Bad News Bears & Matt Stafford Concerns | PredictionStrike's Prep for the Season
We're so close, you can smell it. The start of the NFL season is officially less than a month away.
Life comes at you fast. This past weekend, my brother was
visiting from Nebraska and we had made plans for the cousins to meet up. As I
loaded the kids in the car and started the car up, we were all ready to go.
Pulling out of the driveway my wife says "does the car sound funny at
all?" The pessimist in me should've agreed, but I reply "It was in
the shop 4 days ago, shouldn't be an issue."
As life goes on, sometimes the signs of dysfunction are ever
present and optimism tends to be the blinder to us all. Take the Chicago Bears
for example, and their quarterback Justin Fields
($4.39). Per Jordan Schultz on Twitter Justin Fields has "blown away"
the coaching staff this off-season. Taken at face value many pundits will flock
to this news as him being ready to take the next step. Like the slight noise in
my car, the devil is in the details.
As you dig into the quote you begin to notice the quote says
Fields "mechanics have improved", and this is the only piece of
information that gives us improvement, from an on-field perspective. The rest
of the statement says Fields "cares" and is "in shape." The
comments have blown up all around Twitter, and reading the statement my gut
tells me that the sound I hear isn't great. I think we should hold up on
investing any hard-earned coin in this Chicago Bears team.
While Fields has the rushing upside, is there anything
around him we can depend on? Sure we've heard the rumors on Cole Kmet
($0.90) and Darnell Mooney
($1.51) breaking out, but we have yet to see either player take a step forward.
Throughout camp, we've seen the receiving core lose players left and right… somehow
most notably N'Keal Harry
($2.91) qualifies as a significant loss. If we're to believe Justin Fields is
going to be the engine of this Chicago team, they're putting an awful lot of
stress and reliance on him.
Similar to the fate of my car, the pieces around Fields are
falling apart and the stress may be mounting. The vehicle functioned properly
for the first ten minutes of the ride, but within 15 minutes the car came to a
screeching halt, on a balmy 97-degree humid day. Stuck, for 4 hours in the
heat, I was finally able to get the car to the repair shop. From there I was
greeted with the news that the car I had paid off 6 months ago…had a blown
engine. The story of the 2022 Chicago Bears has an eerily similar feeling to
me.
The Bears have a striking resemblance to my blinding optimism. Other than Chicago opening the season against the Packers, they have a relatively easy schedule out of the gate through the first 5 games (playing only 1 team from the playoffs a season ago). The optimism may trick us into this offense, with a possible 4-1 start on an easy schedule. However, the sound is there and so is the back half of the schedule with several teams expected to compete for playoff spots or were in the playoffs last season. Don't be like me, don't let optimism cloud your judgment.
This is a critical concern, as the Rams' passing offense was
their bread and butter last off-season. If we're going to invest in Cooper Kupp
($14.72) or Allen Robinson
($2.07) this season we should be monitoring this situation throughout camp and
opening night.
If I was going to be taking a risk on this offense, the
safest bet is still going to be Darrell
Henderson ($1.17). Still a basement bargain, Henderson figures to see a
significant amount of carries this season especially if Stafford's arm is
limited to a certain number of pass attempts this season. Sean McVay said last
week "We've got 2 starting running backs." Don't fall for the Cam Akers
($4.54) as he's almost 4x the cost of Henderson, and looked inferior to
Henderson the last time they shared a field.
As the pre-season gets underway, I’ll be back with you every week of the preseason to dive into my head on some other great investment strategies…and don’t look know but IPO’s should be rolling our way sooner than later!
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