Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Bears Down and LETS GO BULLS

Happy Friday Chicago!

When the beers and Bears talk are going down equally well on a Saturday night, that’s a peak human experience.

Then Sunday rolls around, which is why you shouldn’t use drugs or root for the Bears excessively.

Justin Fields had a real chance for a double-win this weekend after USC Quarterback — and projected no. 1 pick — Caleb Williams laid an egg against Notre Dame in a game the majority of Chicago football fans were likely watching. But then he laid an egg of his own Sunday and dislocated his thumb.

Instead of a win-win for Fields, it became a lose-lose for Bears fans: to watch the current QB — who was beginning to win back the masses — struggle after gaining momentum; and to watch his potential replacement look rather ordinary the night prior.

For those who don’t know, Caleb Williams paints his nails. Also for those that don’t know, I don’t hate that he does that at all.

A few reasons why: he’s the best football player in the country and likely the first pick in the overall draft. He can do whatever he wants. And, no. 2, I used to paint my nails when I was a kid, which I guess makes me a bit biased. I thought it was cool and then I started to conform to societal norms like the sorry sissy I am. I’m not dying to paint my nails now (hold this thought), but if I was the USC quarterback and that was in the cards, I probably wouldn’t hesitate.

A group of people with dreadful, normal lives that have been programmed to wear the same thing every single day — along with everyone else — think the guy living out their dream is uncool because he paints his nails.

“But I am living the dream, my wife and my kids…” BOOOO! Shut up, ass hole! Everybody else has got a wife and kids, too.

I had “All-American QB” ahead of “Two iPad-addicted kids and a nagging wife” on my childhood wishlist, but maybe that’s just me.

I don’t think Williams is going to lose any sleep over that crticism. I’m just worried I may.

So, I almost don’t want the Bears to draft Caleb Williams because he paints his nails.

And that’s just because I can already imagine the nauseating discussion the first Monday after a bad game: “The guy paints his nails, for crying out loud! What if he breaks one? Are we out of a quarterback the next week? Give me a break!”

I just don’t know if I’m up for our 30th quarterback of the 21st century coming in with another thing I need to defend outside of his play.

I can just see myself painting my nails in solidarity with him, like Billy Madison fake pissing his pants, and then having to explain to my co-workers that the Bears QB has painted finger nails too, and that I have this newsletter, and it’s a joke… as they all stare at me and nod their heads, horrified.

These are the sorts of daydreams I have, driven by massive internal conflict, amid a massive, actual global conflict.

Other than the Packers loss, the Vikings loss was probably the worst of this young season. Expectations create misery, and those are the only two games I entered with expectations. A fool, I am.

Worse yet, the Bulls season starts Wednesday. That means it’s time to start throwing on the Social Network soundtrack and breaking down what I think the team needs to do differently in order to win 40 games instead of 38.

When I was still living with my parents, my Dad yelled upstairs, “Is everything good? What’s going on up there?” Everything was great, in fact. It’s just that I was screaming at the top of my lungs “BULLS MONEYLINE,” and syncing that to a video of William Wallace yelling FREEDOOOOOOM at the end of Braveheart. Not sure what he was so thrown off about.

Let’s just say, I’m not sure how many hype videos I’ll be making this year. In fandom, the climb is the most fun part, only rivaled by reaching the mountain top. What’s not fun is the proverbial plateau on Mount Everest where you’re stepping over human feces and running out of water, all while thinking about turning back. That’s where the Bulls are.

And that’s sort of where I’m at, at this point of this year, in Chicago sports. And fuck, man, Tom Skilling retired. I haven’t watched the news or the weather in decades, but I liked knowing that Skilling was still ripping it up on WGN.

Nevertheless, I’m grabbing my quill and ice picks and continuing to climb.

People always ask me, “How do you do it? How do you keep it up? I certainly couldn’t watch Bulls and Bears games all week and then write about it.” I tell them, “That’s why no one will remember your name.”

No one has ever said that to me, but that’s what I’d say if they did. I’m going to practice that in the mirror tonight while I paint my nails and my face, ready to be the clown again for kickoff on Sunday and tipoff on Wednesday.

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Matt Eberflus had his out. The only thing he needed to do was win Sunday, and everything would have changed. Soldier Field was rocking for a 1-4 team. The only thing that stood between him and a smooth freeway was a below-average Vikings team.

And boy was it an underwhelming effort. It’s not a great sign when your team looks more prepared off of three days rest than it does off of 10 days rest.

With Justin Fields and the Bears, every game seems completely independent from the last. Even if two games are bad in a row, they look entirely different. Then there’s an easy 40-point effort in which the Bears offense can’t be stopped, only to be followed up by a 13-point effort in which it only needed 20 to win.

The game plan was stale yet again, namely on offense. Fields was bad, with just 58 yards passing and 46 yards rushing before being knocked out, and so was the offensive line. I’m sure many of you have seen the video circulating of two Bears offensive linemen blocking each other as Fields gets pressured. It would be much more funny if it wasn’t so unsurprising.

As mentioned above, Tyson Bagent will be starting for the Bears this Sunday. In doing so, he will be the 29th quarterback to start for the Bears since 2000. That number, while staggering to most, almost feels low.

I’ll apologize in advance, but I just can’t get the juices flowing for Bagent. I’m happy a Division 2 kid made the big leagues, and I’m happy he’s a prospect and not some 35-year-old bum who the coach is friends with. But I don’t see this being a Colin Kaepernick on Monday Night Football versus the Bears situation.

However you feel about Fields, losing him makes watching the Bears significantly less bearable. For those of us who have held out hope that he’s the guy, there’s no opportunity to watch an exciting development. For those that are out on him, there’s no opportunity to watch an exciting play. There’s D.J. Moore, who will likely find it a challenge to get the ball from Bagent. Then there’s a subpar, unexciting defense and a subpar, unexciting special teams unit.

And, hell, at least for this week, there’s nothing exciting about the opponent, either. The Raiders rank next to the Saints and Titans as teams I’d least like to spend my time watching in the NFL right now.

I’ll give Bagent credit, he theoretically almost led the Bears to a comeback Sunday. But did anyone really believe that was going to materialize on that final drive?

The fumble earlier in the game is on him, but I’m also sure that the Bears are the only team that could turn that fumble — which rolled on the ground sideways for 15 seconds — to end up in a touchdown for the defense. That’s not on Bagent, that’s on decades of Bears football, baby.

My largest takeaway from the game was how outcoached Luke Getsy was. He’s certainly no boygenius, and he’s not strong enough of a coach to match up with Brian Flores, who ran circles around him from start to finish. The Vikings blitz far more than any team in the league, and the Bears didn’t seem ready for it.

The Bears lost the turnover battle (I’m still unsure how in the world T.J. Edwards was ruled out of bounds after a review) and lost the sack battle, 5-2. Despite the rest of the noise, you can probably boil it down to that in a shitty 19-13 game. After all, the Bears outgained the Vikings by 50+ yards and held the ball for 10 minutes longer.

As for blitz readiness and taking sacks, that’s part Fields, part Getsy, and part the offensive line, no doubt.

But in both instances where the Bears went into a blitz-heavy matchup — against the Bucs and the Vikings — they seemed especially ill-prepared, despite all the data we have on Flores and Todd Bowles’ tendencies.

It’s unfair to even be mad at the defense’s effort, even though I want to be. It’s just such a non-factor defense. I miss the days where the Bears were awesome on defense and near-incompetent on offense. At least I felt something then. Hell, I enjoyed the hell out of a 15-6 Iowa win on Saturday.

This team has zero identity right now. The “Us Against the World” mentality can be felt, but if you don’t have the guys on the roster, and the guys on the coaching staff, it doesn’t really matter.

Even with that loss, if Fields were playing this week, I could have totally convinced myself of a 2022 Lions-esque renaissance from this team. The Raiders, Saints and Panthers are three of the Bears next four opponents. I was sort of hoping the Bears-Panthers wasn’t going to be the punchline bowl that it’s now destined to be.

.500 by Thanksgiving seemed feasible. It no longer does. Maybe that’s a good thing, that we ripped the Band-Aid off now. Now we can watch Bagent-Aidan O’Connell or Bagent-Brian Hoyer with a large solo pizza on Sunday in peace.

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The DeMar Derozan-Zach LaVine-Nikola Vucevic experiment is over. It didn’t work. Those three played together more than any other three players in the league last year, and their net rating was about a zero.

Now, if an alien were reading this, it would say, ‘So, they changed things up, right?’ That alien doesn’t know Jerry Reinsdorf or his teams, though. And once it gets to know them, it may just return to whatever planet it came from.

A logical person, on the other hand, may also read that and think, “So, that’s it, the Bulls will be bad again this year.” And, yes, that’s probably the case.

However.

What it really means for those of us that plan to live and die with this middling ass team this year is that other players need to be the difference. The “stars” at the top of the lineup have taken this team as far as it can go. Spoiler Alert: it’s not very far.

If the Bulls are going to be a legitimate playoff team this year, there’s a few things that need to happen. I’ll break those down, here and now.

A ‘Vintage’ LaVine

Okay, I’m already going back on what I just said about the three stars.

Zach LaVine is the best player on the Bulls. He needs to be treated as such throughout the season. A 34-year old DeMar DeRozan, while talented and durable, cannot be the focal point of the Bulls offense in 2023-2024.

LaVine is coming off of a healthy offseason, which he did not enjoy last year. I have semi-high hopes for him returning to the best version of himself, the version we saw from 2019-2021.

Free throws and three-pointers

The Bulls shot profile needs to drastically change in order for their offense to get above league average (they were below that line last year).

The most efficient points in contemporary NBA basketball come from three things: rim buckets, free throws and three pointers. The Bulls have had a three-point shooting problem for the last three years, and have done little to fix it.

But it’s not just making threes — they do have some guys now who can do that — it’s taking them. The Bulls took by far the least amount of threes per game last year: 28.8. The next-lowest team took over 30. It’s just not a sustainable offensive system. They actually shot them relatively well — about 36% — but didn’t take enough of them.

The encouraging thing is that this is on the coaching staff’s radar. Billy Donovan mentioned it at the opening press conference and has mentioned it multiple other times, including once after the Bulls attempted 26 threes in a preseason game.

This postgame quote is perfect: “What we're doing is shot faking and passing [threes] up and trying to drive the ball, and we're not even going to the rim,” Donovan said. “We're driving to the elbow and stopping and trying to pass. And we end up with a more difficult shot than we had prior to that."

That coaching has to get through. If it doesn’t, the Bulls are guaranteed to have another subpar offensive year.

The same goes with free throw attempts. Though I’d love to, we can’t blame the referees for everything. CHGO’s Will Gottlieb pointed out last week that, outside of DeRozan and LaVine, not a single Bulls player averaged one trip to the free throw line last year. Vucevic was third with only 1.8 free throw attempts (you get two per trip, you know) per game.

The Bulls were 27th in free throw attempts per game last year.

Without adding anyone (which they’re hellbent on), the Bulls could be so much better by just making better offensive choices. By taking more threes and going more aggressively toward the basket.

Patrick Williams

Hello, my old friend.

Patrick Williams is basically the poster child for Donovan’s above quote. He regularly pump fakes off a good shot (often traveling afterward), only to pass out or take a lower-quality shot.

This is the year for Williams. I have been a believer of his, and never thought any of the three previous years were make-or-break for him, particularly because he missed basically his entire sophomore season with a broken wrist.

If Williams elevates, the entire team will.

He doesn’t have to average 20 points per game, but 15 would be nice. He needs to shoot more threes. He needs to be more aggressive — shooting, defensively, etc. That’s another Donovan talking point that’s been reiterated this offseason, which I also appreciate.

He’ll likely make $80 million more in his NBA career whether he does elevate or not, but for this Bulls team, he holds the cards. They need an impactful wing on both sides of the floor, and that spot is his for the taking.

The point guard position

Lonzo Ball has become this Bulls team’s Derrick Rose. Not in talent, not in production. Instead, in the sense that we have to keep hearing about his injury years after the fact as if it’s an excuse for losing in the past and the future.

Heading into this season, the Bulls have one of the worst point guard groups in the NBA… and I love all of them!

Alex Caruso is a point guard, sort of. He’s unbelievable. With that same group mentioned above (LaVine, DeRozan and Vucevic), if you add Caruso into the mix, their net rating immediately skyrocketed 10 points upward.

He was never going to win it because he plays for the Bulls, but I think that he should have been in the conversation for defensive player of the year. And I think he’s the best perimeter defender in the league.

He’s also not an offensive initiator, though.

Neither is Jevon Carter, who the Bulls brought in this offseason, and who I also love. And it’s not even because he’s from Chicago, born in 1995, and bald.

I watched Carter dominate the Bulls’ ball handlers firsthand in the Bucks playoff series in 2022.

Carter is the heavy favorite for the player that most often makes me flex in my apartment alone watching games this year. I can’t wait to watch him. He also shoots three pointers well. But, he’s also not a great offensive playmaker.

The same goes for Ayo Dosunmu, who disappointed me last year. I still believe in him as a difference maker, just not as a starting point guard.

That leaves Coby White, who I think is a great offensive player that has improved dramatically defensively. But he’s not a great passer and not a great playmaker. He’s set to start at point guard, but I can’t see him lasting there past the All-Star break. He just doesn’t have it in him.

All of this is to say that Donovan is going to need to find a way to maximize the offense with the point guards he’s been dealt. It won’t be easy.

Defense

The Bulls had a top-5 defense in the league last year. They had the best defensive team after the All-Star break. That’s an incredible feat, given that LaVine, DeRozan and Vucevic are all poor defenders.

The offense needs to improve, but for the Bulls to be a playoff team, the defense cannot take a step back. Carter and the Bulls other addition — Torrey Craig — will aid in this effort.

I think they can do it. Time will tell.

Expectations

Alright, if you’re still reading after that Social Network-fueled breakdown, first of all, thank you.

The Bulls over/under win total this year is 37.5. They won 40 last year with an awful close-game record, which should return to the mean. What I also don’t think people truly realize about this Bulls team is that they’re all in. This isn’t a team that’s going to tear things down or fire their coach midseason. For better or worse, they’re going for “it,” whatever it is to them.

I think the Bulls will probably win anywhere from 40-43 games this year. And that, my friends, makes them an OVER.

LETS GO BULLS!

Other predictions: Portland (UNDER 28.5); Minnesota (OVER 44.5); Brooklyn (UNDER 37.5); Houston (UNDER 31.5).

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Thanks for reading the newsletter. Keep the comment section rolling! And I’ll see you next week.