Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Justin Fields is a Bear
Good morning, Chicago…
The next two weeks, we are embarking on the biggest stretch of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago’s history.
On Saturday, May 15, we will be having the first ever SGCTC party on a private floor at O'Callaghan's in River North. It’s located at 29 Hubbard Street and will be packed with any drink you can imagine. The gathering will start at 7pm and go through 11 p.m, coinciding with the Bulls-Nets game. If you read the newsletter, you are invited. Let me know if you’re going to be able to make it. It’s a cash bar and there’s nothing you need to do beforehand.
If you want to bring others who may be interested in the newsletter or a significant other, just let me know.
It should be a blast — many people are already calling it the party of the Spring — and if you bought a shirt, feel free to wear those there. I will be personally wearing mine, glued to the television as Kevin Durant makes three after three as Denzel Valentine struggles to get around a pick.
As for the t-shirts, they are in my possession and I will begin deliveries today. For those of you who need it shipped to you, just let me know your address and I will do so. If you live in the area, I can drop it off.
For those of you who have not yet gotten a shirt, but want one — let me know. You can reach me in the comments here, at andrewdonlan0@gmail.com, or through Twitter DMs. T-shirts are $28. You can Venmo me $28 dollars (Venmo: @Andrew-Donlan) or give me cash at the party if you prefer that.
The shirts are nice and light material, ash gray, and promise to hug any muscle you have and lay off any excess weight you may sport. That is a promise.
For those of you who have already purchased them, I really appreciate the support. It’s been really, really cool to see everyone engaged and excited for this event, and it’s been even cooler that people want to don SGCTC merch out in the wild.
If anyone asks you what the shirt is for, laugh at them, and say ‘Are you serious?’ Then start being nicer and tell them where they can subscribe.
Here:
This past week has been hysterical. Lots of people exposing themselves.
“Why didn’t you invite me to this party that those guys are talking about?”
Oh, I did buddy. You just didn’t read the newsletter… you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you, you fake reader, fake SGCTChicagoan mother fucker.
Alright, I’m not that mad. I know not everyone has 15 minutes to read through rants on a 26-39 basketball team.
But the fake fans made the real fans feel realer this week. So thank you guys so much for the continued support, and I hope to see you all next Saturday.
Now let’s get into it.
Being a Chicago sports fan can be hard sometimes. All of you know that.
But as I sat at the hot corner of a softball game Thursday night, with the Sears tower directly behind the batter who was about to hit a ball at one of us just for us to bobble it, throw it away, and then tell everyone ‘my bad’ in the dugout, it wasn’t all that bad.
As we sat in the field, against a team named something like “the Jager Bombs” or the “8-ballers” (they must do cocaine!), we began to hear murmurs from the field on the other side of Seward Park that the Bears had traded up.
It was yet to be confirmed. Focus began to wane, even as at least eight errors had already been compiled through just three innings.
We immediately began instructing the opposing dugout to get on the phone. We picked the wrong guy. This mental midget took about three minutes (ever heard of Twitter? Google?) to confirm the Bears had traded up. By that time, they had drafted Justin Fields.
The game stopped. It was the closest I’ll ever get to World War 1’s Christmas Truce of 1914, when the Allies and Germans ceased fire and began singing Christmas Carols, smoking cigs, and playing soccer together with the enemies.
The ump, who was god awful, rejoiced! The rain had stopped just in time for the Bears to make their biggest move in at least three years — and perhaps ever for a quarterback.
It turned to cheering, chest bumping, and a lot of other things that 25 year olds should never probably publicly admit to.
It was one of the rare moments where being a rabid sports fan felt worth it.
The Bears, despite their incredible — and still existing — incompetence — made a move that was almost universally accepted as good. They got a guy that could have gone first overall at the 11th pick, and in the process, changed the entire future of the franchise.
Many men and women have lived and died without ever seeing the Bears play a legitimate franchise quarterback. Fields is by no means that yet, but without taking a snap, he is undoubtedly the most talented QB the Bears have ever had on their roster.
For once in my life, the Bears seemed like the smart team, and the others before them felt like the dumb ones.
Justin Fields is a high floor and high ceiling talent. He’s already played against the best teams in the country and shown he can dominate — or at the very least hold his own — against the best players in the country. He’s had a season with one of the three best teams in college football in which he threw for 41 touchdowns and just three interceptions.
As opposed to Mitch Trubisky, who I will abstain from dragging as much as I can from here on out, Fields has already proven that he can be a star quarterback in the league. If he doesn’t work out, it will not be because he didn’t have the talent or tools. We can not say the same about any of the other quarterbacks that Ryan Pace has brought in during his tenure.
He’s 6’3 and 227 pounds and runs a 4.4 40-yard dash. After an illegal hit in the semifinal game to his side that would have probably killed 95% of Chicago on contact, he returned to the game — and played incredibly.
In every interview, he seems polished and mature beyond his years. I recently watched an interview with him done by Kirk Herbstreit, and was actually thinking, ‘Damn, it would be so awesome to have this guy on the Bears.’
I didn’t think it was a possibility. Now, it’s still hard to wrap my head around the fact that a guy Urban Meyer considered taking no. 1 overall fell to the Bears at 11, after they only gave up one first-rounder, a fourth, and a fifth.
As I wrote last week, I was terrified of what the Bears may do on Draft Night:
The Bears right now are a sweaty kid with bad hygiene after hitting the gym. They fucking stink. What’s worse is that they’re going to do the only thing that a sweaty kid at the gym can do to make his situation worse: they’re going to try to put some cologne on. Nothing makes me gag more than the scent of body odor unsuccessfully being masked by cheap cologne.
Sometimes being a moron works out in the end.
The Bears didn’t put on Axe body spray, they ripped themselves with a firehose, lathered each other in Dove at Halas Hall and did a facial moisturizing routine all before going to bed on Thursday night.
Their former mistakes remain unforgivable, and Matt Nagy has done nothing to prove to be that he belongs in his current situation. Pace’s decision making is as volatile as LeBron Jame’s opinion on the play-in game.
I can’t figure it out, but I’m grateful for the good times. This is undeniably one of those, perhaps even greater than the Mack trade.
As we’ve learned, if you don’t have a quarterback, you could have two Khalil Macks, and all pro-bowlers at the remaining nine positions. It just doesn’t matter.
It’s still outright ridiculous that we gave Andy Dalton $10 million, whether they knew they were going to take a quarterback or not.
And that will likely lead to worse decisions. Dalton, who was proclaimed a back-up by two teams in the last two years, should not be starting — but he probably will be.
He’ll probably be a good mentor, the guy has had a great career. But the idea that Fields, who just played in the College Football Playoff in consecutive years and was the QB for as big of a football brand that exists in this country, needs time to sit under a quarterback with little to nothing left in the tank is ludicrous.
The Bears will be better now if Fields plays now. They will be better in the future if the he plays now.
Pace and Nagy have already hung on and tried to put makeup on their mistakes for too long. Rip the band aid off, and let’s play football and see what Fields can do in the NFL.
If you haven’t had a beer and watched Fields’ highlights yet, I highly recommend that activity — which I’ve already indulged in twice since the draft, and a few more times without the beer and a clear head.
He rushed for 15 touchdowns over the last two years, but is far from a “running” quarterback, a label often given to any quarterback who’s black entering the league.
He can run, and is great at it. But his deep ball is as accurate and beautiful as I’ve seen in college football over the last couple of years. Fields had a 70% completion percentage on 11.2 yards per attempt.
Again, apples to oranges, but for context: Trubisky had a lower completion percentage and a yards-per-attempt number about three yards lower than Fields. In the NFL, Trubisky regularly hovered below 7 yards per attempt, again with a worse completion percentage.
The guy we’re getting here could be a “generational talent” as his college coach Ryan Day told Matt Nagy.
He could be great, but I frankly cannot see him not being at least good. And that’s what’s most exciting.
The Bears of yesterday are not the same as today’s. I was entering this season with less excitement than I ever have in my entire life, and now I’m almost as excited to see this team play as I was the 2019 team following 2018’s run.
Because the Bears weren’t done at pick 11, either. They then nabbed offensive tackle Teven Jenkins out of Oklahoma State in the second round (again fulfilling Pace’s sexual desires by trading up), who would have been a fine pick if the Bears would have stood pat at pick no. 20 in the first round.
Jenkins was arguably the best offensive lineman prospect in the draft, and the Bears were able to get him in the second round. According to Pro Football Focus, he let up just two sacks in 1,129 passing snaps during his time in college.
He’s already contributed more fire to the offensive line room than the rest of its members have combined in the last three years.
Is this guy fucking serious? He may be the earliest inductee into SGCTC certification ever. I want him to smash my fucking mouth in an Oklahoma drill immediately.
Calm down, Andrew. That also sounded oddly sexual — sorry about that.
The Bears are high enough on Jenkins that they cut their former left tackle Charles Leno Jr., who was serviceable but never lived up to the massive contract that the Bears gave him.
More than anything, this move is probably about that — the money. They entered the draft with the least amount of cap space in the NFL and therefore needed to make moves like releasing Fuller beforehand and releasing Leno Jr. after it.
Leno also left a SGCTC man, and I don’t have much bad to say about him. He wasn’t a premiere tackle, but he certainly wasn’t the center of the offensive line woes over the last couple of years.
I think Jenkins will end up being a surefire starter for years in the NFL, but that doesn’t mean he won’t struggle if he’s immediately a starting tackle for the Bears next year.
He has a great first step and is quick to get in position to block defenders off the edge, but he could have trouble with staying in front of the best of the best on the edge for a year or two at least.
He relies on his physical dominance and aggression, which is welcomed, but he’ll likely have to channel some of that energy into more productive and smart ways in order to become the tackle that the Bears need in the future. This isn’t the Big 12 anymore.
Cutting Leno Jr. will give the Bears $9 million in cap space, which will go a long way for them when it comes to signing their draft picks.
More moves are probably on the horizon.
The Bears further bolstered their line — one of the two biggest problems with the team over the last two years — by drafting Larry Borom out of Missouri in the fifth round. Borom was second team All-SEC according to PFF and third team according to the legendary college football writer Phil Steele.
He has had an illustrious college career, posting similarly impressive stats to Jenkins. He played both tackle and guard in college, and will add immediate depth for the Bears, if nothing else.
The Bears offensive line may still be below average this year, but that’s why these picks were so important.
They rounded out their draft weekend with a CB (area of need), running back, wide receiver, and interior defensive lineman.
I like all of those picks too, but I honestly don’t feel comfortable giving a draft analysis of 6th and 7th round picks on a newsletter that began with me comparing my men’s league softball game to World War 1.
The Bears draft is being heralded by every major outlet, so much so that it’s almost concerning. I haven’t seen a grade lower than an A, and each pick has garnered mostly As to B+s. That doesn’t mean much, but it’s nice to not be the idiots for one week.
As we look back on this draft, I really do think we will realize that a handful of teams outsmarted themselves by not taking Fields in the top-10. Subsequently, we will realize the Bears outsmarted those teams.
You morons got outsmarted by the goddamn Chicago Bears!
STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO!
There’s no easy transition here to the news that the ‘85 Bears legend and former defensive tackle Steve “Mongo” McMichael has been diagnosed with ALS and is rapidly declining.
Mongo is paralyzed from the shoulders down, and is fed and bathed daily by his wife and caregivers.
I won’t be including the picture of him here, because he is unrecognizable and it is truly heartbreaking.
Everyone sports fan from Chicago — whether it gets annoying or not — is tied to the ‘85 Bears. I always thought it was cool that a city took that much pride in a team that they thought represented them. Mongo, almost more than anyone, was a symbol of that team: tough, unapologetic, and charismatic.
I always loved to hear my Dad tell stories about that team, but what really drove all the points home was the “30 for 30” that chronicled that team’s story. Directed by Jason Hehir — who also directed “The Last Dance” — every minute of it was incredible, and it did such a good job of showing the human relationships that football can form.
Mongo was prominent in that doc, and he immediately became one of my favorite all-time Bears just by the way he handled himself there. He became a Chicago sports media personality for years after, and it’s hard to find anyone who has a bad word to say about him.
It’s tough to know that he seemingly agreed to these barrage of interviews because his family was in need of desperate help. If you want to know how many lives he touched, over 2,500 individual donors have contributed to a fundraiser to help pay for the intensive care he needs at this point. That fundraiser has raised nearly $180,000 as of Wednesday.
What sticks with me the most from that documentary, though, is a quote I thought about a lot when I first heard of this news.
Mongo said that no matter what happened in the future, every single guy on that team — including him — would do it all again, no question.
That was eerily prescient, but in some ways, provided comfort for me as I read the stories about one of the Bears that last won a Super Bowl for the city of Chicago.
At the very least, we know this: His family has the support they need to care for him in his final days; Jarret Payton, who interviewed him, says that his football Uncle has not lost his sense of humor; and finally, he’s lived one hell of a life.
On a brighter note, the Cubs swept the Dodgers yesterday in a double header, beating both Clayton Kershaw and Trevor Bauer in the same day.
In the first game, Kershaw surrendered four runs in the first inning — the first time he’s done so in an inning since 2017.
In the second, the Cubs were unable to get a single insurance run in after having the bases loaded with no outs in the 6th inning. Craig Kimbrel finally gave up a run this year at a bad time, which led the game into extras. The Cubs then erased a two-run deficit thanks to a Javy Baez homer and then finally won it thanks to David Bote, who had 3 RBIs in the first game.
As the Cubs shuffled through shaky pitcher after shaky pitcher, Justin Steele got them out of a jam in extras and went ballistic, which was especially inspiring because that dork Trevor Bauer pumped his chest like he had just won the World Series after ending an inning earlier.
The Cubs are 14-16 and a few games behind in the NL Central after sitting in last place alone last week. It’s tough to be optimistic about this team at times, but then they have a day like yesterday — where Kyle Hendricks looks like Kyle Hendricks again in a complete game and the team hits like they’re capable of — and I’ve got my popcorn ready for the series finale tomorrow.
It’s tough to tell which of the two games was more surprising: the one where they beat down Clayton Kershaw and made him look like a back-end starter, or the one where Keegan Thompson (who? You’re probably wondering) started for the Cubs with Trevor Bauer as his counterpart and the Cubs still won.
The fact of the matter is that the Cubs have been one of the best hitting teams in the NL since they were by far the worst hitting team in the NL for the first couple of weeks of the season.
Kris Bryant’s last eight hits have been extra base hits, and he is slashing an MVP caliber .323/.405/.708. He’s currently leading the NL in OPS+ at 205, which means he’s 105% better than the average hitter in the MLB at this point.
The Cubs are dealing with plenty of injuries, which is why Thompson got the nod yesterday and their starting middle infield was Ildemaro Vargas and Eric Sogard in the second game.
Jake Arrieta — the Cubs best pitcher of the young season — is out with a cut on his throwing thumb. Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ have missed time due to a scary collision in the outfield the other day. That’s why Bryant was forced to play center in the second game, and Jake Marisnick got the start there in the first.
It hurts to lose Happ and Hoerner, two of the better players on the team, at any point.
But the Cubs have had some weird performances from the next men up. Marisnick has been pretty great this year at the plate, and even Matt Duffy — a depth signing at best — has been serviceable.
Baez has been far better of late, and is still hitting with tremendous power, which makes up for his on-base struggles. He’s been annoyingly careless in the field, but as long as his hitting is on the mend, I’m fine with the fielding working itself out.
Joc Pederson is back, and the good news is, he can’t play any worse.
The fill-ins won’t play above their weight for long, so it’s imperative that the big boys step up. Likewise, it’s not realistic to think that Arrieta can carry a rotation in 2021, so Hendricks will have to return to form permanently and guys like Adbert Alzolay — who has a sub-1 WHIP — will have to perform beyond their years.
But if they do, this roster has enough talent to compete in a pretty shaky division. There’s no clear favorite, and an average pitching staff with an above average lineup the rest of the way should do it.
That’s enough for me, given the expectations.
The White Sox have a problem with running the bases.
No, they are not bad baserunners, perse, they just can’t run them without getting hurt.
I’m not making light of Luis Robert’s injury, but watching the Sox young players leg out a grounder is like watching Derrick Rose go up for a lay-up circa 2015. It’s terrifying, and a limp usually follows.
There’s no one to blame for injuries, of course, except for Eloy Jimenez’s injury, which he is to blame for. Robert hurt his hip running to first base, and will now be out for the next three to four months.
That means for the great deal of the season, the Sox will have to go without two of their best hitters. Not exactly ideal for a team with World Series aspirations.
The injury is obviously devastating, and worse because of Eloy’s. But the idea that the Sox season is somehow over is just ludicrous.
For one, the division has been abysmal thus far. The Sox are already tied for first place with the Royals, who will not end the regular season with a winning record.
The Indians have just been OK, while the Twins have been god awful.
As they smashed the Reds yesterday, I hope Sox fans were reminded of the fact that they are 3rd in the AL in OPS despite slowish starts for Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal, as well as a massive slump from Adam Eaton. They are 2nd in all of baseball in team average, despite a slew of injuries and questionable managerial decisions before Robert’s exit.
Even more encouraging, they have the 2nd best ERA and WHIP in the AL, and their starters have thrown more complete games than any other team in baseball.
Dylan Cease has not allowed a run in either of his last two starts, and this is the guy who would ultimately be supplanted by Michael Kopech — who has been fantastic this year.
So yeah, Tony La Russa makes bad managerial decisions and “reports say” that the clubhouse is growing annoyed. That’s not something I’m surprised by, but what are they going to do, plan a mutiny on him, Jim-Boylen style?
No. The Sox will be fine. They have a bevy of talent, with or without Robert and Jimenez. They’ll lose a lot of value with Robert out, especially in the field, but Adam Engel will be back next month (hopefully) and the Sox will just have to deal with a couple below-average bats in the lineup everyday. Plus, they were already doing that, thanks to La Russa.
Is Brian Goodwin, who the Sox signed once Robert got hurt, good? No. But nor is Leury Garcia, and nor was Nick Williams. They have enough to make up for it elsewhere.
The Sox will be in the playoffs, and the young guys that get playing time due to the injuries will probably be better for it.
The COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding and we are all going to be together to watch the Bulls second-to-last game of the year in a week and a half, in what was supposed to be a Bulls season over win total celebration.
So it is just my luck that as COVID numbers plummet in Illinois, one of the 2% of people that are testing positive in the last few weeks each day was Zach LaVine, the Bulls best player.
LaVine has now missed 11! games thanks to COVID and the following protocols, which include cardiac testing. Others that have missed games thanks to COVID have generally missed far less than 10 and closer to five. The only reason I can think of that would make sense is that LaVine, even after becoming asymptomatic, kept testing positive. The protocols require testing negative two days in a row — and then cardiac testing — before rejoining play.
A month and a half ago, the Bulls were hovering near .500 and firmly in a position to make the playoffs. They were on track to win around 34 games, easily eclipsing that 30-win mark.
Then, they made a big splash at the deadline. It was a good move, but it took some time for them to get used to each other. As they were finally getting to that point, LaVine went out. Now, their other best player — Nikola Vucevic — has been out with an injury for the last few games.
Without those two and Troy Brown Jr., the Bulls have been forced to rely on Denzel Valentine and Ryan Arcidiacano — sometimes at the same time. God help us all.
Still, they were down three with five minutes left against the no. 1 seed in the East the other night, thanks to a comeback led by Javonte Green, a throw-in in the Celtics trade to get Daniel Theis. Al-Farouq Aminu has even gotten some tick.
They’ve now lost four in a row, putting them in a position where they’ll need to win four of their last seven to hit that over mark. With LaVine set to return Thursday, and hopefully Vuc as well, I think they can do that — especially if the Bucks and Nets are resting their starters in the final games.
Still, making the play-in game will be nearly impossible, unless they go on a 6-1 type streak here. The Wizards have won almost every single game they’ve played since March turned to April.
It’s a really shitty way to end what I thought would be an exciting year. But we still have things to play for — and I hope we’ll be cheering for the 30th win next Saturday night at O’Callaghans together.
I promised again that I would lead with the Blackhawks this week. For obvious reasons, things changed. To my Blackhawks fan readers, I again owe you one. They are eliminated from the playoffs, but there is plenty to talk about moving forward. I am running into my email length limit here, so instead I will remind you:
Thank you for reading, buying t-shirts, and considering attending next week’s event. Your support means the world. In the meantime, keep telling your friends and family to subscribe.
And let’s get some comments going this week! STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO!
Man, it really still does not feel real. I do not want to admit the amount of time I have spent watching Fields' highlights. Kinda like when you would check your hours logged in grade school on Modern Warfare 2. It is beyond me why he fell out of the top ten but that segways into my next point. I love that he fell out of the top ten. In his head he has to be thinking, how do guys with significantly less experience and playing against significantly worse competition get picked before me? Gotta imagine that is going to fuel him.
Definitely a tough go for the sox no way around it but its definitely not something to throw the season away for. Lineup is still loaded as we saw last night. Grandal is slowly getting on my list though. I really really miss James McCann. The starting pitching has been great though. I know I was out on Rodon but I'm glad that I've been proven wrong (for now). Hopefully, Kopech works his way into a full-time starting role.
These bulls are pretty frustrating. Hard to put the blame on anyone but they have looked so different since the all star break. I know that has to do with the trade but still it looks like even the guys that have been here have lost that spark. I don't wanna see Denzel, lauri, or arch in a bulls uniform next year. Still hope for the 30 wins and we are going to keep our positivity. HOWEVER, I have an important question that might put you in a bind. Would you rather have the Bulls get to 30 wins this year, or continue to lose and have a greater chance of getting in the top 4 in the NBA lottery so we can keep the pick we traded?
My oh my we have a quarterback. When Trubisky was drafted, I think myself and the entire city had nowhere near the excitement that a number 2 overall quarterback selection should have, but Fields has electrified the city. I think I have watched every single highlight tape on YouTube on the guy and could not be more excited. As for Jenkins and as you mentioned, I would've been thrilled to get him at 20. Losing the third rounder hurt as I thought they could address the receiver position there and we could finally stop watching Anthony Miller run aimlessly around the field and talk shit after having 1 reception for 6 yards the whole game, but maybe(?) some of the free agent additions or Dazz Newsome can show some production. Deep balls to Darnell Mooney are gonna give me the chills. I think Justin Fields could very easily turn out to be the best QB in the class, but a lot of that relies on Nagy so that is terrifying. If we get him in the system we had Trubisky going in (albeit against 3 of the worst defenses in the league) in the final games of last season, I think he has pro bowl potential as a rookie (if he gets the starting nod early enough).
I haven't been more excited about the Bears in my life and I cannot wait for this journey with all of you. Love you guys, love the Bears, slowly starting to love the Cubs again.
Go Bears!