Thread: Stock Watch - Who's Rising, Who's Falling

3. Blake Costanzo, LB: Played a role in the team falling out of the top 5 in run defense when he pursued too far downhill, before tripping over Steve Hutchinson as he attempted to recover on Chris Johnson's 80-yard touchdown that inflated Tennessee's rushing statistics during an otherwise strong outing by the Bears.

Geno Hayes also played a role in Johnson busting the run when he couldn't get over the top of the center's block. Even as a backup, you're still expected to perform when you're on the field.

We need to draft that LB next year.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherBearsFan99

We need to draft that LB next year.

Well we do need to draft a MLB prospect but it has nothing to do with either of these guys. Costanzo was brought in as a STeams guy and he's a Pro Bowl level player there. Hayes is a good backup guy behind Briggs because he knows how to play in a Cover 2 defense and he plays STeams pretty well too.

I didn't see the play but trashing a couple of guys who never see the field except in mop up duty over a guy like Chris Johnson busting a long run on them is pretty harsh. CJ can do that against the best of them. Now if it been some backup RB who did it then yeah, maybe they deserve some criticism, but it's not easy to stop one of the top backs in the game from burning you.

Hell, Armando Allen is our 3rd string back and he busted a long run in that Jax game didn't he? Now that should embarrass a defense but if CJ does it, nah.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherBearsFan99

I'm hoping Carimi and K.Davis can help us better this year. We really need both of them to start contributing. I get it, that Carimi is in his first full-season, and he's coming off a major injury and surgery. But right now he's hurting the team each week. K.Davis is needed as a solid receiving TE. He's become a non-factor receiving. He blows as a blocker.

Kellen Davis has been a major disappointment so far this year but I'm still not quite sure where to point the finger. His blocking was pretty damn good last year so I can only assume that what he being asked to do in this offense is much different than what he was doing last year.

Somehow Tice needs to better define his role in the offense. The kid could be a very valuable pass catcher if they started playing to his strengths but for whatever reason it seems to me that they aren't. For the past three years (including this one) we've really mismanaged our TE situation and that I'm having a hard time figuring out. I think how to use Davis effectively is pretty obvious yet it's still being ignored.

If you run him up the seam against Safeties or a SLB I can't see how 6'2" or shorter defensive players are gonna defend a guy who is at least 5" taller or more, outweighs them, and has arms like a gorilla. He has decent speed and is tough to bring down when you hit him in space or on the move. The X factor is that he's also a very tough guy to cover in the red zone as his TD to catches ratio indicates. So why aren't we getting more production out of the guy?

I still think Tice is screwing up this offense a bit like Martz did by asking certain guys to do what they don't do well instead of using them in ways that they do perform well. You can't look at the number of players and the caliber of those players we've had playing TE here and not come to the conclusion that they're not being used correctly.

So why bring in another just to do the same? It's not the players it's the OCs!

K.Davis was lining up next to Webb and getting beat by edge rushers. He looked like a "poor man's Webb" if that is possible.

Slow.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherBearsFan99

K.Davis was lining up next to Webb and getting beat by edge rushers. He looked like a "poor man's Webb" if that is possible.

Slow.

Here's the thing about that. Neither of these guys is physically slow or nonathletic so if that's the case then we need to look for another reason. So how about "reaction time". Make sense?

This was discussed and brought up by some of the lineman themselves. I'd say the problems we're seeing are far more mental than physical which may or may not be a good thing.

If they don't understand their assignments or the correct application of blocking techniques then they're gonna look slow and indecisive. Now if practice and repetition can cure that we're still OK and they'll get better but if the capacity to convert whatever coaching they get into the correct actions just isn't there then we have to move on and upgrade those guys.

Between now and next spring that's what we need to find out and about the only way we can do that is to play them and see what happens.

I see what you're saying, and the "synapse" limitation made sense to me too. But a slow reaction time can be a physical limitation. You can somewhat improve a complex reaction time, but there is a limit to that. It's a physical limitation rather than a mental one.

I'm not convinced that Webb has the physical ability to overcome getting beat by the quicker edge rushers. Hey, I may be totally wrong, but just because Tice says he's a great physical specimen, doesn't mean I blindly believe that.

He may have some great physical attributes, but I'm not so sure about quickness. I just don't see it Soul. But like I said, I may be dead wrong about this.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherBearsFan99

I see what you're saying, and the "synapse" limitation made sense to me too. But a slow reaction time can be a physical limitation. You can somewhat improve a complex reaction time, but there is a limit to that. It's a physical limitation rather than a mental one.

I'm not convinced that Webb has the physical ability to overcome getting beat by the quicker edge rushers. Hey, I may be totally wrong, but just because Tice says he's a great physical specimen, doesn't mean I blindly believe that.

He may have some great physical attributes, but I'm not so sure about quickness. I just don't see it Soul. But like I said, I may be dead wrong about this.

I don't either brother so all any of us have to go on is what we're being told or what our eyes tell us and I see the same stuff as you do. What the reason for it is I can't say either but I toss that out because we know Lovie likes what he calls "quick twitch" players.

Whether that fits here or has anything at all to do with it I don't know. What I do know if that if a guy can't handle the job he's given to do after being given proper coaching and some time to develop his skills then we need to find a different guy.

I don't care whether it's blocking pass rushers or digging holes to plant rose bushes and shrubs there comes a point in time when if you don't "get it" you just don't "get it". It seems to me the time to make that evaluation with several guys is fast approaching.

Webb is young enough and cheap enough to keep around next year as a backup if we do end up replacing him. We could probably do far worse for a swing OT. But I can't see them holding onto Davis for another year without more production out of him. Not after handing him that $6 mil deal. He'll never see year two of his deal if his play doesn't improve but that's not to say I don't think that it can't. There's some potential there.

Originally Posted by MPBears68

I was at the Tennessee game and seated on the side CJ ran down for that garbage TD. First of all, the game was long over, virtually every Titans fan had left (my section was literally 90+% Bears fans by then), and Lovie had wisely pulled his key starters on D.

Costanzo did take too aggressive an angle and someone (Hayes?) missed or was blocked out of a chance for a tackle but gotta say this...I have never seen a RB take it to the outside and get down the sideline any faster than CJ did. He was simply a blur. Gone. A burst and speed like Hester hitting a hole a few years ago.

It was pretty damn impressive and I can't blame the Bears backup D unit for getting gashed there. Sucks for our stats though.

Meh. They can have the stats. We won the game and got our starters out of harms way. That's just smart coaching (see Lovie I threw you a bone here).

Anybody but ESPN will subtract it from the stats mentally anyway. I already did.