Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Justin Fields' MNF and the Blazing Bulls

Good morning Chicago!

For the love of god, can we get a couple more subscribers today?!

If you’ve ever enjoyed a night hanging out with pals featuring nonsensical hypotheticals, you know that it’s oddly one of the more fun things you can do to fill time. Whether it’s sport-related or just about dumb, disgusting shit you’d do for a million dollars, one scenario begets more scenarios until it’s 1 a.m. and you realize you’re still poor and need to go home now.

For instance, I asked my roommate the other day if he’d take a million dollars if it meant that every morning when he woke up, for the next year, he’d have to wrestle Akiem Hicks for the first five minutes of the day.

So, like, you roll out of bed at 6 a.m. on Monday for a work meeting and Hicks is frothing at the mouth hitting his thighs ready to wrestle you. You can get hurt, but won’t need to be hospitalized regularly. You’re hurt enough that it could bother you the rest of the day, but won’t require you to get more than, say, two surgeries (fully paid for) over the course of the year.

Imagine waking up with cotton mouth after a night of gunning shots and beers and all you want is water. But in order to grab that glass of water, you have to get slammed by Hicks as he drools on your chest and dislocates your shoulder? I’m not sure it’s worth the tax-free million.

Anyways, I digress.

What this really leads me to is a hypothetical that I want to pose to you all.

We all know that everyone has had nothing to talk about this week other than Daylight Savings and how it’s depressingly dark by the time we close our email. That’s a tired conversation by this point.

Wired conversation, though: Would you be willing to have this little of light throughout the year, as long as it meant that Justin Fields were a top five quarterback over the next five years and the Bulls were a playoff team throughout?

So, darkness by 5 p.m. for the next five years, but during that entire time, you have a quarterback — and thus, a great football team likely — and also a ridiculously fun and competitive Bulls team.

Do answer in the comments, as I’m very curious about where my readers stand.

LETS GO BULLS, STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO, let’s do this.

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The Bears game was almost perfect Sunday night. Had it not been for the officiating, it would have been perfect.

If the officiating didn’t interfere, we could have all enjoyed a game that was close, made Matt Nagy look like the moron he is, and gave us glimpses of what could come out of our quarterback for the next ten years (this time, good things are ahead).

While I was rooting as usual with all my might for a Bears win, a win there does nothing for us and does everything for Matt Nagy. And folks, that’s certainly not where we want to be.

The atrocious officiating has been well documented throughout the week, so I won’t agonize over all of that here again, other than to say that it sucks for Cassius Marsh to have a sack at one of the biggest points in the game, against your former team, right after being brought up from the practice squad, and then have that all wiped out by a ref making the game about himself.

What I will also say is that the officiating, I think, just exacerbated an already bad situation for the Bears.

There’s that saying that goes something along the lines of: ‘Luck is when opportunity meets hard work.’ Well bad luck is what happens when shitty preparation and coaching meets anything else remotely undesirable, such as poor officiating.

In other, more sensible words, Matt Nagy’s teams are constantly in a position where bad officiating can affect them adversely, because they aren’t disciplined or well groomed enough to overcome extenuating circumstances.

Even when the Bears were royally screwed by a phantom James Daniel chop block call, the Bears ended up electing to kick a field goal within the 10-yard line down two scores. When one thing goes wrong, everything else does.

Well coached teams don’t see officiating as an antidote to winning. For the Bears, it’s the last straw that they cannot overcome.

As for Fields, howboutdat?

It turns out you can give a rookie quarterback on a bad team led by a bad coach more than a few games to have his coming out party.

And boy, did he ever have it. Outside of a couple unfortunate defensive line balls batted down (and intercepted), he threw stunning ball after stunning ball. He averaged well over double-digit air yards per attempt, which is a testament to both his performance and good for a reassertion that the Bears should allow the kid to make some plays down the field.

Up until this point, it seemed that Fields critics had said two things: that he takes too many sacks, and that he doesn’t get through his reads. When you have a bad pass blocking offensive line, those two ideas basically contradict each other.

In this game, his own personal game plan was basically saying ‘fuck it, I’m going to get out of the pocket when I want to.’ That change in attitude has led to his two best rushing games of the year in back-to-back games, and also allowed him to extend plays past his first read even if his protection wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.

There’s a slight chance that leads to bad habits down the line when (hopefully) he has a more competent offensive line and game plan intact. But for now, that inventiveness has at least given the Bears a chance in these games and allowed the braindead morons a chance to eat their words quickly after denouncing him after a handful of NFL starts.

He played so well that Cole Kmet went from being a seemingly useless player to the next Travis Kelce in the matter of 60 minutes.

Things are looking up, and at least we all got to enjoy a Sunday full of football without the Bears ruining it. We got another one of those upcoming as well, as the Bears are off this Sunday. That’s good for Fields sake, considering he was knocked down (and not given a penalty) more than I’ve seen a QB been knocked down virtually all season.

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Ah, the Chicago Bulls.

They overpaid in free agency for Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan, and exactly what for? To be a bad defense and fight for the play-in game?

Or, did they do so in order to have one of the best defenders in the entire league, one of the best offensive players in the league, and all the while, to have one of the best teams in the league?

At this point, we need no validation from the back-peddling schmucks in the media who basically spat in our elated faces after free agency when we predicted the Bulls would be good again, given that they had replaced bad players with good ones.

Man, it feels good to be right! And it feels better to be 8-3, rooting for team, somehow, who was favored in its last three games against the 76ers, Nets, and Mavericks. Imagine being given those lines from the future before the season and seeing those odds — I would have shit my pants.

But really, none of this should come as that big of a surprise to people. The Bulls defined their weaknesses in the offseason and addressed them. It’s a complex process behind the scenes, sure, but from our end, it shouldn’t have been hard to understand.

The Bulls turned the ball over more than all but three teams last season at a tick over 15 times per game. This year, they have the league’s best mark, turning the ball over just 12.5 times per game. That’s thanks to better players, of course, but also very conscious ball handlers like Ball, DeRozan and Caruso.

The Bulls also hardly got to the line last year. They were dead last in FT attempts per game at 17.5. This year, you guessed it, they’ve changed course and now attempt 21.9 per game, tied for 5th best in the league. That’s because, again, DeRozan is renowned for his ability to get to the line — and LaVine is also increasingly getting to the stripe.

And lastly, despite what you were led to believe, the Bulls went out and signed really good defenders! Between Ball, Caruso (the league leader in steals), Javonte Green, Derrick Jones Jr., and others, the Bulls have managed to be maintain a top-5 defense in the league thus far despite playing great offenses over the last few games.

Their closing lineup, which includes Caruso, has the best defensive rating in the entire league in the fourth quarter. That group also has an absurdly good net rating overall, too — Caruso, Ball, LaVine, DeRozan, and Vuc, that is.

Will Gottlieb @wontgottlieb

Bulls in the 4th quarter: - 116.5 (2nd) offensive rating - 95.6 (1st) defensive rating - 20.9 (1st) net rating

Nikola Vucevic had a bad stretch, but rebounded (literally and figuratively) last night with a strong 18 and 10 performance. Next time a guy of his stature has a few bad shooting nights, let’s not all pull the fire alarms, okay? For a group of fans who dealt with Denzel Valentine heaving jumpers in the fourth quarter last year, we’re awfully quick to worry about an All-Star’s micro slump.

Demar DeRozan played his worst game since the opener last night against the Mavs, and the Bulls showed they could make up for it on nights when he does not have it. That was the next step, as was Ball hitting a season-high seven threes.

The Bulls are at the bottom of the league in threes made this year, and still have had this success. Now imagine if those began going down? I can imagine it, especially considering that Coby White is slated to come back any day now.

I have updated my projections for this team. Though I’m sticking with my preseason predictions (pictured below), I’ve been forced to believe even more in this team than I did before.

I now believe the Bulls can seriously contend in the playoffs. They’ll undoubtedly take some bumps in the regular season, things won’t always be this rosy. And they’ll still struggle with the top teams in the East come spring.

But there’s just no reason to deny anymore that this team can make a deep playoff run — perhaps even the ECF — when the time comes.

We got a Bulls Friday coming up tomorrow on ESPN against the league’s best, the Golden State Warriors.

Let’s show them who we are.

LETS GO BULLS!