Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
The Bears Spit in Their Fans' Faces
Good Morning Chicago. If you missed Friday’s newsletter, read that here when you’re done with this one. Or before, if you’d like.
Today’s newsletter is a big one. I encourage you to read it all, and engage in the comments at the end. We’ve got a lot to cover — beginning with the disaster that was yesterday’s Bears press conference.
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The Four Spokesmen of the Bears’ Apocalypse
This newsletter was finished on Tuesday night and ready for a Wednesday morning sendoff. I held back because the Bears announced that Bears Chairman George McCaskey, President and CEO Ted Phillips, General Manager Ryan Pace, and Head Coach Matt Nagy would all be addressing the media at 10 a.m. Wednesday. I thought it would be a typical press conference. I thought I’d do a final write-up on my lunch break, tie a bow around the newsletter and send it out. But this press conference ended up requiring more than that. Much more.
George McCaskey, Ted Phillips, Ryan Pace, and Matt Nagy gave statements and took questions live on Wednesday morning from remote locations. They may as well have been in an entirely different universe.
In the world they were presenting from, six-game losing streaks are a good thing, Matt Nagy has proven to be a seasoned leader, Ryan Pace’s performance over six years has inspired confidence, the Bears have an enviable football culture, and hard questions do not require thorough answers — or answers at all.
Whatever world they tuned in from, I want in. Ignorance is bliss there, and that world seems to rain ignorance Monday through Friday, with a little arrogance sprinkled in on the weekends.
For those of you who tuned in, you’re well aware. For those of you who didn’t, you missed one of the most embarrassing moments in Chicago sports over the last, say, two decades. That’s all I can vouch for.
Others, such as radio host and former Bears reporter Marc Silverman, can speak for longer periods of time.
The press conference started off predictably. It was all about COVID-19, right off the bat. Most businesses feel the need to mention COVID-19 in the first paragraph of any press release these days, often for good reason.
But if George McCaskey — who kicked off the shitshow that was yesterday’s press conference — thinks that the coronavirus has anything to do with what’s plaguing the Bears, he’s sorely mistaken.
And I don’t think he believes that to be true. Instead, he was looking to fill his obligation with as many buzz words and excuses as possible before logging off.
McCaskey said before the year that he was eager to see whether this year’s Bears team would prove themselves to be more like the 2018 Bears or the 2019 Bears.
A reporter reminded him of that. He didn’t know what to say — literally. He stumbled, admitted that the 2020 and 2019 records were identical, and then was incapable of offering up a reason for why everyone was retaining their jobs then.
Throughout the question portion, he said he could not hear reporters questions, despite no one else having problems — on either end — the rest of the press conference. Including those watching. He didn’t want to hear the questions because he didn’t have the backbone to answer them.
And props to the Chicago media, who pulled no punches for the duration of the press conference.
McCaskey said he was proud how the team “handled adversity” this year. As Sun-Times writer Jason Lieser pointed out, adversity and failure are not the same thing. Yet every one of the four spokesmen of the Bears apocalypse kept using them interchangeably.
The Bears chairman seemed woefully unprepared, and also inadequate for his position. He seemed to hold weight in the fact that the Bears “bounced back” from their 6-game losing streak.
The only two other teams who had 6-game losing streaks in the 2020 NFL season were the 1-15 Jaguars and the 2-14 Jets. Not only were those two teams actively trying to lose games, but they also are not moving forward with their leadership from this season.
The Bears were trying to win a Super Bowl! — not tank — and yet lost six games in a row and are retaining their president and CEO, GM, and head coach.
McCaskey seems so football illiterate that he could not decipher why the Bears may have “bounced back” from their six-game losing streaks. After they lost to the 5-11 Lions, they beat the Texans, Vikings, and Jaguars.
Not only did the Lions rank dead last in the NFL in points allowed per game, but the Texans, Vikings, and Jaguars ranked 27th, 29th and 31st, respectively.
It wasn’t resilience that brought the Bears playoff hopes back to the surface. It was scheduling luck.
The press conference was characterized by a lot of non-answers and word salad. Very few responses to questions felt genuine or like answers.
Ted Phillips dropped the best line of the day:
"Have we gotten the quarterback situation right? No. Have we won enough games? No. But everything else is there.”
The only thing I learned from the conference via the answers we were provided was that Ted Phillips is an incompetent disaster. His performance today made it clear how an organization could retain its head coach and general manager after the year we just had, paired with the expectations that were set.
He was a bumbling fool, plain and simple. It may be hard to gather this from the newsletter, but I genuinely don’t like to attack or be harsh on people in sports when it’s not warranted. What gives me the go ahead, however, is when they become arrogant.
And that’s what Phillips did on Wednesday. He talked down to the fans, and argued that firing people isn’t always the right answer, and that you have to hold people “accountable in other ways.” He could offer no examples of how anyone had been held accountable for the utter disaster that was this season.
Nor could he or McCaskey give any concrete goals or plans for the future, other than saying “we have confidence in Ryan and Matt.”
I am 25 years old, which means I have been on this earth for a quarter of a century now. Unfortunately, I’ve been a Bears fan for every conscious moment of those years.
In those 25 years, the Bears have made the playoffs six times. The Lions — often considered one of the worst organizations in all of sports — have also made the playoffs six times. The Vikings — who have another so-called tortured fan base — have made the playoffs 12 times, doubling the Bears count. The Packers have made the playoffs 19 times.
When I was in school, a football reporter from Green Bay came to speak with us after the 2018 season, when the Bears won the division and the Packers failed to make the playoffs. He talked about the frenzy taking place in the Packers organization, and how everyone was heading into the 2019 season desperate to keep their jobs and improve the on-field product.
That was after they had missed the playoffs — one of the two times that had happened in the decade we just exited.
The Bears are no better than the worst of the league. And at least the worst of league has something to look forward to — a change of regime, a new vision, and a Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields.
The Bears have none of that.
And yet, they acted like they had it all on Wednesday. They talked about the “people” in the Bears organization, and how that’s what really matters. It’s too bad none of the fans that they claim to care about so much can ever see the pizza parties that are apparently a blast inside Halas Hall.
The NFL is a tough, cutthroat league. It was extremely evident during this presser that the Bears are operating as a VHS company while the vast majority of the league is building out their new streaming services.
They do not have a football-minded approach, and that’s why they don’t see how terribly broken the football product is on the field, which is Nagy and Pace’s doing.
Both Phillips and Pace refused to disclose the terms of Pace’s contract, which made for a couple of the most strange moments I’ve ever witnessed at a press conference.
Phillips said it was “not pertinent to the conversation,” which is completely delusional. Pace said it was “just like a player contract” as his defense to not answer.
I can look up the terms of every single player contract on the Bears right now.
The Bulls just are just exiting one of the worst front office eras of any sports franchise in the 21st century. And from someone who watched a whole lot of GarPax press conferences over the years — many of which being completely rooted outside reality and depressing — I can tell you that I never saw something as bad as what I watched yesterday.
The Bears should be ashamed of themselves, and they are lucky that no fans were allowed inside the stadium this year. It’s all fun and games when the losses pile up but the fans keep coming. At this point, I’m not entirely sure they will continue to do so.
And they shouldn’t. Each of the Bears “leaders” clung to false realities and general statements and shied away from any facts presented to them.
These press conferences are generally worth tuning into for one thing — where the organization is going to find their next quarterback. After all, Pace has failed at that three times. But this time it was just the sidebar.
The delusions presented by the four spokesmen of this football apocalypse were the story. And in a press conference where they told us nothing, they inadvertently told us everything.
Matt Nagy’s Surrender
This was written before Wednesday’s press conference.
With eight minutes remaining in Sunday’s embarrassing playoff loss to the Saints, the Bears faced a 4th down and 5 from their own 30. Down 21-3 and needing a quick score to have any hope at making an improbable comeback, Matt Nagy elected to punt.
Yes, after a Cordarrelle Patterson run, an incomplete pass to Javon Wims, and the all-too-familiar three-yard completion when we needed eight yards on third down, the Bears elected to add another flag to the mix on Sunday — this one of the white variety.
It’s not surprising to any Bears fan, or at least it shouldn’t have been. During the six-game losing streak, although they all felt like it, many of the games weren’t blowouts. We all remember the garbage touchdowns when the game was out of reach, just like we’ll remember Jimmy Graham’s one-handed grab and an immediate exit to the locker room.
But before that, Nagy routinely fought for optics instead of wins.
If you remember the Titans game (for your sake, I hope you’ve blocked it out by now), the Bears were down 17-0 in the fourth quarter. They had a 4th down on the 4-yard line with over 12 minutes left. The Bears were in the thick of the playoff race.
Nagy, scared of a shutout, sent out Cairo Santos to kick a 22-yard field goal in lieu of trying to actually compete. A 10-point game with over 12 minutes left is far from insurmountable. At the time, the Titans were one of the worst passing defenses in the league.
There are plenty of other examples of Nagy running the ball, and burning the clock, when the game was still in reach in the fourth quarter.
When the going gets tough, Nagy quits, and then tries to cover his ass, as if 10 million people aren’t watching at home and will only see the score in the paper the next morning.
(He tricks his bosses, I guess.)
But to do so in the playoffs is downright indefensible. It’s one thing if it’s a 4th and 25. The Bears had five yards to gain to save their season, at least for a little while, and elected to give the ball back to the other team and surrender.
Even at the end of the first half, the Bears elected to not try to score down 7-3, and instead run the clock out.
The Bears are undisciplined. Their offense is terrible. Their in-game adjustments are non-existent. Their situation management is the worst in the league. They can’t score in the red zone. They can’t get a yard on third and fourth down.
They were 1 for 10 on third down Sunday.
Yet the most damning thing about Nagy and the team he ostensibly leads is that he allows them to quit.
Nagy went on a rant after the game about how they specifically took out time during the week to point out Saints cornerback C. J. Gardner-Johnson’s tactics to incite opposing players.
Anthony Miller fell for it. Miller has proved time and time again to be incapable of being a professional, and he doesn’t deserve to wear a Bears jersey ever again. Good riddance to him.
But Javon Wims fell for the same tricks weeks ago against Gardner-Johnson, costing his team gravely. He was rewarded with a target on the biggest play of the game Sunday and the ball went right through his hands.
Miller quit on his team and thought about himself when he threw a punch at Gardner-Johnson. But so did Nagy when he punted that ball.
When you create a culture that lacks any sort of accountability, Miller’s outbursts are just a symptom of the problem. Miller is a lost of taste and smell, and Nagy is COVID-19.
But perhaps that’s not even true. After all, the Bears — from the top down — have accepted this sort of failure and behavior. Nagy’s lack of acumen has been on display for some time now, and he’ll be back next year.
Why would he shoot for 10 wins and a playoff win when 8 wins and a first-round exit would get him another shot?
Nagy’s press conferences this year have been a masters class in leadership. In other words, he speaks how a leader shouldn’t. The way he handles success and failure so glaringly proves that he should not be a coach in the NFL that I assume George McCaskey and Ted Phillips opt out of watching them.
He’d blame Mitch Trubisky, who, despite all of his shortcomings, I genuinely feel bad for, knowing what we know now. He’d blame the offensive line, acting as if he was detached from both his quarterback and the foundation of his own unit. Penalties were his players’ fault, and not ever his.
The character of a team reflects leadership, and penalties aren’t an opt-out from responsibility. If you watch Alabama at all, for instance, they don’t make dumb mistakes. They don’t taunt, they don’t showboat, and they rarely commit boneheaded penalties.
Is that because Alabama specifically recruits and signs better guys? No, they recruit the best players like the other top teams do. When unforced errors are made consistently, it eventually falls on the coaching staff.
If nothing else, thank God Sunday marked his last postgame press conference for at least seven or eight months.
Before inevitably throwing others under the bus, he always starts with how much the guys care, and how much they fought. He did so again Sunday, unable to wrap his head around the irony that is him punting, down 18, an hour prior.
“Wherever there’s a weakness, we’ll make it a strength,” he said about the offseason.
In Year 1 under Matt Nagy, Chicago was 20th in the league in offensive DVOA. In Year 2, they were 25th. In Year 3, they were 25th.
In Year 1 under Matt Nagy, the Bears defense was 1st in DVOA. In Year 2, they were 10th, and in Year 3 they were 10th. This year, in weighted DVOA, which gives more weight to later games in order to decipher if the team improved to worsened over the season, they were 13th by year end.
As the Bears defense has worsened, so have the Bears. Because Matt Nagy’s offense has never improved.
You can make the argument that since Matt Nagy’s first year, the Bears have not turned any strengths into weaknesses, and that they’ve instead turned any strengths into weaknesses.
“They got good players,” Nagy said of the Saints.
If Ryan Pace has one gripe, it’s this. It must be infuriating to hear Nagy say this about the Saints time and time again. Are we some startup team that doesn’t have good players?
No. The reality is, the Saints may have a slight edge in talent. But overall, the Bears have plenty of good players — and more than enough talent to win with.
Rex Ryan’s comments on Get Up! this week proved that the national media is catching onto Nagy’s schtick. Nagy leaves his players and coaches out to dry when things go awry.
Last year, OC Mark Helfrich and O-Line Coach Harry Hiestand got the axe. It was Helfrich’s problem that the offense sucked, huh? Doesn’t seem so a year later. Was it Hiestand’s, who is as respected as an O-Line coach there is in the industry? It certainly doesn’t seem like it.
Now it’s Chuck Pagano’s fault. Pagano retired Tuesday, meaning the organization clearly told him that he would be out and he decided to frame it as going out on his own terms.
Pagano wasn’t great as D-coordinator, and a change probably needed to be made. But will him leaving fix what’s really wrong with the Bears? They were still in the top-third of the league in defense this year.
Forcing Pagano out as the sacrificial lamb after a great career feels illogical and borderline immoral. I would like to go a different way defensively, but I would also like a brand new coaching staff.
Pace will be back too for his seventh year. The Bears have had one winning record under Pace, no playoff wins, and their books are full heading into next year.
Everyone always asks why Pete Rose isn’t in the Hall of Fame. What’s the problem if you’re gambling on yourself?, the logic goes. Well, that may be true for the player Pete Rose. It gets dicey when it’s the manager Pete Rose.
Because when you have money on your own team in game 36 of 162 it means you’re doing everything you can to win that day, and not considering down-the-road consequences. You’re throwing a guy out there for 120 pitches even if it means he may be gassed four or five days later.
That’s where we’ll be at with Pace next year. He’ll be making last-ditch efforts to save something that he may not be able to save. He’ll do everything he can to get this team back into the playoffs, whether it makes the rebuilding process significantly longer and more painful or not.
He played the results in 2018. We signed every goddamn guy who logged a statistic, using our 12-4 record to justify it.
Look where that’s gotten us.
Now the fanbase is hellbent on extending everyone again. #ExtendAllenRobinson, right? Why? So we can have more money on the books long term and another quarterback who can’t get him the ball and another coach who doesn’t know how to facilitate that?
In the end, the Bears 2018 season — one of my favorites ever — may have doomed them. It gave fans and the organization the false sense that this team was on the brink of the Super Bowl. Now, as the rest of the NFC has advanced over the last couple of years, the Bears have worsened, and have drifted farther from any light at the end of the tunnel.
Sox Nab Hendriks
Ah, there is some good news. Or some not-so-good news, if you listen to the White Sox fans that live on Twitter and pray they can get mad about something.
The Sox signed the best closer in baseball Tuesday, 31-year-old Liam Hendriks. The deal is worth $54 million over three to four years, depending on whether or not the Sox pick up his fourth-year option.
Either way, Hendriks will get all of his $54 million. The annual average of the deal — $18 million — is the largest ever for a relief pitcher.
Over the last two seasons, Hendriks has had a collective 1.79 ERA and a .871 WHIP. He had 39 saves and a FIP (fielding-independent pitching) of 1.7. The FIP is a good indicator that his stellar ERA was not a matter of luck, which low ERAs are sometimes the result of.
He’s a major upgrade from an already-stellar closer in Alex Colome.
The White Sox now have four pitchers who finished top-10 in Cy Young voting in 2020: Dallas Keuchel, Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn, and now Hendriks.
The move fills a need for the Sox, and in a vacuum is hard to have any gripes with.
In context (okay, disgruntled Sox fans), you could be mad the the money was spent on a relief pitcher, and not another above-average outfield bat or starting pitcher.
Still, I think the Sox spending top dollar at all is probably a good sign, though that is admittedly a low expectation.
The Sox have a chance to have plus hitters in every single slot in the order next year, a solid pitching staff, and now one of the best bullpens in the American League.
Blackhawks Waste No Time
The Blackhawks kicked off their season after the Tampa Bay Lightning conducted a banner ceremony for their bubble Stanley Cup championship. The Blackhawks, at this present moment, seem so far away from the last time they raised a banner of their own.
The Lightning went up 3-0 in the first period, and the Blackhawks barely salvaged a shutout with a third-period goal to ultimately lose 5-1.
This is fresh off the news that unproven Head Coach Jeremy Colliton received a two-year contract extension. And that, of course, was on the heals of another inadequate Chicago sports executive — Stan Bowman — receiving a promotion.
And yet that’s all overshadowed by Jonathan Toews being out with an unknown illness. Rumors are flying that it could be some sort of neurodegenerative disorder. I won’t speculate here, but whatever it is, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s 1. very bad and 2. could end his career.
What’s more sad than the Blackhawks decade-of-success boat sinking is that it’s captain is going down with it — through no fault of his own.
My thoughts are with Toews, who has given this city everything. It’s our turn to show him we appreciate it.
The Competitive Bulls
The Bulls are 4-7 and yet that below-average mark is completely inconsequential.
In one week, the Bulls were a shot away from beating the two best teams in the West on the road, the Lakers and Clippers. Their 1-3 West Coast road trip opened the national media’s eyes to the phenomenon taking place within the Bulls organization.
The team has improved drastically from Game 1, and now is in every game they play. Billy Donovan has already turned the worst offense in the league last year into a good one.
Patrick Williams — the rookie — continues to start and has guarded Giannis, LeBron, and Kawhi Leonard over the past two weeks. He is 19 years old.
If you would have told me the Bulls and the Sox would be the two most exciting teams in Chicago 18 months ago, I would have been horrified.
And yet here we are.
The Bulls are back at full strength after losing a few players — including Tomas Satoransky and Lauri Markkanen — to COVID-19. They play a must-win game for the Wins Total bet on Friday. They tip off vs. the Thunder at 7 p.m.
College Football Epilogue
We’ve reached one of the saddest days of the years for your boy, the one following the college football national championship.
This is a Chicago sports newsletter, and not a college football one, but I’m speaking to the few of you reading this who know how awful it hits.
Firstly, the game is on a Monday, for some ungodly reason. I guess because more people are sitting on their couches on Monday at 7:30 p.m.? Well guess what, this year, everyone was sitting on their goddamn couches on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. too.
I hate that I correlate what is supposed to be the climax of the college football season with general sadness, but it has literally never been at a good time.
For one: It’s always in the worst part of the year. Winter in Chicago, but past the holidays. Always a disgusting time of the year minus a few friends’ birthdays that used to be celebrated in a fun way.
If it was when you were younger, school was right around the corner or it had started up that day. As the fourth quarter nears closer, the impending doom of Tuesday creeps in.
There’s maybe not a worse feeling than school starting up again when you were a child. Even in college, when winter break was an ungodly length for me personally, my friends mostly had gone back to school as I sat and watched the game with whoever remained.
The idea to make any sort of significant sports game on a Monday is just totally asinine, whether you get 1.2 million more casual viewers or not.
That’s why the only time I liked the Super Bowl was when I was in college. You could basically get anything you needed to get done on a Monday in college hungover. And I’m not proud to admit that I didn’t watch more than 6 and a half plays in the Panthers/Broncos Super Bowl. No hot takes from me on my boy Cam not diving for the ball. I didn’t see it. Therefore I will not comment.
The only good thing that came out of last night for some Chicagoans was the facelift Notre Dame got. I mean, if Ohio State had not gotten that turnover early in the game, it could have been a 30-point deficit at half.
The Fighting Irish actually kept the Tide to their lowest point total since they lost to Clemson in the National Championship two years ago.
There is no good argument to suggest that Notre Dame didn’t belong in the final four, no matter how many big games they’ve lost by a wide margin over the last few years. In a vacuum, that argument makes some sense.
But if you have a brain and watch college football, it should instead be evident to you that there are a few teams operating at a different level, and the fourth-best team is usually the best team in the nation that is not at that level.
I grew up an ND fan, admittedly, but have since become a lesser one. I have my own college to cheer for now, so for the last seven years or so, I’ve been a lukewarm Notre Dame fan. And stepping back from my fandom has enabled me to see an unbelievable race that has taken place. And there’s a new leader.
Notre Dame fans are absolutely obnoxious. But there is two distinct groups of them. There are those who went to the school and got 4.7 GPAs out of 4.0 in high school and haven’t worn sweatpants a day in their lives. They look down on anyone who went to a public college and think their entire existence is a reflection of the excellence that is Notre Dame, or even worse — that their excellence is evidence that Notre Dame is also excellent.
Those are the bad ones. The ones that live in Chicago are often blue-collar catholics who grew up rooting for Notre Dame because everyone else in their family did. There are catholic schools in the deep South who used to say prayers for Notre Dame every Friday, for crying out loud. It’s more of a culture thing, and I don’t think it’s nearly as lame as the anti-Notre Dame fans think it is to root for Notre Dame when you didn’t go there.
Believe it or not, not everyone had the ability to go to Notre Dame as a kid, even if they were smart. Michigan fans will find this startling.
I will concede there are plenty of annoying Notre Dame fans, whether they’re the type that went there or not.
But the thesis I’ve formed, officially after this run, is — for the first time in history — anti-Notre Dame fans are actually worse than Notre Dame fans themselves.
Holy Shit, these people do not shut up. And they never bring any facts. Notre Dame’s schedule sucks! Um, not really, like ever. Notre Dame didn’t deserve to be in the playoff! OK, then who did?
Notre Dame fans over the last few years have become incredibly self aware. They recognize that they’re not Alabama, and frankly, that’s fine, for a variety of reasons. One could argue it’s a lot more impressive that Notre Dame can make the playoff every other year than it is for Clemson to win a national title every three years.
Instead of dealing with my post-college football sadness by sulking, I’ve found a thesis that can take me into the offseason. If you disagree, by all means, meet me in the comments.
But please, for the love of God, bring some facts.
Anyway, I thought this epilogue was necessary for a college football season that personally brought me a lot of joy in an awfully weird time. I think we all owe thanks to all the players and coaches who sacrificed a lot of their freedoms for our enjoyment.
The season wasn’t perfect, but nobody needed perfect when everything else was in shambles. The sport that encapsulates the overall spirit of sports came through again, and boy did I appreciate it.
When the Big Ten season was cancelled mere months ago, I wrote a eulogy for it here. It was an awful day. Now, I can write to you that I once again enjoyed the absolute hell out of early, cloudy Big Ten football, late afternoon SEC, and Pac-12 after dark to try to win all of my money back.
Cheers to another season, and here’s to hoping we can all tailgate a couple of games next year.
Thanks for reading… as always, I appreciate it deeply. Don’t forget to tell someone to subscribe today. And don’t forget to comment. Let’s go!
Hey Andrew, and all the SGCTC fans. Great article, The breaking point for me during the Bears game was in the 4th quarter, Bears ball, down 3 scores, 8 minutes left in the game. Play Call? Montgomery up the middle for 1 yard. I then started watching Criminal Minds. Rex Ryan: Shut up. You and your family are big mouth vulgar losers who have never won anything. Hawks? The joke that is Stan Bowman continues. Should be arrested for killing this franchise and fan base. I do hope Toews is ok, just like Hossa, we lose a true leader. Bama wins because Saban holds players accountable for their actions. I am a Notre Dame fan (the second type!) I remember the disaster with Bob Davie, Ty Willingham, Charlie Wiess, etc. so I appreciate they are a top 5 team with lofty academic standards. Their 2021 schedule is absolutely brutal. will be tough to get there again. I am enjoying the run they are having. Stay safe and healthy, looking forward to the next SGCTC !!
This football team isn't going anywhere until Ted Phillips is gone. He doesn't know the first thing about football and the only reason he has lasted this long is because he continues to line the Mccaskeys pockets with FIAT. After watching the press conference I truly believe that Geoge Mccaskey might be the dumbest person in the chicagoland area. I think im the exact opposite of you in terms of being an ND fan, my fandom for ND has sky rocketed in recent years. Brian Kelly is a top 5 college football coach and I am willing to die on this hill. He's not necessarily turning water into wine, but he is damn close!