Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Week 23—Let's talk about the Bears, J.A. Adande on audio portion, Cubs plummeting, and Sox batting races
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This week in Chicago:
Bears: Sunday at Denver 3:25 p.m. on FOX
Cubs: Monday at San Diego 9:10, Tuesday at San Diego 9:10, Wednesday at San Diego 9:10, Thursday at San Diego 2:40; Friday vs. Pittsburgh 3:05, Saturday vs. Pittsburgh 1:20, Sunday vs. Pittsburgh 1:20
Sox: Tuesday vs. Kansas City 7:10, Wednesday vs. Kansas City 7:10, Thursday vs. Kansas City 1:10; Friday at Seattle 9:10, Saturday at Seattle 8:10, Sunday at Seattle 3:10
Sky: Wednesday playoff opener vs. Phoenix Mercury at 7
Audio portion:
Can’t imagine a better way to get through this dreadful Monday than this awesome conversation I had with J.A. Adande on the ‘90s Bulls and Michael Jordan. The greatest guest of the audio portion thus far. Listen and share:
Troubleshoot link: J.A. Adande
Time stamps: 9:30—What was different about the 90s Bulls from other championship teams; 18:20—Why it was financially beneficial for the Bulls to stop competing after ‘98; 20:30—LeBron vs. Jordan; 24:30—when Jordan saw Adande struggling to get into a a party; 27:20—the ESPN doc on Jordan and the ‘98 Bulls; 32:45—straight facts
Bears:
It was a special night. Virginia McCaskey, born only a few years after its advent, sat and watched the kickoff to the NFL’s 100th season. Brian Urlacher, Jonathan Toews, and Patrick Kane also populated Soldier Field’s suites. Members of the ‘85 Bears came out of the tunnel in the pregame, armed with towels to wave.
For crying out loud, there was a chill in the air! And its scent was strong enough to evoke nostalgia over a youth football practice that took place more than a decade ago. Every third person had a Bears jersey on. It was like Friday in high school again.
Truly, it was the most electric the city of Chicago has been since the Cubs run in 2016.
And the Bears delivered. It wasn’t always pretty, but in the end, they pulled it out. They put away the Packers, 13-10, after shutting down Aaron Rodgers. What defensive regression? They sacked Rodgers five times, and he and the Packers offense went just 2/12 on third downs. That new savvy coach up in Green Bay was out-gained by a struggling Bears offense by over 40 yards.
Trubisky looked bad, but wasn’t helped by Nagy’s play calling or the fact that he hadn’t thrown a live ball up until the kickoff of the regular season. He threw 35 times, seven of which were to Allen Robinson, who had 102 yards on the day. Robinson delivered the opener we all hoped for to kick off his second year in Nagy’s offense and his first coming off a healthy offseason. Eddy Pineiro’s two field goals—a 38-yarder in the first and a 58-yarder in the third—and a David Montgomery touchdown run in the fourth were ultimately enough to seal the deal.
We’ve seen better games, but in the end, it resulted in a W. The Bears are 1-0 and the Packers are 0-1. There’s still a long road ahead. Next up, Denver.
As you all know, the Bears did not win. But everything above is true with the exception of the words in italics. Trubisky did look bad. The defense looked great. Nagy called a horrible game, just as he did in the second half of last year’s first game against Green Bay.
Everyone is zigging, as in, everyone is acting as if the Bears season is effectively over. Trubisky was a waste of a draft pick and Nagy doesn’t know what he’s doing. Well, I’m zagging. Coaches have bad games, but I still believe in Nagy. If you loved Nagy heading into Thursday, there’s no reason to be out on the Bears after losing a sloppy opener that proved the defense can be as good as it was last year.
And by the way—Trubisky had some really bad games last year, too. He deserves all of the heat he’s getting. He was awful. But there’s only a handful of quarterbacks in the NFL that should be passing the ball 45 times in a game, particularly in the opener. Trubisky is not one of them. Everyone except for the fanboys on Twitter know that.
Tarik Cohen, remember him? Zero carries in the game. He lined up 40 times in the slot, 7 times split out wide, and just four times in the backfield. What is the point of that? As someone put it—and I apologize for not remembering who—Cohen is a back who can split out, not a receiver who can line up in the backfield.
And David Montgomery, after an awesome first quarter, had one carry in the second half. When your quarterback looks as awful as Trubisky did, it helps if you can establish some sort of second option, and the Bears didn’t even try.
Green Bay’s Tramon Williams said, “We knew if we could make Mitch play quarterback, we would have a chance.” As discouraging of a sign that is, Nagy didn’t just make Mitch play quarterback, he made Mitch attempt to play Patrick Mahomes, and anyone with an operating eye knows he’s not that.
The Bears first play, where they lined up in the T-formation, motioned, and then fumbled the ball before recovering it for a huge loss, was an ominous sign in retrospect. So was the sequence of Pineiro’s made kick, a huge ovation from the crowd, and then promptly launching the kickoff out of bounds, giving the Packers the ball at the 40-yard-line.
But this all means there’s things to improve. Trubisky may not be a quick fix, but the way we use each of our weapons is. The point of the above exercise was that sometimes there is a fine line between winning and losing. And, yes, every game does matter in the National Football League. A lot. But the narrative after the Week 1 loss feels like we were Miami Dolphin fans with Super Bowl aspirations and then lost 59-10.
There were encouraging signs. Roquan Smith looked like one of the best linebackers in the league. Roy Robertson-Harris was in Rodger’s grill all game and is now another legit threat among our league-best front seven.
Before the season, we were worried about a defensive regression and Trubisky taking the next step. But Trubisky, without taking a next step at all, was the quarterback of a 12-win team last season. And again, the defense was fantastic.
If I told you a team didn’t play its starters at all in the preseason, what areas would you say they’d struggle in? Probably with tackling, quarterbacking, and penalties. They were fine in the former, and awful in the latter two. They had over 100 penalty yards. That alone is the difference in a one-score game.
Playing on the road in Denver is never easy, even when they’re not very good. I expect them to be pretty good this year (we’ll know a tad more about them after tonight), and it doesn’t help that their head coach knows everything about how the Bears operate. But guess what? The Bears know how Fangio operates, too. If the Bears win this week, the season is right back on track.
In case you all forgot, it’s Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, not still gotta come through Chicago until we lose one game. Jordan said it after they lost and the Bulls had their backs against the wall. You don’t bow out when there’s a bump in the road. You grab the wheel and tell the passengers in the back to hold on and pass the sunflower seeds.
“If we sit here and worry about what people think of us, we don’t have a chance. Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.”
They’re not going 16-0. Go figure. They’re 0-6 in their last six openers, which is especially demoralizing. I get it. But it’s one game. An NFL season, much like any other season, has its ups and downs. We can only go up from here. We’ve got a long week to prepare for Denver and get Trey Burton healthy. Denver’s got a short week after a Monday night game and Joe Flacco as their quarterback. Let’s pump the breaks on the apocalyptic rhetoric until we get a few games under our belt. The Bears started 3-3 last year before rattling off 9 of 10 wins to finish the year. The schedule is tougher and wackier, but the NFL is the NFL. Let’s get back on track.
P.S.
If this continues I may need to gather some subscriber volunteers and organize a 24-hour watch outside of Soldier Field. You still gotta come through Chicago and you still gotta get through us to get to Papa Bear and Payton.
This week’s thread: Bears group therapy session. Direct any and all thoughts here. I’m available for arguments all day. Let’s recover together:
Cubs:
After all, Cubs fan have no choice but to count on the Bears turning things around. Thank god for football season. They’re hellbent on wasting another season in which our top position players are all on team-friendly deals.
Javy Baez is out with a hairline fracture in his thumb, most likely for the entirety of the remaining regular season schedule. Kris Bryant has been in one game, out the next with a sore knee. Gee, if only we could’ve had some foresight and given him a couple of weeks off immediately after this injury surfaced instead of putting him in and out of the lineup and seeing his production dip. The Cubs, as they’re wont to do, had a god awful weekend against the Brewers, losing the last three of a four games series.
They’re 4.5 games out of the NL Central. They’re three games out of the top wild card spot, which belongs to Washington. They’re only 1.5 games and two games up on the Diamondbacks and Brewers for the second spot, respectively. FanGraphs playoff predictor now has the Cubs at a 62 percent chance to make the playoffs and only a 17 percent chance to win the division.
The only hope for them now is to dominate the Cardinals in the seven remaining games that they have against them. Strangely, the Cubs still control their own destiny. But this team has given us absolutely no reason to believe they have a run up their sleeves. The magic just isn’t there, like it once was. The Cubs play the Padres, Pirates, and Reds next, while the Cardinals play the Rockies, Brewers, and Nationals. An outsider may look at that optimistically from a Cubs perspective.
But if you’ve watched this team religiously, you’re 1. worse off for it and 2. not at all ready to chalk those games against sub .500 teams as wins. And the Cardinals, who have the tougher schedule remaining, are unconscious right now. I’m so tired of checking MLB scores and seeing the Cardinals up 10-1 in the 5th. So I’m also not ready to chalk up losses for them in the next few weeks.
The Cardinals have gotten better throughout the season. The Cubs have gotten worse.
They’ve had their chances. Losing Javy hurts. We’ll see what that clueless backup Addison Russell feels like after getting hit in the head on Sunday. Maybe he’ll apologize to his exes, stop having kids with every girl he locks eyes with, and focus a little more on his profession. But chances are he’ll just be more clueless. Until then, I think David Bote may have to man the fort at short for a few games. Bote is a better fielder than he’s given credit for and has actually hit well of late.
The first of only a few bright spots has been Darvish, who still gets yanked with a low pitch count for god knows what reason. What are we saving him for? The offseason? He was humming again until he got pulled after five innings at 72 pitches. Listen, we’re either all in or all out at this point. Put the best guys available in the lineup everyday and play them until they can’t play anymore. It’s time to dive in the deep end. No more toes in the water.
Schwaber has over a 1.0 OPS in the second half. Nicholas Castellanos is still Nicholas Castellanos. And Ben Zobrist, even though he kept that dreadful rendition of Benny and the Jets from his ex-wife as his walk-up song, has been wonderfully efficient since returning.
I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the Cubs chances this entire season. Like the Bears, I’ve zagged when others zigged. I said that in the MLB, any team that makes the playoffs has a chance. It’s hard to say the Cubs have a chance with a straight face anymore. Heck, it’s hard to watch them, particularly with football on. By next week, the Cubs will either be completely dead or will have weened themselves off life support. We’ll see which one it is.
But I guess I should take my own advice and pucker up a bit. Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, he murmured under his breath.
Sox:
The Sox have some seriously interesting storylines to follow down the stretch, and I’m not even being facetious. No, they didn’t bring up any prospect talent and are still telling us it’s not about service time. If it’s not about service time, it’s about shrinking expectations so Sox fans can’t be mad next year when they’re eight games out of the central at the break and Luis Robert and Nick Madrigal are underperforming.
At .334, Tim Anderson is just 3 points behind Anthony Rendon for the best batting average in baseball. DJ LeMahieu is 6 points behind Anderson at .328. Batting average certainly doesn’t tell the whole story about a hitter, but it is worth noting that the recent batting champions are: Mookie Betts, Jose Altuve (three times), and Miguel Cabrera (twice). That’s some pretty good company for TA, if he can pull it out.
Jose Abreu is fourth in RBIs, behind Rendon (114), Freddy Freeman (115), and Josh Bell (114), with 112. In the last two weeks, Abreu has over a 1.0 OPS. This year, with 2 outs and runners in scoring position, he’s hitting .407/.467/.833 in 60 plate appearances. That’s incredible.
Bulls:
Until the season starts, this section may be renamed the Tomas Satoransky update. He’s been dominating for the Czech Republic in the FIBA world championships, tallying 20 points, 7 rebounds, 9 assists, and 3 steals in a win over Brazil. See you later, Kris Dunn.
Blackhawks:
The Blackhawks prospects lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs prospects in the Traverse City Prospect Tournament, 6-3.
Sky:
The Sky may be falling for the Bears and Cubs, but the Chicago Sky are headed to the playoffs for the first time since 2016. If you don’t watch the WNBA, the most fun player to watch—in my opinion—is point guard Courtney Vandersloot. Game 1 of the playoffs is Wednesday at Wintrust Arena downtown against the Phoenix Mercury. Let’s go.
Betting pick:
The betting pick is finally making its comeback. We’re picking up where we left off, with an 11-5 record. The hiatus was due to baseball season, which dragged our record from 11-2 to 11-5 in three weeks. So instead of pushing through it, I stopped it. I don’t want to give out betting picks unless I believe in them. So, without further ado:
BEARS +1. Let’s GO.
Historical perspective:
Today’s historical perspective is a relevant one, given the way the Bears treated the preseason and the audio portion.
Reminder: Not every charitable deed calls for a SportsCenter sit down.
Next week’s newsletter, after a Bears win, will be the best one yet. Never stop telling your friends to subscribe, and never stop yelling Still Gotta Come Through Chicago to anyone who doesn’t understand.