Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Now We Go

Happy, happy Friday Chicago!

The week started poorly.

My mom said she couldn’t find my passport (is she stupid?); President Trump delayed the TikTok ban, so I couldn’t witness grown people cry about weening off their dopamine dependencies, which are tied to 15 second videos of teenagers dancing; and I was fully convinced I was going to have to forfeit my Bears fandom and probably this newsletter.

And how quickly things can turn around.

The weather was freezing cold, below zero. I love that in January, man. That’s what we call #grindtime in my household. Kill off all of the fleas, ticks, and other bugs that come out in the summer before I’m ready for the beach. Let me put my head down, hood up, and detach from anything that doesn’t have to do with the action items put in front of me from Monday through Friday.

On Saturday, let me forgo partying, and instead go check out what the Doc has to say (“your bloodwork is amazing, can you share your strategy?); what the dentist has to say (“your teeth look great, but I have to charge you $1,000 for something to keep us in the green, if you don’t mind”); and what the financial advisor has to say (it’s me, I’m the financial advisor — “keep it up, brother.”)

Just about the only happiness I deserve to experience during this time of year is satisfaction from a job well done.

But, every now and then, I’ll take a peek at what the old imagination is cooking upstairs between the ears. What’s going on up there, what’s ready for me when I’m through with #grindtime and on the other side?

It’s a picture of the perfect day — reached through a day dream, with my eyes slammed shut at the urinal.

The sun is out, the grocery store is bustling with people eager to make good on their plans, or to find some. I’m with one friend, we’re going to buy booze for the whole bunch. Everyone — against all odds — is available today. The stars are aligning, and I’m happy to kick things off with a beer run. It’s on me, there’s no thought of being reimbursed.

As we haul the alcohol to the cash register, a woman anywhere from the age of 50 to 70 (preferably a store worker) says to me, “someone is having a party tonight!” Chills.

Soon thereafter, a man around the same age (preferably a casually dressed neighborhood patron) says, “I want to go where these guys are headed.”

The plan is laid out coherently in the group chat. Against even longer odds than everyone being available, no one has asked a dumb question yet. Despite having friends with the collective reading comprehension of a first grade class, the messages are all understood.

Winter is over. The setting is set. The booze is bought, and everyone knows when festivities will commence.

The drinks are stored away in a cold spot, and now it’s time for a diner skillet. The groundwork has been laid, and better yet, the waitress used “sweetie” liberally.

There’s just enough time after, too, to grab some couch time, throw the baseball cap on top of the face, and dominate a 15- to 20-minute doze off.

It’s time to rock and roll. Literally. The playlist goes on and the phone goes away. The party is filled now, with people asking “what song is this?” and not “can you change this song?” or “can you play this song?”

There’s a slight interruption, however, as someone is trying to reach me. I answer, and yet another great lad wants to come join. Absolutely. We’ll be here for a while longer.

But wait, there’s more. This lad also went to the University of Iowa, and he lets me know that the Hawkeyes just landed a wide receiver transfer. He’s terrible, and I’ve never heard of him, but I greet the news with a “let’s GOOOO!” Under Iowa’s coaching, he’ll be a star (not true, but I don’t know that yet — it’s May).

Some of the party goers may be on drugs other than alcohol, but I’m not. The ecstasy from the day is enough for me, and it’s heightened by the lack of natural ecstasy that has existed in life leading up to this point. While others have been scrolling TikTok and tapping out their happiness chemicals, I’ve been drowning mine in the cold, dark, and forbidding Lake Michigan.

The worst of the action items are through, the appointments are completed.

It’s time to ride this wave until 9 p.m., which is when I’ll sit in a corner with three comrades and get down to business for yet another offseason. Someone said to me at 5 p.m. “How many wins for the Bears this year?” and I shoo’d them away. Hold. Hold.

The sun finally goes down at 8:30pm, I thank it for sticking around.

And now it’s OK to dive into the Bears. It’s especially OK because of what we now have ahead of us. We’re not talking ourselves into anything. There’s no delusion in this hope.

Just like getting through the winter, Bears fans have gotten through a winter that has lasted decades. Sort of like The Lion, the Witch, And The Wardrobe under the White Witch’s reign. I will not compare Virginia McCaskey to her here, that is distasteful.

Again, there’s no promise that a thaw is coming, or that summer will be full of bliss, but there’s good reason to believe it will be.

Imagine being such a digital dopamine dope that you’re a national security threat. I’m going to call everyone who still has TikTok CCPs (Chinese Communist Party Stans).

Anyways where was I, oh yes, after telling everyone I’m through with nicotine the entire day, I’m asking repeatedly for another nicotine pouch as I ramble about what the playbook may look like for Caleb Williams in the fall. If someone slightly disagrees with me, I’m calling them a fucking moron. This is what good conversation looks like.

As the night winds down, I take a walk home. Rest assured, my head is on a swivel, as I’ve promised 30 to 40 suburban adults over the last year that I’d be careful when walking around the city.

As the night turns black, so does the day dream.

I zip my pants up at the urinal, and I put my perfect day back on the shelf.

That day is materializing here in late January, as I dig my heels in and the Bears finalize the coaching staff. For now, though, it’s time to get back to work.

When I found out that the Bears hired Johnson on Monday, the feeling that came over me is as close as I’ll ever get to being a mother of boys who just learned an armistice had been reached after a long war.

But it’s time for the Bears to get back to work, too. In actuality, the war is just beginning. But at least they won’t be riding horses into a drone battle.

And with that, let’s get into it.

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The Football God laid his hand on the city of Chicago Monday. It’s not time to ask why now, but instead time to be grateful for his (or her) touch in the first place.

As mentioned above, who knows if this will work out. But after decades of losing and embarrassment, the Bears are in a position they’ve never been in modern history, or perhaps franchise history.

TheyWe have a potentially great quarterback, and are pairing him with the hottest candidate on the market. Caleb Williams will have the same play caller, the same mentor, for the next five years at least, barring something catastrophic.

The Bears put their big boy pants on. Perhaps Virginia McCaskey finally told George she was proud of him, perhaps he remembered that he had buried $50 million in his Sycamore, Illinois backyard before Y2K. Perhaps he had a bad dream and that spawned all of this. Whatever the case is, I’m grateful.

It’s not time for more personal essay, but it’s hard to imagine that the way I’m feeling is dissimilar from the way millions of other die-hard Bears fans are feeling. I asked the Bears to fail forward, just one time for me, and they did.

This week is one of resuscitation. It’s like mining for gold for a decade and finally catching glimpse of the glimmer. The gold still needs to be excavated safely and brought back to be worth something, but all the years of dreary fandom feels worth it today.

For coaches that didn’t have experience leading the entire operation, Ben Johnson is one of the most no-brainer hires in memory. He has experience turning an embattled quarterback into a confident Pro Bowler. He has experience turning a disastrous, poorly run franchise into a well-oiled machine. He knows what goes into making an offense fire on all cylinders, in the run and pass games.

The Bears have missed on all their recent hires, but as I said last week, they have hardly tried at those. Not once have the Bears gotten the top candidate and failed. They’ve failed with the third, fourth and fifth options in cycles when there were only five or six jobs available.

That’s not the case here. And that alone feels like a seminal and seismic shift for the organization.

Believe it or not, Johnson can also give a press conference without sounding like he’s sharing a fun fact about himself on the first day of college classes.

The press conference can be overrated, but the last few Bears coaches have all sucked, and they’ve also all sucked behind the lectern. Somehow, Johnson made me more excited about the future in his.

Outside of football, he started with his shoulders pulled back and lots of eye contact toward the people he was addressing. But before he got to the people in the room, he started with gratitude to those who had helped him get to where he is now.

That included a monologue about the people in Detroit, which could have been awkward if it wasn’t so heartfelt and well said. He continued to thank his wife, and acknowledged that being a football coach at this level is a selfish endeavor.

He waxed poetic about Chicago, and also turned to Ryan Poles and directly thanked him for bringing him in, which seemed to prove that Poles was given the keys during this cycle, and that with his back against the wall, he made a move to get us on the right path.

Ryan Poles Gang, Stand Up! Is anyone else still here?

I’ll be making t-shirts that say “POLE(S) RIDER” for anyone that wants one. First dibs on the larges goes to me, though.

Poles isn’t done. But he may end up being the man responsible for what Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson accomplish over the next decade.

We know what’s next: plenty of draft capital ready to be allocated toward the offensive and defensive lines, along with nearly $70 million in cap space. Poles erred with his patchwork in the trenches the past two years, but this was always going to be the offseason that mattered most. Always.

Now he has the chance to go out and get it done. He’ll do so with credibility, too, including a new deal, the hottest head coaching candidate in place, and one of the most promising young quarterbacks in the league. Johnson preached total organizational alignment, which seems like a given. But that has been a rarity at Halas Hall.

He also laid out a philosophy in his presser, but a malleable one. One that emphasized moving players out of their comfort zone, keeping them accountable, and setting them up to succeed. There were no phony acronyms, no suggestion that one system would be the answer no matter the roster or the year. It sounded like a man who had thought about what he may do when given this opportunity a number of years.

“It’s not going to look like it did in Detroit,” Johnson said. “We have a completely different personnel group than what we did in Detroit. This entire offense is going to be predicated on the guys that we have available. That’s going to take the spring time as well as training camp to hone in what it’s going to look like.”

That is so simple, yet so important. It’s what most of the Bears coaches have missed the mark on of late, particularly on the offensive side of the ball.

In addition to his hat tip to Poles, he also expressed what should have been obvious: that Williams was a magnet this offseason.

“Listen, it’s clear that modern football in the NFL is quarterback-driven,” he said. “That is no secret. You can look at analytics right now, quarterback success is a higher predictor of winning and losing than turnover ratio, which has been for 20-plus years. That’s changed, so there’s no doubt Caleb played a large component into my decision. He is a phenomenal talent that had, as many quarterbacks do, an up-and-down rookie year. Where I see my role is as a supporter of him.”

After lots of nonsense about coaches maybe shying away from tough divisions, Johnson could have said that did not factor into his decision. Instead, he said that he wanted to stay in the division — that he wanted to take the challenge head on.

The players present at the presser, including Williams, D.J. Moore, Cole Kmet, and Rome Odunze, appeared to have a childlike exuberance about them. Particularly Caleb.

Johnson addressed them directly when he said that they should, “get comfortable being uncomfortable.” “The bar has been set higher than it’s ever been set before,” he said.

The next head coach of the Chicago Bears said he got goosebumps walking into the facility, and made sure we were all aware how lucky he felt to not just be a head coach, but also to be the Chicago Bears head coach.

Johnson said that his family has been coming up for a Cubs series in the summer for the last decade, which also pulled at the heart strings. “This place is special,” he said.

There’s lots more to point out from his press conference, and there’s lots more to point to in his resume that suggests that Johnson is the best coach for the Bears right now.

Mike Vrabel was my initial no. 1 option, but as we moved away from Week 18, I became enamored with the idea of Johnson. It could be confirmation bias, because I was certain Vrabel would not be coming here.

But, the more and more I think about Johnson and the Bears, it just feels like the perfect fit. The right place, the right coach, the right quarterback, all at the right time.

Right now, losing out on other coaching candidates doesn’t feel as bad. The last year doesn’t sting as much. No matter how you look at it, the Bears failures all led them to this point. The means almost justify the end. They failed forward enough that they may — just may — be able to actually begin to succeed and change the entire ethos of Bears football moving forward.

Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, the namesake of this newsletter, has read like a joke on the top of these emails for the past couple of years. Johnson’s confidence and devotion to the city has me feeling like the saying is making its way back soon, how it was intended.

Just like Poles’ “We’re going to take the North and never give it back,” empty promises and old adages are starting to gain meaning again, starting to gain life.

We’ll continue to go through what this means on the football field throughout the offseason, especially as Johnson hires his staff.

For now, though, I think it’s worth taking a step back and soaking it all in. As is always the case, the offseason is a garden for hope. There will be time to dissect draft prospects and free agents at a later date.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not sure that garden is going to be washed away with the cold weather come this fall. In fact, I think that garden is going to sprout into something new, into a harvest we may be able to tell our kids and grandkids about.

It’s a new era, and I’m shouting from the rooftops that the Bears are back.

….. #BEARDOWN

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Next week, we’ll continue breaking down all things Ben Johnson, get into some Cubs offseason news, and hopefully begin to check in on those lowly Bulls that are already over halfway into their season. Thanks for reading another SGCTC. Comment below, dear readers!