Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Bears Win, MILLMAN no-no, Sox Atop the AL
This may be the best Chicago sports weekend to ever precede a Still Gotta Come Through Chicago newsletter.
Jason Heyward hits a three-run homer off of Josh Hader in the ninth inning to beat the Brewers on Saturday. That’s when I should’ve know there would be something special the air west of Lake Michigan this Sunday.
After that, the Bears pull off a 17-point comeback to win on the road — in which Mitch Trubisky threw a few … unbelievable dimes? Alec Mills, a 28-year old who has never spent a full years in the majors, throws a no-hitter. The White Sox complete a sweep of the Tigers and take over the best record in the entire American League. And most importantly, the Les Miles-led Kansas Jayhawks lose to Coastal Carolina but cover the second half spread!! Come on! Anyone else betting on a game with a 9:20 p.m. start, no fans in the stands, and zero knowledge of any of the players on each team?
I mean what is going on?
Watching Red Zone, still high off of the Bears comeback that almost brutally crushed our souls with six seconds left and being notified that ALEC MILLS had a no hitter heading into the 8th inning felt like that night when Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert got COVID-19 and everything went to shit, except the exact opposite. I was just being swamped with good news.
Other than my BetRivers Casino app crashing every four minutes and me cursing J.B. Pritzker out under my breath as if he programmed the app himself, it was one of the greatest weekends — objectively — for city morale in a long, long time.
There is nothing that brings this city together more than a Bears victory.
If I was selling Still Gotta Come Through Chicago shirts on Michigan avenue today I think I would’ve been able to retire. And by the way, those are coming. So get someone to subscribe. The more people that read the newsletter, the better these teams do. It’s basically science. We got a few more readers for my Bears pre-game hype speech newsletter on Friday and look what the hell happened.
If you missed that newsletter, read it here.
Tell a friend to subscribe, tell another subscriber to get this newsletter out of their promotions tab and drag it to their primary inbox, and let’s turn this entire goddamn year around with the best sports fall of all time.
A Tale of Two Mitches
If you read my newsletter on Friday, you know that you are absolutely not allowed to call me a hater or accuse me of being negative. I am jacked up about this football season and no matter how ugly that game was for 50 minutes, all I care about (for the most part) is the outcome. If we lose that game, it would be seriously hard to remain optimistic. But we found a way, and it was a galvanizing victory. Having one of those gritty comeback wins right out of the gate, I believe, will be massively beneficial for this team down the road.
I have to get this off my chest, because my social media feed would lead you to believe that Mitch Trubisky was God disguised as a Bears quarterback on Sunday. This is a fact: He made a few of the worst throws I have ever seen an NFL quarterback make today. Like four throws that were so bad that they could not even get intercepted.
If there’s one thing good about Mitch it’s that his bad throws are so incredibly horrendous that even the defenders don’t have a shot of catching them the majority of the time. Off the top of my head, those throws to Ted Ginn Jr. on 4th down and Cole Kmet near the goal line were actually stunningly off the mark.
In a lot of ways his fourth quarter was comparable to Jason Heyward having a near 1.000 OPS this year and hitting homers off Josh Hader after grounding out to the second baseman every at-bat for the last four years. That throw to Anthony Miller legitimately shocked me. The air evaporated from my lungs. After tearing half of his receiving corps obliques due to over and under thrown balls through the first 45 minutes, our guy all of a sudden was just lacing balls down the field.
There’s got to be something psychological to it. When they’re in the two-minute offense or playing hurry up due to a deficit, Mitch is approximately a 4x better quarterback.
The rest of the game he thinks too much and stares down his check-downs or under route receivers for 35 seconds before throwing to them for a four-yard gain. It’s truly unbelievable.
As far as his targets are concerned, I would dominate Jimmy Graham in a vertical leap contest. He didn’t look particularly good, but that may not even matter because he’s so much better than any option we had last year that it’s hard to complain about his variety of shortcomings.
Darnell Mooney, the sub-4.4. 40-yard dasher 5th round pick out of Tulane, looked like one of the best offensive players on the field today. It’s a very encouraging sign that the skill positions are still solidified after Taylor Gabriel’s departure.
Tarik Cohen looked better today than he did in almost any game last season. David Montgomery is a beast, and anyone who thought less of him due to our god awful offensive line situation last year should be ashamed of themselves. He makes the right cuts 90% of the time and almost always gets yards after contact.
Allen Robinson, who is very clearly upset about his contract situation, had a typical A-Rob game. Made some catches he shouldn’t of made and was free of mistakes.
Anthony Miller, who I’m hot and cold on because of his propensity to make awful mental mistakes during games, is still uber-talented. He looked fantastic today.
The play calling was so much better. The personnel packages were more creative and the Bears probably should have scored a lot more than they did in the first half. I have no complaints about the way the game was called today, which is another good sign, considering there probably wasn’t one such game like that last year.
It’s far too early to tell, especially because we have no clue how good the Lions will end up being, but it also seemed like the line was creating holes yesterday that they weren’t last year. The new line coach, Juan Castillo, is a run-game expert, and the early signs suggest there’s been some positive changes made. The Bears ran for over five yards per carry today, a mark that was not reached often in 2019.
The defense looked, well, not good today. They looked especially gassed in the fourth quarter, which is undoubtedly — at least in part — an effect of COVID-19 and the lack of a true preseason.
Having said that, one of my strongest takes regarding the Bears in general still held true today. Bears fans often conflate sacks with good pass rushing. If Khalil Mack isn’t getting strip sacks, the conventional wisdom goes, then he’s not playing well. You know had the second-best pass rush win rate in all of football Sunday? Khalil Mack, according to ESPN analytics.
It’s not his fault if others aren’t holding up their end of the bargin or if he’s getting headlocked every play and not getting whistles for holding when he should be. Not only did Mack have a great game, he actually was speaking up on the sideline, which is a welcoming sign from a guy who is generally quiet.
When Robert Quinn gets back, his job will be easier because of Mack, and Mack’s job will also be easier. Until we see our defense fully healthy, I’ll withhold judgement on a subpar first outing.
Jaylon Johnson, the rookie corner, looked unbelievable. He helped cause that all-important Kyle Fuller interception and was pretty flawless in man-to-man coverage. That’s an incredibly promising sign and will also lead to more sacks and QB pressures over the next 16 weeks.
The Bears are just the fourth team to mount a 17-point, fourth quarter comeback since 2006.
The game shouldn’t have been as close as it was, and one could argue the Bears should have lost anyways, but I am still generally encouraged by the performance overall, minus the glaring issues in quarterback play throughout the majority of the game.
To the Mitch truthers, I’m not trying to bring the energy down. If you want to be delusional about what we saw today, God love ya. It’s a SGCTC kind of thinking. I just can’t kiss his ass with a good conscience following that performance.
These back-to-back tweets pretty much sum up Sunday’s game. And I’m not ashamed by it. That first tweet, by the way, originally had three retweets. A couple SGCTCers decided to back away from the tweet upon further review. Fair enough!
All that matters is that we got the win. For the first game of the year, in a COVID-19-disrupted season, to make that many mistakes and still be 1-0 — you can’t be anything but happy about that.
The sun will shine a tad brighter on the city of Chicago today. Bear. Down. Driving to pick up a large pizza pie and listening to Jeff Joniak on the radio hit especially different this weekend. What a joy it is to have Bears football back. God bless.
By the way, if I was a Lions fan, I may stop watching football after that game:
Alec Friggin’ Mills
I’m not sure if this is mean-spirited but every time I see Alec Mills I laugh. When I saw that he was on the verge of a no-hitter on a day that no one was watching the Cubs game made me laugh maniacally and then sweat profusely. The sweat could have to do with the barrels of whiskey I drank yesterday, but I’d like to believe it was solely do the THE MILLMAN throwing 12-6 curves as Christian Yelich’s knees buckled.
Jokes aside, the guy didn’t get recruited going into college, went to Tennessee-Martin, is 28 years old and completing his first full MLB season, and just chucked a no-hitter. He only had five strike outs, sure, and it wasn’t the most dominating no-no of all time, but the fact that he was even in that position is a miracle in the first place.
A Jason Heyward homer off of Josh Hader and an Alec Mills no-hitter may be the most unlikely defining moment of a Cubs season since Miguel Montero pulled a grand slam out of his ass in the NLCS in 2016.
The Cubs are responsible for the only two no-hitters thrown in Miller Park ever, the other one being Carlos Zambrano’s against the Astros in Milwaukee, which was 12 years ago almost to the day.
Len and JD’s call was terrific — and I couldn’t get enough of JD’s homerism towards the end of the game — “That should be strike 1!!!”
The last two no-hitters we saw were by one of the most dominant pitchers in the last decade — Jake Arrieta — and this one was by a fringe starting pitcher who had a 5+ ERA two weeks ago and literally didn’t know what to do with his hands after he completed it.
Seriously, that was the most awkward, least fired up I’ve ever seen a pitcher after a no-hitter, but there was something emotionally provocative about this quite, no-name type getting a no-hitter on the first week of the NFL season.
The only thing that clawed emotion out of him was this, which proves once again how great it is to see one of the best guys on the Cubs succeed again:
In terms of the fielding, is there a single person you’d rather have field the last ground ball on a no-hitter than Javy Baez? He might be the least nervous person on a baseball diamond since Mark Buehrle entered a playoff game six beers deep.
Speaking of Buehrle, that Arrieta-Mills juxtaposition is reminiscent of his perfect game followed by Philip Humber’s perfect game years later.
That’s baseball man.
The Cubs — up until this weekend — have had the most frustrating, boring first place season in the history of baseball. Not one Cubs fan who watches this team day in and day out was particularly excited about the future of this season. This weekend may have changed that. They’re four games up on the Cardinals with 12 games to play.
David Ross is one of 11 people ever to manage a no-hitter as well as catch one, by the way. That’s according to ESPN’s Jesse Rogers.
I am also obligated to mention Lucas Giolito’s no-hitter now because I failed my duty to write for the people after that one — and for that I apologize. It was more dominant than Mills outing for sure, and he also wore a Bulls jersey in his pressers after, further cementing his SGCTC-certified status.
That night, Giolito said that the goal was to win a World Series. To national fans, that may have sounded like a joke. No one is laughing now.
Atop the American League
If the season ended today, the Sox would be the no. 1 seed in the American League. A season that started with the Twins hitting a piss missile off of Giolito — the worst pitcher in baseball two years ago — has ended up being one of the most successful White Sox seasons in this century.
They may not have the best roster for the postseason moving forward, or maybe they do, I don’t know. But the White Sox have been objectively the best team in Chicago up until this point, and the country is beginning to notice.
Since I tweeted in August that the Sox had won the great majority of their games against the Tigers, which pissed a lot of you off, the Sox have beaten the Cubs in a series and gone 15-5 overall.
Tim Anderson may be on his way to another batting title (.362), and the Sox have four players that have at least 70 at-bats who have over a .900 OPS. Luis Robert isn’t even one of them. For context, there are only 30 players in the entire league who are above that mark, meaning the Sox account for nearly 15% of them.
Every Jose Abreu fan has had the entire year to rub their crotch in all of the naysayers faces who said that the was not worth the money he was being paid at this point in his career.
If nothing else, the Sox are fun as hell to watch. With the exception of the fact that White Sox Twitter has a collective meltdown unlike anything I’ve ever seen after every single loss, it’s been a great year to be fan. And no one deserves that kind of season more than Sox fans, after all of the rebuilding and non-rebuilding failures they’ve had to deal with since 2008.
The Cubs, Sox, and Bears are all in first in their division, and the summer air is giving way to the Autumn. It smells like a SGCTC Fall is on the horizon.
Let’s go.
Comment here, and let’s have a Monday:
Mitch isn't the answer but neither is Nagy! You do have to ask the question why every time they have to abandon the gameplan in a game Mitch starts looking like an effective QB???? Please do me a favor and throw the ball downfield every once and a blue moon. I thought Jonathon Vilma said it best, "I would rather see Mitch throw a ball downfield and have it picked than see these little lateral passes". Please Nagy?!?! Send that Mooney kid on a fly pattern several times a game just to show them he is there.
Was Roquan on the field on Sunday? He was non existent. I think he spent too much time drinking out on the playpen this summer with porn stars, and not enough time preparing for week 1.