You doomers are funny.
DOOOOOOOM!
Pfft.
Look I'm not expecting a Super Bowl by any stretch, but many of you are leaking an emotional judgment while trying to pretend it's a logical one.
The reality is that even composed as they are now, Andy Dalton is a better quarterback than Mitch trubisky when giving protection. People seem to have short-term memory regarding the offensive line, which held up the last two games against better teams, and really has been okay ever since Sam Mustapher took over center.
Fuller for trufant is a downgrade, but let's not pretend that Fuller was this awesome cover corner - his skills were jumping routes when there was a pass rush and hitting like a linebacker at times. But he would also get burned because of his over aggressiveness which he was because frankly he wasn't that good of a cover corner.
Also, while everyone is feeling negative about the defense being a year older, we realistically don't know the deal with Robert Quinn yet. Everyone just wants to easily write him off as an overpriced bust and he still very well could be that. But then there was word that he played hurt last year. If that ends up being true and not just an excuse then the pass rush could see an improvement, and there is no substitute on defense for a good pass rush. It can make lesser secondary players look better.
On offense, it's trendy to bitch about Nagy's scheme, but if you take a closer look at Mitch in that scheme, there were always wide receivers wide open for him to throw to. There were just a ton of times where he flat didn't even see them. Is it the schemes problem if the receivers are open but the quarterback is too stupid to read the field and find them? That seems like a very clear quarterback issue to me.
And frankly for the people who are paying attention, it happened so often that if you simply had an average quarterback get the ball to the open receiver in those cases 75% of the time more than Mitch did, you probably would end up with a third the more yards then what you got in total last year, and likely end up scoring a lot more too.
An offense it's not rocket science. The offensive line is now good enough although I wouldn't hate some upgrades at the tackle position. You don't need a Hall of Fame quarterback in this parity League to get you to 10 and 7 and the playoffs.
The Bears just need an adequate game manager to distribute the ball, and if that game manager is good enough at it, he's going to have a shit ton of yards by the end of the season.
Not to mention, you never know you're from year which teams will play better and which will play worse. It's always a crapshoot trying to guess the schedule.
So yeah, barring injury put me down as the Bears going 10 and 7. Because of a better quarterback, parity, and the defense drop off not being nearly as bad as doomers are saying.
