The Killer B's: Joel Blank & Jeremy Branham
Chicago Bears Reporter Courtney Cronin Joined the Killer B's to Talk Texans vs Bears!
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First I wanted to ask about your receivers, though. Roma Dunes A, Keenan Allen. I know they're on the injury report. What are the chances these two guys play? Yeah, neither have been practiced today. We just got the injury report now. So both were DNP, and that's not trying to be a great direction, I think, for the Bears to have either of them available for Sunday. I mean, from Roma Dunes A, you've got an MCL sprain. I know Matthew Fluth said that it's nothing serious, which means, you know, I guess it's a good thing if you're saying an MCL sprain when we saw him go down pretty hard on film blocking for Vela Shones on the Edge. That hopefully means it can truly be a day-to-day situation, which is how he classified it, but you want a slow play. I don't think there's any need to rush him out there this week, when clearly he's probably not feeling his best. He saw him on the bike earlier, so conditioning. They're making sure that he can stay in shape while he's sitting out, but I think the Keenan Allen one is one to keep your eye on, because he had the heel injury the last week of training camp or right around the time that they cut down the roster, and he played through it last week. But then he reactivated it, so this is a situation now where he's kind of being put back on ice for a little bit to see how he responds, but, you know, two days is not practicing. It doesn't look very good for his chances to be out there this weekend. Courtney, you look at everything that the Bears did in the offseason. We know they put a lot of weapons and made a lot of moves for Caleb Williams, and they obviously drafted Caleb Williams, but they made a lot of other improvements, too. They improved the offensive line. The defense continues to improve. If you were to say the biggest improvement the Bears made this offseason aside from Caleb Williams, where would you go? I think you have to go to the receiving core, just even though it didn't look good last week, right? Like, I mean, it was not a great day for the entire offense, but the talent level that you have for a receiver like Keenan Allen, who, yes, at 32 years old, he's not going to be playing that much longer, but he is so good with the way that he can disguise his route. Such a big tool for a quarterback to have early on in his career, that that's a huge asset, that eventually when he's healthy, something Caleb Williams can tap into, and then to pair Caleb's trajectory here, you know, first spot, four or five years of his career with somebody who's on that same timeline in Roman Dunes. That's huge, and I anticipate this weekend being the DJ Morgan. Like, we know how good DJ is at adjusting to whichever quarterback he's playing with. Playing with, he's played with, you know, double digit. I think it's upwards now of 12 or 13 throughout the course of his career dating back to Carolina. He's really, really good at just figuring it out on the fly, no matter who's throwing in the ball. So I would have to say, just based on how bare the cupboard was around Justin Fields last year, it looks a lot different and a lot better with those receivers now for Caleb Williams. Courtney Cronin joining us on the HRMP guest line. You can follow her on Twitter at Courtney R. Cronin. You mentioned that trajectory for Caleb Williams. What is a fair trajectory for what you expect from Caleb Williams in his rookie year and then going forward? I think for his rookie season, because we have the idea here in Chicago that someone is finally going to be the one to break the long-standing drought of not having a 4,000-yard passer. My money's on Caleb Williams to do that. Does that mean it has to be in his rookie season? Not necessarily, but even after a tough game like he had last week, he's still probably the favorite to get there. I don't know if it'll happen in his rookie season, but again, I do think he will get there. So short-term success, what you're looking at from the first quarter of the season over the course of his rookie season, it's got to look better than it did. You have to start seeing what made him so great at USC, made him a Heisman Trophy winner. You've got to see that part of the offensive game plan. The Bears have to stack wins early. They have the bulk of their division schedule, weeks 11 through 18, and if they want to be a playoff team, which they talk about, I mean, it's not like that's been vented out of thin air. They've talked about feeling like they're ready to take the next step as contenders, and in doing so means that you're going to be buying for probably a wild card spot coming out of the NFC North. Now, of course, so much of that depends on the success that Green Bay has. Maybe they're able to stay afloat amid the Jordan love injury and the success that the Detroit Lions have coming off, you know, a big win for themselves in overtime. But I think for Caleb, the best situation that he can possibly find himself in is one where he doesn't have to do everything on his own, and we saw that. The defense carried seem to a win. It started with special teams being really opportunistic with the block punt, three field goals from Cairo Santos, and not having Caleb Williams have to be the reason that the team, like be the reason why the team wins games and having to work his way out of an early game rut the way that he did last week. Like, it wasn't clicking for the offense. They were able to turn things over to the other units, and not every rookie quarterback, especially those drafted number one overall, because you're usually going to a bad team. He doesn't fall into that same category, which is why I think he's in a situation where it's okay to lean on that defense until you can figure it out offensively. But, I mean, it certainly does have to look different than it did last week in order to give anybody confidence that this thing is on the right track. I'm curious, Courtney, because we heard from a lot of national people and a lot of people making predictions. The Bears are a sexy pick, as you mentioned, to make the playoffs, to flirt with a wild card, maybe do more. They're more talented all across the board than they've been in some time. But you cover this team every day. What were your perceptions of this team going into week one? And where did you think they'd finish at the end of the year? My perspective on them, I mean, you're here every single day. So a lot of that playoff talk comes from people who are just looking at how good can this team be on paper, and not really seeing or hearing what's going on around behind the scenes. My expectation for them is anywhere from like eight to ten wins, eight being the absolute bare minimum, the floor, and ten being, you know, exceeding expectations. Because as we saw in week one, when you have a rookie quarterback, it takes some time for things to feel normal for him. It takes time for him to get in rhythm and for him to figure it out. And I anticipate that the struggles we saw in week one will probably not be as magnified going forward. I think that was, you know, the offensive coordinator, Shane Waldron, figuring it out, too. Today, when I asked him about the personnel usage, if you're three of us ride receivers on the field together in 11 personnel of 10 SNF, you've got to have more than that. You've got to have more coal commit usage, too. They're trying to figure it out. And that's why I look at the situation. Not saying it's not as optimistic from somebody who's here every single day, but somebody who has a more measured approach knowing how good the rest of the division is, and that it's going to take time for a rookie quarterback to figure it out and put himself in a spot where he is the reason they're winning games instead of, like, the past weekend winning in spite of the offense. With that said, what is the hot seat like for Eber Flus, though? Well, I mean, it's funny. It's like depending upon who you at, you could either be on the hot seat or on our coach of the year candidate. And that's kind of -- it's like this crazy whiplash just based on the fact that there is so much talent now that, you know, barring a 4 in 13 finish, or just, like, a straight-up abject failure, I think he's safe. Because no matter what, the Bears are trying to do things differently than they had in years past, where in years past, it would be first-year quarterback paired up with a coach who's been here for a little bit. They lose a lot of games. That coach is fired. Quarterback gets passed on to the next staff. That next staff doesn't work out with the quarterback. Quarterback gets moved or traded or cut, whatever it is. They don't want to do that. So I feel like Eber Flus has this year. Again, barring a terrible finish, which I don't think they're capable of a terrible finish. Not with how talented they are. Not with how good this defense is. The strength of this team until the offense can prove otherwise. But I don't think his seat is nearly as hot as it once was. And certainly this offseason does up the ante for him to perform and prove that he can win a lot of games with this talent. But as we saw, his unit, his defense, was the reason that they stayed in that game and were able to come back from, you know, a 17-3 deficit at halftime to go and win and get their first win in week one since his first season, which again, that was a flooky win in 2022. This one was pretty convincing that his defense wrestled it back and were the reason why they won. Well, Courtney, I also like to look at it from the perspective of the team that you guys are playing because of the fact that we hear it every day. We talk it every day. We follow this team every day in the Houston Texans. You saw them in the offseason. You saw them in week one. From your perspective, looking at what the Bears are about to face, what do you see in terms of the overall possibilities for this Texas team? I mean, there's so many parallels that I think you can draw. Like what, you know, what do we talk about in Chicago? Ryan Holz weak in the Carolina Panthers to get the number one overall pick this year, get in the hall, you know, for trading the number one pick two years ago. And, you know, the way that the teams constructed was similar to how that Cleveland trade played out for the Houston Texans, with all those draft picks, building the bulk of your roster through the draft and then picking and choosing where you want to spend on expensive players while also rewarding players that you bring in, whether it was the more via trade. You paid them those off these. Make eight contests, let's be a trade, last off season. It's in the middle of last season. So, I mean, I think a lot of it is that they're actually pretty evenly matched up in the sense of how they're built, but maybe not in terms of talent. Obviously, CJ Stroud is going to be linked to this team forever. And Caleb Williams is going to have to deal with the fact that the bar was set really high for rookie quarterbacks by how CJ played last year. And that's a great space to be in. I don't think that they're looking at it as, hey, he has to do exactly what Stroud did in order for this season to be a success, but it's hard to, you can't like just look past that and say, oh, well, that doesn't matter. Like, that's not motivation. That's not anything else. Like, it has to be because CJ had such an incredible season and did it. You know, did it. Come on for him right away. I don't think it was until that week three game last year that was a win for Houston where it started to feel like the ball, you know, really got rolling for Stroud. And then, of course, you know, the come from behind game-winning drive that he had against the Cincinnati Bengals and all of the moments leading this team to play off, winning a playoff game against a team that, you know, looked like they were coming down Houston to win. It's truly like, I just find like so many parallels there that are kind of eerily similar for two teams and one in the Texans that had a very quick turnaround with a rookie quarterback, you know, one year after, you know, pulling off all these moves to get the draft picks and that they wanted to and being able to capitalize on that success pretty instantaneously. Courtney on Twitter and Courtney R. Cronin. You can see her all over ESPN, the Bears reporter for ESPN's NFL nation. Courtney, thanks for taking a few minutes. I really appreciate the time. Look forward to catching up again down the road. Thank you guys for having me.