The Entire Internet And Possibly Justin Fields Gave Chase Claypool Shit For His Effort Against The Packers
That little supercut of Claypool by Renner shows you everything you need to know. It was clear as day during the game. We all saw it. Seeing it again gets me even angrier. I mean we are talking about a guy who is 6'4 and almost 240lbs and runs a 4.4 40 yard dash. A physical freak that just gets dominated physically all the time because he just doesn't seem to want it enough. That isn't the guy I remember from ND, but maybe football was just so easy at that level for him that the lack of effort at times wasn't so easily noticed.
Ryan Poles was desperate to get a weapon for Fields last year and ended up with Claypool in a mid-year trade for a 2nd rounder. A 2nd round pick that ended up being 32nd overall. That trade looks like absolute DOG SHIT in hindsight because Claypool doesn't have that dog in him. He had issues last year with the team. And it looks like he has issues again. Look at this one quote from Justin Fields from yesterday
“If you go back and look at the film, if we block the guys, those are big chunk plays, 10-, 15-, 20-yard plays. That was just the game plan. If they weren’t going to match we were going to throw it out there and let our guys work. Just didn’t do our best at perimeter blocking, blocking on the edge, for our guys to catch the ball and run.”
It's hard to single out just one guy yesterday for that debacle, but the tape doesn't lie from Renner. If Claypool had a tenth the heart of Ruettiger the Bears might've been in that game. Get your fucking facemask on a guy. Get in the way. They aren't asking Claypool to block Miles Garrett. They're asking him to run good, hard, clean routes even if he's the 4th option and help his teammates.
I don't know the answers overall, but one of them might be playing more 21 personnel. You signed Robert Tonyan and Mercedes Lewis. They'd block better on the perimeter and be able to help Darnell Wright a bit. Maybe play Tonyan more than 4 snaps.
Reward the guys that play with the type of culture you want. Guys like Roschon Johnson.
Advertisement
I expect the Bears to at least be more competitive against Tampa. I don't know if that means a win, but the effort needs to be better.