By KEITH GLOCK
CONJSports.com Founder
As the National Football League kicks off its 100th season on Thursday, it’s not difficult to find someone who wants to tell you what’s sure to happen this year.
Look near and far from the back rooms of Las Vegas as bookmakers set season win totals, to the end of the bar at your local Buffalo Wild Wings, and it’s seemingly a right of passage for prognosticators to rattle off the sure bets of the season.
This isn’t a time to be high-brow and scrunch your forehead at the wannabe soothsayers.
It’s time to join in. Let’s face it – it’s fun.
Here are two things that are (cough) ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, SURELY GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE NFL THIS SEASON.
The Chicago Bears will not make the playoffs, and will not be over .500
Betters in the state of New Jersey, as of Labor Day morning, could get the Bears with the 9th-best odds to win the Super Bowl (according to Fox’s new FoxBet app). The Action Network has their season win total at 9 as of Monday.
There’s a ton of information out there to suggest that you should cut and run on the Bears and their chances to make the postseason for the second-consecutive season.
One of the most notoriously sharp analytic websites, Football Outsiders, is much closer to the mark, methinks. The reason is because they (like others like Pro Football Focus do) look analytically to predict what’s coming. As of the workforce holiday celebration day, FO had the Bears’ win total at 7.9.
The bigger question is obviously why the Bears will take a step back. When predicting future success in the NFL, one of the most basic things that analysts look for in their crystal balls is a place where a team will regress to the mean.
The basic mathematical principle of regression to the mean, simply implies that when things happen which are statistical outliers (either so bad, or so good), the chances that over time and with a larger sample size, it is difficult to maintain that level of goodness or badness. More likely, things are going to slip back toward the middle, or the average.
The Bears are the most likely candidates for regression because of the absurd statistics they put up defensively in 2018. Not only the absurd turnovers the Monsters of the Midway forced last season, but the type of turnovers.
According to Football Outsiders, the Bears forced a turnover on 19.1% of defensive drives, the best in the NFL. The next highest was the Rams at 16.5%.
As mentioned, it was the type of turnovers – interceptions. The Bears had 27 INTs in 2018. The next three highest numbers in the league were 21, 18 and 17. To put a point on how absurdly high that number is, 11 teams (more than a third of the league) had 11 INTs or less last season.
It is a generally accepted fact that interceptions are more a factor of luck than skill compared with forced fumbles. Sure, you can have great cornerbacks, but other QBs’ decisions, tipped balls, wrong routes etc. all contribute to picked-off passes.
Heck, let’s keep going.
The Bears picked off a pass on 14.8% of opponents’ drives in 2018, which was more than twice the NFL average.
Oh, did we mention that the coordinator of that vaunted defense, Vic Fangio, is now the head coach of a team 1,006 miles to the west of Soldier Field in Colorado, and he’s been replaced by Chuck Pagano. Remember all those incredible defenses Pagano had as the head coach of the Colts? Us either.
Offensively the Bears go into their second season under head coach Matt Nagy, which is certainly a good thing. Nagy is considered one of the bright, young, offensive minds in the league.
The bad news: Mitchell Trubisky. Let’s just gaze again at his fantastic field vision. To refresh your memory, he didn’t even throw to Trey Burton, who we are pretty sure is still wiiiiiiiiiide open.
Regression. Big time.
The Green Bay Packers will not be good offensively – this season
Yea, yea. I can hear you screaming now:
What?? Have you forgotten that Aaron Rodgers is the quarterback of the Pack? And that they got rid of the predictable Mike McCarthy offense? And that they have offensive genius Matt LaFleur as their new head coach?
All good points until the last one, which is where the issue is.
LaFleur’s coaching arc has gone like this:
2015-16: Atlanta Falcons QB coach
2017: LA Rams Offensive Coordinator
2018: Tennessee Titans Offensive Coordinator
2019: Green Bay Packers head coach
Seems logical and normal. Fantastic pedigree. QB coach for a 2016 Falcons team that was one of the top 10 offenses in NFL history, coordinated a turned-around offense in Los Angeles in 2017 and then coordinated another the following season.
But feel free to take a deep dive whenever you want to more closely examine those vaunted offenses.
In Atlanta in 2015 and ’16 (we will get to the ’15 team in more disturbing detail below), now 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was the architect and play-caller of that offense. (Also, what does it say that when Shanahan left Atlanta for San Fran, he chose NOT to hire LaFleur and bring him with him to the bay area??)
In Los Angeles, though LaFleur held the title of offensive coordinator, it was head coach Sean McVey who instituted and called the offense.
The first time that LaFleur has ever called plays in the NFL was last season in Tennessee, and let’s just say the results were underwhelming.
The Titans were 25th in yards per game in 2018 and 23rd in a crucial stat – yards per play (5.3). For reference, the Chiefs led the league at 6.8 yards per play. As another means of comparison, the lowly Buccaneers ripped off 6.3 yards per play.
But it is Rodgers who, at least in Year 1 in this offense, could be the biggest hindrance to it succeeding to the level it can, and should.
LaFleur will run the Shanahan offense in Green Bay which is predicated on motion to define the defensive coverage for the QB (a good thing) and play action to open up middle and down-the-field route combinations (another good thing).
But it’s also predicated on timing, and the quarterback operating within the structure of the play to take what’s in front of him – which often means a six-yard completion instead of forcing the potential 24-yarder.
Rodgers is a notorious ad-libber. He drew up a play in the dirt in 2016 to beat the Cowboys in the Divisonal Playoffs, often rolled his eyes at the initial call and then changed Mike McCarthy’s plays in the huddle the last several years, already criticized LaFleur’s offense for not allowing him to change plays at the line of scrimmage, and even scrapped an entire play call in practice and drew up another play in the dirt during his first training camp with his new head coach.
What does it all mean? That Rodgers is often less-than-willing to play within the timing and structure of plays.
Want more?
The Falcons Matt Ryan was the NFL MVP in 2016. But many forget what 2015 looked like for Ryan, who is basically the opposite of Aaron Rodgers when it comes to playing within the timing and structure of the play. He’s the ultimate preparation and team guy, and his overall intelligence is very high.
The Shanahan offense is just, well, complicated. Quarterbacks in their first season in that offense struggle. Let’s look no further than Ryan in 2015:
The Falcons signal caller threw 21 touchdowns and tossed 16 interceptions (the second most INTs of his career) and after that season left many wondering if he was the long-term solution in the ATL.
Year two in the Shanahan offense was clearly much better for Ryan given the whole MVP (38 TDs 7 INT) and Super Bowl appearance thing.
Long story well, long, but when you combine the patience required to succeed in this offense, and Rodgers lack thereof, it’s going to be a longer season than most think in Green Bay.
Let the games begin.
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