Bear Weather Fans

 The time is now. We're in the window for a Super Bowl. It can happen. But if it's going to happen, we have to be ready now . And I'm afraid we're not. Why? First, let's talk about draft capital. Here's the total draft capital teams have had over the past 4 seasons: (Draft pick values based on Spielberger-Fitzgerald model) Yes, the Bears have had the third-most draft capital over the past four seasons of any team in the NFL. Why cut it off at 4? Because rookie contracts are 4 seasons. Drafted players within the last 4 seasons = on the cheap. We have players making a fraction of what they will once their rookie contract is up and their second contract comes due. That net difference between what the player is "worth" (aka, what they will be making on their second contract) and what they're currently being paid is what football nerds call "surplus value". So how much surplus do the Bears have? First, let's talk offense. Darnell Wright...

  The always-great Fitzgerald over at Over The Cap had a really great article on the success rates teams have on finding top players at each position using top-tier draft picks vs top-tier cap spending.  TL;DR - there are some positions that you can consistently expect to find a top player for readily available in free agency (for example, linebacker), and some for which you will never, ever find one available (IE-DL [abbreviations are fun! So are parentheticals!]). So which is which? So when we look at positions of need over the last two years (so ignoring QB and WR), we see that far and away defensive lineman are found in the draft - Edge players around 75% of the time, and interior defensive lineman like 90%. If you need them (we do) you draft them. On the other hand, the most freely available top players are in the positions of Center, Tight End , and Safety , and to a lesser extend LT. Alright, no need to spend draft capital there - they're easily available any free agenc...

Hey, Patrick here, the guy whose words you're reading. The past three weeks, I had the great pleasure/disorienting nightmare of joining Travis and Kyle over at Start Kyle Orton to try to read and explain Tyler Dunne's absolute atrocity of journalism that is the three-part "House of Dysfunction" series via a 3-part series of our own. Thus was born — "A Dramatic Reading of Ty Dunne's B.S." with a simple goal - attempt to explain the madness in all its blubbering glory: A Dramatic Reading of Ty Dunne's B.S., Part 1 ( Spotify link ) ( Youtube link ) A Dramatic Reading of Ty Dunne's B.S., Part 2 ( Spotify link ) ( Youtube link ) A Very Ty Dunne Final ( Spotify link ) ( Youtube link ) We did not succeed. We didn't come close. Over the course of a combined 3.5 hours of podcast across a three-part series, we got through reading maybe 10% of the (suspiciously erotically charged) words Tyler Dunne wrote on Caleb Williams. We processed maybe 1%. How c...

  Recently, the NFL has changed the rules on everything from kickoffs to whether or not you're allowed to touch the passer without a safeword and written apology (the answer is "no*", where the asterisk is "*unless they're on the Bears", in which case the refs will gladly turn their head while the pass rushers used the face of the franchise to scrub their cleats). Football fans are treating changes to their game with all the dignity and grace you would come to expect from a demographic who still suspects Tim Tebow was blackballed from the league because of Jesus but Colin Kaepernick should be dead. And seeing all of this rage from the very audience I write for over a few rule changes has inspired me with a simple goal: What if I Made This Worse   Here are some rule changes the absolute  prudes in the NFL are too scared to implement: 7. Field Goals Just Got More Intense A simple, binary 3-points-or-none is an outdated rule from an era where players were all m...

 If you're reading this, you know all the talking points already— Football coaches are, as a rule, antiquated, dogma-fueled, and generally optimized towards minimizing probability of embarrassment rather than maximizing probability of winning. The standard decision of kicking or punting on 4th down rather than going for it is based on mitigating humiliation, and flies in the face of analytics, which unequivocally point to coaches being laughably conservative, IE - " Punt, kick or go for it on fourth down? Method to NFL analytics models - ESPN ": Analytics! There's a consensus on the "why" as well - NFL coaches don't understand the numbers, analytics, or really even statistics in general. ...except that's complete horseshit. Fans haven't ran the numbers and don't understand the analytics. The average NFL fan can't get through a fantasy football draft without 13 legs up from ChatGPT, you telling me these ESPN fans've done a regression o...

A funny thing happened recently where the laughable ineptitude of past Bears coaches came up, today, and every day, all the time because it's an overflowing well for which there is no bottom. However, folks are often surprised as just how much I hate Matt Nagy. "You hate Matt Nagy!?"     I do. So much. So, so much. "Wait, is it because he blatantly ignored the very obvious limitations with his QB and offense and, rather than even try to come up with a solution, or even improvement,  instead spent a whole offseason in a pants-shittingly insane frenzy over a kicker battle?"     It sure doesn't help! "And then the guy who won the battle, Eddie Pineiro, got injured, and they, out of duress, went to Cairo Santos, who ended up being one of the most accurate kickers in Bears history? So they effectively proved their kicker battle was a pointless waste of time, an embarrassment to the franchise, and also not even effective at finding the best kicker?...