2020 Week 5: Chicago Bears 20, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 19

By Kevin Schroeder
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Updated: October 18, 2020

Kimarite wa sukuinage. Sukuinage de Khalil Mack no kachi. (Photo: NFL GamePass)

Player Grades

The grading scale goes from -3 to +3 for each play. Screens are graded as runs. Penalties are counted in whatever phase they were committed. Pre- and post-snap penalties are in the “Misc.” column. “Short” throws are 10 yards or less, “Medium” is 10-20, “Deep” is over 20. Everything else (scrambles, throwaways, reads, etc.) is under “Miscellaneous.” Parentheses in a column denote grades/snaps from the opposite side of the ball and are not included in grades/snaps from the player’s usual side. Snap counts are from Pro Football Reference. Box score and other relevant info can be found at that link as well.

All hail Saint Nick the Bradyslayer!

Foles had two bad misses and two dangerous throws. Otherwise, he was solid. I didn’t ding him for the pick since that should’ve been pass interference on Tampa. It was a lot of short stuff because to say the line struggled in pass pro would be putting it mildly. The Robinson miss was just an outright miss. The Mooney one was on Foles. Mooney runs a post corner. He has his man beat and thus continues toward the corner. Foles didn’t anticipate Mooney getting so open, assumed he was going to flatten out the route, and just like that, what should be an easy 6 points falls incomplete. Foles left a deep ball for Mooney short later in the game, so maybe he just doesn’t yet have a feel for how fast the rookie is.

How do we feel about the play calling?

Mostly good. Nagy started calling more quick hitters when it became clear the line couldn’t hold up in protection. I had two real problems with the play calling; the opening drive of the second half and Nagy’s red zone timeout in the fourth quarter. Here’s that opening drive:

Down	Distance	Spot	Time	Personnel	Formation
1	10	CHI 31	14:52 3Q	11	Gun Y Trips RB Weak
Levels Sail. Foles hits Montgomery in the flat for no gain. If he had waited a second longer to throw the ball, he might have had Miller open on an in route. Foles -.5 Misc.
2	10	CHI 31	14:16 3Q	11	Gun Bunch RB Weak
Mooney comes across the formation at the snap to provide a diversion as the Bears set up a screen for Allen Robinson. The Buccaneers shut down the screen from the start and Kmet compounds this mess by holding. Kmet -2 Blocking.
2	20	CHI 21	13:48 3Q	11	Gun Spread RB Strong
Foles to Robinson for 3 yards on a hitch. Foles -.5 Short for a low throw, Robinson +.5 Receiving for catching the low throw.
3	17	CHI 24	13:06 3Q	11	Gun Y Trips RB Weak
Foles to Miller on an in route for a gain of 8. This had no shot of getting to the sticks. Good stunt pickup by Whitehair. Foles +.5 Short, Miller +.5 Receiving, Whitehair +.5 Pass Block.

And an image for mobile users:

None of that was going anywhere. The Bears ended the half with all the momentum and should have come out looking to take control of the game. Instead, they farted around.

As for the timeout, Foles clearly wasn’t happy about that and he was right. That looked like an instance of the Bears still needing to wash some Trubisky out of the offense; Mitch would have needed that timeout so the team could get the red zone plays in. Foles was perfectly fine running tempo and didn’t need that timeout, which wound up killing the momentum of the drive.

PFF said this was Khalil Mack’s worst game of the year.

That’s ridiculous. Admittedly, after watching the game live, I was expecting a bonkers score for Mack in grading and this was not that. He was still the best player on the field, though.