Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

We're Onto Tampa Bay

Happy Friday Chicago!

There’s some scientific evidence to suggest that after women give birth, they are biologically programmed to at least partly forget how awful the experience was soon thereafter. That clears the way for them to be convinced — by themselves or a partner — that they can and should go through that process again.

The human species can sustain itself based on that: our queens continuing to make that head-scratching decision to not drink coffee or alcohol for nine months while that baby grows; to sweat and shit to push that baby out; and then to recover like they tore up their knee hooping for weeks after, while that baby keeps them up all night, to boot.

If I’m remembering correctly, I think this is the second time in Still Gotta Come Through Chicago history that I’ve compared myself to pregnant women.

But there’s got to be something to that theory, and there’s got to be something similar going on with Bears fans.

All I could muster, over and over, were these words Sunday: “I just can’t believe it.” That was always countered, by me, immediately, saying, “But I guess I can believe it.”

(Don’t worry, I was with other people.)

What do you mean you can’t believe it, dude? You can’t believe the Packers kicked the shit out of the Bears? What is so unfathomable about that, you fucking moron?

It’s not as if after every Bears season I say “I’m done with this team.” I’m not that naive, but there is part of me that wants to be that guy in the bar that says, “I haven’t watched da Bears since ‘92 when the McCaskeys…” At least those guys stand for something.

I want one of my buddies to show up at my house at noon on a Sunday in ten years with a six pack, only to see me watching, like, World War 2 In Colour, and then smile softly and walk away like Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting when he realizes Matt Damon left Boston.

There’s a zero percent chance that ever happens, but it’s sometimes nice to think about on Monday mornings when I’ve just been reminded of how dumb and delusional I am when it comes to my favorite team.

Truth be told, the aforementioned trick I play on myself every offseason works week by week, too, because I’ve already geared myself up for Sunday’s visit to Tampa Bay.

It can’t be any worse than last week. Only up from here!, he tells himself.

Let’s start with last week’s newsletter. I just reread it, and feel like I don’t even know the person who wrote it. So full of optimism, so full of excitement.

If I’m going to refer back to my wins and accurate predictions, I have to reflect on the bad, too.

So let’s start with the worst of it all:

A Green Bay matchup is certainly a hell of a way to jump into it all, but so be it. It can’t be worse than the abomination we witnessed at the start of the 2019 season, when our expectations were Super Bowl or Bust.

The above reads as if I am actually mocking my future self.

… Chase Claypool — who had over 1,700 yards receiving before his shaky last year. Claypool will have a good year, bank on it. Either way, he’s so much better than what our third wide receiver options have been.

Bank on it, he said. My God. Claypool put in genuinely one of the worst efforts I’ve noticed on a professional football field in a long time. Albert Haynesworth-On-The-Redskins type stuff. At least Haynesworth has already cashed in. Claypool is one or two more plays away from returning to his homeland, Canada. I hear the CFL pays as much as $100,000 players to its top players. He can enjoy a nice Canadian life off of that and the money he stole from the Bears.

From Pro Football Focus: “Receiver Chase Claypool was one of three receivers to run more than 35 routes this week without picking up a reception.”

But, who is Jordan Love going to rely on besides Aaron Jones?

Turns out Aaron Jones was plenty! He had 127 total yards and two touchdowns, even though he exited the game early after injuring his hamstring.

The worst part of last week’s newsletter is the stench from the optimism riddled throughout it, but I can’t capture that in a quote.

But there were some good things, too, only canceled out by the fact that I didn’t listen to myself at all:

It’s good to have tempered expectations. The Bears, lest we forget, were literally the worst team in the NFL last year. I don’t think the optimism is unwarranted, but we should slap the cautious label atop those warm feelings.

The Packers ended the regular season well, and their defense was a big part of that. They are also wearing green and yellow jerseys, which automatically makes us all queasy.

Great points, man.

And finally:

The Bears win Sunday. Should that be a cause for overreaction? No. Should we overreact? Why the hell not?

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With 1:05 left in the game and the Bears trailing the Packers 38-20, Justin Fields threw a designed outside screen pass to Darnell Mooney that went for an incompletion.

The Bears need to have one fan or common sense ambassador on the field with the coaching staff that can intervene there and say, fellas, we can do anything here but throw our 10th screen pass of the day.

But it did make for some humor. And as a Bears fan, I’ve learned to fight hard for bad losses to be really bad losses. Then, there’s maybe a slightly higher chance there will be change the following week or season.

It hardly ever works, but hey, at least George McCaskey was mad this week, reportedly. Welcome to the club, buddy.

That play is what the last drive started with, a perfect bookend, separating the pages between the other bookend, which was the end of the first drive — a Cole Kmet QB sneak?

Besides the fact that it was a Matt Nagy-ass play call, Kmet also does not do anything really with quickness or authority. At least Nagy put Akiem Hicks in the backfield.

Jordan Love isn’t even good! The Bears had the chance to end his career before it started, placing fear into the heart of their biggest rival’s new quarterback. Instead, Love’s first drive was filled with time to throw, pockets to step up in, and loose zone coverages to throw the ball into.

After a failed Kmet sneak and Love’s first drive, we all should have known. The Bears had an awful game plan — on both sides of the ball — and it was evident from the get-go.

Oh, and I forgot about the personal foul penalty on the opening kickoff.

If you need to temper your expectations after an exciting offseason (we thought), the Bears were happy to help out. They traded the no. 1 overall pick for D.J. Moore, and then he was targeted on 4.35% of the routes he ran, which was the second-lowest rate among wide receivers in Week 1, also according to Pro Football Focus.

I’m not exactly ready to dive into all of the other stats that put into perspective how bad that game was. Stats often help tell the story, but in this case, watching the game was all the perspective you needed. The eye-test was fool-proof with this one.

Nothing was good. Not the defense, not the new defensive additions. Not the offense, not the new offensive additions.

We really didn’t find out anything about the coaching staff last year. Whether you liked what you saw or didn’t, none of it mattered until the organization was trying to compete. They’re trying now, and that’s what happened.

All of it should be under question. Luke Getsy doesn’t look to be the next hot offensive head coaching candidate after all. Alan Williams had no sense for the moment, time and again, but that ultimately falls back on the head coach. In fact, it all does.

Getsy’s conservative play calling sucked throughout. But it was worse toward the end, akin to Nagy punting in the fourth quarter while down in a playoff game against the Saints in 2020.

He was guarding his groceries from being stolen in the store while still shopping. You haven’t paid for them yet brother, go peruse the aisles. Throw the ball down the field. What’s the worst thing that could happen? You lose? You’re down three scores!

The offensive line was bad, but the offensive line has been bad for the better part of the last decade now.

As the NFL tries to address offensive lines that have gotten so good at timing their quarterback’s cadence that they gain an advantage, the Bears are simultaneously unable to fire off the ball in unison. Every play, it looked like two guys jumped or the three other guys didn’t know the snap count.

You can’t trade the no.1 overall pick for a guy you target twice, and you can’t live by the HITS principles (Hustle, Intensity, Takeaways and (playing) Smart) and then do literally none of the H, I, T or S.

As for Fields, he certainly didn’t look great. I just don’t understand watching that game and him being a top-5 concern afterward.

I also don't understand being thrilled with Fields' performance by the end of last year and having that completely undone by Week One.

Remember last year’s Texans game? The entire fanbase was ready to move on at the quarterback position, once again. That was not the case two weeks later, even with the extenuating circumstances Fields was dealing with around him.

If the excuse for the play calling Sunday is that coaches don't trust Fields — I think it’d likely be the offensive line — that just doesn't make sense to me.

If the coaches genuinely don't trust Fields and schemed around that, it's negligent that they did not let the GM know that in the offseason. If they had, plans would have changed. Deductive reasoning would suggest they did not tell the GM that, and that's why we got D.J. Moore and not Bryce Young.

Ready to move on to Caleb Williams? What the hell is Williams going to do that Fields couldn’t do Sunday?

I’m ready for the headline.

Sept. 6, 2024

Williams Doesn’t Look Ready For NFL After Bears Debut

It’s fine for our patience to wane from a macro perspective. We’re all tired of the same old bullshit from this organization. But as tempting as it is, our patience shouldn’t wane in the micro.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Fields’ skills should be leveraged, and he should take more advantage of his escapism to throw the ball down the field when plays break down. But the coaching staff also has to put him and the rest of the skill players in positions to succeed.

In the same vein, Darnell Wright is going to be fine. Holy shit, guys, he’s a rookie starting at offensive tackle in the NFL. They generally take some time to get their feet underneath them.

In fact, the rookies were just about the only bright spot from the game. Roschon Johnson wanted to hit someone, at least. He looked like he’ll easily earn himself carries throughout the season, and probably be RB 1a or 1b by 2024.

On the other side of the ball, the same goes for Tyrique Stevenson. I was very happy with his performance.

Outside of that, I don’t know, Yannick Ngakoue looked okay.

It turns out that having eight players out of every training camp practice can come back to bite you out in the end. Who would’ve known that rolling it out there and yelling play ball wouldn’t work in the NFL.

Zero unison. Zero preparation. Zero adjustments.

It’s sink or swim this week in a game I had already chalked in as a win. Then, in Week One, the Bears got boat raced by the Packers and the Bucs beat the Vikings.

This could be falling in the same trap, but I really don’t think this Bears season is over. But massive improvements were imperative this week.

Todd Bowles is undoubtedly going to look at that game film and bring the pressure to Fields. It’s up to him — and the coaching staff — to rise to that challenge. If they don’t, they’ll be headed to Kansas City on the verge of an 0-3 start.

The Bears are 2.5-point underdogs.

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Earlier this year, I begged and pleaded for the Cubs to have a better sense of the moment — to grab win when they desperately needed it. I can no longer make those pleas, as they have exceeded my expectations, and then some, since.

But, on a more personal level, I needed them to sense the moment here. Probably 60% of Bears fans turning Sunday to Monday needed a good week from the only other hope in this town right now.

They did not deliver, losing 2 of 3 to an awful Rockies team before we all finally got some respite today on their day off.

The first of the three games was harder than it should have been. It required an awesome — but stressful and unnecessary — comeback in the ninth inning, in which Yan Gomes came in the clutch.

The second game featured a grossly wild inning that turned into four Rockie runs, but Javier Assad didn’t have it from the jump. The next game was a day game, with Jameson Taillon pitching, known in my playbook as an “ESPN app” game.

Marcus Stroman threw another bullpen this week, and has let the Cubs know he’s happy to help in any area they’d like him to at the end of the season and in the playoffs. Well, I hate to break it to you brother, but where we need ya is squarely in that starting rotation, pitching as you did in the early summer.

The only silver lining to this week’s slate was 1) watching Pete Crow-Armstrong, who the Cubs pulled up before the series, make two of the best catches I’ve seen all year in his first Center Field start. I think he has the chance to be one of the best outfielders in all of baseball, and quickly. He’s not just uber-talented, but clearly a gamer. He didn’t look 21 years old out there.

And, 2) Watching Kris Bryant see some success for his new team.

A strange joy, mixed with sadness, came over me watching Bryant desperately try to string some good at-bats together (he did), while all of our eyes were on the next big thing on The North Side — Crow-Armstrong — in Center field. A quick acknowledgment of time gone by, I guess.

But that only lasted a moment until I began fretting over the agonizing game ahead of me again.

The Cubs are in a tough spot. They’re now 4.5 back of the Brewers for the division, and only 2.5 up in the Wild Card.

It’s the injuries that concern me. There’s Stroman, of course, but more relevant is Adbert Alzolay going on the 15-day IL and Jeimer Candelario going on the 10-day IL. Candelario has been struggling mightily, so perhaps that propels a bounce back.

But the Cubs had grown to rely heavily on Alzolay, and now it’s up to the recently activated Brad Boxberger, Jose Cuas, Daniel Palencia, Michael Fulmer, and the familiar, but worn faces, (Leiter Jr., Merryweather) to fill in the gaps while he’s gone.

I already didn’t trust Ross’ bullpen management. Now the test got harder.

Next up is the Diamondbacks. Then the Pirates and Rockies, again. A Braves series follows, and now that they’ve clinched the division, hopefully that will be an easier matchup than it looks to be on paper. We’ll see.

The real question is whether the division will even be in play by the time the Brewers and Cubs face off at the very end of September.

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Thank you for reading another edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago! AS ALWAYS, I deeply appreciate it. If you enjoy it, please tell someone else to subscribe to the newsletter today.