Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Bye Bye Packers and Bulls Fridays
Good morning and happy Monday Chicago! We’ve got a good one to kick off your week. Grab a cup of coffee and let’s get to it.
But first, if you missed Thursday’s newsletter — which I know many of you did — go ahead and give that a read here.
We covered a lot in that one, so don’t miss it.
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Would you rather know your team was run by a bunch of clowns and start every year with the expectation that your season will end in disappointment, or have Aaron Rodgers for 15 years and have one Super Bowl to show for it?
That’s honestly a tough one for me. It may be the funniest NFL fact ever that the Packers have had the same amount of Super Bowl appearances as the Bears since Rodgers was drafted. I’ve been cackling to myself over it all day.
The Packers are better than the Bears in every aspect, from the top down. Yet they have had one of the best quarterbacks of all time for a decade and a half and have very little to show for it.
Of course, they have a dozen or so playoff appearances since then and have beaten the Bears senseless. But honestly man, if I were a Packers fan, I may be more upset after this year than I am as a Bears fan right now.
They kicked a field goal down 8 inside the 10-yard-line with a little over two minutes left. That is some Matt Nagy-ass shit! God that was beautiful. Thank you Tampa Bay!
The Chicago Packer fans are going into the offseason with no ammo. Yes, their parents once went to the Wisconsin Dells and therefore they are Packer die-hards, but they’ve got nothing to say to us.
Every single Bears fan acknowledges that the organization is a joke. We start the argument from a bulletproof place.
“You guys suck.” Correct.
“Your owners are morons.” Correct.
“Your coach is an offensive guy and your offense is one of the worst in the league.” This is true.
“Ted Phillips probably doesn’t even know what a check-down is.” Undoubtedly the case.
“Aaron Rodgers beats the shit out of you every year.” Yes he does.
“In 30 years you’ll be serving my kids fries while we’re on our way to a skiing trip.”
Might be true, but guess what Anthony Davis, and the rest of you dorks? At least I won’t be unoriginal. And at least I won’t have to go to bed every night knowing that I had a top-2 quarterback in the league every single year for a decade and went to a single Super Bowl.
Now we get ready for the Super Bowl, one of the most overrated sporting events year in and year out. It represents the end of all football for the year (intensely depressing), it’s on a Sunday and you have work the next day, there’s only one game, and this year — to top things off — The Weeknd is the goddamn halftime show.
Listen, I like The Weeknd, but this guy is not Super Bowl material. We get absolute All-Star performers like Lady Gaga, Shakira, J-Lo, and Justin Timberlake every year, and now we’re getting the fucking Weeknd? If he’s the Weeknd, he feels more like a Sunday to me, am I right guys?
Lady Gaga was absolutely mesmerizing. What an incredible performer. Flying around on a zip line and knocking out banger after banger. Justin Timberlake had me shaking my ass all over an Iowa City bar, singing like I was a 16-year-old girl at an NSYNC concert. Then, speaking of asses shaking, Shakira and J-Lo enter last year, and half of the room had their waist bands bulging.
My God, I think half of my friends missed the Chiefs comeback last year because they couldn’t stop talking about Shakira and J-Lo’s racy performance.
And listen, I’m all for the women (and men) getting their chance to drool over a halftime performer. But The Weeknd ain’t it. That man isn’t putting asses in the seats like the aforementioned singers.
The Super Bowl also sucks because I bet my tail off all year and then some random girl at the party who knows two NFL players goes home with $500 somehow because they won squares.
They didn’t put in the work like I did. They weren’t up at 10 p.m. on a Monday night sweating out a backdoor cover in November. It’s just not right.
The Super Bowl also sucks because it’s the most mainstream event ever. So instead of talking about the weather for two weeks, all of a sudden Sally is talking to me on the phone about who I like in the big game. Uh, I don’t know, the Chiefs I guess? Oh you too? Awesome. Alright well I have to go thanks for the help cancelling my credit card Sally.
On the other end, however, it’s also a big day for guys who don’t know too much about football, but know just enough that they try to either talk down to or impress girls with their football knowledge at the Super Bowl party.
It’s one of the only events where both men and women specifically gather to watch a game. It’s the main event. So now some kid is in the corner screaming at a girl that Pat Mahomes is really good. Thanks for the input, buddy.
Speaking of Super Bowl parties. Or parties in general. Remember those? I think last year’s Super Bowl was the last event I attended where COVID was not mentioned once. It’s all been downhill since.
Super Bowl parties are kind of like the Super Bowl anyway, though. Like, definitely a little exciting at the start but by the third quarter you start thinking about the fact that you’re eight beers deep and simultaneously have no less than 50 unread emails in your inbox.
You’re waiting on the first person to say, “God dammit, I don’t want to work tomorrow.” Then you tell that person to shut the hell up.
Bulls Fridays
The inaugural “Bulls Fridays” took place on January 8th of this year. The Bulls suffered a heartbreaking loss, but a tradition unlike any other began.
The Bulls almost always play on Friday, which is probably the best day of the week. And what do you do when a pandemic has kept you from going anywhere for a year but the Bulls are on the come-up, led by a slick son of a bitch named Billy Donovan? You create a tradition out of thin air.
Since then, there have been two more Bulls Fridays. But it already feels like a winter tradition that will last a lifetime.
What is it? Three to five friends gather to drink wine and watch the Bulls game. If the Bulls win, whiskey comes into the equation. Actually, if they lose, it also comes into the equation.
Although the first ever Bulls Friday resulted in a loss, the pros outweighed the cons in Game 1. Watching a handful of grown ass men chanting LETS GO BULLS! in game 10 of the regular season, completely genuinely, is a sight to see. Not one I’d ever want anyone else to see, truly, but a sight to see nonetheless.
It’s only three to five guys given the circumstances we’re all dealing with. The first time we did it there were six people there and J.B. Pritzker personally broke into my apartment through sheer will and mass and shot my friend Peter in the forehead. He survived, but barely. He won’t be attending any more after that.
The schedule of Bulls Friday goes something like this:
-Get to the apartment for the game about 20 minutes later than I said I was going to
-Pour a glass of wine (after researching it on my red wine app — Vivino)
-Talk shit about every guy that didn’t come that week because they had to do something dumb like go to dinner with their girlfriends or see their families instead of getting wasted and screaming about the 7-9 Bulls.
-Go ballistic for 2 and a half hours over the game. Finish the wine.
-Break out the whiskey, and maybe a few beers. Put on “College Football Images of the Decade 2000-2010) and start crying. Pour another shot of whiskey. Watch Derrick Rose highlights and the Cubs playoff run video. Another shot of whiskey. Continue crying.
-Put on Four Days in October, the documentary about the 2004 Red Sox. Watch my friend fall asleep on the couch in the wee hours of the morning and realize I’ve probably overstayed my welcome by anywhere for 2 to 5 hours. Uber home. (Okay, this may have been just last time.)
But any dumb tradition requires one thing: t-shirts. And thus, the first ever SGCTC merch was created. No groceries for this guy next week after dropping $150 on t-shirts for Bulls Fridays, but hey, so worth it.
Don’t worry, although none of you are invited to this magical event, this is relevant to you. I have now established a relationship with a t-shirt manufacturer, and t-shirts will be available to the public soon. If you’re interested in that, please keep telling your friends and families to subscribe.
Also, Bulls Fridays can be licensed. If you want to start your own Bulls Fridays, by all means, go ahead. The more the merrier.
The only other sports traditions in my life that rival this one are watching college football games at my Uncle’s on New Year’s Day and going to the Bears home game closest to Christmas every year.
Bulls Fridays have been something else thus far, but no one has ruined their entire Christmas Eve family party yet, which the Bears tradition has done. Turns out when you’re wasted at a family event before anyone even cracks open a bottle of wine, Mom and Dad won’t be happy.
Okay, so now that I’ve told you about what I do on Fridays for five minutes, let’s get down to the actual sports writing.
The Bulls had a predictable week, and a net-positive one. They won their seventh game of the year, continuing the incredible streak of having all of their wins come in games in which they were underdogs. They beat the Hornets in dominant fashion, another great team win from start to finish.
Zach LaVine continued to show his improvement under Billy Donovan. If you would have told me that LaVine would be averaging nearly six assists this year, well, it wouldn’t be that crazy actually, but I would have been surprised.
LaVine still is plagued by his end-of-game hero ball tendencies, but his defense is far better this year (trying helps a lot) and he has been passing well. His scoring has always been there, and he’s having a career year in almost every facet of his game.
Do I still want to trade him? Well, it would hurt the Bulls season win total OVER chances, but yeah. Still, for now, he’s been enjoyable to watch, minus a few miscues late in games.
The Bulls got Tomas Satoransky back and he immediately showed how he’ll help the Bulls this year. He’s a more-than-capable defender, he busts his ass, and is an incredible passer. The Bulls are very short on actual facilitators, so his presence will be huge moving forward.
And yeah, they lost to the Lakers on Saturday. Did you know they beat them by 19 in the second half? Didn’t think so. They simply ran out of time.
But I’m not worried about the Lakers losses. I’m more into the Hornets-type wins. The Bulls aren’t trying to compete for a championship, they’re just trying to compete. And for now, I’m more than fine with that.
Wendell Carter Jr. is out again, this time with a quad injury that he suffered during practice. Carter Jr. has had a slew of health issues over the course of his career, and as one of the most important pieces, I’m hoping these first couple years have just been bad luck — and not a glimpse into his future.
He was just gaining his footing this year, so it sucks that our best big man was out against the Hornets and Lakers. Anthony Davis is a sworn enemy of this newsletter, but I could have guessed that Daniel Gafford and Cristiano Felicio (yes, he played) weren’t exactly going to shut him down.
Carter Jr. has played 101 games out of 163 since he entered the league — just over 60%. If the Bulls are going to rely on him moving forward, they’ll have to find a way to reverse this trend.
The Bulls game on Wednesday was postponed due to COVID-19 cases on the Grizzlies, so he’ll have some time to rest up.
But before then, they’ll take on the Celtics tonight. The Celtics are one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Bulls match up. This year, every game on the schedule is a big one. So buckle up and LETS GO BULLS!
The Bulls do not play on Friday this week, but they do play against the Magic next Friday. When they got wind of the shirts I made in Orlando, they literally were talking about one of their players injecting themselves with COVID to get it postponed. At least that’s what I heard.
We currently sit at the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference, meaning that if the season ended today, the Bulls would be in the play-in tournament. The goal is to be a third of the way to 30 wins by the end of next weekend. After that, we’ll worry about getting above .500.
Let’s keep the good vibes and Bulls Fridays rolling!
Hat Tricks and Ws
Last week, I deliberated here over whether I thought the Blackhawks could turn their season around after a dreadful start.
I’m still not sure if they can, but things look better today than they did a week ago. Patrick Kane continued to be a wizard today in a 6-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings.
And all around, the game was an absolute joy to watch.
The Blackhawks’ Pius Suter has three career goals in the NHL. All three of them came today, resulting in a hat trick.
That is unbelievable. That would be like hitting for the cycle in your sixth ever MLB game without getting a hit beforehand or not scoring in an NBA game and then dropping 30 points.
The Blackhawks first three games all resulted in pretty ugly losses. Since, they’ve lost in overtime (gained a point), and won the next two. Now, those came against the Red Wings, who are admittedly bad, but it’s still encouraging to know this team could be somewhat competitive.
If the Blackhawks and Bulls weren’t competitive this year, the dog days of winter would hit twice as hard during the COVID era. Let’s keep it up boys.
Bears Name Defensive Coordinator
The Bears have officially named Sean Desai as the next defensive coordinator. He was formerly the Bears safeties coach and has been with the team since 2013.
At first glance, you might be thinking, ‘What the hell?’ By no means is it a sexy hire, but from everything I’ve read about this guy, I really do believe it’s the right one.
First of all, it means we’re not bringing in Mike Singletary, which I wrote about last week. Singletary interviewed for the job and while that would be a fun concept, it probably wouldn’t have worked out for the best.
Desai is the longest tenured coach on the Bears staff, and has a doctorate. He seems like a very smart dude (this is why you come here, for that type of analysis).
He is highly respected by the players, and the campaign for him to be the next defensive coordinator actually in some ways began on Twitter through tweets from the former Bears linebacker Sam Acho.
He’s the first Indian-American D-coordinator, which is cool. He has a doctorate. He has his Masters. He’s been around. The Players love him. But, that “right hand man to Vic Fangio” is by far the most important point to me.
That has since been confirmed, and having a Fangio-type identity moving forward would be a breath of fresh air. The defense has been good since Fangio has left, but has not been nearly as dominant. Even if the Bears stink next year, a fun defense to watch would be nice.
“The thing I love about him is he’s so smart — it’s easy to be prideful in this line of work, and this dude is humble,” Acho said in 2018. “He’s grinding and he understands concepts in a way that on Vic’s level that he can relate it to anybody. Some players don’t feel like they can approach the head guy, but you’ve got a guy like Doc, Doc is approachable, he’s smart, he’s tough. He’s not a coach you walk all over. He’s a guy you go to to learn from, to listen from, to glean information. I talk to him all the time about defense and nuances, so he’s helped me become a better player.”
Fangio tried to bring Desai with him to Denver, but the Bears blocked that and promoted him to keep him in Chicago.
The Bears did something good. When is the parade?
Hateable Losers
I am not going to comment on this Kyle Hendricks trade rumor, because I don’t think it will happen.
Thank you for reading, as always! Make sure to tell a friend to subscribe today so I can get you a t-shirt. And make sure to read Thursday’s newsletter if you missed it. There’s a lot there, so I’d love to get as many reads there as possible.
Oh, and stop by the comment section for a chat.
STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO! LETS GO BULLS! LETS GO BULLS! LETS GO BULLS!
Glazer reported that the Bears are going to be "Major Players in the QB market" this offseason. Inevitably I am going to get my hopes up for Stafford or Watson and they will get Fitzmagic for 2 years/$12 mil.
When grown men are falling over at 3:30am trying to emulate David Roberts sliding headfirst back into first base in game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, its time to put the whiskey down and call it a night.
The Magic are SO fucked on Friday Feb 5th. LETS GO BULLS! last nights game was atrocious can we please please trade Denzel Valentine.
Hope Peter is doing alright.
The “serving my kids fries on the ski trip” line got me good. Another thing I hate is when people say you should root for the packers it’s the nfc north blah blah blah. I don’t really care this team has embarrassed us basically for the past decade, I want to continue watching them lose on the biggest stage. I will not root for them.
I agree I wish we were getting someone better than the Weeknd. Unless Future comes out and raps the best verse of all time on low life we are screwed. I am already sick of him and all the blinding lights commercials. Also, I think we need to start not letting girls in on the squares for real because like you said the dedication we put week in and week out for 21 weeks of the year is exhausting. And awful for the bank account. I love every second of it but one of us should be rewarded. I am also gonna take anywhere between 5-20 prop bets for the game starting with the coin flip and I could not be more excited.
Those Bulls Fridays are exactly what I do on my Fridays. If you want to risk Pritzker busting you again let me know. There really is no better feeling watching the game with the guys and being so passionate without money on it. I think that’s gotta be one of the reasons why we gamble cause we are chasing that. And also why we emotionally bet on our teams cause a win-win like that is really the best feeling
I really liked what you said about hornets type wins compared to lakers type losses. They are on complete opposite spectrums. Those hornets games are games we should be winning or at least competing in. Yeah we basically lost in the first half against the lakers but they also are the number 1 rated defense, tied for 1st in the west and have much more talent. Might even call it a morale victory. Down 30 at half and lose by 11. This team last year loses by 45+. Although lavine played well against the hornets I think he was forcing a little too much. Granted nobody shot well on the team. He was trying to match AD who had quite the first half.
I am unfamiliar with the Bears new DC but seeing that Acho quote fired me up. Also, knowing he worked so well with Fangio is exciting. Since he has left they have had back to back decent/good seasons. We will see.
Let’s get this dub against the C’s. Getting 2009 EC First round vibes