Walt Williams Neck wrote:
Ryan Pace watching the guy he got rid of shred his defense
And to that, while I joked it was mitch 34 bears 6 @ HT it felt to me like Mitch was game managing. They didn't ask him to go out there and consistently chuck it 15-25+ yds downfield. They set him up with easy plays where guys were open and despite his C- at best accuracy he generally got the ball there to the tune of 20/28 ,~210yds 1 or 2 TD in that first half.
The stats look.great but watching the game Mitch was just calm and in control of running the plays being fed to him. Way way WAY more often than not those plays worked so Mitch would have an easy target generally right in front of him 5-12yds downfield so he made solid common sense throws and showed that he can be a quality backup for this bills team cuz if you give him the weapons and the plays he can do a job for you at QB.
Example = on his first TD on 2nd or 3rd and goal I saw the pre-snap shuffling of the WRS/,TES and it looked like 3 or 4 WR or maybe 3WR 1TE so he had 4/+ guys lined up tight around him. During the pre-snap shuffle told my dad (watching with me) "watch, one of these guys is going to get a step ahead of his defender and be open for Mitch right in the middle of the endzone" and sure enough #13 got that step/+ was clearly open and Mitch got the throw timing right, but the throw was on the trajectory to hit him right in the face if he didn't get his hands up and catch it for the "tuddy"
so while Mitch showed his chicago-famous lack of accuracy a fair amount of times, the bills put Mitch Iin.a situation where he mostly had easy 5-15yd throws to an open guy right in front of him (or even some post routs right by the sideline just past 1st downarker) and thus they l Mitchproofed it to where a pass that's a foot or two higher or wider than the hands/breadbasket target, it still got the job done way more often than not.
And then with that they could run the ball with ease, setting up effective PA situations and legit worrying that last year's defense decline is going to continue under this new and seemingly lesser DC than even Chuck Pagano with his "bend just enough to break your heart" defense
Mitch was a passenger today and you saw that in a top quality offense that knows how to evaluate a player and determine their strengths and weaknesses and create a game plan where they call quality plays that get receivers so open they're effectively mitchproofed, yeah, he might be capable of a matt Flynn game here and there.
Remember his ~280-320yd 4TD game against the redskins in 2018? He can be a game manager if you work within his limitations and have him do things he can do against crappy defenses or with the rare occasional great playcall to set it up for you. That said, odds are that Mitch will never rise up and pick a team up by their bootstraps and lead them to the promised land ... But if you recognize what he can and can't consistently do and play to those strengths and minimize those weaknesses, today is the best case example of Mitch being a quality game manager for you
Back in Chicago when you boasted that the playbook is finally fully open now that Nick foles is here and you're hellbent on Mitch developing accuracy 25+ yds downfield(which ironically led to an INT that got him benched in DET) he's very likely gonna fail. If your players aren't good enough to get themselves open on their own and thus your playcalling constantly requires you to make tight precision passes to covered receivers 15+yds downfield where natural/innate/intrinsic accuracy is needed.... Welp, that's Mitch's bears career in a nutshell.
The only reason he came back to lead the charge back to 8-8 and a one-n-done is cuz since you knew where foles would be on every play you could key off on the run and dare foles to beat you while your front 4 are providing enough pass rush to keep him anything less than comfortable. Mitch still could theoretically take off and run, and even tho his rushing #s in 19+20 COMBINED for less than the 400something he got in 2018, that was enough to.make teams respect his ability to break off a 15yd run like he did today and thus the running game opened up more, got better, got Mitch less nickel coverage and thus more easier targets on mediocre++ playcalling, and viva la 8-8 one and done run.
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Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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