Today is a great day to be a Bears fan. They won a football game, the backups look good, and we're going to the NFC Championship - book your flights now. Today is also a good day to be a The Bear Claw hater because I do not know ball apparently.
Neither Tyler Scott or Rome Odunze were lined up as receivers the entire game, so let's start there. I completely got that wrong. Needless to say, neither of them hit the receiving yards I predicted. One player did get close to what I predicted - Collin Johnson. Johnson had LeBron game 7 appearance last night. He had a Jerry Rice game out on that field. That man played his ass off into an NFL contract. 56 yards, two touchdowns. When we're going through the meat grinder in back-half of the regular season and we have injuries, I would feel fairly confident seeing Johnson suit up. Especially if he has Brett Rypien throwing to him.
Brett Rypien. That's it. Just Brett. Rypien. I haven't seen a Bears QB have poise in the pocket in forever. Speaking of, shout out to our backup O-Line they did a fantastic job allowing zero sacks and creating a strong pocket for Rypien. Something I'm also not used to seeing! In my last article I believe I said "sorry Brett Rypien, you just don't have it in you". My God, I'm one game into the preseason and I'm starting to reach Skip Bayless level of bad takes. Rypien completed 11 passes out of 15 for 166 yards. I don't know what Shane Waldron is cooking up at Halas Hall but if this is what we can do with backups, I'm ready to give the guy the OC position for life.
I will backup a little bit and give some fair criticism to the O-Line. I did appreciate seeing a pocket, but can we please go one game without false starts? That's been old for a long time. Throughout training camp there have been reports of multiple delay of games and false starts and I just do not understand how this is still a problem. Eberflus has been quoted saying the offensive line is "still struggling" and this bothers me. I don't think a coach needs to rip into his own team but come on man. I know that Williams and Odunze and Allen are the shiny new toys but for the love of all that is good can we please put more focus into the O-Line? Yes we were watching 2nd and 3rd string guys but I'm not sure that our starters are doing much better. This is a complete coaching failure. You know why Rypien and Johnson did so well? Because we have a stronger offensive mentality through Williams, Odunze, Allen, and Moore and our OC Shane Waldron. That gets distilled down through the offense. We need a better O-Line mentality and it needs to be taken seriously. Where is a screaming Nick Saban when you need one?
I had a great time watching the game. One thing I did predict correctly was how fun it would be to see a football on my TV screen. Even if it was preseason.
What did you think of the game? Do you think Rypien should be QB2? How do you think the O-Line performed? Also, how do you think the defense did? I admittedly could have paid more attention and I'm sure I missed a few things if you could not tell given my complete lack of defense talk. I try very hard to keep this blog my own and not borrow other takes. I guess I also have lot to prep to do for the regular season. Bear Down.
God bless you Brett Rypien.
Someone’s gotta put some heat under Caleb’s rear end. Let’s go Brett