t doing anything like that.
A big intradivisional game this weekend is the biggest story in the best division in football. Let’s take a look.
Lions at Bears
I gotta give Lovie Smith credit for the dismantling of the Eagles last week. He had a great game plan, both offensively and defensively, and had his guys ready to play, unlike Andy Reid. Impressive win. The Lions, meanwhile, had an uneventful bye week to rest up. The last meeting was all Lions (in Detroit) but since then the Bears have improved their blocking, their playcalling, and their penchant for giving up big plays.
Both of these teams are quite good, but also flawed. I don’t know what to make of this game. The Lions have an advantage in talent (Megatron against smaller CB’s and inexperienced safeties? Ouch), but the Bears can run the ball and the Lions can’t run it, nor have had much luck at stopping the run. The Bears can gameplan to try and take away Calvin, and Pettigrew has been quieter and no one else has really stepped up to take the pressure off Calvin. The Bears are very good at taking advantage of other teams’ mistakes while minimizing their own, and the Lions are highly penalized and occasionally mistake prone team.
I’m just not sure. I think the Lions are the better team, but they are also the kind of team (sometimes undisciplined, a bit one dimensional) that the Bears take advantage of. Since the game is in Chicago and the Bears have the revenge factor going for them, smart people will pick the Bears to win. So …
Lions get the victory.
Vikings at Packers
No contest. Packers get an easy win at home. There are concerns for the Packers (Jared Allen, Adrian Peterson, trap game), they still have the best player in the NFL, a defense that is hungry to prove something, and are going against a rookie QB. I’ll watch because it’s the Packers, but I don’t expect much of a game.
Lions start with two turnovers and 3 penalties for almost 40 yards, icouple of dropped passes in just the first quarter. What is it about the Bears that makes the teams playing them kill themselves?
Megatron drops a pass at the 2 yard line, Stafford looks horrible and just threw a pick 6 right to defender, and they don’t chase down a fumble. I am flummoxed to explain why teams play so poorly against the Bears.
I guess I shouldn’t worry because the Bears don’t scare me, but it boggles my mind.
And another pick 6 by Stafford. Thrown right to the defender too. I don’t get it.
No doubt. They have a very good defense, are well coached, and have the best return man in the game. But the dropped passes, the dumb penalties, the throws right into the hands of the defenders, and the missed tackles are not, to my mind, always the result of great play, but rather mistakes by the opposing team. Still, the Bears win convincingly against good teams, so maybe I underappreciate them
No kidding. I was rooting for the Lions earlier this year when they were winning. Yes, I am a Bears fan, but I liked the scrappy underdog vibe they cultivated in September and had they continued their winning like they they were winning then, I would have rooted for them all the way to the Super Bowl (minus any Bears games, of course). Jim Schwartz proved himself to be a punk in the game against the 49ers where he chased after Jim Harbaugh because he didn’t like the way Jim shook his hand. That all rolls downhill: Suh took a cheapshot on Cutler on that forward fumble play, Fairley hit Cutler late as well, and Stafford pulled D.J. Moore’s facemask on the interception return. I’m suprised Stafford didn’t get flagged for it and you know he only pulled that on Moore because Moore’s the smallest guy on the field. Were I a worse sportsman, I would have rooted for someone to put a thumb in Stafford’s eye. The Lion’s are proving themselves to be punks and they’re not going to win any casual fans that way.
Anyway, great game by the Bears. Forte had a subpar game, but he scored, so that’s good. The secondary looked good and getting those picks is something they needed. The Bears may not be the best team, but they’re showing that they’re the best of good teams.