I rewatched the Bears Eagles playoff game....

Bort

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....and holy shit the offensive line was bad. I didn't notice watching in real time how many times guys just completely whiffed blocks. It was ugly. And it was everyone. I'll keep posting examples until I get bored.
 

Chief Walking Stick

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....and holy shit the offensive line was bad. I didn't notice watching in real time how many times guys just completely whiffed blocks. It was ugly. And it was everyone. I'll keep posting examples until I get bored.

How many pure athletes were playing that game?
 

Bort

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This is from the first drive of the game. This is a nice play design and probably would have gone for a nice chuck of yardage if Daniels and Massie hadn't completely whiffed on their blocks.

It's a 2 WR, 1TE, 2 RB set, but the Eagles are in nickel (because Cohen does that to teams). Trubs has the option of throwing a swing pass to Cohen to the leftt or handing off to Mizzell for a run to the right. This is a great play design because you're either going to get Cohen out in space or you're going to get a blocking mismatch running to the right because there's a nickel CB instead of a WILL.

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A lot is going on here. You can see Trubs and Cohen looking at each other. Trubs makes the right decision by handing it off because the SAM crashed in, and with Cohen standing at the 35 yard line, that might be a pick 6 if Trubs pulls it in and tries to make that throw. Meanwhile, as I've highlighted, Daniels gets beaten immediately by Jergensen with a swim move and is just punching at air, and Bennett already has Massie on his hip.

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Jurgensen and Bennett have completely beaten Daniels and Massie and are going to blow up the play. It's really worth emphasizing that this should have been a big gainer. The corner bailed, Whitehair is going to steamroll the nickel CB, and there's all that empty grass to the right side of the play. If Daniels and Massie could have just held their blocks for 2 seconds, Mizzell would have gotten himself a nice chunk.

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There was really nothing Mizzell could have done here, and he actually did a good job of turning a 4 yard loss into a 1 yard loss by making Jurgensen miss and dragging Bennett for a couple yards.

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At the end of the play, Daniels manages to perform the Loser's Pancake, whereby you completely whiff on your block, then the defender completely whiffs on the tackle, then you jump on the defender's back at the end of the play (widely revered as most incompetent pancake block possible).

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....and holy shit the offensive line was bad. I didn't notice watching in real time how many times guys just completely whiffed blocks. It was ugly. And it was everyone. I'll keep posting examples until I get bored.
This is why I wish injured guys and their coaches, like Long in this case, would just sit instead of toughing it out. It was bad enough that they spied Mitch and took away his edges but getting pressure up the gut completed the trifecta. Line play on the D was well schemed. We kinda needed to go deep more early but they also weren't giving us time for that. Mitch also took a while to settle down from that pressure because his usual tricks to escape it weren't working.
 

Bort

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This was maybe the most frustrating offensive play of the entire game for me. Your defense get you the ball back up 5 points in the middle of the 4th quarter, and on 1st and 10, your running back eats shit in the backfield because 2 defenders come in nearly untouched. As you will see, no one blocks either of the circled players.

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My best guess in that the plan was to have Long help Massie double team Cox, then pick up the Mike, and intentionally letting Bennett come free while Howard is supposed to run off left tackle, but it's just a guess. It's a really botched play when I can't even tell for sure what they're even trying to do. Also, you can see Long sort of waving at the Mike as he charges right through the middle of the line untouched.

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I also wanted to highlight that Leno let Graham stand him up and set the edge here. Just look at the leverage Graham has on Leno. Meanwhile, Howard kind of panics after taking the handoff and seeing the Mike bearing down on him totally untouched. A faster RB may have had a shot at trying to bounce this outside to the left, but Howard is totally fucked here.

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Cox has thrown Massie to the side like a rag doll and is now also headed to join the party in the backfield.

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Howard just gets totally swarmed by 4 defenders in the backfield. Just an ugly play that really killed the momentum after a touchdown and a defensive stand on the last 2 drives.

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Bort

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This one is more on Nagy I think because any play design that depends on Kyle Long blocking Fletcher Cox for more than like 2 seconds is probably doomed from the start.

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Immediately off the snap, Cox punches Long with his left arm and turns him sideways.

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Look at that. Cox just threw Long to the side with one arm like a rag doll.

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And then Mitch is immediately running for his life and the play is fucked.

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Bort

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This video is not solely on Leno but it high lights a lot of times Leno was just flat out bad and didn’t look like he was giving effort.

I was going to do the one at 7:40 but the video has that covered. Leno whiffed on the DE, then tried to get to the second level and block the LB and whiffed again. The rare double whiff.
 

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This is why I can’t understand why the Bears did not put more effort in to upgrading the oline this offseason. They seem to be satisfied & content with what they have. A big problem I see is that Kyle Long can’t stay healthy. His position definitely needed to be upgraded. I hope poor blocking will not hinder Nagy’s plays & play calling this coming season.
 

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This is why I can’t understand why the Bears did not put more effort in to upgrading the oline this offseason. They seem to be satisfied & content with what they have. A big problem I see is that Kyle Long can’t stay healthy. His position definitely needed to be upgraded. I hope poor blocking will not hinder Nagy’s plays & play calling this coming season.
I think Pace tried to truly go BPA (obviously with Montgomery being the exception since RB was the biggest need) because he trusts Hiestand to get the best out of that group.
 

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I have been talking about how bad the offensive line was in this game since that horrible loss. Bears OL is most overrated in football. Trubisky bails them out a lot.
Are you sure Trubisky doesn’t make them look bad? I know....mind blown right?
 

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The devolopment of an in-line TE or H-back (Shaheen, Sowell, Braunecker) is what offers the most hope imo for o-line improvement, with Massie...

the other option would be to get a RT who doesn't need a chip so badly.

I think we get a small sized boost from Daniels progression, and a major boost from Whitehair and Daniels both going to their personal best position...and I do believe thats true for both of them.

Long being healthy would be unlikly but a major boost.

What happened should be expected with our o-line playing against a good d-line with consequence meaningful game level of play. Cutler never even watched a playoff game to understand his own fucking league.
 
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Visionman

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You guys know the opposing defense is paid to make plays too, right?

Even good OL players get beat from time to time. Acting like unless they are perfect they suck is going to make for a depressing life as a football fan.

Yes, they probably shouldn't have played Long in that playoff game jusy coming back from injury and clearly not 100%. But I think the lack of a quality TE hurt much more in that game than the OL did. Lets see how long Long can stay healthy and how the young kids are developing before we slam Pace for "doing nothing" about the OL though...
 

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You guys know the opposing defense is paid to make plays too, right?

Even good OL players get beat from time to time. Acting like unless they are perfect they suck is going to make for a depressing life as a football fan.

Yes, they probably shouldn't have played Long in that playoff game jusy coming back from injury and clearly not 100%. But I think the lack of a quality TE hurt much more in that game than the OL did. Lets see how long Long can stay healthy and how the young kids are developing before we slam Pace for "doing nothing" about the OL though...
They played worse than that and the TE we were missing didn't affect the blocking. He did help make the early game plan ineffective with his absence but had little to do with the extra pressure and well schemed D.
 

Visionman

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They played worse than that and the TE we were missing didn't affect the blocking. He did help make the early game plan ineffective with his absence but had little to do with the extra pressure and well schemed D.
It made Nagy much too conservative and our offense much more predictable. It didn't have everything to do with it, but it had a lot to do with it.

And as I said, inserting an injured Long into the OL didn't do them any favors. Ruined any chemistry they had.
 

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I said it 1st.?
 

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