Tarik Cohen has his moments,

linchao · 18-02-2019 04:55:31

The Bears’ offense is a competent unit Danny Trevathan Jersey , but it is not a unit with an identity. Nor is it an offense with a truly dangerous weapon. Tarik Cohen has his moments, but he is 51st in the NFL in terms of yards per reception, and 13th in terms of yards per rush. He is 32nd in yards from scrimmage per game in the NFL (at 79.4). He’s clearly a great addition to the team, and he’s more than the gadget player some critics dismissed him as from the beginning, but he is not going to knock a defense on its heels. He doesn’t have enough carries to be ranked by Football Outsiders’ DVOA, even if he is their 8th-best receiving running back. Cohen is, frankly, a fantastic ‘2’ for an offense that has a 1-2 punch. That 1 just isn’t playing right now.Time for full disclosure—I went into this piece looking at ten areas that I suspected the Bears were struggling, thinking that I could find a few to build into an article. My original title was going to be “X Things The Bears Need to Improve,” with the idea being that it really didn’t matter if only half of the areas were struggles.No luck. The Bears really have only an area or two where they are struggling, and one of those (Special Teams) is skewed by one bad game. I don’t like arguing from anecdote that severely, so I had to change directions.Of my original ten ideas, this was the only one that really stuck.Meanwhile, Trey Burton is the 19th tight end in the league when it comes to yards after the catch, while only being 9th in terms of targeted air yards (per Next Gen stats). Burton is a solid 11th in yards per reception among tight ends. That’s not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is also not a dominating performance. Things get better for believers in Football Outsiders’ analysis, because according to them he is at least 11th in terms of DVOA among tight ends, and 7th in DYAR. However Authentic Cody Whitehair Jersey , he’s 71st in receiving yards per game. In other words, Burton is playing like a good tight end, and he’s earning the contract Pace gave him. What he’s not doing is forcing defenses to adjust to him, and he’s not taking over games.“Deep threat” Taylor Gabriel is the highest-ranking Bear in terms of receiving yards per game, but he’s only 48th on the list. The low placement of the Bears on these lists is not an artifact of perfect ball distribution, because the Bears are 21st in receiving yards per game as a team. Instead, the receiving corps is adequate. It’s just not dangerous.It’s hard to fault or credit Trubisky in any of this, either. By now, #10 has been analyzed and over-analyzed sufficiently. However, it’s enough to point out that even with a mediocre performance against the Bills, his passer rating is enough to keep him in the top half of quarterbacks without being in the top quartile. He’s 15th in ANY/A. In other words, he’s playing fine football. He has his ups and downs, and he’s keeping drives alive at times, but he’s not taking over games. That is neither a criticism nor an apology--it’s just an observation that even if nothing about Trubisky so far has elevated the Chicago offense on a consistent basis, it’s hard to build a reasonable case that he’s somehow keeping Burton or Gabriel from unlocking their potential.What this leaves is three possibilities. The first, and probably the likeliest, is that the Bears are not going to have a true game-breaker on offense this season. They will have a quietly competent offense that serves as a counter-punch to their defense. The second is that one of the players currently earning solid (but unremarkable) stats will take a step forward. That would be nice, but it seems unlikely that it would suddenly happen in a stretch of games that will feature the Vikings twice and the Rams. The final possibility is that Allen Robinson will be a difference-maker, either by breaking games open himself or by drawing just enough attention to provide one of the others (Gabriel Youth Eric Kush Jersey , Burton, or Cohen are the likeliest) a chance to truly shine. Jacksonville Jaguars coach Doug Marrone is shouldering the blame for the team's four-game losing streak, saying he "hasn't done a good enough job for whatever reason to get everyone's mind in the right place."Marrone insists he's not trying to be a "martyr, a shield or anything like that."Truth is he's protecting everyone: top executive Tom Coughlin, general manager Dave Caldwell, inconsistent quarterback Blake Bortles , unavailable running back Leonard Fournette and dozens more underperforming players on an underachieving team.The Jaguars (3-5) have been one of the NFL's biggest busts in 2018, especially last month when they went 0-for-October and looked nothing like the team that advanced to the AFC championship game nine months earlier."There is a story out there about this team. It is an ugly story," said Marrone, who is counting on his team to regroup during its Week 9 bye."But the story hasn't ended. We can still control how this story reads. When we get away, we have to think long and hard about it. We have to come back and we have to figure out what the story is going to be on the 2018 team."Injuries are a big reason for the slide, especially with Fournette — the team's offensive centerpiece — missing six games because of a strained right hamstring. But Coughlin, Caldwell and Bortles deserve criticism.Coughlin designed an old-school team to play in a pass-happy league, one in which running the ball is barely important and hiding a mediocre quarterback is next to impossible. The ground-and-pound Jags want to control the clock, limit Bortles' throws and play stout defense. It can work, but it usually needs everything to go right.Turnovers, dropped passes, defensive lapses, the Jaguars have seen those too often and aren't built to handle much adversity or overcome double-digit deficits.It doesn't help that Jacksonville is getting so little from its rookie class and its free-agent crop.Coughlin and Caldwell were so confident they had a playoff team in place that they used the draft to prepare for 2019 http://www.bearsauthorizedshops.com/aut … sie-jersey , adding several down-the-road replacements for veteran starters. First-round pick and defensive lineman Taven Bryan has nine tackles in eight games. Second-round receiver DJ Chark has 12 catches for 159 yards to go along with a fumble and several costly drops. Third-round safety Ronnie Harrison has been the best of the bunch while playing mostly in certain defensive packages.Right tackle Will Richardson (fourth) is on injured reserve. Quarterback Tanner Lee (fifth) remains on the practice squad. Linebacker Leon Jacobs (sixth) has barely played outside special teams. And punter Logan Cooke (seventh) has failed repeatedly to flip the field when needed.Free agents Andrew Norwell, Donte Moncrief, D.J. Hayden, Austin Seferian-Jenkins and Marqise Lee have been equally disappointing.Norwell, a 2017 All-Pro guard from Carolina, was expected to bolster the offensive line and help give the Jaguars one of the best running attacks in the league. Instead, he looks unworthy of his five-year, $66.5 million contract.Moncrief, who signed a one-year deal worth $9.6 million, was supposed to offset the loss of physical receiver Allen Robinson. He has 29 catches for 379 yards and two scores.Hayden (toe) has missed six consecutive games, and Seferian-Jenkins (core muscle) and Lee (knee) are on injured reserve."Playing football is easy," defensive tackle Malik Jackson said. "Staying healthy is the hard part."A legitimate franchise quarterback might be able to make up for all of Jacksonville's deficiencies. But Coughlin and Caldwell decided to give Bortles a three-year, $54 million contract in February, betting that the fifth-year starter would continue developing and adding to a growing list of turnover-free games.Neither has happened, and the Jaguars are seemingly stuck with Bortles because of his $21 million contract in 2019. He has 10 touchdown passes, eight interceptions and three lost fumbles to go along with 18 sacks.Throw in a training camp fight, two weeklong suspensions, a locker room scuffle last month, four players getting detained in London because of an unsettled nightclub tab Adrian Amos Jersey , Jalen Ramsey's mouth and the ultra-confident defense failing to maintain its 2017 form, and the Jaguars have been more of a farce than a force in the AFC."The most important thing as a team is we've got to keep our belief strong," defensive end Calais Campbell said. "No matter what the outside noise says or does, we just got to keep our belief strong. Five losses in this league this early sucks, but five losses throughout the season, that's not bad at all; that's a heck of a year."We've got a lot of ball left to play. We made it real hard on ourselves, but I truly believe the guys that we have here are built to be able to do something special, even considering our current circumstance."Marrone hopes to get Fournette, Hayden and cornerback A.J. Bouye (calf) back after the bye week. He also wouldn't rule out staff and lineup changes.Already saddled with two division losses at home, the Jaguars have little room for error after the break if they're able to write a feel-good ending to their "ugly story.""When no one picks you to win and everyone thinks you are going to stink, it's, 'Let's go out there and prove everybody wrong and play with a chip on our shoulder and go,'" Marrone said. "Then all of a sudden, when everybody is on the bandwagon, it's the opposite. 'Let's prove everybody right.' Either way, you are trying to prove right or wrong what is going on."We just haven't lived up to the expectations to this day."