In our exclusive interview, the NFL analyst famous for 'Baldy's Breakdowns' discusses the upcoming NFL trade deadline, the Bears' move for Jeffery Simmons, whether the Colts could move Jonathan Taylor and much more.
Brian Baldinger believes the Bears should be taken ‘very, very seriously’ by the rest of the NFL after they beat the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks, on Monday night.
The Bears improved to 6-2 on the season with an impressive win on the road in Seattle, with Jeffery Simmons – who they acquired in a trade with the Tennessee Titans last week – making a major impact defensively.
The Bears are now +850 in the NFL betting to win the Super Bowl this season, and Baldinger believes they have the pieces in place to make a deep playoff run.
In our exclusive interview, Baldinger also discusses the upcoming NFL trade deadline, with Jonathan Taylor, Josh Downs and Brian Thomas Jr. among the players considered most likely to move teams within the next week.
How seriously should the rest of the NFL be taking the Chicago Bears as Super Bowl contenders?
Very, very seriously, because honestly, Kansas City went to Seattle and scored three points. Seattle completely shut down Kenneth Walker, who was averaging 135 yards a game, and he had 37 against them. Patrick Mahomes looked completely frustrated.
Chicago went in there on Monday night and on the opening drive went 17 plays, 80 yards and scored. It was perfect execution.
But then you see the addition of Jeffery Simmons. I don’t think that he’s just a predominant defensive tackle in this league, I think he’s the predominant defensive lineman in this league. He makes everybody around him better. Montez Sweat, Austin Booker, Grady Jarrett, James Lynch – they all played bigger and better to shut down Seattle’s offence outside of Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
The big issue, though, is that division is going to be murderer’s row. I think all those NFC North games are going to look and feel like playoff games, so Chicago has a gauntlet to get through before they get to the postseason.
Chicago paid a hefty price for Simmons, with two first-round picks going to Tennessee. Is he worth it?
Yes, and I’ll tell you why. The Rams have been the blueprint for these kinds of deals. They did it with Jalen Ramsey, they won a Super Bowl. You can go take your two first-round picks and go into the draft, and it’s going to be a crapshoot. Ten of the 32 guys getting drafted are going to be busts. Ten of them might become great players and 10 might just be guys. We see it every year.
The thing about Simmons, which is different than almost everybody else, is he played 90 per cent of the snaps against Seattle. On the season, he’s playing 87 per cent of the snaps. He is a very well-conditioned athlete and he’s largely been injury-free since he tore that ACL coming out of Mississippi State. You’re getting a healthy guy, a productive player that makes other guys better, and the defence looks completely different right now. They still have some weaknesses maybe in the secondary, but their front is going to be difficult to stop right now.
What has impressed you the most about Caleb Williams’ development this season?
The biggest one is he no longer just bails from the pocket when something isn’t right. He’ll do it when he needs to. If there’s quick pressure, if there’s a free rusher coming at him, he’s got that athletic ability to outrun or manoeuvre himself against anyone. But I feel like it’s his discipline, and his accuracy on throws. He still misses a couple when he has an open shot, but he’s so much better in the pocket than he used to be and he’s willing to stay there.
The other thing that you can’t see really from a game is how he’s taken the leadership role and is literally engaging with every player on the team. Offensive linemen, defensive linemen. He’s already given a nickname to Jeffery Simmons. He’s the leader of the team without announcing that he’s a leader of the team.
What’s the next area of his game you’d like to see him develop?
Just to recognise even quicker what defences are doing, whether it’s the pressure game or disguised coverages. I remember talking to him in the Hall of Fame Game in his rookie year. I’d known him since high school, so I went up and I started talking to him and asked him about his first year. When he was in college at Oklahoma and USC, he never had to call a play in a game. All the plays came from Lincoln Riley.
When he got to the NFL, it’s up to him to decide which is the right call, when to get out of a bad play, get into a good play, run to the right, run to the left. Just the little things that give your offence an advantage. He’s just going to get better and better at calling the game at the line of scrimmage.
You threw some doubt on the Los Angeles Chargers in preseason and they have gone 0-7 to start the year. How do you diagnose their problems this season?
I think it starts with the roster. The roster was very incomplete. Now, you can’t anticipate losing the center you sign in free agency, Tyler Biadasz, Rashawn Slater, Joe Alt – you can’t anticipate losing three starters like that. At some point, even up until last week, they were playing four rookies on the offensive line. You wouldn’t even see that in a preseason game.
I don’t think they have a good receiving skill set. If you look at the Bears with Colston Loveland, Rome Odunze, Luther Burden – they don’t have that type of talent for Justin Herbert. They don’t have young receivers that can stay on the field and can do everything. Even when their guys were healthy to start the season, they weren’t very good.
I don’t care what the quarterback’s name is, if you’re seeing good quarterback play, you’re seeing a good running game. The only guy that might separate himself from that is Joe Burrow, but he’s just so elite that he can win without a run game. Nobody else can. So if you can’t run the ball the way the Chargers can’t, the quarterback can only do so much.
So I do put some on coaching, because they haven’t been good in short yardage and goal line and I think there are ways to get a yard. They had they had 4th-and-1 against Denver up 17-10 in the fourth quarter and they ran a quarterback sneak and lost a yard. It was a terrible play, and that might have been a difference.
You’ve been on a team where it feels like everything is going wrong at the halfway stage. It feels that way for the Colts this season. As a veteran in the locker room, how hard is it to keep things together and move forward?
I was on a 1-15 team. It’s hard, and it’s not fun. When I was on that team, I tried to do everything that I would do if the team was winning, and more, and I tried to organise study sessions for some of the younger linemen that were forced to play to get them up to speed. But the hard part is you can practise, you can gameplan, you can prepare, and then when things start to go bad at the end of the first quarter it’s hard to stop guys from thinking, “here we go again.”
It’s hard to stop that mentality for some players. Some can fight through it and not even look at the scoreboard, but you start to see guys wanting to spend less and less time at the facility. It could be rehab, it could be your lifting, it could be extra film session, all the things that you naturally want to do when you’re winning, guys start cutting those type of sessions short.
With the Colts looking at a lost season, do you get the feeling that Jonathan Taylor will be traded?
Jonathan Taylor doesn’t want to leave Indianapolis. At least that’s what he says. And this summer after they gave him a contract extension, he told me he wanted to play his whole career for the Colts.
I played for the Colts. They have a very good organisation. There are a lot of people working in that building that were there when I was there 35 years ago. They’re very loyal to their workers, and players feel that. They treat players very well in that organisation.
But at the same time, they’re dead men walking right now. Can Jonathan Taylor go to San Francisco? Can he go to Denver? Could he go someplace for a half a year and maybe help them win a Super Bowl?
There’s part of him that says he would go do that. But when your name is bandied about like it has been in certain places… it caught Quenton Nelson completely off guard. He thought he was going to be a Colt for life. The reality is it’s a business, and so there’s going to be a lot of players that are probably going to get moved.
Which of the contending teams should push the hardest to get Taylor if he is available?
If you look at teams that might want Jonathan Taylor, like Denver, he’s a good fit, they need to run the ball better and I’m sure Sean Payton would love to have him. You are mortgaging a little bit of the future, so what about Jonah Coleman? He looks like he’s really good, and when he’s healthy out there, he helped them win that game last week. He looks pretty special.
Or if you said San Francisco, I don’t think you could put Jonathan Taylor in San Francisco with Christian McCaffrey. He’s used to being the alpha male. But then you also take carries away from Kaelon Black, who played really good in their last game and ran for a 30-yard touchdown. He looks like a good young player.
I don’t think you should take carries away from young players that can practise every day, who have got good juice in their legs. I think it’s going to be tough to get a first-round pick for Jonathan Taylor.
Josh Downs is another Colts player who has been talked about, and actually has said he’d like to be moved. Does he have more production to be unlocked in a new environment?
He has to be in a special offence, because he’s a pure slot receiver. He’s not Jaxon Smith-Njigba that can play in the slot, play out wide. I don’t believe, because of his size, that he could be a No. 1 receiver and I don’t think he could play outside. Where they have been playing him is where he belongs.
The Patriots had three receivers all hurt last week, but Efton Chism is that guy for them that can play in the slot, and he’s been good in that role. So Downs is not going to go to the Patriots.
I don’t think he’s for every offence, and it takes a special coach, to unlock his abilities.
Is there a contending team where you see a glaring need that must be addressed before the deadline?
Last year, Jacksonville went out and got Jakobi Meyers, they went on a tear and won eight in a row. He was a perfect fit for them. Nobody would have thought he was an elite player, but what they have right going right now with him and Parker Washington is good.
Travis Hunter is getting receiving work now, so is Brian Thomas Jr. available? He caught a touchdown pass last week. That’s a guy where after his rookie year, you would say you’d want that guy in your offence. I think that’s a guy that could get moved.
He was a first-round pick, and he’s got elite skills. So I feel like that’s a guy that you might be able to get who could really fill that need for a team like San Francisco, because of the injuries at wide receiver. But what are you getting? Are you getting a guy that has a case of the yips? Can he catch everything?
He’s got maybe not the best personality for the position. There are some questions about him, so it’s just a question of what kind of homework you do with him, how do you feel about him, and could he help you?
The Cowboys are coming off a tough loss but they’re still in second in the NFC East. Could they be buyers or sellers at the deadline?
The biggest mistake the Cowboys made was not taking care of Micah Parsons. It’s been downhill since. Now, they got a lot for him – they got Rashan Gary, Quinnen Williams, they were able to draught Malachi Lawrence, but none of these guys have made a difference. They’re not difference makers right now.
They break down so much in every area of their defence. They turn Trey McBride loose like he’s just a guy who they haven’t paid any attention to, and lose a 10-point lead with three-and-a-half minutes to go to the game. Tyler Allgeier is a backup running back, he goes 63 yards for a touchdown right up the middle.
They have to stop giving up these big plays that they give up every week.
Christian Parker’s a young coach who has never been a coordinator. I think he’s a good teacher, but he hasn’t made the defence better. They gave up 550 points last year, the most in Cowboy history. They’re giving up a lot of points now.
I don’t think Brian Schottenheimer is his dad. His dad was a great motivator, got the team to play hard. My brother played for him for almost 10 years in Kansas City. I just feel like there’s something missing there from a head coaching standpoint. With a talented roster, the players just look too content, even though they lose these games the way they lose these games.
They’re 3-5, and they just look too content. That starts with the coaches.
When you study the Kansas City Chiefs, what looks fixable to you and what looks like a genuine concern?
We don’t know what’s going on with the left guard. He’s out of the line-up, but they’re a better team with him in the line-up. Kahlil Benson has been playing for Josh Simmons, he’s played really well. There’s something missing. Simmons isn’t playing, Kingsley Suamataia is out, and something’s not right there in Kansas City.
I feel like offensively, some of it because they’re down some linemen, they’re not running the ball the way they did the first five weeks of the season. Two weeks in a row now, they’re not running the ball very well, and when they were winning, that’s what was happening. Against Denver, first week of the season, Kenneth Walker has a monster game against the Broncos. He gets shut down on Sunday.
They got Rashee Rice back, that’s good, and he had a decent game. They’re missing big plays from Tyquan Thornton. So I feel like they’re an explosive weapon short right now.
Defensively, I actually like a lot of the things that Spags is doing with a lot of young players – R Mason Thomas, Peter Woods, Mansoor Delane – some of these guys look pretty good out there. So I feel like the defence is going to get better the second-half of the season, playing as many new and young players.
But I am concerned about them offensively, because if you just do what Denver and Seattle did and make sure you stop Kenneth Walker, it looks like you kind of slowed the whole offence down.
Which AFC team looks the most dangerous right now?
I think Jacksonville is dangerous, because I think the division isn’t tough. They’re going to win a lot of division games. They lost DaVon Hamilton, which is a big loss, he’s a really good interior player. But I feel like they’ve got the roster, the leadership, and the coaching. With their special teams, they win the game in London against the Eagles with their kicker. If it becomes a field goal game in the playoffs, I trust their kicker.
I think that’s a team that nobody pays attention to. They’re not on prime time. Nobody’s watching them on TV much. That’s a team I think that can be scary good in the playoffs.
I’m a big fan of Liam Cohen, Tony Boselli, and what they’ve done to that team. I know they lost a tough game in London to Houston a couple of weeks ago, but I feel like Trevor Lawrence has never played better and a lot of that is the coaching, and the team they built around him. I’m a big fan of the Jaguars and I love watching them play.
Which offensive lines look like they are dominant enough to carry their teams deep into January?
I would say that Buffalo is still very good. Obviously, Josh Allen is having an MVP-type season and they’ve got a lot of tough guys there – O’Cyrus Torrence, Dion Dawkins and Spencer Brown. It’s a good group.
In addition to that, if you look at what Tampa is doing right now, their offensive line is the same five starters as basically the last three years. You watch the way Bucky Irving and that Kenneth Gainwell are playing right now, they’re very good. You can count on that line, and the tight ends, to be very good.
And then you look at the Steelers, the changes they made with Brock Hoffman at right guard, Iheanachor at right tackle, Darnell Washington at tight end, the way that they’re running the ball. I would say those three teams jump off the charts of how the line is playing.
Is there a is there an individual lineman who’s not getting enough attention for what he’s been doing?
One thing that Pittsburgh can do is they can draft centers. They know what a great center looks like, and they’ve got a bunch of them in the Hall of Fame.
This Zach Frazier is a really good player, and nobody really talks about him. He’s in Pittsburgh, everybody talks about Aaron Rodgers or TJ Watt. They don’t talk about Zach Frazier enough. But he is a really good player, he was a state wrestling champion. He’s really good at that position. And they’re running the ball very well. Jaylen Warren is having the best year of his career, and they need a run game. But I feel like Zach Frazier is a guy people don’t spend enough time talking about.
What’s the best single-game performance from a player that you’ve watched on film this season?
I think Tyler Linderbaum’s first game as a Raider. I thought maybe Jim Otto was up in heaven, looking down, going, “the Raiders got themselves a center.” It was just everything you wanted and more from a guy that you just broke the bank to pay and, destroyed the center market.
I thought Tyler Linderbaum’s first game was about as good as it gets. Now, they’ve struggled in areas for a variety of reasons, but when I saw Linderbaum play that first game, I thought this was dominant, this was a Raider, this was somebody that could have played for John Madden, Al Davis, in any era.
The Raiders made a big change in the running game by giving Mike Washington nearly all the carries over Ashton Jeanty. How much of their struggles running the ball recently can be put on the running back?
I had been advocating it for a month. I think Ashton Jeanty is a talented player if you give him real space and real holes. But I think he makes bad decisions with the football. I pointed it out last week, people criticised me for saying Mike Washington would be making those runs.
Going back to preseason, I thought Mike Washington was the best running back. He’s bigger than Jeanty, he’s much faster than Jeanty, he gets to top speed quicker and I think he’s a stronger runner. Just look at the explosive plays that Mike Washington has had this year.
I think Jeanty had more catches than any running back in the league going into last week, so he’s a good receiver. There’s a place for him, you can throw the ball to him and he’s going to catch it. But Mike Washington doesn’t have bad hands – he’s really good.
I think the Raiders made the right move. They won the game, they’re 4-4, they go to the 49ers and they’ve got to find a way to win six more games out of the last nine to make the playoffs. They could do it, but they’ve got to give themselves the best chance. I think Washington does.
Who’s the team that you think people are underrating this season, or could make a surge in the second half of the season?
Well Tampa threw the ball three times on Sunday. They were playing in a monsoon. But if you look at their last two wins against Carolina and now against Atlanta, they’re winning in the division. You win your division, you’ve got a home playoff game, and that’s the quickest way to get to the playoffs. So if you look at Tampa right now and defensively how they stop the run, they’re very good. You look at their secondary with Tykee Smith, Zyon McCollum, Jacob Parrish, and the addition of Josiah Trotter at linebacker, and their defence is really good.
Bucky Irving looks like Bucky Irving of the second-half of his rookie year, and the offensive line is healthy. Now, the passing game isn’t good enough, but Baker has been a really good quarterback in this league, so I feel like they’ve got to catch up in the passing game but that’s a team you have to pay attention to.
The other team right now, and it’s only based off really one game, but what the New York Giants did in Houston two weeks ago was really eye-opening, because we’ve never seen J.J. McCarthy play like that.
Maybe it’s one game, but that was in Houston against a good defence and he didn’t make a mistake, and they ran the ball really well. I feel like the Giants, because they’re in the NFC East and they’ve got the Eagles and Commanders coming up, if they win those games and get to 6-2-1, they’re going to have a home playoff game. So I feel like we shouldn’t overlook the Giants.
The Ravens are turning to Joe Fagnano at quarterback after losing both Lamar Jackson and Tyler Huntley to injuries. Could you see them making a move for a veteran to save their season?
Well, they made the switch in Arizona to Gardner Minshew. Does that mean Jacoby Brissett could be available? He can win games for you. Jacoby’s a good quarterback. He could win games.
If I was Baltimore, I’m not going to the playoffs in the current state we’re in right now. If Joe Flacco available? I would make a move for Flacco because he knows that team, he knows that organisation, he knows he can fit into any system and he can complete a lot of passes.
I wouldn’t give up on the season, but I feel like if you just stay put right now, you’re in a division with everybody else having a winning record. They’re not going to the playoffs with what they have. They have to make a move if they feel the playoffs are that important. The one constant factor on that team is Zay Flowers. He’s just a difference maker in everything that he does.
I would make a move if I was them, because otherwise, Jacksonville could go in there on Thursday night and do what they just did to the Colts to this Baltimore team.
