GOOD MORNING CHICAGO AND HAPPY GAME WEEK!
The newsletter lives for these weeks. Thousands of you are reading this right now (just kidding), mere hours away from the weekend — a weekend that will be jam-packed with glorious football. And so will the next weekend, and the weekend after that.
Grab your coffee, put the slate up on your monitor, dig into the newsletter, and let’s enjoy this beautiful September weather.
All of you dorks can start listening to your waiver wire fantasy football podcasts and continue conflating fantasy football knowledge with actual football knowledge.
All of you degenerates can begin chasing that high that comes in the 15 minutes immediately after you wake up on Saturday and Sunday and scroll through the slate looking at what to bet on.
And all of you non-sports fans can hit the the nearest exit. I love when non-sports fans make fun of us for caring so much about dudes playing sports that we don’t know. What exactly is it that you do in your free time? Read made-up stories or watch movies centered around a man who was bit by a spider and now shoots webs at towers? There are nothing but fools in this room that we’re all in.
I did see a video the other day that really got me thinking, though. It was a woman claiming that men only play fantasy football, watch sports, bet on games and play golf just so they can talk to each other, and don’t know how to otherwise.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but I also can’t say for certain that it’s not true. I mean, I literally made t-shirts that said “Bulls Fridays” so my buddies and I could get together on Fridays and get wasted. The Bulls went, like, 1-6 on those Fridays.
I’m also not shameful about it. There will be no excuse to not grab a beer, grab some food, or just flat out hang with the boys (or girls) this fall. I non-ironically asked my brother last night if he wanted to watch the Coastal Carolina-Kansas game with me tonight.
I’m hitting a rare vacation beginning this weekend, and there’s a non-zero chance that it will be ruined thanks to and Iowa/Iowa State Saturday matchup and a Bears opener against the Rams the following night.
The beach is nice, but it’s a hell of a lot nicer if your teams are undefeated.
Before we get into our Bears preview, I thought I’d bring back some betting picks this year. For longtime readers, you’ll remember when that used to be a staple of the newsletter. I think after the last pick I was at close to a 70% hit rate, and at one point I had hit eight or so picks in a row, including a Raptors pick to win the ECF in 2019 when they were down 2-0 against the Bucks (they won the championship).
So here it is, the first two picks of the year.
CFB: Ball State/Penn State — A great win for the Nittany Lions last week positioned themselves once again as a top-tier Big Ten team, gave Iowa a better chance of winning the West, and shut up Wisconsin football fans for a week. Jump around is cool until you realize half of the dorks jump around and then jump out of the stadium immediately after. Anyway, after a huge win there, this is a massive letdown spot for Penn State. By no means am I suggesting they don’t win, but they’re getting more than three scores against Ball State a week after an emotional, hard-fought, low-scoring game in Madison. Ball State won the MAC last year and promptly bulldozed San Jose State in the bowl game. They are now returning their quarterback, and 19! other starters. They’ve got top skill players on the outside (best in the MAC, likely), and though they didn’t look great last week against Western Illinois, I think they’ll keep this one ‘closer than the experts think’.
PICK: BALL STATE +23
NFL: Broncos/Giants — Broncos -2.5. The Broncos are in a do-or-die season for Vic Fangio, and the Giants are likely to be one of the worst teams in the NFC. I think the Broncos are a dark horse to make the playoffs and also believe they have a top-3 defensive unit. It’s tough to like a road dog in Week 1, but I like the Broncos here.
PICK: BRONCOS -2.5
And then for some bonus picks we bring in “The Insider,” a friend of mine who began hitting on college picks through some sort of fucked up mathematical equation in 2018. I called him a moron and bad mouthed him then. He continued hitting in 2019 and I called him a moron then, too. Then he continued hitting in 2020 and I still called him a moron, but thought hey, he may be onto something here.
Go ahead and follow him here on Twitter at @ZTICOLLEGE.
Without further ado, here are his picks for Week 2 of the college football season:
TROY +5
NEBRASKA -14
TULSA +13
HAWAII +11.5
FIU -1.5
We’ll check back on these picks next week, but until then, God bless football and happy gambling.
Let’s get into it.
The Bears kick off Sunday at 7:20 in the brand new (to fans) So-Fi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
There’s been a lot of sentiment over the last couple weeks on Twitter with Bears “fans” suggesting they want the Bears to lose, and for Andy Dalton to fail, so that Justin Fields will start sooner.
What I want to stop as soon as possible, for one, is the Justin Fields/Andy Dalton conversation.
Having said that, I will be cheering for the Bears on Sunday as hard as I did against the Eagles in the 2018 playoffs. Andy Dalton, Mitch Trubisky, Justin Fields, Jay Cutler, Mike Glennon, Chad Hutchinson, I don’t care.
You’re only guaranteed 17 games per year, every year, to root for the Chicago Bears. I can’t bring myself to ever root for any outcomes other than a Bears win. Just as I couldn’t at the end of last year — hoping Nagy may get fired — I won’t be able to now.
Once you start to get judicious about the team you root for, you begin losing your soul. By the end of whatever process you began rooting for instead, you’re not the same fan you once were — and I wholeheartedly believe that.
You can generally be okay with your teams losing if it means a higher draft pick, sure, but there’s a reason why watching the red-hot Cubs full of nobody’s was a blast these past couple weeks.
The 2013 Cubs, the 2018 Bulls, the Sox from 2008 basically until last year, the Blackhawks pre-dynasty and the Bears in the second year of Trestman. We’ve seen it all, and yet there’s still nothing that replaces a Friday morning, Sunday night, or Monday morning after a Bears win.
Now, the odds are against us, if you hadn’t heard.
The Bears are still only 7.5-point underdogs against the Rams, which seems so low that I almost — and I said I would get here — am starting to think I may just have to bet the Bears. Hey, this may be the last good opportunity to do so with good conscience until the first time Fields starts.
And when I do bet on them, I’ll feel as queasy about it as Drake does when a woman he’s with begins using drugs both recreationally and irresponsibly.
The Bears are +550 to win the division behind the Packers (-160) and significantly behind even the second-place Vikings at +250. The Lions come in last at +2800.
Sigh. Remember that feeling in 2018, that the Packers’ reign was over, and that we wouldn’t see odds like the above for the next five years, at least?
Their over/under win total is 7.5, and the under has gone down to -125 after preseason-watchers hammered the hell out of it for the last month. Remember that this year there are 17 games, meaning Vegas is expecting the Bears to be somewhere between a 7-10 team and an 8-9 one. Who knows, the latter could mean a playoff berth, but I wouldn’t bet on that, and I wouldn’t bet on the over.
Justin Fields, despite not starting the season, has the third-best odds at Rookie of the Year at +600, which shows just how little confidence Vegas — along with everybody else — has in Dalton.
Andy Dalton did not look good playing for a Cowboys team that looked stacked offensively last night. He hasn’t looked good in half a decade, frankly, and yet he is the starter of your Chicago Bears in the year of our lord, 2021.
If you need something to get you going, though, I’ve got that, too.
ESPN ran 20,000 simulations of the NFL season, and one of them begins with a Bears 1-3 start. Justin Fields takes over and the Bears lose three more games. But then, magic ensues, and Fields leads the Bears to impossible win after impossible win all the way to a playoff berth.
If this happens, you could argue it would be worst for the collective health of Chicago than if they’d just go 1-16.
In regards to Dalton, though, I don’t have anything against him personally. If the Bears offered to pay me $10 million to play quarterback for them, I, too, would accept. Just as Mitch Trubisky didn’t ask to be drafted 2nd overall and before Pat Mahomes and Deshaun Watson, Dalton didn’t ask to be put in the position he’s in now.
Direct your anger elsewhere — there’s plenty of places for it to go.
The Bears injury report looks as expected before this Sunday, meaning it looks awful and concerning. The list is long, and full of big names, most notably with Eddie Goldman — who either can’t catch or break or can’t get out of his own way. He’s been out the last two days with a knee/ankle, and the Bears signed two veteran defensive linemen to the practice squad, which is not a good sign.
Robert Quinn is still battling being bad while getting paid a ton of money and also a bad back. Darnell Mooney is also battling a back issue as well. I don’t expect much out of Quinn this year, at all, so the former is less concerning at this point. By no means do I expect a bounce back year for Quinn, who’s another significant mark on Ryan Pace’s legacy. And back injuries are just bad news. We saw it with Teven Jenkins, we see it with Quinn, and now with Mooney.
If Allen Robinson or Darnell Mooney miss any real time this season, the Bears are very much in trouble. Outside of those two, the receiver options are… uninspiring. It’s likely that the main pass catchers will be those two, Cole Kmet, Jimmy Graham, and then David Montgomery. But without the top-2 at their best, I see an already-ugly offense going downhill quickly.
I tend to think the Bears offense will be more like it was the past couple years than how it was in 2018, despite Nagy’s assertion that his offense takes a “couple years” to get going. After all, a bad offensive line hasn’t gotten better, if anything, it’s gotten worse. I’d take Trubisky over Dalton, and just about everything else is the same.
The only thing that can change that is Fields dynamic playmaking ability, but we’ve gone over that enough.
Defensively, I’m just also not sure how much longer this squad can carry the team. Hopefully Eddie Jackson will perform at the level he’s capable of this year — and up to par with his salary — and other vets like Akiem Hicks can stay on the field.
What I’m most looking forward to is seeing how Roquan Smith plays.
I think the world of Jaylon Johnson as a corner, too, but I really am not bullish on him. The only reason is that his shoulder issues have been constant since he’s been in college, and at some point, that will again come to a head. It sucks, but it’s the Pace formula — draft a guy that has an injury history to try to extract value. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t (see: Teven Jenkins).
And if Johnson goes down, just like Mooney, it gets grim after that at the corner position.
The Bears are essentially banking on one of the oldest teams in football staying completely healthy this year, with the ceiling being — maybe — 9 or 10 wins. It’s not a recipe for success long term, and probably not even in the short term.
Either way, if the Bears drive down the field and go up 7-0 on Sunday night I will be jumping around like I’m in Madison and have red and white overalls on, the only difference being that I will watch the rest of the game.
Next week, we’ll be nearing the end of the MLB regular season, closing in on the opening of training camp for the Bulls and Blackhawks, and know a lot more about what this Bears team will look like moving forward.
I’ll be here to talk about all of it.
LETS GO BEARS, and have a great weekend.
Leave your predictions below… closest one will get a free SGCTC t-shirt.
How funny is it that Nagy said the offense takes a couple years to get going? It's like when he said Mitch was in 101, then 200 level the next offseason. Sooner or later the whole offense is gonna be in grad school!!!! LOL! It's so ridiculous listening to that moron talk. Ryan Pace still has the most punchable face in the NFL. Absolute pieces of shit. I won't let that ruin my Friday though!
I hated Andy Dalton when the Bears signed him but Justin Fields was able to change my emotions on the whole situation just as he does with every other aspect of life. Love that guy. I will never understand rooting for the Bears to lose just to get to Fields sooner, though. As badly as I want to see him, it doesn't make sense to try and argue with Matt Nagy's logic because there never really is any logic in his thoughts. Would Andy Dalton leading us to the playoffs be a failure year then? Get the hell out of my face with that shit. Let's win some goddamn football games.
Go Hawks Go Bears
P.S that ZTI guy sounds like the man, you shouldn't call him a moron!
Spider Man fans out here catching strays!
Like the Ball State pick. Sean Clifford is not good. When he was a Freshman backing up McSorley I saw him come in against Kent State and go 3/3 for 100 yards and a touchdown and thought he was going to be amazing. Not the case. He stinks.
I don't have a whole lot new to say about the Bears but will have plenty to say on Monday.