Panthers vs the Bears for TNF

There is no better way to start week whatever this is in the NFL than with two teams that routinely compete for championships. It's the Panthers at the Bears on Thursday night. Dan Wieder covers the Bears for the Chicago Tribune.

Hey, how accurate was that? I'm sure that won't come up at all. Al will not mock the game at all. Look, maybe it's just me. I kind of feel like Al's over Thursday night football already. I think he's just kind of playing out maybe like certain teams do.

I don't know. Alright, so it's Tyson Badgett, Dan. We're going to talk a little bit about Justin Fields here, but what have you seen from Badgett since he has taken over for the injured Justin Fields? So it is pronounced Bajan. I'm correcting you there because there is a following of Tyson Bajan here in Chicago that will jump on you if you get that wrong.

Of course there is. I mean, what we've seen, honestly, if you're capable, which this city isn't always capable of doing, of having a grounded sort of perspective on the quarterback position is we've seen an undrafted rookie out of Division Two come in in the spring and answer every challenge that's been presented to him over the last five or six months. He's got three starts. He won his first one against the Raiders in convincing fashion a couple weeks ago, has played really well in spurts, but then had turnover problems. He's got eight turnovers in 14 quarters of action, and that's just not going to get it done. And obviously for last week in New Orleans was the torpedo to the Bears upset hopes at the Superdome. And so you've got a young kid, 23 years old, trying to figure out what he does well and what he doesn't do so well at this level, making mistakes.

And at the same time showing, you know, high level quarterback feel for how the game needs to be seen and how it needs to be operated can be really interesting to see how he how he does back at home against the Panthers defense that obviously is vulnerable and also against the Panthers defense that should allow the Bears to establish the run and lean on that pretty heavily. That's the question that that's the vulnerability for Carolina's defense and also know Brian Burns tonight as well. They're they're banged up in the secondary.

They've been banged up basically all year long. Safe to say that Tyson Bajan. I want to get that right. I don't want to get the hive.

It's it's like the saying that Beyonce is overrated. I guess the hive will come after you best player ever from Shepherd University. Certainly best player from Shepherd University that I've ever watched.

Yeah. And I know you had him on your pre draft big board. You thought maybe it's funny because he came to rookie minicamp, you know, and the Bears had picked him up as an undrafted free agency shortly after the draft ended. And, you know, they had been with them at the Senior Bowl. We guess he was one of the head coaches of the Senior Bowl last year and they had liked him. And then one of my competitors from Chicago, sometimes Patrick Finley had written a story coming out of rookie minicamp about Tyson Bajan. And I openly mocked him. I said, don't you realize that this kid is just here to take some preseason snaps and playing some preseason games and then they're going to launch him by Labor Day.

And the story really isn't that good? I was wrong. And I've owned up to that. I've confessed to that.

I've apologized to Patrick for that. And here he is. You know, he's making the most of his opportunity.

And I just really I've admired the kid's fearlessness, honestly, over the last month, because it's been a whirlwind for a kid out of Division two to make this leap and to do it with the kind of grace and ambition that he's shown. Did you talk about this on the Take the North podcast? We talk about a lot of things on the Take the North podcast. And one of these weeks, one of these years, one of these months, whatever it may be, I hope that the tone of the Take the North podcast starts to get a little bit more hopeful and optimistic because it's been a rough couple of seasons. Dan Wieder covers the Chicago Bears for the Tribune in Chicago.

There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about. These two franchises seem somehow really aligned past trades. Right, Greg Olson. But they're also two franchises that are having a hard time getting out of their own way.

And there are some similarities. I'll get to one in a second. But let me just ask you before we get to that. Justin Fields, I know you had been I was on your Twitter timeline at Dan Wieder, by the way. And there is some confusion as to why Fields isn't yet ready to play. I know he hasn't been cleared.

I use air quotes there. What's what's your reporting telling you about what's going on there? That I'm dizzy and confused by how the Bears have messaged this, particularly in this short week as they've tried to prepare for this.

I'd encourage any of your audience to either go to my Twitter timeline or find the video of Matty Bufus's press conference. It's floating all over Twitter in terms of the way he tried to explain the designation of Justin as doubtful for Thursday night's game while also dodging every single question about kind of what specifically hasn't been shown by Justin Fields to gain clearance by the team or the medical staff or by Justin himself. This is a guy who dislocated his thumb on his throwing hand, you know, three weeks ago.

And what you have is swelling and you have grip strength issues and you have functionality that hasn't been there. But he's been back at practice. He was at practice on Friday. He practiced again yesterday.

They had walkthroughs on Monday and Tuesday. He's able to throw the football and he's getting better and he's getting closer and he needs to be back in the huddle soon for the Chicago Bears this week. I think the short week may have been a factor in terms of the Bears. Not really eager to turn him loose in a week where you don't have much practice time and not a lot of time to truly assess how he is physically, mentally and honestly, emotionally, as you kind of try to get yourself reset to come back in the huddle and take hold of the rest of this season, which might be the only season you have left with the Chicago Bears. Is he the future at quarterback?

There has been no evidence to tell you that honestly. And so like, this is where this gets tricky and you know, the NFL, Adam, it's like the sands of that hourglass run out really quickly. If you're not watching it, it can sneak up on you. And I think that that's the thing here is the two and seven football team that has one big thing that they have to solve before the end of the season. And it's answering the question you just asked me, is he the future at quarterback? And so Justin needs to get back out there. He needs to play at a higher level than he's played. He needs to play with much greater consistency than he's played with over the last three seasons as a starter. And if he doesn't, the bears obviously own the Carolina Panthers drastic, which could be the number one overall pick, and they're going to have an a golden opportunity to reset at quarterback if so desired.

And so when you think about the stakes through that lens, there is a lot still to happen for this football team over the last two months, even in a season that obviously is going nowhere in terms of two thousand and twenty three. They could even take another University of North Carolina quarterback. They take no question they could take another one, but one who has started more than fifteen games in his career.

Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. All right, now to the similarities between these two franchises. One has happened in the draft. The other has happened within the season. Carolina has had the propensity to trade future assets to move up in drafts when they probably shouldn't have. I like Bryce Young trading from nine to one, which obviously cost them DJ Moore and the first overall pick and the second pick the following year, among other things. That was probably, as I said at the time, an ill-advised thing to do because this upcoming draft seems to be better for quarterbacks.

But regardless, they did what they did, but they did that with Matt Corral a couple of years ago. They traded from up into the third round or a higher whatever. They traded a future third round to get up higher in the fourth round to take a guy that isn't even on their team anymore.

So this is what they have done historically. And last year the Bears traded a draft pick, a pretty good one, for Chase Claypool. They don't have him anymore. And they just traded a second round pick for Montez Sweat, who may be a very good defensive end, but he's also due a lot of money. What gives? Right.

You know, desperation gives, I think, in some of these circumstances where it's just that there is an urge to try to get yourself better as soon as possible. The Claypool trade was an obvious disaster. To give away what turned out to be the number 32 overall pick for a receiver who didn't even spend a calendar year in your building before you got tired of them and launched them to the sun.

I guess it was Miami, but it should have been the sun. It's inexcusable, right? What you gave up there. Now you've done something similar for a much more reliable player, much more proven production out of Montez Sweat, much fewer character concerns coming out of Washington. But what you've done is now you've identified him as a star. You've given away what could be a top 35 pick, certainly will be a top 40 pick in next spring's draft, just to have the right to then negotiate the contract with him, which you did last week. And you've given him $98 million on a four-year extension.

And so you've rewarded him as a superstar. Now for the next three, four seasons, Montez Sweat has to produce every single half of every single game like he's a superstar to get the return on investment on that. And so that's some of the games that these teams start to play when you just feel the urgency to try to get on track in a way that creates momentum and success in ways that show the outside world that you're moving in the right direction. It is amazing how organizations, it's like we have a different GM or a different head coach, and it just seems like there's something about, I don't know where the offices are that just breeds questionable decisions. I mean, we have a new owner here and they continue to make very suspect decisions about the draft, about personnel. I mean, I'm actually glad they didn't trade for a player, but honestly, the Panthers should have traded as many players as had value at this draft because they have no draft capital to rebuild the team. And it's going to be too bad that Brian Burns couldn't showcase himself, maybe for the Bears, because it seems like these two franchises keep trading with each other, but it is what it is.

Final thing before I let you go. DJ Moore, he certainly had the big splash game back in, what, that Thursday night game week five where he had 230 yards receiving and a thousand touchdowns. He's had a couple of really good games since then, but how much is DJ Moore's production hamstrung here by quarterback play? Well, no, honestly, it shouldn't be because Tyson Bajan has been every bit as reliable of a passer as Justin Fields has been. Well, I was lumping Justin Fields in that as well.

Sure. No question. One of the talking points here over the last several weeks is how do they use their game plan? How does the offensive coordinator try to manufacture opportunity for DJ Moore when there's not a lot going his way within game flow?

I think last week he only had four targets, walked out of the Superdome with three catches and when one of those, he fumbled and lost the fumble in it. And so you understand that DJ has to be a focal point of everything you do now, opponents understand that as well. And they, they, they, they turn loose a lot of coverages to take him away. So now as a quarterback, what you've got to do is understand that, you know, okay, when I get my opportunities to take shots to him, let's make sure that we do that. But we also have other players. We've got Cole Kamet, we've got Darnell Mooney. We've got, you know, some, some running backs that can, can help us, by the way, Deontay Foreman could have an opportunity tonight against his former team to get loose a little bit. So, um, it's a balance, you know, and you know how it is that, you know, offensive coordinator always gets, gets skewered for a player's lack of production, um, very rarely gets praised for, for his high production.

And so that's kind of what they're dealing with here. I think this is a big opportunity tonight to try to get DJ loose. So you mentioned it the last time he was on the Thursday night stage, he had a career night. Uh, I think he likes the opportunity to play on these stages. And I think he's looking forward to seeing his old team as Foreman is as well. So it'll be really interesting to see it on the topic of, you know, the, the, the, the marriage between these two teams. You guys got two guys, uh, in Andy Dalton and Joshua Cowen overseeing Bryce Young's development that I obviously have a lot of familiarity with from their time here in Chicago.

It is, uh, it is uncanny. The Julius Peppers connection, the, uh, Greg Olsen connection as well. And, uh, look, Ron Rivera.

No, that is right. Ron Rivera is good. My guess is going to be a free agent at the end of the season also.

Although it might just get bumped up to the, uh, to the front office in Washington. He's such a good human being, uh, that I think any organization with Ron Rivera in it is a better organization. Um, do you look at DJ Moore as a number one wide receiver or a number two on a real contending team? You know, I looked at him as a number one, but he's not in that top tier, you know, not in the junk, Justin Jefferson, Jamar chase, Devon Diggs, uh, category. I mean, like, I've really been impressed with DJ since the spring and just turns, uh, um, his play speed in his play strength. You know, it can be kind of underrated at times. It doesn't look like he's that fast, but yet he's out running guys.

He doesn't look like he's that strong, but nobody can tackle him. And, um, you see these moments where that shows up and you go, yeah, and then, and then just as ability as a route runner is so quarterback friendly that, that both of these guys should be very thankful. Uh, that they have him to throw to when they decide to throw it his way. Um, it's going to be really interesting because obviously I think DJ is going to be here for a long time now, you know, and you've got to try to try to get the production out of him as well, because that was a key part of that trade last year. When you gave away the number one pick and Oh, by the way, you might get the number one pick. And as you mentioned the draft where you really wanted it. Yes, yes, yes.

Panthers fans are well aware of the, of that possibility. Uh, look, I wish DJ more, uh, well, he's back home in the big 10 area. So, uh, as a big 10, as a big 10 legend, uh, Dan Wiederer, uh, you're a gentleman. I appreciate your time at Dan Wiederer on Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it. Appreciate it, man. Enjoy the game tonight. Always good catching up, Adam. Take care.