A clinic on how NOT to play football
The best NFL video that I've watched all year: Seaside Joe 1656
Today I’m going to share the best video about football that I’ve watched all year…a self-inflicted boodbath of lowlights by the NFL’s worst team last season and spoiler alert: possibly the worst NFL team this season.
There are people who say that The Room, notorious for being the worst movie ever made, should be shown to every student in every film school. A step-by-step guide of how to become a filmmaker by doing the exact opposite of every choice by writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau in The Room.
The Seahawks were bad in Week 1, and the Giants were understandably the most ripped on social media after a 40-0 loss to the Cowboys, but the Chicago Bears put on an ABSOLUTE CLINIC—at every offensive position—of how to never play football at any level.
In the video linked below from The QB School, a detailed breakdown of how everyone from the quarterback to the coordinator to the offensive linemen and skill players let down every single Bears fan who was forced to watch another Bears game, you will get the best one-hour clinic on football you’ll see all year. It’s that good because they’re that bad.
It’s not a Seahawks video, and Chicago doesn’t even play Seattle this year, but I often get asked to share the best Xs and Os videos on my playlist and there’s none better than this…I can’t wait to watch it again! And there is at least some tangential relationship to the NFC West and the NFL: The coaches will soon be fired and the Arizona Cardinals might as well bring back Kyler Murray, because the Bears could steal the number one pick from a tanking team for the second consecutive year.
This would make general manager Ryan Poles the writing version of Tommy Wiseau; head coach Matt Eberflus as the directing version of Wiseau; and quarterback Justin Fields as the football-tossing star.
Come to think of it, I now know what the Chicago Bears did for the last nine months to prepare for this season:
In the video you’re about to watch, and I recommend that you do because if you can set aside nine hours on Sundays for live football then surely you can squeeze in 60 minutes of replaying the NFL’s biggest disaster, J.T. O’Sullivan rips basically every player on offense, as well as coordinator Luke Getsy. In a roundabout way, he’s also ripping Eberflus, as he has to be held responsible for not having professional football players ready for a Week 1 divisional game against the Packers despite having months to prepare for it.
If you do not watch The QB School and you see this and think something along the lines of, “Geez, this guy’s negative. Is he always like this?” No! He actually never gets this mad at players/coaches not doing their jobs well. I do like J.T.’s videos because he’s not afraid to be critical and correct players, but this film isn’t about nitpicking or pointing out that someone’s accuracy is a little off with no “capital A anticipation”. The entire experience is a shitshow worthy of a midnight screening and what’s great about this particular breakdown is that he’s highlighting more than just what the quarterback is doing right and wrong:
The receivers run bad routes and show little effort on blocking; The right guard is next level terrible; The tight end doesn’t seem to know he’s playing in a football game; The players are either doing the wrong things or the scheme doesn’t make any sense; The center can’t snap straight; The tackles can’t block right.
The Bears are only masterful at being incompetent.
What’s perhaps most incredible is that this is a video about the Bears offense… but the defense was even worse! (I’ll link a video of Jordan Love against Chicago’s defense below.)
Again, I know this isn’t a breakdown of the Seahawks (I got one of those coming up later too) but I do think that almost everything that a fan needs to know about how football shouldn’t be played is found in The QB School’s analysis of the Bears in Week 1. It’s an AMAZING watch.
Full disclosure: I’ve been on record since the 2021 draft that I didn’t think Justin Fields was a wise choice as a first round pick, let alone the two first round picks that Chicago used to go up and get him. (I also said that Zach Wilson would be an MVP candidate by now, so no this isn’t about my awesome predictions.) I thought that by the end of the year, the Bears would fire their head coach and general manager.
They did.
I now expect Matt Eberflus to be fired midseason. And Ryan Poles, who hasn’t even been the GM for two years yet, should go next. But not because of Fields.
He traded a second round pick (turned into 32nd overall) for receiver Chase Claypool and he signed tight end Cole Kmet to a $50 million extension. Those were the two worst players on the field on Sunday. He had the number one overall pick and he traded down eight spots out of respect to Justin Fields, yet the team either doesn’t know how to use him or doesn’t want to use him, which makes it more confusing that the Bears passed over all those other quarterbacks in the draft because of him.
If Chicago has two top-10 picks in 2024 (they also have the Panthers first rounder), do they really want this regime to manage them?
You may also be thinking that I’m overreacting to a single game. Fair. But also not fair because the Bears went 3-14 last season! Chicago is 1-14 in their last 15 games and they remind me of the Jaguars going 4-29 over two seasons and the Browns going 1-31 over two seasons, both leading to back-to-back number one overall picks. The Bears eschewed the number one pick this year but if they have it in 2024, they won’t be trading the pick, they’ll be trading the quarterback.
The Cardinals, a team that actually did try to win on Sunday, better take notice. Their Week 16 game at Soldier Field could decide the fate of USC’s Caleb Williams.
As promised, here’s Packers quarterback Jordan Love against the Bears defense, a unit that was 31st in points allowed and 30th in yards per attempt allowed in Week 1 after ranking 32nd in both categories in 2022.
The Seahawks were not good in Week 1 and that’s not something we want to overlook. But it’s good to have perspective and keep in mind that no matter how bad your film is…there’s probably at least one movie that’s worse.
Shout me out your thoughts on the worst teams in the NFL in the comments:
Reminder: Survivor Leagues
Two things: First, if you haven’t signed up yet for the “Second Chances” league, go do that NOW before the deadline on Thursday night. This is a Survivor league open to EVERYBODY, not just Regular Joes or people who were eliminated in Week 1 or if you’re still alive in the other league, you don’t even have to be a Seaside Joe subscriber. Send it to other Seahawks fans if you want. Go sign up for that now!
Second, if you were in the first Survivor league and you DID NOT get eliminated in Week 1, then you should have received an invite to a separate Yahoo! Survivor league as well as an email from me.
If you think you should have gotten an email and you didn’t, you either did get eliminated or you didn’t leave a proper email address. Or check your SPAM/JUNK folder. People must also enter that league by Thursday, at least 5 minutes before kickoff of TNF.
And please remember: This is just a fun thing I decided to start this season, so don’t take it too seriously if you feel there’s been any error! I could have easily decided to not run a Survivor league and saved myself time and work, but wanted to try something new that fans might enjoy and turns out I didn’t think of it until the last minute. Please remember the key word: FUN.
Matthew Stafford against the Seahawks
Key word: NOT FUN.
Watching this video actually made it a little bit easier for me to accept Seattle’s terrible third down defense because Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, and Tutu Atwell were executing plays that probably should fail at a higher rate than they did. Most quarterbacks won’t hit the tight windows that Stafford hit, nor do they have the nifty arm angles and no-looks. At times, the Seahawks were adequately blanketing the receivers but credit the receivers for holding onto the ball and getting their feet down.
If I do have one question about Seattle’s defense that I didn’t have before it came on the last play in the video and it’s not an easy topic for me to bring up to you right now but…does Riq Woolen look slow to you?
I know, I know. But we need to address every possible question, not avoid the ones that could hurt or could be easily explained by rust after offseason knee surgery. I just can’t imagine a world in which Woolen can’t keep pace or catch up to Puka Nacua given the dramatic differences in their 40 times as we know them.
Let me know your takeaways from these videos in the comments section. Consider upgrading to Regular Joes for only $5 per month or $55 for the entire year—you’ll get over 100 bonus articles between now and the start of the 2024 season and you’ll help support a Seahawks newsletter that runs every single day. Give a gift subscription to a Seahawks fan who might enjoy the regular updates on the team:
I didn't notice Riq at all. And there's a good reason for that - he was targeted twice by Stafford, 1 completion for 5 yards. I guess when you have Artie Burns and Michael Jackson to pick on, there's no reason to look Riq's way.
Just wanna say--and I know it's off subject and maybe it's already been stated--but how about them Jets? Rodgers went down on the fourth play and they did not fold. They came back from down 10-3 and an interception and won the game. The Seahawks might take a look at that game as an example. And four former Seahawks on the field.