Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

A peculiar Bears loss; A great Bulls win

GOOOOOD Morning Chicago!

Sign someone up for the newsletter today, and tell them you paid for it as their Christmas gift. They’ll be none the wiser:

Hope everyone is staying safe out there and feeling healthy enough to be excited for the upcoming holiday, if Christmas is something you’re into.

Based on anecdotal evidence from my life, it’s a statistical certainty that half of you are sick right now. So I have a few pieces of advice if you do fall ill with COVID in the coming days or weeks:

— Do not document it. Quite literally, a billion people have had it by now. No one gives a shit how you’re coping with the day-by-day. No offense.

Hope you feel better though.

— Do not tell your most worry-prone family member. My dumbass dad — against my will — told my aunt about my COVID diagnosis in March. The poor woman probably didn’t sleep for weeks, and I got a call just about every hour on the hour for a week straight. I told her I felt great and was on the mend on a morning I had a 103-degree fever just to ease the communication.

— Be thankful you’re quarantining from a sickness in the winter, it’s far better. You’ve also got Christmas movie options, bowl games, NFL football, college basketball, etc. Great time to read the newsletter, watch ball, and develop some new takes to take you into the new year.

Get well soon.

As for sports-related COVID disruption, I already went on my rant last week. (If you missed last week’s newsletter, please read that here.) I’ll abstain from any of that chatter this week.

One of the only good things that’s come about thanks to COVID protocols in the NBA and NFL right now, though, is players getting opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Take Thomas Graham Jr. as an example. The Bears 6th-round pick stepped off the practice squad and onto the field for a Monday Night Football game and looked better than the majority of the defensive backfield has looked all year.

Or, Alfonzo McKinnie, who grew up on the West Side of Chicago and attended both Curie and Marshall, getting signed to two consecutive 10-day contracts by the Bulls thanks to COVID absences, and taking full advantage. He played great against his former team — the Lakers — Sunday night, got a new 10-day deal, and then came back with a 16-point effort last night.

He topped it off with a great Chicago quote to kick this edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago off:

Man, to be honest, it’s the biggest dream come true. I’m a West Sided kid. I grew up like 10, 15 minutes down the way. House was a Bulls house. Watched the Bulls growing up. So just being able to compete on the highest stage in my hometown, on my favorite side of the city, the West Side, it’s been surreal to be honest. Just putting that jersey on has been everything for me.

Let’s go.

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I figured I’d kick off the newsletter on a more positive note and then end it with another. These days, that means finishing by talking about the Bulls and smashing the Bears in the middle.

At this point, what’s there to talk about? Well, a lot, but there’s also nothing really new — which is as damning as anything. The same old shit week in, week out. Of course, changes remain hard to come by in McCaskey World.

Last night’s game was truly something to behold.

Kirk Cousins throws for the fewest passing yards of his career against a Bears defense missing Artie Burns, Jaylon Johnson, Eddie Jackson, Tashaun Gipson — in other words, the entire defensive backfield.

Akiem Hicks performance felt like a last hat tip to Chicago and its fans. A disruptive, two-sack night. Robert Quinn added two sacks as well. Roquan Smith, all over the field, again, added the 10 tackles that he could get in his sleep at this point.

The first blocked punt by the special teams in a long time.

The crowd was electric, proving again that the 4th phase is still the greatest phase of the Bears on any given night. Out of context, it looked like a 9-4 Bears team playing a 6-7 Vikings team, and not a 4-9 one.

And despite all of that, the Bears (effectively) lost by two scores at home.

Despite being in the red zone time and again, the Bears (effectively) scored three points on a night where Justin Fields played pretty well minus a miscue or two.

It makes much more sense once you’re made aware of the fact that Matt Nagy was calling the plays, which it seems he has been over the last few weeks.

This play calling back and forth has truly become one of the more insane story lines I’ve seen out of the Bears in the past decade. At this point, it’s under-covered. Not who’s calling the plays necessarily, but why they’re calling the plays.

The offensive woes become blatant, Nagy gives up play calling duties. The offense appears to succeed — at least marginally more so — under Bill Lazor. Then, suddenly, Nagy takes over play calling again.

Lazor, along with a couple other coaches, was on the COVID list this week. But all signs seem to suggest that Nagy was again calling plays again before Lazor was quarantining.

The question should no longer be ‘Matt, are you calling the plays’ and instead ‘Matt, why in the world are you again calling plays?’

The series immediately after the blocked punt was a good summation of Nagy’s tenure. He gets a gift from a phase of the team he has nothing to do with and immediately squanders it in epic fashion.

Firstly, why not take a shot on first down? For the love of god, you’ve got more momentum and fan backing than you deserve after the punt block. Skip the run up the middle and do something creative and/or aggressive.

The fourth down call was discombobulated from the start. Pause the television before the play was ran and ask every Bears fan what the outcome would be — you’d get a universal answer.

Fields rolls out to the short side of the field and his receivers basically all run routes that could not possibly free themselves up and make them a target.

This is the kind of thing that Fields has to deal with — plus the incessant dropped passes — and yet we have people evaluating his QBR and seeing how it projects the rest of his career.

Cole Kmet had a few catches, sure, but his drops have become more than alarming. He may be the second worthless high-round tight end pick of Ryan Pace’s tenure, and it seems he’s mentally broken as much as he is physically.

Every time Jesper Horsted steps on the field, on the other hand, he makes a play. Whether in preseason or during the season. I would usually say the coaches know best given that they see these guys every day, but Thomas Graham Jr. also looked like the second best defensive back that’s played all season this week and we’d have never seen him if COVID didn’t exist.

Teven Jenkins defense of Fields is probably the only future-forward positive that came from last night, a gesture Fields acknowledged after the game, and an action he said the Bears “needed more of.”

I could not agree more.

The Bears have no culture, no plan inside or outside of the game, and generally little fight (which starts with the coach). At least they showed some of the latter against the Vikings.

God Bless the 4th Phase. At least we all show up. But I’m beginning to think, again, that that’s part of the problem with this entire organization. We’re too reliable, while everyone else is unreliable.

P.S. Fumbled punts is still the one thing I struggle to get mad at as a fan. Of course, your NFL punt returner should always catch the ball. Of course. But… every time I see it happen, I can’t help but think, ‘Yeah that makes a lot of sense why he dropped that. I can’t believe they ever catch those.’

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The only thing the Bulls have done wrong this year is an in-arena entertainment bit where they essentially suggested that all black people look the same by putting Common up on the big screen and then promptly finding three black dudes in the crowd who apparently were supposed to be “look alikes.”

Outside of that, errors have been few and far between.

After the COVID disruption that the Bulls have — for lack of a better way of putting it — gotten ahead of, they came out with a shell of their roster and immediately won both halves of a back-to-back.

They were unable to practice with each other for a week. They haven’t had their entire team together in two weeks. And yet, the Lakers took an L back to LA with them and the Bulls got vengeance on the Rockets in what was a tough spot on the latter half of a back-to-back after a week of sitting at home.

Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley deserve credit for zeroing in on replacement talent that could feasibly contribute in these games while we await for the rest of the Bulls team to get back. Iowa’s finest Tyler Cook played great defense on LeBron on two occasions Sunday night and scored 11 last night. The aforementioned Alfonzo McKinnie has been great. He was all over the place Sunday night and played like a legitimate, capable role player Monday.

And Devon Dotson — another Chicago native, who has been trying to get playing time for two years at this point — stepped in nicely as well.

Billy Donovan deserves as much credit as anyone. He’s plugged and played different guys all year with similar, successful results. Outside of the two games the Bulls were forced to play before their season was essentially paused, the Bulls have been consistent with a roster that has had to deal with upheaval.

He’s taken that opportunity to let others shine. Coby White’s absence early on allowed Ayo Dosunmu to flourish, for example, and now Dosunmu and others’ absence has allowed Coby to get his feet underneath him — finally. He had 25 points last night, perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the win.

Sunday night’s game against the Lakers was one of the best wins of the season. Not only did we sweep those ass holes, we shut up the grown men in LeBron jerseys in the stands up for at least some time. No doubt they were spitting in their wives faces that night talking about LeBron being the GOAT, still drunk because they didn’t have work to worry about in the morning, but at least the UC crowd drowned them out for once in their lives.

LeBron’s tough shooting night actually hurt the Bulls, because he ended up taking the ball to the basket more often. Though he had a good night, especially in the second half, the Bulls once again proved the worth of team defense over the concept of individual defense.

The Bulls have a lot of good individual defenders, but even the lesser ones have been integrated into a team-style defense that makes sure no man is left alone in the wrong positions.

The Laker game was a stand-up game, meaning, I didn’t sit down for more than half of it. We had Bulls basketball taken away from us for a week, and when it returned, the Lakers were in town. To come back from being down late and win that game on the shoulders of DeMar DeRozan, a guy that hadn’t been in the facility for 10 days, was more than satisfying.

The Bulls are now firmly back in the second spot in the East, only trailing the Nets, who they’ve beaten twice already. And DeRozan is not only looking like the best free agency signing of the offseason — not the worst, as prognosticated — but also maybe the best free agency signing in Bulls history.

It’s still early, but things are certainly trending in that direction.

Lonzo Ball is one of the only players that hasn’t entered protocols, and he’s reacted by filling in a lot of the gaps that the absences have left. He had a 19 point, 8 assist, 5 rebound, 5 steal, 1 block performance Monday night.

His back-court, first-team defense mate, Alex Caruso, unfortunately left the game. I was concerned he had re-aggravated the hamstring that had kept him out last week, but the Bulls said its a foot sprain. The two could be related.

At this point, shutting Caruso down for a week or two may be the best idea. Given that the Bulls only play once between now and Christmas, this may be a good time. He’s worth too much to this team to have his health compromised in the first half of the season.

And that leads me to my next point. The rest of the Bulls players are set to return “after Christmas,” which has understandably sounded daunting to fans. But the Bulls have just one game between now and the 25th. That’s against the Raptors Wednesday, and frankly, given the COVID issues that Toronto is dealing with, that game may be postponed too.

The Bulls will be back at near-full strength soon enough. The Pacers game on the 26th may be the first look at that. I wrote last week that given the circumstances, the Bulls winning one of these three games would be good enough for me.

But in 2021-2022 Bulls fashion, they’ve gone out and won the first two. Let’s hope for a win or a postponement to take us into Christmas.

It feels soooo good to be back!

LETS GO BULLS!

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Don’t forget to comment below.

Thank you for reading, my dear subscribers. Look out for possibly another newsletter tomorrow — I need to get down some baseball, Blackhawk, and Bears front office thoughts down before we break for the holiday.

Stay tuned, and as always, STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO!