I thought I'd take a break from talking about the Bears, and talk about some of the other stories around the NFL, and who I think are going to have good or bad seasons in 2019.

Let's start with the biggest news of the recent draft: the selection of Kyler Murray first overall to the Arizona Cardinals. This pick gave me flashbacks to the Bears trading up one spot to draft Mitch Trubisky in 2017. This move by the Cardinals wreaks of desperation! The Cardinals had just selected Josh Rosen 10th overall with their first-round pick in the previous year's draft. And now they're dumping him in favor of Kyler Murray?

The Cardinals appeared desperate when they selected Kyler Murray, despite having drafted Josh Rosen last year.

Rosen didn't have a particularly good year in 2018 -- in fact, you could probably say that he had a bad year. But he was also playing QB for a bad team. Very few quarterbacks can single-handedly turn a team around. When you draft a guy to be the QB of the future, you've got to at least give the kid a chance!

Yeah, sure, the Bears may have cut Mike Glennon's knee-caps out from under him after drafting Trubisky, but Glennon was only signed to a one-year contract anyway. It was apparent that (unless he proved to be a superstar) he would not be the QB of the future for the Bears. Rosen had every expectation that he'd be "the guy" in Pheonix for at least a few years. He had the expectation that he'd have time to develop and improve. Not so.

The lack of faith in Rosen isn't even the problem here. The problem is that the Cardinals didn't even bother to trade Rosen away until after they had drafted Murray! From what I understand, they hadn't even been shopping around for a possible trade. After selecting Murray, it was apparent that Rosen would not be on the team moving forward, and his trade value plumeted. The Cardinals were able to trade him to the Miami Dolphins, but probably for a fraction of the value that they could have gotten had they performed the trade even just one day before.

And it isn't like they had to pretend they didn't want to trade Rosen, in order to hide the fact that they were going to take Murray. They had the first overall pick. Nobody could sneak in ahead of them without the Cardinals willingly giving up that pick. This isn't like the Bears in 2017 feeling like they had to trade up one spot to prevent someone else from trading up to take Trubisky. There was no risk of Murray being poached by another team. I can only assume that even the Cardinals didn't know who they were going to draft until it came time to announce the pick.

Unlike the Bears in 2017, the Cardinals were at no risk of losing Murray to another team trading up.

Stuff like this is why the Cardinals are the Cardinals, and why the Cardinals aren't very good.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, props to the Redskins for having the patience to not trade up to draft Dwayne Haskins. They got a great deal when Haskins fell to them 15th overall.

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I was really impressed with Matt Nagy's first year as the Bears' head coach. I wasn't the only one, as Nagy was named the Coach of the Year by the NFL itself. The accolades were warranted, as Nagy was routinely out-scheming the Bears' opponents in game after game last season.

The coaching prowess wasn't limited to Nagy either, as defensive coordinator Vic Fangio was also named the NFL's Assistant Coach of the Year. Fangio was helped by the shocking trade of Khalil Mack to the Bears at the end of preseason, who provided immediate results to the team.

After tripping over their own two feet in the 2017 NFL draft, it was starting to look like the Bears' management (including General Manager Ryan Pace) were finally putting together winning personnel. This was the smash-mouth, ground-and-pound, suffocating defensive team that I want the Bears to be. I could finally stop hating the Bears and start to love them again.

The Bears had two coaches of the year in 2018!

New defensive coordinator

I'm not sure if it's going to last though. I expect Nagy to have a long and [relatively] successful career with the Bears, but my immediate expectations have sunk due to a few key changes in the team during the 2019 offseason.

The first bit of bad news came in the form of losing former Assistant Coach of the Year Vic Fangio. Fangio accepted the head coaching job with the Denver Broncos. Congratulations to him, as he deserves it! I think his schemes will work very well for the Broncos' defensive personnel, so it's real good news for Broncos fans. But damn, that stings for us Bears fans.

They get Vic Fangio from us, and all we ever got from them was Jay Cutler and John Fox?! This is not a fair deal at all...

Former Colts head coach Chuck Pagano will replace Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator.

The silver lining is that the Bears' new defensive coordinator is head-coach caliber. Chuck Pagano (formerly with the Indianapolis Colts) accepted the job as the Bears' defensive coordinator going into the 2019 season. I stopped paying as much attention to the Colts after Peyton Manning left, so I can't really speak to how successful I think Pagano might be. The most optimistic stat line for Pagano is that he helped coach Colts' safety Mike Adams to be tied for takeaways in the 2014 season. That bodes well for safety Eddie Jackson, who very well might have been the Bears' best defensive player if Khalil Mach hadn't been getting all the attention.

So maybe the loss of Fangio won't be as painful as it might have at first seemed.

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I recently wrote about the game at E3 2018 that most caught my interest. But there are other things coming out of E3 that I also paid peripheral attention to. One of the few reasons that I anticipate E3 each year is that it is also around the time that we start to get the first substantial looks at the upcoming Madden game.

The first thing that I noticed about Madden 19 previews is the focus on player movement and locomotion. Specifically, I noticed the fact that they seem to be re-selling us features that were supposed to already be in the game. Didn't Madden 25 already introduce this same mechanic? Yes, it was called "true step" back then. If it was so important to gameplay back in 2013, then why was it ever removed?

Player locomotion and runners getting through gaps in the line are focuses of Madden 19.

We're also seeing the return of a variation of the "get skinny" mechanic that dates all the way back to PS2 versions of the game, but which had been subsequently removed. Hitting the right gap in running plays has been a problem for a long time. It's good to see EA addressing it with the "hit the gap" and "push the pile" mechanics, but they've supposedly addressed this issue several times in the past, and it's never solved the problem.

They've also claimed that defensive coverages have been improved, and that defenders will now do a better job of playing the first down marker in coverage. That mechanic was also supposedly implemented back when Tiburon revised zone coverages for Madden 17, but apparently that didn't work either, so here they are, promising to fix it again. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of these promises play out in the small bits of gameplay that I've seen so far -- let alone improvements regarding block-shedding, defensive coverage, or general A.I.. So I'm tempering my expectations.

EA's dev blog has also stated that tackles will now factor in momentum, speed, and player weight. Wasn't that what the Ignite, Infinity, and Frostbite engines were supposed to have been doing for the past five years or so? Admittedly, I did see a few improved-looking group tackles and broken tackles in another piece of gameplay footage, but not much regarding the advertised features. Don't get me wrong, if all these features work, then I'll be happy. It's just not very reassuring to hear the same promises year-in and year-out, and then not see them in the advertised product.

Also, what's the deal with Terrell Owens being featured so much (as the cover athlete and in the trailer)? Is he coming out of retirement or something? Does Owens actually have anything to do with the content of the game?!

A long overdue Franchise overhaul?

In any case, it looks like Franchise Mode is a large focus of this year's game, which is good news considering that the mode was almost untouched in Madden 18, which seemed to focus almost exclusively on MUT...

CBS Sports columnist Pete Prisco has given the Chicago Bears a solid "A" in his 2018 Draft Grades. He's not the only one. The internet is abuzz with analysts praising the Bears' draft this year. Bears fans, on the other hand, seem less enthusiastic.

Maybe us jaded fans are just bitter from years of disappointment and bad decision-making at the highest levels of the Bears organization. Perhaps the analysts are just impressed that the Bears didn't metaphorically trip over their own feet on the way to the podium the way that they did last year with the dumbfounding decision to trade up one spot to draft Mitch Trubisky (a player that the team ahead of them, the 49ers, wasn't even planning on drafting), instead of taking the elite pass rusher that everyone thought they were trading up to get (and which the 49ers did take with that next pick). Was it the right move? Time will tell.

Well the Bears didn't impress anybody by picking up that desperately-needed pass rusher this year either. They had a chance in the second round to take Harold Landry, but instead took center James Daniels. Landry has had some injury issues in his college career, and consistently drafting injury-prone players has been one of Chicago's key failures in recent memory. Maybe Kevin White will finally play a full season this year? I'll settle for half a season.

The Bears drafted linebacker Roquan Smith from Georgia Tech 8th overall.

Top needs addressed and ignored

Despite not addressing their most pressing concern, the consensus among analysts seems to be that general manager Ryan Pace and newly-hired head coach Matt Nagy had one of the best drafts in the league (and one of the best drafts for the Bears in a long time). They picked up an inside linebacker, Roquon Smith, in the first round. He is expected to start immediately next to Danny Trevathan in Nagy's 3-4 defense, and should hopefully give former Georgia teammate Leonard Floyd more room to get pressure from the outside. The big question is: can Floyd or Trevathan stay healthy? Hopefully, Smith doesn't end up being the only linebacker left by the time December rolls around...

The Chicago Bears confused analysts and fans Thursday night when they traded up with San Francisco to draft North Carolina quarterback Mitchell Trubisky 2nd overall in the 2017 NFL draft. Analysts, fans, and even myself thought that the Bears would likely take one of the elite defensive players such as Jamaal Adams (safety), Marshon Lattimore (corner), or Solomon Thomas (defensive end). It was unlikely that Myles Garrett would still be on the board at no. 3, but at least one or two of those other players would be.

The Chicago Bears traded up with the 49ers to draft NCU QB Mitch Trubisky no. 2 overall.

The Bears desperately need help in their defensive secondary, especially considering the elite passers that are in their division (Aaron Rodgers, Matt Stafford, and maybe even Teddy Bridgewater if he returns healthy). They did pick up Prince Amukamara (CB), Markcus Cooper (CB), and Quintin Demps (S) in free agency to add some depth, but they still need more help at those positions. If a safety or corner wasn't available, then an elite pass rusher that could pressure those rival QBs would be the next best thing. The Bears offense actually moved the ball pretty well towards the end of the season, scoring 20 or more points in 4 of their last 5 games. The problem was their defensive was giving up 30 or 40 points.

I'm not complaining about drafting Trubisky. I like the pick, and the Bears need a quarterback. I just think that the Bears have severely overpaid for it considering their earlier offseason moves, and that a defensive star should have been higher priority. Everyone seemed to think that the 49ers were going for Solomon Thomas -- or maybe Jamaal Adams. And, in fact, the 49ers did use their number 3 overall pick to get Thomas after all. So it seems (on the surface) that Trubisky would still be there for the Bears at number 3 if the Bears wanted him.

Maybe the Bears were tipped off that someone like the Jaguars were offering a trade with San Fran to get Trubisky? Maybe the Jags were worried about Chicago picking Trubisky at number 3 and wanted to leapfrog to get him? Or maybe the Jets were looking to trade up? That's the only way that this trade makes sense. Or maybe the 49ers outright swindled the Bears? The Bears gave up this year's third and fourth round picks, as well as another third round pick next year, so this was a pretty costly trade considering they only moved up one spot, and the 49ers got a super-sweet deal. They got the guy they wanted all along, and they get two more mid-draft picks to fill other needs or as capital to trade.

What this tells me is that the Bears still have no real clue what they're doing at quarterback. They already committed a huge amount of money to get backup quarterback Mike Glennon ...