bout Patrick Mahomes. He sat for most of last season Youth Jordan Howard Jersey , even though the prevailing thought was that teams need to play their young quarterbacks as soon as possible. The situation in Kansas City, with an established vet QB in Alex Smith, meant that they would only play him when they wanted, and not when they needed. Could he have stepped in from day one and played this good? There’s really no way to know, just like there’s no way to know if him sitting for 15 games last year was beneficial to his development. There is no right way to bring along a young quarterback, because every situation is different. The only thing I know for sure is Matt Nagy spent a whole year working with Mahomes in K.C. last year. 2) The New Orleans Saints had to come from behind to beat the Cleveland Browns, so are the Saints not as good as many of us thought, or are the Browns better?I’m leaning towards Cleveland being much improved this year. 3) Speaking of the Saints, did you hear the story of how Olin Kreutz nearly put Drew Brees through a wall? I wish there were more details, but I’d imagine someday, someone could convince Kreutz to write a tell-all book. Paging Jack M Silverstein...4) The Score guys interviewed Kreutz because he abruptly retired mid-season in 2011, so they wanted to get his take on Buffalo Bills’ Vontae Davis retiring at halftime on Sunday. Some people were livid at the decision, but if Davis didn’t feel it anymore, should he just stick around and go through the motions to collect his paycheck?He’s a football player walking away from a game he played professionally for ten years. And while I think it was a dick-move to leave the stadium like he did — he could have stuck around for his teammates — ultimately the decision was his and it’s not that big a deal. 5) The Green Bay Packers tied the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday (which I’m good with), but these two plays were complete bullshit. Defenders can’t go low against quarterbacks (they’ll get flagged) and they can’t go high (they’ll get flagged), so they target the midpoint and physics tells us they’ll likely land on top of the quarterback. But in both of these particular instances, the referee believed that the defender lifted the quarterback up and drove them to the ground. After the game, referee Tony Corrente said this about the call on Clay Matthews. “When he hit the quarterback, he lifted him and drove him into the ground,” Corrente said in a pool report via Pro Football Talk. “It has nothing to do with the rule of full body weight. He picked the quarterback up and drove him into the ground.”Bullshit. The NFL needs to allow these types of calls to be reviewable. 6) I’m not a New England Patriots’ hater by any means, but I do find it funny seeing Tom Brady melting down on the sidelines. The Jacksonville Jaguars are a damn good football team, and I wish I would have picked them to win the AFC. This happened on Sunday too. 7) The Pats picked up talented, but troubled, wide out Josh Gordon from the Cleveland Browns for a conditional 5th-round draft pick. That’s a small price to pay for a player with so much potential. The Browns gave him every chance to succeed, but it just never worked out for him. The 27-year old heads to a veteran team that has had success in getting through to players in similar circumstances. 8) The best part about Ryan Fitzpatrick's two game run is how meme-able he’s become.There’s no way the Buccaneers go back to Jameis Winston once his suspension ends. He may get his job back at some point Youth Mitchell Trubisky Jersey , but he’ll be the back-up for at least a couple weeks.9) Way back on Thursday Night Football, the Cincinnati Bengals improved to 2-0 with an impressive win over the Baltimore Ravens. Andy Dalton threw 4 TD passes, 3 of which went to A.J. Green. They might be the class of that division, especially with the way the Pittsburgh Steelers are starting to go downhill. 9a) In case you missed it, Steeler wide out Antonio Brown didn’t show up for work today. 10) ESPN failed in not showing any of Brian Urlacher’s halftime speech in accepting his Hall Of Fame ring on Monday night. We’re talking about a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer being honored at the half, not some dog chasing down Frisbees. Urlacher wasn’t just a great Bear, he was a great player for the NFL, and not showing us anything was an idiotic decision.Instead, ESPN showed some clips of Urban Meyer and a band playing a song.The Bears did share a clip of the ceremony.Week 2 Postgame: Bears defense carries the water, smothers Seahawks in 24-17 win Many of us thought the Bears would dominate this game. Some of us (for example, me) thought the Bears offense would have a more dramatic bounce back after failing to close out against the Packers last week.The Bears dominated the game in terms of yards and time of possession. Points? That was another story. The offense has plenty of reasons to be slow to get started—First time head coach installing an ambitious system, a quarterback with 13 NFL and 13 college starts, and a complete change in receivers over the off-season. Still, I’m tired of defending the Bears offense, and I wish they would just be immediately amazing so I wouldn’t have to.The best two first-round picks every spentThe Seahawks answer for Khalil Mack seemed to be runs and fast passes, choosing to leave Mack one-on-one with mediocre right tackle Germain Ifedi most of the time and hoping to get the ball out fast enough that it doesn’t matter. It worked sometimes. Other times Mack and Goldman combined to form the hearty whole-grain bread slices in a Russell Wilson-flavored quarterback smoshwich.The clever Seahawks decided to help Ifedi out with a tight end. Mack quickly consumed the tight-end for a power-up then used his indestructible upgraded form to bull-rush through Ifedi and knock the ball out of Wilson’s hand. Khalil Mack is the good thing Bears fans aren’t used to having. At least we have some offensive hick-ups to give us something familiar to hold on to,Roquan quiet so farMr. Smith started the game with back to back tackles, but for the most part went unnoticed. He did miss a tackle on a Russell Wilson scramble, which seemed to be a result of taking a bad angle rather than being too slow or bad technique. That’s easy to chalk up to getting used to the NFL game speed.Roquan showed good instincts, speed, and coverage ability in moments, and finished finished the night with 7 solo tackles. Honestly, we can let Roquan quietly take his time to achieve the level of dominance at the NFL level we saw in him as the leader of Georgia’s defense. Because it’s so easy to focus our attention on Khalil Mack...Allen Robinson Brings the Easter Sunday SwaggerTonight we learned that Allen Robinson has been the best dressed Bear since 1999, and he demonstrated the route-running and catch-point confidence that clearly runs deep in his roots. This offense has a lot of weapons. That doesn’t mean AR12 isn’t a true number one receiver who manages to stand-out in all the important subtle ways on a play-by-play basis.Is defending Trubisky going to be my new full-time job?Trubisky missed Jordan Howard high on an easy dump-off early, then stepped up and finished the drive all the way to the end zone. Let’s call that little bounce back.He then threw a poor-mechanics underthrow interception Blue Eddie Goldman Jersey , followed by an “ahh C’mon!” tipped pass interception on the next drive. That combo would knock the air out of most of us. I’ve seen Trubisky bounce back from discouraging situations, but taking his next drive to the 6 yard line doesn’t really fit the narrative of bouncing back and thriving.My feeling on Trubisky isn’t going to change quickly. Overall, he has plenty of shortcomings, but most of them fall into the category of things that improve with experience. He rushes passes and throws with bad mechanics. He makes some bad decisions. And he’s clearly affected by the garbage bloggers like me spew out because he seemed to overreact to the critiques of him not being aggressive enough (see the overplayed still image of an open Trey Burton in the end-zone).This may sound like the biggest homer excuse you’ve ever heard, but I actually believe too much success early in your career isn’t necessarily good for a young QB’s development. When things work the way you want them to, you don’t get much opportunity to learn. And when you’re used to things being easy, you can get real frustrated when they start to get hard. I’ll root for Trubisky for as long as he wears a Navy jersey, no matter how good he is. But I honestly believe there’s a lot of reason to hope. My timeline for patience is long, so don’t try to come at me if he’s bad next week.More Jo HoMatt Nagy didn’t call a lot of run plays. For the first half, this seemed like a chicken/egg scenario. The Bears run plays didn’t go particularly well, and the Bears didn’t run a lot of times. The Seahawks biggest weaknesses are their linebackers and cornerbacks, so this may have been a conscious decision to avoid the Seahawks’ decent defensive line—not to mention Earl Thomas’ contribution to run defense. But in the 4th, when Jo Ho started to get more involved, you saw what that beautiful Bear can do with vision and power. We need to see more of that, if only for the chortles of joy it induces in the best of us.Two unblocked sacks on TrubiskyThe first was a linebacker blitz from inside-trader Mychal Kendricks. For the second, Frank Clark toasted Bobby Massie without getting slowed at all. But the Bears sacked Russell Wilson 6 timesBWahahawhahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Can we just enjoy the Bears defense while we wait for a new offensive system and a talented inexperienced quarterback work out the kinks? Just kidding. Of course not. Please use the comments section to drag our offense through the dirt and complain as loud as possible.Aaron Lynch proving to be a valuable contributorWhen Aaron Lynch sat out the entire preseason and training camp with injuries, most of us were worried. In two games, he’s been able to get pressure, tackles for loss, and otherwise be a menace to opposing offenses. 9 more to goPrince Amukamara promised 10 interceptions this season after two zero interception seasons in 2016 and 2017. He made the most of his first, returning it for a touchdown. I expect to enjoy the other nine.The Bears defense was the best unit on the field tonight, and we saw some truly impressive domination. The Bears offense is a work in progress. It wasn’t always pretty, but we’ll take the W. Maybe next week Mack and friends can take a rest while Trubisky carries the weight? Probably not. But I’ve got my spotify celebration dance mix ready just in case.The Bears are now tied for most wins in the NFC North! They also don’t have any ties. Ties are for losers.
