Teams with most penalties against this season:

Cardinals – 49
Jets – 45
Bears – 45
Buccaneers – 42
Chiefs – 40

Fewest:

Patriots – 12
Seahawks – 23
Broncos – 23
Texans – 24
Rams – 24

— NFL Stats (@NFL_Stats) October 22, 2020

An early look at how the Rams must get going against that loaded Bears defense. From TNF First look @nflnetwork @StaceyDales @AndrewSiciliano pic.twitter.com/dz2Ea6E1Tr

— Steve Wyche (@wyche89) October 22, 2020

from https://www.turfshowtimes.com/2020/10/22/21529061/rams-advanced-stats-football-outsiders-dvoa

Offensive DVOA: 18%. The Rams rank fifth in offensive efficiency at FootballOutsiders, including 10th in passing and first in rushing. LA’s DVOA in 2017 was 11.3% and in 2018 it was 25%, so this is a medium between the two.

The Rams strongest suit on defense is a pass rush led by Aaron Donald and a secondary led by Jalen Ramsey. They rank 21st against the run by DVOA (-4.4%) but are 11th against the pass.

BOOM! I wish all journalists would do this when public figures of any stripe won't answer the question posed. https://t.co/0zl6gpRadg

— Hart Hanson (@HartHanson) October 22, 2020

Jourdan Rodrigue@JourdanRodrigue
McVay on ILBs: They played tough, but was clear they were having trouble when stretched wide. Adds that some key areas where favorable down and distance tackles were missed are particularly an area that needs to get cleaned up immediately.

Sosa K@QBsMVP
The #LARams paid a premium by way of trade to acquire a shutdown cornerback in Jalen Ramsey. They then extended that by paying him huge $. It’s paid off — big time. Per @PFF

Ramsey ranks 5th in yards per target allowed in his coverage (4.52) among all CB’s with 10+ targets.

PFF@PFF
Highest-graded RBs:
1. Raheem Mostert – 89.1
2. Darrell Henderson – 86.9
3. Austin Ekeler – 84.5
4. Dalvin Cook – 82.2
5. Alvin Kamara – 81.3

TurfShowTimes@TurfShowTimes
Rams linebacker Micah Kiser has cleaned up his missed tackles since Week 1.

Going through the LAR-SF tape…

QB Jimmy Garoppolo on play-action throws = 8-of-9 passing.

Shanahan targeted zone coverage with PA + middle of the field route concepts. Create open voids for Garoppolo to throw on rhythm. @NFLMatchup #49ers pic.twitter.com/NsNQWxN19F

— Matt Bowen (@MattBowen41) October 22, 2020

The one who got away? Really?

Jimmy Garoppolo isn’t exactly making the most of his time in an incredibly quarterback-friendly system in San Francisco. https://t.co/I8FowwYFFF

— Phil Perry (@PhilAPerry) October 22, 2020

Are The Chicago Bears Good Or Just Lucky?

* https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-the-chicago-bears-good-or-just-lucky/

With one NFL Sunday left in the month of October, the Chicago Bears hold sole possession of first place in the NFC North. They’re 5-1 after six games, and FiveThirtyEight’s Elo-based projections give them an 85 percent chance of making the playoffs. Even if they played .500 football the rest of the way, they would still finish 10-6.

So why are some observers labeling their success as “fraudulent”?

The easy answer is they haven’t faced many good teams — and they haven’t won by very much. Their five conquests to date (the Detroit Lions, New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers) have a combined win percentage of .379. Given that the Bears have only outscored their opponents by a total of 128-116, predictive metrics like the Simple Ranking System don’t love them.1 With a weak slate like that, it’s no surprise that opponent-adjusted stats like Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) aren’t impressed by their performances so far, either.2

But winning five of six NFL games is never a complete accident, and there are plenty of concrete football arguments for the Bears being what the scoreboard says they are. They rank seventh in both scoring and yardage defense, thanks to a secondary that’s allowed the lowest completion rate of any team in the NFL. All-Pro edge rusher Khalil Mack has 4.5 sacks as part of a unit that’s tied for 10th-most sacks in the league despite blitzing less often than all but five other teams. They’re an especially good situational defense, allowing the second-lowest third-down conversion rate and lowest red-zone touchdown rate in the league.

These numbers don’t stack up to those of hallowed Bears defenses like the 2006 and 1985 units. But it’s reasonable to believe the 2020 edition will still be tough to score against for the rest of the regular season — and, likely, the playoffs.

The obvious problem is on the other side of the ball, where a quarterback combination of Nick Foles and Mitchell Trubisky has made for one of the league’s most anemic passing attacks. The Bears rank 26th in team completion rate and passer rating, and they sit in 30th in both yards per attempt and yards per completion. As good as their situational defense has been, their situational offense has been nearly that bad: They rank 27th in third-down conversion rate and 26th in red-zone touchdown rate. The passing attack has generated just 17.5 expected points, seventh-worst in the league.

The Great NFL Passing Boom of the 2010s primed football-watching minds to correlate passing success with team success — and if there was an opportunity for defenses to cycle back to ascendance, the rise of do-everything quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson 2.0 seems to have squashed it.

If the NFL is still a pass-first league, just how badly can Chicago’s quarterbacks perform without killing the team’s postseason hopes? Let’s compare what the Bears have gotten from Foles and Trubisky so far with where the bar seems to be.

There have been 60 playoff teams over the past five full NFL seasons, and most of them have been very effective through the air. Last year, eight of the NFL’s top 10 passing offenses3 made the playoffs.

Here’s where the 2020 Bears stack up against the best, worst and average passing attacks — by adjusted net yards per attempt — from the past five playoff fields:
Chicago’s passing looks like the worst playoff teams

Passing stats for the top five and bottom five 2015-19 playoff teams by adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/Att), plus the 2020 Chicago Bears
Team Year Comp% TD% Int% Yds/Att ANY/Att
Bears 2020* 61.3% 5.0% 2.9% 6.0 5.1

Top 5 teams Year Comp% TD% Int% Yds/Att ANY/Att
Falcons 2016 69.6% 7.1% 1.3% 9.2 9.0
Chiefs 2018 66.0 8.6 2.1 8.8 8.9
Patriots 2016 66.9 5.8 0.4 8.1 8.5
Chiefs 2019 65.6 5.2 0.9 8.1 8.1
Saints 2018 73.4 6.4 1.3 8.0 8.1

Bottom 5 teams Year Comp% TD% Int% Yds/Att ANY/Att
Panthers 2017 58.5% 4.4% 3.2% 6.6 5.2
Bills 2017 60.7 3.4 2.1 6.5 5.2
Broncos 2015 60.7 3.1 3.8 7.0 5.1
Titans 2017 61.7 2.8 3.4 6.8 5.1
Texans 2016 59.5 2.6 2.7 5.9 4.5
Years Comp% TD% Int% Yds/Att ANY/Att
Average 2015-19 65.1% 5.2% 1.9% 7.6 6.9

*2020 stats through games of Oct. 18.

Adjusted net yards per attempt is calculated as (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) – 45*(interceptions thrown) – sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks). Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com

The Bears are definitely getting more from their passing attack than the worst-throwing recent playoff team, the 2016 Houston Texans. But “more” than Brock Osweiler and Tom Savage were able to contribute to a team that barely won the dire 2016 AFC South is not much.

In fact, if you drop the Bears’ current passing rate stats in with that field of 60, they would rank near the bottom in almost all of them: completion rate (49th), touchdown rate (34th), interception rate (56th), yards per attempt (60th), passer rating (55th) and adjusted net yards per attempt (58th).

But unlike the 2016 Texans, the Bears don’t have a productive tailback, let alone two. Lamar Miller and Alfred Blue gained 1,493 yards for those Texans at a 4.06 per-carry rate, leading that season’s eighth-most-prolific rushing attack. With 2020 Bears starter Tarik Cohen already out for the season, second-year back David Montgomery has managed just 305 yards over six games, averaging 3.7 yards a pop. The team’s No. 2 active rusher? Wideout Cordarrelle Patterson, with just 70 yards.

To stay competitive for the rest of the season — let alone make noise in the playoffs — the Bears will likely have to get better at one of these phases of the game. But if Foles can’t get closer to his top form, Montgomery can’t run more effectively, and the defense can’t find an even higher gear, there’s still one element driving the Bears’ success: fumble luck.

On defense, the Bears have forced four fumbles and recovered three, while on offense, they’ve recovered all six of their own fumbles. All in all, they’ve picked up 81.8 percent of the balls that have hit the ground in their games so far, the highest rate in the NFL. For comparison, the highest recorded full-season recovery rate since 2003 was the 69.8 percent put up by the 2009 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

But whether the Bears have been lucky, good or both, it doesn’t change what’s happened. They’re still 5-1, with remaining games against the 1-5 Texans, 2-3 Detroit Lions and 1-5 Jacksonville Jaguars — and two games against the 1-5 Vikings. Even if their fumble luck regresses a little, and even if they don’t play significantly better, the Bears’ hot start has given them a nearly 50-50 chance to win the division and a 17 percent shot at a first-round bye.

Bears fans probably like those odds, even if the numbers lead everyone else to call them frauds.

.@kurt13warner's Top 5 QBs from Week 6!

5. @JimmyG_10
4. @PatrickMahomes
3-1. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/BTvxHdKgr5

— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) October 22, 2020

First look: Rams look to bounce back in Week 7 vs. Bears

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) October 21, 2020

merlin

There were a lot of “almosts” in the Rams’ run plays vs SF. Lot of plays that could have gone for really nice yardage had one guy not whiffed on his assignment. Some of it was technique too IMO, especially on the zone runs with reach blocks. This OL is good enough to sustain a strong run game I believe. The talent is there now, just gotta polish it up and get your two best backs in there for the majority of snaps.

TurfShowTimes@TurfShowTimes
Optimism for development of Ogbonnia Okoronkwo and Samson Ebukam is all but faded with Okoronkwo going on IR and Ebukam’s playing time dwindling

DOWNTOWN RAMS [DTR]@DowntownRams
#Rams DC Brandon Staley is having a great year

– 19 PPG Allowed (5th)
– 109 Rushing YDs Allowed Per Game (11th)
– 209.5 Passing YDs Allowed Per Game (4th)
– 318.5 Total YDs Allowed Per Game (4th)
– 4.3 3rd DN Conv Per Game (4th)
– 2.7 4th QTR Points Allowed Per Game (1st)

Sosa K@QBsMVP
The #LARams paid a premium by way of trade to acquire a shutdown cornerback in Jalen Ramsey. They then extended that by paying him huge $. It’s paid off — big time. Per
@PFF
:

Ramsey ranks 5th in yards per target allowed in his coverage (4.52) among all CB’s with 10+ targets.

NFL Stats@NFL_Stats
Most tackles for loss this season:

Vince Williams – 10
TJ Watt – 10
Aaron Donald – 9

aeneas1

PFF RANKINGS THRU WEEK 6