Chicago Bears: 4 Players whose stock went up vs. Bills
Normally I would have had this article out closer to the end of Saturday’s preseason game. However, with how poorly the Chicago Bears played versus the Buffalo Bills, I had to take a step back and try to find who deserved to be listed on the stock-up list. Shockingly, I was able to come up with more than four players once again, but I have to admit, some of these might be a bit of a stretch. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few are cut before the final deadline on August 31st.
If you missed all or most of the Chicago Bears game last Saturday, do not go looking to watch your recording. In fact, don’t even watch clips. If you are a Mitch Trubisky hater, then actually go ahead and watch it — wink, wink. Seriously though, it was a rough showing and most of it came in the first half. The Buffalo Bill laid a shellacking on this Chicago Bears team.
When your defense that has a vast majority of its starters playing (Roquan Smith and Danny Trevathan missed all of the game, while others would take many plays off at times before sitting for the day (Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn, etc.) and can still not stop a Bills’ offense playing with mostly backups at the skill positions and quarterback, then there is cause for concern. This does not mean that the Chicago Bears’ defense will be bad, but they better clean some things up.
The key here, or I should say the hope, is that the Chicago Bears were playing vanilla defensive schemes, and starters who are locked in might not have been going at full speed/strength. We have no way of knowing this to be true, but again, that is the hope.
The Chicago Bears had a few players stand out enough to see their stock rise
Instead of living in the past (as I’m about to talk about the past — hypocrisy I know), let’s now turn our attention to what has transpired since Saturday’s horrific loss. Today, Matt Nagy came out with news that Andy Dalton will rest and Justin Fields will start for the Chicago Bears on Saturday in their final preseason game versus the Titans.
Yay! Hold on, no, that’s actually bad news. This means that Dalton is a lock to start versus the Rams in Week 1 and Matt Nagy’s “coach speak” was not coach speak after all. Instead, he stuck to his guns all along and the original tweet by Chicago Bears media of Andy Dalton as ‘QB1′ was a real premonition of what took place this offseason — even if unjustifiably so.
My hope was that Fields would get time with the starters versus the Titans, but that it would be the final test to see who starts Week 1. As someone who originally predicted Week 5 for Fields’ first start, I had changed my mind on the young quarterback and truly believe he gives this team the best chance to win — even with his rookie learning curve and bumps along the way.
Nothing we can do about it now, but Matt Nagy is convincing me more and more that he needs to go. Until then, let’s take a look at players who saw their stock rise last weekend.