Windy City Gridiron
The Chicago Bears actually won a wild game that required scoring over 45 points.
It’s truly a new era for the Bears. The defense is the problem, but the offense is carrying the weight.
Overall, it’s far from perfect, but the Bears are 5-3 nearly halfway through the season. Above .500 after Halloween.
That’s progress.
There are plenty of areas for the team to improve, beyond the positions ravaged by injuries.
Let’s take a nice look, halfway through the season at which players are doing better and which aren’t.
Stock up
Darnell Wright, OT – Wright is quickly becoming one of the better right tackles in the league. Maybe there’s a bit of hyperbole in that, but either way, Wright is playing at an elite level. The clip of him absolutely demolishing the Cincinnati Bengals’ first-round pick Shemar Stewart went viral. Then he did a cartwheel following Colston Loveland’s game-winning touchdown. A cartwheel at 6’5” and 325 lbs.
Colston Loveland, TE – The 10th overall pick is coming along. He caught the first two touchdowns of his career, including the game-winning 58-yarder. He broke tackles and sprinted his way to the endzone. He finished with 118 yards on six catches.
Montez Sweat, DE – Sweat now has had three straight games with a sack. He had a QB hit and two PDs. He nearly added a forced fumble but Joe Flacco kept the balling moving forward just enought to get it called an incomplete pass.
Honorable mentions – Kyle Monangai played an absolutely awesome game and deserves a spot, but I wanted to highlight some other guys, and it came against the worst rushing defense in the league. Caleb Williams deserves praise, too, but again, against a bad defense and he still had a few off plays.
Stock down
Tyrique Stevenson, CB – Stevenson was awesome after starting the season with a couple of rough games. But he was not great against the Bengals.
Cairo Santos, K – Another rough outing for Santos, who had a kick blocked. I know I’m not the only one who was glad that the game didn’t end up coming down to Santos’ leg. It’s been a real liability and conversations about the kicking job need to be going on inside Halas Hall.
Rome Odunze, WR – I love Rome but Sunday wasn’t his day. He had a bad drop on Cole Kmet’s laser pass to him and didn’t catch any of the three targets his way. It’s the first game on Rome’s career with the Bears which he didn’t make a catch.
Who is on your up and down lists this week?
