Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Maybe You Don't Still Have to Come Through Chicago

Happy Friday Chicago!

It’s great to be back after a week away. Well, not really. I return to a (somehow) even worse Bears situation and the Cubs nearing the end of a historic collapse.

I would say sorry for not writing a newsletter last week, but I’m not. I was wish-I-still-lived-at-home-with-mommy sick, praying on Zoom calls that snot would not start caving its way through the hairs on my mustache while having serious work conversations.

A late night writing session recapping the Bears felt like a herculean task, so I took the easy way out. Tough times don’t last, tough people do. But I don’t want to be tough anymore, I don’t want to be a loyal fan anymore. I want to opt out.

Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve been the victim of: a Bears loss; Bears coaches calling out Bears players; Justin Fields calling out Bears coaches; a head cold; the Bears defensive coordinator mysteriously leaving the team; Bears fans speculating that he is Jared from Subway; a lawyer refuting that he’s Jared from Subway; that Bears defensive coach resigning abruptly; $100,000 of Soldier Field’s equipment being stolen; the Iowa Hawkeyes losing 31-0; Taylor Swift screaming in my face; a 31-point first-half Bears deficit; D’Agostinos marking my pizza order as “for pick-up” and not “for delivery,” unbeknownst to me; Taylor Swift again screaming in my face; Travis Kelce doing a variation of the Crank That (Soulja Boy) dance to bring the Chiefs lead to 41-0; another Bears loss; the Cubs blowing two 8th inning-or later leads, one being a 7-run Braves comeback; the Cubs being swept; the Cubs falling out of a Wild Card spot; the elevator in my building breaking.

I think that covers it.

My friends and I attended an Iowa game right after we graduated years back, and they blew a late 4th-quarter lead to Wisconsin. We left drunk and pissed off, cursing Iowa’s coaching and the game for 20 minutes straight on our walk back. After a brief moment of silence interrupted the bitching, one of my friends just screamed “And Mitch Trubisky fucking sucks.” It was both completely irrelevant and totally relevant at the same time.

That’s what these last couple weeks have felt like: a comedy of errors and almost too absurdly bad for the idiom “when it rains it pours” to feel appropriate.

I actually threw on incognito mode on Safari last week, peered to my left and right, and placed a real, binding wager on the Bears against the Chiefs. That was a better indication of me being sick than the runny nose.

But alas, life goes on. The quill has again been dusted off and now I fight my fate, yet again, with the pen.

The Bears are underdogs this week — at home — against a Broncos team that gave up 70 and lost by 50 last week.

I’ve heard a lot of the “this is rock bottom” takes the last few days. My brothers and sisters of the fourth phase, please never say things like that. Firstly, are we sure it hasn’t been this bad before — under Trestman, under Nagy? Secondly, “this is rock bottom” suggests that there’s nowhere lower to go. And if you believe the Bears’ situation can’t get worse than this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

That dogshit song that goes “the house don’t fall when the bones are good” randomly came to my head last week, and thank God it did. It works well. I think that’s generally true, in that the Bears organization — the foundation, the bones — is so bad that a few mere rain drops are enough to kill a quarterback for good, sink another season and have the know-nothings screaming “this is rock bottom!”

We’re all a part of a traveling circus, with the only issue being that it never leaves town.

We all sit around trying to place blame. It’s Fields! It’s Getsy! It’s Eberflus! It’s Poles! That sounds eerily similar to… It’s Trubisky! It’s Nagy! It’s Pace! All the while, the McCaskeys sit around smiling, watching the idiots (us) repeat our yearly routines.

No matter the organization, no matter the business, it all starts at the top. If a restaurant has a mice problem, a service problem, cold food, etc., it’s eventually not a bunch of isolated incidents, and instead an inherent problem with the restaurant.

The only difference is, we can stop going to that restaurant. But we know — and the owners know — we won’t stop going back to the Bears. It’s a great business model.

There’s an Irish song by The Saw Doctors called “Same Oul’ Town.” It’s about a man living in a small village who has nothing in life to excite him, with every week turning back over to Monday, and him being met with the same faces, the same rain, the same streets, and, you guessed it: the same town.

Somehow, it took my father nearly two decades (thanks to me) to realize the song — while great — is perhaps the most depressing song ever created.

Same oul faces, Same oul streets, Same oul people is all you meet, Too long waiting, Standing round, I'm sick and tired of this Same oul town.

The years turn over and we’re met with the same oul’ Bears.

And that’s how I feel today, about everything.

It’s the Same old story, Same ould town.

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A brief interlude here to discuss Taylor Swift’s appearance at the Chiefs-Bears game. I’m sure you are all nauseous hearing about it by now, and I can’t figure out why I’m not.

And therein lies the reason for this section.

I really don’t care about Taylor Swift. I think she has some good songs. I don’t feel strongly about her, one way or the other, and yet I’m captivated by these developments between her and Travis Kelce.

I never cared about one of her relationships before, until now. I guess for the first time, I was able to put myself in the shoes of the man she was dating. That’s probably the most insane thing you’ve ever read, that somehow my brain makes a connection between Travis Kelce and I. Nevertheless.

It could have been a copying mechanism to deal with what was actually happening in the game, too, but I just couldn’t stop asking myself questions (I was alone, pizza-less, in my apartment).

The biggest question I kept coming back to is where you take her after the game. Like, you can’t take one of the most famous women in the world to just like a nice steakhouse in Kansas City, Missouri. You barely even know her, too, and it may end up just being awkward.

In the end, it appears Kelce rented out a restaurant for him, Taylor, her friends, and his teammates to go to. And there I had it: the answer to my question.

What a perfect idea. That way, as you’re trying to successfully chat up a superstar, you can have teammates casually strolling by saying shit like, “you balled out today, as usual” and “this is the toughest dude I’ve met” while patting you lightly on the chest. Then you can feign modesty and avoid any awkward silences at the same time. Brilliant. Job well done.

The shots to Taylor after every Chiefs touchdown did remind me of one of the my least favorite sports memories of all time, though, which then reminded me that I could deal with her jumping up and down.

Rajai Davis’ game-tying home run in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series. And this is what showed up on the television, when I was at my lowest.

Yes, that’s Yankee Fan LeBron James. Remember it like it was yesterday.

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After the last good Bears season in 2018, they became obsessed with finding a field goal kicker. After the double-doink against the Eagles, it was the one weakness they felt they had to correct.

They were wrong, of course. But I do find it funny that, five years later, without a winning season since, under a new regime, the only thing I can think of that the Bears are (maybe) above average at is kicking field goals.

Cairo Santos (AKA King Tut) is 4/4 on the year. Please clap.

Now the Bears have reshuffled their roster, front office, and the last name of their head coach. The Eberflus variety of the Bears’ Matt is here.

There’s two faults hovering above Eberflus’ head right now, and neither may belong to him. One is this season, which I’m not entirely sure is his fault completely, but he at least is going to have to take a good chunk of it. Then there’s his face, which looks dumber every time the Bears lose — and that is not his fault. But it is still a reality.

In points allowed per game, the Bears rank 31st.

In yards allowed per game, the Bears rank 30th.

In rushing defense, the Bears rank 31st.

In passing defense, the Bears rank 30th.

In defensive sack percentage, the Bears rank 32nd.

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In points scored per game, the Bears rank 27th.

In yards per game, the Bears rank 29th.

In rushing offense, the Bears rank 17th. (LETS GO BEARS!)

In passing offense, the Bears rank 31st.

In offensive sack percentage, the Bears rank 30th. (Justin Fields gets sacked on nearly 13% of dropbacks, the Bears sack the opposing QB on 1% of dropbacks.)

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In giveaways per game, the Bears rank 27th.

In turnover margin per game, the Bears rank 27th.

In wins on the season, the Bears are tied for 32nd.

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The Bears signed a bevy of free agents this offseason, a few of which cost them a lot of money: DeMarcus Walker, Tremaine Edmunds, T.J. Edwards, Yannick Ngakoue, and Andrew Billings, among others, on defense; D’Onta Foreman, Robert Tonyan, and Nate Davis, among others, on offense.

Instead of plugging in more stats here, let’s go through a thought exercise. If I showed you the last two Bears games with the sound off — and you had no prior knowledge of what signings were made during the offseason — would you be able to point out any of the above additions?

Tens of millions of dollars spent, and there’s virtually no difference in production. Well, there sort of is. The Bears are worse.

Now we get back to the blame game. Is it those players? Is it the coaches — Eberflus, Getsy and co.? Is it Poles?

That just doesn’t seem like a worthwhile exercise anymore.

There’s not a single press conference that is reassuring, either. For instance, Matt Eberflus said earlier this week that the Bears “need to send 5, send 6" to get more sacks, which just reminded me of this tweet.

The most nauseating part of this experience is the excuses I keep hearing. They always go something like this: “Getsy doesn’t trust X, so he doesn’t do Y.” He has reservations about the interior line, or Fields running one sort of play. Eberflus doesn’t trust his blitzes to get to Mahomes, so that’s why he didn’t blitz much.

Hey, guys, I don’t know if you’ve realized, but you’ve been down two scores or more in your first three games. I don’t give a shit what you do or don’t trust, it can’t get any worse! Mix it up!

You did one thing really well last year — rushing the football. Tell Fields to run like Johnny Manziel in College Station out there, for crying out loud.

I really still believe Fields is far from the problem. He even threw some nice deep balls late last week (when he was finally allowed and able to), but they were not caught. Still, he absolutely has not been what I expected this year. But every single time he took a sack last week, I watched the behind-the-quarterback replay review closely. And each time, there wasn’t a single receiver open.

On the other side, Kelce and the other Chiefs receivers are improvising routes to sit in the middle of the Bears soft zone, while the best quarterback in the league has 8 seconds to throw.

Greg Olsen was great on this game. It was maddening and humorous to hear him say things like, “8 guys in the box here, don’t want to run here” and then watch the Bears immediately hand the ball off into the middle of the line for a negative play.

I’m fine with criticism of Fields, but it just doesn’t even feel relevant at this point to the overall problem.

Likewise, defensively, no one is playing well. But with a legitimately non-existent pass rush, it’s hard to even evaluate the defensive backfield. It’s impossible to play good coverage when the opposing quarterback has unlimited time to throw.

Now, injuries are coming to the surface, too. That defensive backfield is going to look even worse if Eddie Jackson and Jaylon Johnson both can’t play Sunday.

The Bears are a laughing stock, yet again, as they kickoff a joke of a game just four weeks into the season. I’m just not sure what else there is to say at this point.

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All I wanted this year was the Cubs to play meaningful games in September. Be careful what you wish for.

The Cubs weren’t projected to — or going to — win the World Series this year, so there won’t be much national discussion of the collapse we’re currently witnessing. But that’s all it can be described as: a collapse.

A collapse that saw them go from a game back of the Brewers in the division, to out of the division race, to firmly in a Wild Card spot, to out of a Wild Card spot. All in about three weeks.

FanGraphs had the Cubs odds of making the playoffs at 93% after sweeping the Giants in early September. With one more series to play — against the Brewers, which I had zeroed on as a winner-take-all series — their odds are now at just 18%.

It’s pretty cruel how this has all gone down.

Seiya Suzuki, who has been one of the hottest players in baseball, makes (or misses) the play that will define the season. With two outs in the 8th inning in Game 1 against the Braves this week, Suzuki ran over to a fly ball that probably should have been Cody Bellinger’s ball and ended up missing it. The 6-0 lead had already been erased, but now Suzuki’s error had given the Braves the lead.

You could tell just how devastated he was afterward. It was heartbreaking. But you can’t blame the guy that is slashing .361/.422/.701 in September (not even accounting for his 3 hits Thursday night) and responsible for a well over 1.0 OPS in August and September combined.

You can blame some other things, though. And some of those things are no one’s fault. Injuries: to Adbert Alzolay, namely. To Jeimer Candelario. To Marcus Stroman, who I wrote last week had to be himself again when he returned for the Cubs to have a chance in October. He was not himself.

The bullpen put in a valiant effort all year. By the end of it, they were hurt, worn down, and, eventually, unreliable. Justin Steele, too, was worn down, looking gassed by every 6th inning.

I had an intrusive thought on Wednesday, right before the Cubs blew the second game of the series to the Braves, again in the 9th. Did I even want them to make the playoffs? The stress of these September games — the ones I wished for — was already too much.

To top it all off, the Mets blew a 9th inning lead against the Marlins Thursday night, after Anthony Kay, formerly of the Cubs — thanks for the h/t from a SGCTC reader — came in for the save. That game is actually still suspended, with the Mets down 1 to the Marlins in the bottom of the ninth.

You could also blame the manager. I’ve found Ross to be maddening at times throughout the season, but I also think that’s part of being a baseball fan. But, man, there were some tough moments.

What’s tougher for him is that the Cubs are going to end the season without a playoff run, but with a run differential (about +100) better than any team in the National League but the Braves and Dodgers. Better than the Brewers, better than the Phillies, better than the Diamondbacks, and about 160 runs better than the Marlins.

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Sit down on here, son, next to me. You just read all the above and think the Bulls are actually going to successfully trade for Jrue Holiday?

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