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junker-town · 5 years

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How much would have *really* changed if the Bears hadn’t settled for Rex Grossman?

Undoing the trades that made the Bears draft Grossman in 2003 is an exercise in nihilism.

For 28 seasons — between the heydays of Jim McMahon and Mitchell Trubisky — the Bears had a quarterback problem. For nearly three decades, the apex of Chicago quarterback play was the wild swings of Jay Cutler’s boom-or-bust howitzer throws downfield. No era was worse than the stretch from 1997 to 2002, when nine different players, ranging from Rick Mirer to CFL legend Henry Burris, all earned starts at the position.

The 2003 NFL Draft was Chicago’s chance to clean up its Superfund site of a depth chart. The Bears’ 4-12 record the previous season came with the silver lining of the No. 4 pick that spring. Although that wouldn’t be enough to pry top prospect Carson Palmer away from a needy Bengals team with the No. 1 selection, Chicago had its pick among a flawed-but-interesting group of quarterbacks headlined by Marshall star Byron Leftwich.

And the Bears wanted no part of that.

Chicago traded down from No. 4, instead opting to allow the rest of the league to sort out the year’s QB crop. By the time the team finally decided to draft one down at No. 22, it settled for the fourth quarterback off the board: fading Florida star Rex Grossman.

The good news is he was the best passer available at that point. The bad news is he was still Rex Grossman.

Grossman would have only one season in which he started more than seven games for Chicago. And while that 2006 season ended with a 13-3 record and an NFC championship, the young quarterback was merely an obstacle for his suffocating defense to overcome. He completed less than 55 percent of his passes that fall, threw 20 interceptions, and completed as many touchdown passes to Colts defenders as he did his own teammates (one) in the Bears’ lone Super Bowl appearance in the past three decades.

So what if the Bears didn’t trade back in 2003?

Introducing 2004 Bears starting quarterback Byron Leftwich

It’s easy to understand why the Bears were eager to trade out of the fourth overall pick despite a quarterback carousel with the centrifugal force to turn veteran arms into mush. Palmer was a safe bet to develop into a stud, but the rest of the 2003 class was filled with high-ceiling, low-floor quarterbacks.

Leftwich was a tough-as-nails moose who completed more than 67 percent of his passes while throwing 68 touchdown passes as an upperclassman, though that came for a Marshall team that cut its teeth against unimposing defenses like Akron, Buffalo, and Bowling Green each week.

Kyle Boller looked like an NFL quarterback (6’3, 220 pounds) and could throw the ball very hard, which was somehow enough to gloss over a 47.8 percent completion rate and 48 interceptions in four seasons at Cal.

Grossman was a Heisman Trophy candidate in 2001, then regressed hard the following year to record 17 interceptions and the worst passer rating of his collegiate career.

Even so, the need for a franchise quarterback was very real for the Bears. Since 1991, they have fielded a top-10 scoring offense in only four seasons but 15 other times have fallen to the league’s bottom 10. Chicago’s 2002 team ranked 28th in the league in passing efficiency and came into 2003 with a 31-year-old Kordell Stewart and a 38-year-old Chris Chandler competing for the NFC North’s saddest starting role. Something had to be done.

That overrode the team’s desire to plug other holes. Chicago needed an edge rusher, but a poor workout seemingly took Terrell Suggs out of the running. Two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Terence Newman may have been the pick — Jerry Azumah and R.W. McQuarters weren’t exactly lighting the secondary on fire.

Let’s say the Jets don’t offer a significant overpayment to move up to No. 4 and instead hang on to their 13th, 22nd, and 116th picks. Without the opportunity to overhaul an unimpressive roster with a deluge of selections, Chicago decides to address its biggest hole and add Leftwich.

It’s a modest upgrade!

Not trading back doesn’t change the Bears much, but gives them a little more hope at QB

In reality, Chicago traded down twice in the first round of the 2003 draft, moving from No. 4 to Nos. 13, 22, and 116 and then swapping the 13th pick for Nos. 14 and 193. That 193rd pick was eventually traded as well. But if the Bears decided to stand pat with their top-five draft pick, the final outcome would look like this.

Bears get:

QB Byron Leftwich

Bears don’t get:

DE Michael Haynes QB Rex Grossman DT Ian Scott and a piece of the draft assets that allow them to trade up on Day 2 for WR Justin Gage

The glaring takeaway from this hypothetical is that even though it reverses two first-round trades, it’s still incredibly boring. By settling for Leftwich, Chicago wipes Haynes, Scott, and Grossman of its books. Losing Scott is a modest blow — he’d start 33 games in four seasons as a space-eating defensive tackle — but Haynes was a bust (5.5 career sacks, zero games played after 2005) and Grossman is redundant behind Leftwich.

In return, the Bears get a slightly more efficient centerpiece to an offense aching to catch up to one of the league’s top defenses.

Slightly more efficient. Leftwich wasn’t any great shakes in Jacksonville, though there’s an argument he’d have been better with Chicago. While Leftwich would spend the start of his career throwing passes to an aging Jimmy Smith and a handful of retread and never-was wideouts like Matt Jones and Ernest Wilford, the Bears could offer Marty Booker, Bernard Berrian, and Muhsin Muhammad. The Bears also boasted Pro Bowl blockers like Ruben Brown and Olin Kreutz up front; the Jags failed to send any of its offensive linemen to the NFL All-Star Game over that same span.

The bigger issue is whether the Bears could have kept Leftwich healthy — injuries limited him to just 11 starts in 2005 and six in 2006. He was effectively done as a starter after that. Better blocking in Chicago would have helped, but the not-especially-mobile Leftwich also struggled with injuries in college, most notably the broken leg he toughed out in a loss to Akron in 2002.

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Since his 2005 season was cut short after breaking his ankle while being sacked, he probably would have stayed on the field longer with the Bears’ more stable offensive line. That’s not what we’re interested in, however. The main question about this what-if scenario is whether a young Leftwich would have provided enough offensive firepower to carry Chicago to its first NFL title since the 1985 season.

And he would not have.

Leftwich would have been a boon, but not the steady hand the Bears needed

Leftwich was good enough to get Chicago to a Super Bowl, just like Grossman did. But if you gave him the 2006 Bears’ swarming defense and spotted him a 7-0 lead in the big game, would he be able to derail Peyton Manning and the Colts’ quest for their first NFL title since 1970? Probably not.

So what about the 2005 season — the one where the Bears overcame a 1-3 start to rally to the NFC North title before bowing out to the Panthers in the Divisional Round? Could he have delivered a championship parade to the Windy City then?

It’s unlikely, but it’s possible.

Chicago won a division crown despite forcing a 23-year-old Kyle Orton into the starting lineup for 15 games after Grossman suffered a broken ankle. The two combined to throw 10 touchdown passes, 15 interceptions, and post dueling 59.7 quarterback ratings for a team that scored 19 points or fewer 12 times and still won seven of those games.

Leftwich, meanwhile, was in the middle of a breakout campaign where he went 8-3 as a starter and recorded career bests in touchdown rate (5.0 percent) and yards per attempt (7.0).

Again, not great numbers, but there’s a clear edge in production for Leftwich, who would probably turn an 11-win team into a 13-win one. Even if he was awful in his lone postseason start (18 of 31, 179 yards, 1 INT against the Patriots in ‘05), that was still slightly more efficient that Grossman’s performance in the aforementioned loss to the Panthers (17 of 41, 192 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT).

There are several interesting hypotheticals in the Leftwich-Bears universe. In the real version of January 2006, the Bears entered the playoffs as the No. 2 seed and lost their first game. However, Leftwich’s presence could have been enough to push them to the No. 1 seed in the NFC and a Divisional Round game against a Washington team it held to only nine points in Week 1 of the actual 2005 season.

Could he have done enough to advance the Bears to the next weekend? Could he outstrike the league’s top scoring offense in a potential conference title game against the Seahawks? Could a young, caretaker quarterback have beaten the Steelers in the Super Bowl?

The Bears’ odds are slightly better with Leftwich in the lineup, but they’re still not favorable. With or without those first-round trades, it’s tough to see things in Chicago improving too significantly.

Whoooo. Well, after all that, I effectively called the Bears’ 2003 first-round trades meaningless, which sorta gives this whole exercise a nihilist feel, doesn’t it? Things don’t work out much better for the Jaguars, who either don’t get a top prospect quarterback that year or settle for one of the inaccurate trebuchet duo of Boller/Grossman instead.

Either way, Chicago and Jacksonville both find reasonable but unsustainable success behind unreliable quarterbacks and have to hit the reset button on the position again.

The Bears could have waited on a more promising crop of quarterbacks by passing on Grossman and hoping someone from the Eli Manning/Philip Rivers/Ben Roethlisberger Class of ‘04 would fall to them, but that wouldn’t have worked either. A lineup of journeymen passers in 2003 was good enough to strand Chicago in no-man’s land, giving the team a mid-round draft pick that would have come too late to select any of those decorated quarterbacks.

The lesson here, other than that the 2003 draft was kinda butt for quarterbacks, even with the presence of Cardinals Ring of Famer Carson Palmer atop the list? If you need a franchise quarterback, you’re probably better tanking your way into a top-three pick rather than trying to polish a flawed late-first or mid-round quarterback into a diamond. At least the Bears seemingly figured that out, 14 years later.

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unfair-sports · 5 years

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The OSG Fantasy Report Week 13

Thursday Slate

Here we go with what is always one of the most exciting slates of the year. Most fans are off of work, and some will have time to plug in some lineups. Some versus friends, family, and versus the masses. On a 3-game slate, you have to try to make some lineups a little different to avoid the chalk, and get ahead of the field. However, do not ignore the best plays. Sometimes, you just play the best plays. On short slates, raw points matter. You are not going to love your lineup from top to bottom and will be forced to roster players that on a full Sunday slate would not even be in your player pool. If they hit, you may have a new favorite NFL player. (I’m now the biggest Derrick Henry and Calvin Ridley fan in America!). Regardless, the Week 13 Thursday OSG Report!!!!!!!!

Chicago Bears -4 @ Detroit Lions (39)

Buffalo Bills @ Dallas Cowboys -7 (45)

New Orleans Saints @ Atlanta Falcons (49)

Quarterback

Drew Brees- On paper this is an excellent matchup for Brees on the road in the dome in Atlanta. He’s an easy play because of the ability to stack with Michael Thomas, Jared Cook, or Alvin Kamara. They have one of the narrowest target trees in the NFL. The only issue here with Brees is price. He has by far the best matchup, the highest total vs a reeling defense who for two weeks showed signs of life. If Atlanta can keep the game somewhat close and force Brees to pass for 4 quarters vs allowing the Saints to kill the clock for the 4th quarter, then Brees can meet or beat value.

Mitch Trubisky – Purely a price play here if you have seen him play lately. He’s gets a friendly environment at the Lions dome, along with a soft matchup who handed Dwayne Haskins his first win. I’m willing to succeed that Mitch is a hair higher on the rankings than Haskins. He offers some rushing ability here and can make rostering some studs a little easier depending on lineup construction.

Matt Ryan- Vs this Saints defense, Ryan is a tough sell. Early season he was a lock for 300 yards and multi TDs every game. With his dome and weapons, it SHOULD still be there and it’s not. And with Julio Jones very questionable Wednesday evening, he’s a tougher sell depending on how many lineups you are building.

Josh Allen- At the time of writing this, Allen is my favorite QB. The thing here is I am considering NOT stacking him in the traditional sense. Allen to Brown etc. (we will get to that at WRs). The likes of Sam Darnold and Jeff Driskel have played very comfortable vs Dallas, and in the dome, could be easy fantasy points picking for Allen. The same knock on Dallas applies to Buffalo, no wins vs quality playoff bound opponents. So, I even think the 7-point line in Dallas is way too generous and could lead to Buffalo feeling a little disrespected and coming to play. Regardless, Allen provides a solid rushing floor and leads his team in rushing TDs on the season. An easy plug and play

Dak Prescott- As of now, Dak is my least favorite QB and draws the toughest matchups of any QBs on the Thursday slate. 10 of 11 of QBs facing Buffalo have finished 13th or worse in QB fantasy points each week. The running game here should be the target vs Buffalo.

Running Back

Tarik Cohen/David Montgomery- The Bears get the best matchup vs RBs this week and this is purely a play to be different. The masses loaded up on Montgomery vs Detroit a few weeks ago and it DID NOT WORK OUT! So, the common sense move would be to avoid him, but on a 3-game slate he has to be considered. I prefer Tarik Cohen due to his pass game involvement as of late. I do wish he secured a few more rushing attempts, but on a 3 game slate beggars cannot be choosy. He’s a sneaky stack mate with Trubisky depending on how many lineups you do get to.

Alvin Kamara/Latavius Murray- Pass catching backs vs Atlanta are a “thing” and in comes Kamara. The very definition of a pass catching back and can be stacked alongside Drew Brees for that reason. While the 20 touches are always there, it’s a mix of pass and run that gets him there. Last week, Murray somewhat started off the game in the backfield, and even punched in the beloved red zone TD. Vs Atlanta either back is in play. For his price, I would prefer Kamara to have access to the goal line and red zone carries. From the eyeball test, it seems that the Saints are managing his rushing load, which for his price has been making him an extremely tough sell. If you fade Kamara for these reasons, then Murray is the direct beneficiary of Kamara’s missed snaps.

Devin Singletary- He topped 100 yards last week, but no TDs. The positive regression should come soon. He’s in a great dome environment and has the speed and athleticism to take a screen pass from Allen the distance. Frank Gore is always scary due to his goal line work, but not enough to roster, though we can do stranger things on a short game slate. Gore and the likes of David Montgomery could easy go for minimum yards and a few goal line carries for 2 TDs.

Ezekiel Elliott- Once again, Zeek is one of my favorite RBs of the slate. While the “explosiveness” may not be like his rookie year, the work however is. He dominates his backfield touches and gets plays drawn up for him in the passing game. With so much pressure on Dallas, the head coach, and facing a very tough defense with a shutdown corner, the commonsense play is to “feed him on Thanksgiving” (clever right?) Regardless, we targeted Phillip Lindsay vs Buffalo because the Bills never put 7-8 in the box which allows them to clamp down on the passing game. So that means Zeek vs a weak front, with very little LB presence around the line against a defense allowing 4.62 yards per carry, sign me up Zeek!!

Devonta Freeman- Mentioned here because of the slate. He’s returning from injury and was the clear lead back for an Atlanta team that doesn’t like to use their lead backs in heavy loads. His pass game involvement was there, and Julio may miss. It’s the worst matchup on the slate for RBs but all must be considered.

Wide Receiver

Atlanta Falcons- With the Saints being so stout up front on the run, all production shifts to WRs against them. We need the news about Juilo, but on a short week in a lost season, why rush him back with a shoulder injury here? I could be wrong but I fully expect Jones to sit which leaves Russell Gage, and Calvin Ridley as their main WRs. I love them both here despite not loving the QB. Gage was heavily involved last week, and though in trash time Ridley once again hit value with a late TD. He is going to be one of my favorite WRs on the day. In 3 career games vs the Saints he has gone for 3/28/0, 8/93/1TD, and 7/146/3TDs a few weeks ago. We cannot expect 3 TDs, but with Hooper already out, and Julio very questionable without practicing all week, Ridley is a candidate to finish with the best WR box score Thursday. The Falcons/Saints will more than likely be where most if not all my WRs come from (A Rob, Beasley maybe) while attacking the rushing elsewhere outside of some Kamara stacks. So, pay attention to news regarding Jones despite being the latest game of the day.

Michael Thomas- Do we even have to tout Michael Thomas. He’s steady floor is running back-ish at his point. He’s gone over 100 yards in all but 4 games and scored in one of those games. He has absolutely dominated the Falcons during his career, and this once again sets up as a can’t miss. The smaller your field or number of opponents, makes it very hard not to roster Thomas here paired with one of the most accurate passers in league history.

Allen Robinson and company- The Bears are always a tough sell, but we saw last week as well as several times during the season that when Tribusky shows any amount of competence, Allen Robinson has very good fantasy and real-life games. They face the woeful Lions defense who is a mecca for shootouts, and just laid 6/86/0TDs vs them on November. Taylor Gabriel is out with another concussion which places Anthony Miller in line for extra targets coming off of 9 and 11 target games the last two weeks, as well as bottom priced Javon Wims. Again, it’s the Bears, so you have to only really like 1 guy and hope for the yards and the TD.

John Brown/Cole Beasley- Dallas plays a stingy zone defense which is designed to prevent the big plays which by design should suppress John Brown’s recent production and big play ability. Of course, on such a short slate, anybody is in play, but I may look to the slot receiver who had some choice words for the Dallas offense in Cole Beasley. It’s a great revenge spot on Thanksgiving for Beasley. Aside from revenge, it’s a great spot here. Dallas has yet to give up over 75 yards to a WR, and the slots have led in yards the last two games vs Dallas.

Amari Cooper/Michael Gallup- Assuming Cooper will see Tre’Davious White who hasn’t given up a TD since Week 14 of last season!!! Gallup on the other hand should see Levi Wallace who runs a 4.63 and has allowed catches on 69 percent of his targets for 495 yards, and 4 TDs.

Tight End

Dawson Knox- Purely a price, and matchup-based play in hopes of a TD here. They get the matchup on Sunday vs a stingy zone defense designed to suppress WR production. With Allen’s scrambling ability, and Dallas forcing production to screens and the middle of the field, I could see 3 catches, 34 yards, 1 TD. For his price, that is completely acceptable on a slate where any TE not named Jared Cook is highly questionable.

Chicago Bears- They are literally down their 3rd and 4th string TEs which means they really signed them as opposed to be on the roster as a 3rd or 4th. Avoid this situation at all costs.

Jared Cook- Easily the best TE of the day, but everybody will play him as well.Outside of Dawson Knox punt lineups, Cook will bless each lineup.He has the highest upside and comes in with 70 or more yards and or a TD in five straight games.He’s been on a tear lately and will be a targeted receiver from one of the leagues best with the highest game total.

Defense

Any defense on a short slate is in play, and you may love a lineup and be forced to have a defense vs an offensive player. For instance, I love Zeek, but also the ability of Buffalo to catch a INT or two vs Dallas or garner some sacks.

I do like the Bears vs the 3rd string QB in Detroit easily.

I do like the Saints vs the struggling Falcons.

The Bills more for their price fit, and you could punt with Atlanta in hopes of a semi repeat vs the Saints.

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