Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Where To Go From Here

Happy Friday Chicago!

And Happy Halloween. I hope you either 1. didn’t dress up at all or 2. spent weeks plotting your costume. Anything in between doesn’t work. If you’re too cool to dress up, don’t dress up at all. If you want to get dressed up as a killer clown, I want to see a killer clown, I want you drooling blood.

I want a killer clown voice, I want you weaving in and out of character all night, and I want your significant other to be horrified and embarrassed by you by the end of the party.

My parents had the best Halloween play this year. I didn’t expect it, but at family dinner, they cosplayed as aliens who had never been tasked with ordering food from the waiter before. It was infuriating, but that’s the kind of emotion you want to bring out of others in October.

Halloween is a great holiday, as Bill Belichick once said. (“Costumes and candy, who doesn’t like that?”). At this time of year, I feel like paying respects to the mothers who drop everything to make sure their kids are in the costume of their new favorite character, particularly when it’s a character they became obsessed with a week ago.

Mom, how did you not know I wanted to be the lone ranger from the show I watched last Saturday?

But the moms always pull through. At least mine did.

The passing of Halloween now, though, reminds me just how little football we have left. We’re already two thirds of the way through the college football season. I’ll close my eyes, and then wake up to rivalry week in late November. I’m not a killer clown, just a sad one with no makeup.

I’ll close my eyes again, and then I’ll be at the Super Bowl party, existential dread dripping out of my pores, laughing here and there to keep my friends in the dark, and out of the darkness in my head.

After all, we all wear costumes. Mine is a well-adjusted adult, and I wear it well. Most of the time.

Then it’ll be February, and I’ll walk around the neighborhood, with my hands crossed behind my back, looking for life’s meaning. Trying — and failing — to enjoy “the little things.”

And here I am again, writing an ode to football, four days after she ripped my heart out again, only leaving me with a bag of cookies and work the next day. OK, I bought the cookies.

I can’t quit her, even when she quits on me.

But, hey. For now, there’s always next week.

Let’s get into it.

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Sunday’s game was a back breaker, an inflection point, and a perfect microcosm for the Bears future if nothing changes.

It’s very likely that loss will dictate the Bears season in some way, but one game out of the playoffs feels about right, particularly in a year where 11 wins may be necessary to move on in the NFC.

That is the first thought that came to my mind after Noah Brown caught the tipped ball in the end zone. And, unlike in previous weeks, with a few days between an immediate reaction and writing, I feel the same way.

When you have a subpar coaching staff, what can go wrong, will go wrong. Murphy’s Law is as applicable in the NFL as it is anywhere, and perhaps more so. Matt Eberflus and his staff are not the victims of late-game breakdowns, they’re the cause. Sometimes indirectly, and sometimes directly.

Everyone thought the Cubs were cursed, and then competent ownership came into play. And a competent president. And a competent manager. Then they won the World Series. Where did the curse go?

Matt Eberflus was surprised by the hail mary completion at the end of the game. I was not. Nor, I’m sure, were many of you. The Bears aren’t cursed, we aren’t being punished by God. The answer is actually far more practical and maddening than that. It’s the organization, from the top down.

The players are good enough to hide some of those warts this year, but when the margin is so thin, they can’t hide all of them.

We’ll let him off the hook for his first year. Eberflus has been at the helm for at least four unconscionable losses, with Sunday being the latest. He was a defensive coordinator with no business being a head coach two years ago, and he still is now.

A free 15 yards prior to the hail mary, which Eberflus said “didn’t matter.” It did matter, because it allowed Jayden Daniels to get the ball close to the end zone in the first place. Had he not had a free run at chunk yardage the previous play, he would have had to initiate a multiple-lateral play, which has a far greater chance of failing than a hail mary. I don’t know why I’m explaining this.

Kevin Byard called into question that strategy after the game, of course. Many players voiced their displeasure with the coaching from the game, which is bad in that the coaching is so egregious that they feel the need to address it, and also bad in the fact that they feel comfortable doing so. No matter which way you slice it, it’s a poor reflection of Eberflus and his staff.

No pass rush. This remains one of the dumbest decisions head coaches make throughout football. If there’s six guys back, or eight guys back, the math doesn’t really change on whether the hail mary will be successful.

When the quarterback has limited time to throw, however, the math is greatly impacted. A quarterback cannot throw the ball 70 yards, on a dot, if he’s being pressured. He can’t throw it at all if he is sacked.

Chunk yardage on the play before, and unlimited time on the hail mary.

Then, of course, there’s Tyrique Stevenson, who was waving and motioning to the crowd on the opposite side of the field before and during the final play.

That blame is placed on Stevenson, of course. But if it’s true that Stevenson was responsible for Brown in the end zone — or even if he was not — why would the Bears have not called time out?

Hell, why wouldn’t the Bears have called time out anyway, to go over a coverage they clearly haven’t practiced enough?

Stevenson was willing to put himself over the team throughout the game. He was called for one unsportsmanlike conduct, and was on the brink of being called for others.

I don’t know what you do with him, really. He’s a great player, who clearly needs to be reeled in. Are the Bears capable of reeling him in? Stomping your feet at the Stevenson video can only get you so far. It’s just a reflection of much bigger problems.

Eberflus took zero accountability for the end of “just one game” afterward. Then, after some of his players took accountability and others questioned his leadership, he said it was “on him” by Wednesday. The PR team was a couple days late on relaying what the message should be.

Off a bye, the Bears looked like they had not practiced in two weeks. Yet another slow start — the 8th in a row!

When coaching is most visible, the Bears look bad. At the start of the games, when the plays are scripted. At the end of the games, when strategy and oversight matters most. On challenge calls. Before the snap.

The Bears didn’t deserve to win the game in the first place. When you don’t score until the second half, and when you hand the ball to a lineman — down a score — at the one-yard line (which Shane Waldron said he would do again), something is going to get you (don’t forget the D.J. Moore fade in the end zone before that). A hail mary was just the least likely thing to get you, but it did anyway.

I should have known the Bears were in trouble when Waldron was jumping around and smiling ear to ear after the Bears scored their first touchdown of the game (and still trailed).

I would love to root for a team — just once — where I could think: ‘There’s 20 seconds left, of course we are going to win.’ I was prepared for the loss, and I shouldn’t have been.

Eberflus says it is just one game. But it’s not, and it’s the nagging feeling that I can’t get rid of. The margin between winning and losing on Sunday was coaching, and it will continue to be the margin in close games you need to win moving forward. There is generally not a large gap between the best 10 teams in the NFL.

If the Bears don’t save themselves from this coaching staff, they’ll piss away another chance to turn around the franchise. And if they do, they will — for the third straight time — have a second-year quarterback under an entirely new regime. When you’re so bad at what you do, win-lose decisions become lose-lose.

With that thought in mind, it’s hard to dive into the minutiae of the game. But we’ll be watching this Sunday, too, so here we go.

Caleb Williams played fantastic in the fourth quarter. He played fine in the third quarter. He was awful in the first half.

He’s a rookie, playing against his hometown team, in his third true road game.

But he just missed some throws. The difference between his mistakes and some of our prior quarterbacks’ mistakes is that I never feel like they’re going to be long-term, defining issues. He was inaccurate, but we know he can and will be accurate.

He’s not holding onto the ball too long, he’s not shrinking from the moment, he’s not immobile, and he doesn’t have a bad throwing motion. He’s not defaulting to his first read. He’s not dumb.

And that’s why I continue to put him down toward the bottom of the list when it comes to the Bears biggest problems. If anything, he masks a whole lot of them — like bad play calling and a bad offensive line.

The Commanders blitzed the Bears more than any team has on Sunday, and it showed. I’ll say it again — I’m not sure why anyone takes a different approach.

Williams is 31st in the league in EPA per dropback when the defense sends five or more pass rushers. But, to anyone watching, that is clearly more an offensive line statistic than it is a quarterback one. Williams is fine under pressure, he just needs a chance.

When a rookie — who missed the entire offseason and played in the Ivy League last year — is strapping up his laces for his first NFL action midway through the game, at left tackle, the quarterback is going to have to be Superman to succeed. Williams was close to that in the fourth quarter.

The defensive effort, sans Stevenson’s mishaps, was valiant again. The Commanders moved the ball well, but didn’t come up with touchdowns when they needed to. It’s not a coincidence. The Rams moved the ball. The Texans moved the ball. Neither were able to nab 6 in the red zone when they needed to.

Injuries may finally catch up to that unit, though. Of course, on the other side of the ball, the offensive line is a mess (Kiran Amegadjie, Braxton Jones, and Teven Jenkins all sat out of Thursday’s practice).

But now, on the defensive side, Jaquon Brisker is still out. Kyler Gordon is still out. Montez Sweat is dealing with multiple injuries, and was limited Thursday.

The Cardinals are bad on defense, and solid offensively. Generally, that sort of opponent is right in the Bears’ wheelhouse. But the case was the same with Washington, and that did not turn out well.

If the Bears win Sunday, a lot of this will be forgotten. It shouldn’t be. Because we will remember it in January, when the team falls short yet again. The difference between winning and losing on Sunday was small, but that will likely be the ultimate decider when it comes playoff time.

It will be hard to get past that, emotionally for me, and statistically for the Bears.

Right now, the season is not over, of course. But I can’t manufacture optimism when the roof continues to leak. Maybe next week.

Ben Johnson wanted to come to the Bears? Thanks for letting me know. I’ll believe the McCaskeys are signing off on a $70M contract when I see it.

#BEARDOWN

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The Sox hired Will Venable as their new manager. Is it a good hire, a bad one? Not a clue here.

But let’s keep the main thing the main thing. He’s been with the Cubs, the Red Sox, and the Rangers prior to becoming the White Sox manager. Not the Royals.

And that, my White Sox fan friends, is cause for celebration. Let’s have a beer this weekend in the name of marginal progress.

Onward!

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If you haven’t been paying attention, or if you have not had a single way to watch, you may have missed that your Chicago Bulls are 3-2.

Josh Giddey is finally hitting three pointers. Coby White is returning to form.

Zach LaVine’s trade stock is rising like hell, he’s playing like he wants a ticket out of the city… and, he’s hurt. AC joint sprain on the shoulder for young Zachary. History is so important, dear readers, because it repeats itself.

The Bulls beating the Bucks, Grizzlies, and Magic in their first five games is not something I saw coming.

It’s the first time they’ve been over .500 since November of 2022. From November 2022 until last week, they were trying to compete. Now they’re rebuilding. And yet here we are. That is a good reflection of the Bulls under Arturas Karnisovas, who continues to say things like “home court advantage is the most important thing.” Really? The most important? In an 82-game regular NBA season?

I don’t know. But I’m trying to stay focused on what matters moving forward.

We need LaVine to get healthy. We need Giddey to continue to unloading from three.

The best move the Bulls have made over the last few years very well may be their hiring of the shooting coach (they didn’t have one before), Peter Patton.

Since Patton arrived, he has turned Ayo Dosunmu and Alex Caruso into good three-point shooters. He has helped improve Coby White’s shot. And now, he’s tasked with turning Giddey into a complete player.

Giddey’s playmaking and passing is already fun to watch. If he can become a reliable shooter, that will beget even better playmaking and passing.

Friday plans? I’ll be watching the Bulls and Nets in my apartment on an illegal, off-shore website.

LETS GO BULLS!

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