Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
God Bless the Chicago Bears and Bulls
GOOD MORNING CHICAGO! Happy Holidays and welcome back to the best Chicago sports newsletter.
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And if you missed last week’s newsletter on falling back in love with the Bears, and more, read that here first: https://sgctc.substack.com/p/still-gotta-come-through-chicago-9ec
Thomas Paine woke up one morning in 1775 and decided it was the day to begin penning Common Sense, a plea to the then-colonies to join the revolution against the British and begin what is now considered the United States of America.
Likewise, at about 11:00 p.m. Monday night, I embarked on a similar quest. I’ve written frequently about the turnover of the Bulls front office — and how this team finally deserves your support.
But I needed to reach more Chicagoans to have some influence. The American government is squeezing out its lower-class residents, only allowing a $600 check for this year-end stimulus. So we’re taking matters into our own hands.
Thomas Paine’s rally to help Americans — Common Sense — became the most widely-read American title of all time.
My rally to help all Chicagoans get a few extra bucks is positioned below, and is also… common sense.
View this video, whether you have a Twitter or not, right now. As the Bulls get set to face the Hawks tonight in the first game of a new era — dubbed the Renaissance — I need you to be on board.
I understand why you left, but god dammit it’d be wrong if you stayed away. Come back, Bulls fans. New and old.
Watch this, and share it widely. The goal is to reach 2,000 Chicagoans by 7 p.m.
God bless you and welcome back.
Folks, I mean, the Bulls over/under is listed as a percentage on DraftKings right now at 41.5%. That means if they were to play all 72 games they’re slated to (10 less than normal), they’d have to win 30 games to hit the over. 30-42.
If you think the Bulls won’t win at least 30 games I don’t want you subscribing to this newsletter anymore.
I’ve waited too long. I’ve fought too hard to get rid of these morons in the front office.
I’m not the Boy Who Cried Wolf. On the contrary, I’ve told friends and family it was their right to abandon the franchise over the last few years. And many of you did.
But now, I’m screaming for you to get back aboard the ship.
The Bulls may not make the playoffs, but hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they reached the play-in tournament — a new NBA feature that posits the 7th through 10th seeds against each other at the end of the season to duke it out for the 7th and 8th seeds.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if they nabbed one of those final seeds, either.
The Bulls have been awful the last few years, but they have a better team, coach, GM, and president this year than they did last year. And last year, their O/U win total was similar to this year’s, scaling for the amount of games they are expected to play.
Pat Williams has already proved to Billy Donovan — who has won two national championships and coached a myriad of NBA playoff teams — that he belongs in the starting lineup.
That’s right: the guy that everyone cried about the Bulls drafting 4th overall a month ago because they didn’t know his name and he didn’t start as a freshman at Florida State is about to start his first NBA game ever.
As he should.
For those of you who loved what the early 2010 Bulls meant to you, and yearn for that same fire that you felt rooting for Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, and Taj Gibson, you’re about to see a team akin to that this year.
They may not be the best team in the East, nor close to it, but they’ll be fun to watch every night, and they will play hard.
I’ll guarantee that.
Lauri Markkanen didn’t get a deal before the deadline this week, meaning he’ll become a restricted free agent after this year. Boo-hoo. A new sheriff is in town, one who doesn’t reward players with $20 million-per-year contracts for just showing up, being lengthy, and semi-athletic.
Bravo. Prove it, Lauri.
Instead, Billy Donovan is going to put the best guys on the floor and nourish them on their way to becoming the best players they can be. What a change that’ll be.
The way Donovan looks is already worth four wins.
Let’s say you know absolutely nothing about basketball. Which coach do you think would lead your NBA team to more wins?
This guy?
Or this one?
And don’t say I didn’t warn you. When the Bulls are all of a sudden 14-12 and in the playoff hunt, I don’t want you asking me to slow the train down. This thing leaves the station at 7 p.m. tonight and it’s making no stops until the Chicago air feels warm again.
The Bulls are going to leverage their best players: Wendell Carter Jr., Coby White, Zach LaVine (ugh), Lauri Markkanen (ugh), and Pat Williams, as well as a slew of young role players energized by playing for a real franchise for the first time. And they’re going to win a respectable amount of games.
How you view the Bulls now will not be how you view the Bulls in June — that’s a promise.
And when the Bulls go, say, 34-36, you’ll wish you believed in them. And you’ll wish you had that extra cash in your pocket to join us at the Bulls OVER party somewhere in downtown Chicago where everyone will be vaccinated and the new roaring ‘20s will be kicking off.
We’ll dance, we’ll sing, we’ll hug. Everyone will enter the bar with “Sirius” playing and then we’ll convince ourselves that the Bulls may be on the verge of a championship in 2022.
And it’ll break my heart if you miss out on it.
STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO! See you at 7 p.m. tonight.
Oh you thought I only had one new banner? That’s right, we’re breaking out the SGCTC Walter Payton artwork for this one.
The Bears pulled off their second straight win Sunday, and eclipsed 30 points for the third straight game.
You can call me dumb and naive. I may be the former, but I’m not the latter.
The Bears have failed grossly this year. They lost six games in a row in which their offense looked completely helpless.
They have a general manager who has delivered zero wins during his tenure, which has lasted over half of a decade now. Their offense only became competent when the head coach — the offensive guru — gave up play calling duties. They have a monstrous amount of money to pay to players of a .500 win team, and are likely going to be hamstrung moving forward.
They are headed for an average season, and thus, an average draft pick. Their recent success has kept them from having their choice at a new, young quarterback.
All of that is objectively bad. And I still want everyone gone, and yes, that includes Mitch Trubisky, who has played valiantly these past few weeks and deserved better than the Bears as his first landing spot in the league.
Having said all of that, I’m still a little kid at heart, man. I cannot root for the Bears to lose. I cannot even watch a Bears game neutrally, willing to accept either outcome.
If Chicago’s football team is playing, I’m all in.
Watching the Cubs for a decade-plus before 2015 will teach you how to do that. Hey, and watching the Bears will do that to you too, I guess.
Life is too short to be sour about your team winning football games, no matter what the long-term effects may be.
So goddammit, Bear Down.
I cheered my ass off for the Bears Sunday, and I cheered my ass off for the Eagles later that day in order to give the Bears a better shot at the playoffs.
While the Eagles couldn’t pull off the upset, which would’ve put the Bears squarely in the driver’s seat, a lot else happened in that afternoon slate that boded well for us.
The Jets won, which now puts the Jaguars (next week’s opponent) in line to nab Trevor Lawrence with the first pick. There’s no shot they’re blowing that with a win over these last two weeks.
The Saints lost, and that’s important because they’re fighting with the Packers for the no.1 seed in NFC. Now, it’s likely that the Packers Week 17 matchup will mean nothing against the Bears. That sets the Bears up for a better chance to sneak into the playoffs, and also a better chance to break all of our hearts on the last day of the season.
The Jets also beat the Rams, which means the Rams will have more to play for come Week 17 when they face the Cardinals, who currently stand in the way of the Bears for the last seed in the playoffs.
Before that, the Cards will play the 49ers, who are bad, but usually frisky.
If the Bears tie with the Cardinals record-wise at 9-7, the Bears will get the nod because they have not played head-to-head, they’ll likely have the same NFC record, and the Bears will have the third tiebreaker (record against common opponents) over them.
It’s an arduous journey, and one I wish we weren’t on. But as I said last week:
Now, if the Bears win two games and need a win at Soldier against Green Bay to finish it off… we better get every vaccinated front-line worker in Chicago in that goddamn stadium and do whatever we can to get into the playoffs.
But if we do get to that point, we’ll just have to know that we did ourselves in, and it will have probably been for the worse. Every guy we wanted gone during the six-game losing streak will be back, we won’t have a top choice at a new QB, and we’ll be right back where we started.
I want you to stay in the cave, the fox hole. But if you want to get out and fight, god dammit, I have no choice but to go down fighting with you.
It’s not a good idea to let our guard down and start screaming PLAYOFFS with our shirts off. But if your shirt is coming off, mine is too.
Bear Down, and let’s get this 7th seed.
As for the game, Mitch is still, despite a better performance, a one-read quarterback. If his first guy isn’t there, the play probably isn’t going to work out.
But we don’t need to focus on Mitch as much anymore, because our incompetent head coach is no longer calling the plays. He still lacks in-game awareness, despite having virtually no job but roaming the sidelines, and routinely misses out on things that head coaches shouldn’t miss out on. Those include things like situational timeouts, challenges, when to settle for a FG and when to be aggressive, etc.
But Offensive Coordinator Bill Lazor’s command of the offense has further proved the point that Nagy needs to be fired. The offense has been night and day since he took over, even when Foles was still manning the offense.
It is an embarrassment to the entire organization that we hired a coach who’s team gets better the less he’s involved. But that’s where we’re at.
The offense actually bailed out the defense this week, a spectacle I never though these eyes would see.
David Montgomery eased the burden on Mitch, and the offensive line opened up holes all day for him. Why take acid to feel like you’re hallucinating when all you have to do is strip Nagy of his play calling duties?
The world feels warmer and fuzzier without that ass hole staring at his play sheet. Holes appear on offense and Mitch appears to be a top-20 QB.
If there’s a drug that you can take to make me see that every weekend, sign me up, as well as the rest of Chicago.
Greg Jennings, who was the color analyst for Sunday’s game and had virtually nothing intelligent to say, did mention one thing that piqued my interest.
"Bill Lazor,” Jennings said… “Knows how to call an offense that hones in on what guys are good at.”
Or something like that.
And that’s the point. Some of you think Mitch hung the moon, and that’s alright. Some of you think he’s the worst quarterback in Bears history. I’m somewhere in the middle.
But one thing is undoubtedly true: He looks a helluva lot better now that he’s not being forced to adjust to Matt Nagy’s way — and the numbers bear that out.
Merch will be live in January. The Bulls season kicks off tonight. The Bears are in the hunt.
Remember four things for me:
Tell someone to subscribe, so I can give you some SGCTC merch
Bet disgusting amounts of money on the Bulls OVER season win total, so we can party when the spring turns into summer with the winnings
Don’t ever feel bad about rooting for your football team… and
STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO!
Next week: Tony LaRussa says he doesn’t have a problem and the Sox continue to make good moves when Jerry Reinsdorf is not involved.
LOVE THE VIDEO!!! LETS GO!
Ange, I am in on the Bulls full tilt! I agree on everything except you might be being a bit harsh on Lauri. Fred Hoiberg said last year when he came in for a game vs. Northwestern that Lauri was the most coachable player he ever had and was capable of great things which was a total jab at Boylen and how far Lauri had fallen. Lets see what Billy can do with him.
I wish to god I had a source inside the Bears Organization. This is a different team with Lazor calling the plays BUT I still see where we march downfield and get in or near the Red Zone, things change. I know that is Nagy in Lazor's ear saying "Lets make sure we get at least 3 here" or "Lets stick to safe play calling at this point". Take for example Mitch's interception. We move quickly down field to the 5 yard line. PLAT ACTION ON 1STD DOWN PLEASE! No, dive right, dive left, throw a jump ball to Graham in the corner. Its Nagy. Always has been Nagy! Always will be Nagy!