Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
The Justin Fields Dilemma
Good morning…
Welcome back to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago. Hope you enjoyed rearing your head to the sky like a pigeon to watch planes fly above you this weekend.
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Thank you for starting your morning with me. After a newsletter-less last week I decided to return alongside the mask mandate in Chicago. I hope you are all wearing one. I passed out in the gym earlier today and was rushed out in an ambulance but am proud to say my mask never came beneath my nose.
Regardless of what else is going on, there are a few things we can always count on. Football season arriving is unlike anything else in life, the rare thing that stays as exciting as you age.
After a year plagued with lesser-than sporting events thanks to COVID-19, I’ll take any and all football this year. I plan on watching more than I ever have, and am off to a great start. The Jaguars 4th stringers played their asses off last night and just fell short of a comeback against the Saints… and damn did they make me proud.
I returned to my childhood home to watch the first Bears preseason game last weekend, and 60,000 strong showed up to the actual game. I can’t think of a more anticipated preseason game — around the entire league — in my lifetime.
And just like football is reliable, so is my father, who without realizing it became a parody of himself as he simultaneously read passages from his latest Abraham Lincoln book to me, stopping intermittently to scream at the television about refereeing in the fourth quarter of a the Dolphins game, with players on both sides that he probably will never watch again.
Just as his rage will return, so will the thousands of football fans in Chicago screaming about the problems with the Bears in bars and house parties, in lieu of doing literally anything else with their time. Sounds like a great deal to me.
And boy there will be plenty to rage about.
Right now, the Rams -7.5 in Week 1 looks like such an incredibly obvious pick that I’m considering breaking my rule, which is to never bet against my own teams. I mean I bet on the Cubs! the other day.
But sometimes a decision in the moment seems like its the only right one to make to move forward. An example would be when my brother had eaten the rest of my dementia-striken grandmother’s pizza that he brought her, and when she unexpectedly asked for second helpings, he told her that she had finished it all. Good, god. I’m sorry grandma. RIP.
Immoral, yes. Feels wrong, yes. Somewhat logical response? Also yes.
I’ll probably talk myself into the Bears chances by then, though. So I won’t follow that thought process, whether it has to do with betting on a Week 1 football game or lying to my kin plagued by Alzheimer’s.
Irregardless, I’m so glad we’re back. My weekends from here on out with be dedicated to college football and NFL football from Thursday through Monday, with little time to enjoy anything else.
Thank God I don’t have to watch television shows to fill my time anymore, like that show Outer Banks, hypothetically, which I imagine is just god awful. No more searching for gold or screaming OH MY GOD HE’S ALIVE! in a high pitch anymore, again, hypothetically. Won’t miss thinking of that show a lot even though I don’t watch it.
You could say there’s a ship on the horizon, though, and it’s packed with $400 million of gold! God dammit, football is here.
There’s no conventional wisdom when it comes to what the Bears should do with Justin Fields in Week 1 against the Rams. In Halas Hall, wisdom seems hard to come by at all.
Matt Nagy reiterated the other day, with a little less leeway, that Fields would start in the final preseason game against the Titans Saturday and that Andy Dalton would be your Chicago Bears opening game starter on Sunday Night Football.
I say there’s no conventional wisdom because nationally every guy is trying to get that sound clip of them jerking off to their own reflection, talking about how Fields should be the starter, all to go viral. It seems everyone outside of Chicago is now in agreement on that.
Chicago is a little bit less in on the idea of throwing Fields out there Week 1, which I think is a marked shift from how they felt even a week or two ago. The offensive line is so decimated that people are genuinely worried about Fields getting hurt — badly — in a regular season football game, which would be so incredibly on brand for the Bears you’d probably get a mix of maniacal laughter and tears from your boy.
That concern is genuine, and it was exhibited by me as well until I re-watched the Bills-Bears game last night and did some more critical thinking about the whole issue.
So we have three perspectives here:
— The Bears: We have to start Andy Dalton, and there’s no QB competition for no reason other than we have to justify, somehow, paying Andy Dalton $10 million per year after he made $3 million as a back-up last year. Plus, extending Fields’ time on the bench likely keeps whatever remaining rays of hope that still exist for the rest of our (Nagy and Pace’s) tenures alive, thus extending our shelf lives longer.
— The national media: You have to start Fields. We say this because it’s low-hanging fruit to pick on an awful coaching staff in a big market, and gives us a chance to tweet out us speaking as if we’re geniuses about a pretty simple concept.
— Us, the fans: We should probably start Fields because he’s the better player. He’s also the future and there’s no chance Andy Dalton ever plays for us again after this year. What are we doing here? At the same time, the construction of our roster has been so godawful that playing Fields concerns us. We finally have a QB that we may enjoy — other than those of us who love Jay Cutler to death despite his awful work ethic because he says whatever he wants — so please don’t let the Bears take another one away from us.
The Bears cut Charles Leno Jr., who almost no fan loved in his last couple years here. But the guy was a professional left tackle, perhaps the second most important position in the game, and had played over 90 games straight without missing one.
But because the Bears were so hard-pressed against the cap despite being pretty bad last year, they thought they had to cut Leno Jr. to make things work. They could have done other things, like take away from a good defense instead of further take away from an awful offense, and cut Akiem Hicks. As they did Kyle Fuller. Or they could have cut Jimmy Graham, who really doesn’t matter if Cole Kmet becomes who we think he’ll be, or if — even more likely — the Bears offensive line is terrible anyway.
They even could have extended Allen Robinson and reduced his cap hit this year, but instead of all of those options, they got rid of one of the couple reliable — albeit just okay — offensive linemen on the team. So then a professional sports team decided a rookie who played the majority of his Big 12 college career at right tackle, who also had a litany of injury issues the Bears knew about (some teams even had him off their boards completely thanks to those), could just be slated in at left tackle for Game 1 of the 2021 NFL season!
Those are the geniuses we’re backing. The Bears know Andy Dalton will be there Week 1, but hardly even know who will play which position on the offensive line against the Rams.
Our no. 1 option at the most important position on offense besides quarterback was a guy who had back issues coming into the draft and immediately had to get back surgery a couple weeks into training camp. Our no. 2 option is an array of offensive linemen not set for the job, like Elijah Wilkinson or another rookie in Larry Borom. Our third option is the 39-year-old Jason Peters, who was fishing when the Bears called him two weeks ago and asked him to save them.
This is why the Bears aforementioned perspective makes no sense. Andy Dalton made no sense in the first place, of course. But him starting now still makes no sense, based on performance. It’s especially dumb when they say they need to see “what Andy looks like in live action” considering that we’ve all seen it for the last 10 years. If their reasoning is that their offensive line is too bad to protect Fields, well then, that’s admitting they’ve done a poor enough job where they should be fired anyway.
Reality check: The Bears weren’t good last year. They have the roughly the same team, for the most part, but have downgraded at left tackle and lost an all-pro in Kyle Fuller on the defensive end. Right now, the Bears are a bad team with an exciting back-up quarterback.
Do not even get me started on the special teams. The third phase of the game can be overrated if it’s weighted the same as the first and second phases (not like the fourth phase, which can’t be overrated), but it’s still extremely important if you want to be a contending football team. If you watched the Bills game, two things were evident: the Bears special teams unit will be one of the worst in football and that Mitch Trubisky isn’t the worst quarterback ever if he doesn’t have the worst coach in football calling plays for him.
I was personally of the belief that Fields should start Week 1 no matter what. I wavered after the troubling injuries in training camp assured me that the line would be even worse — if possible — than it was in the previous two years. But I’m coming around again to the idea that Fields should be the starter.
For one, he’s better than Dalton is right now. That is evident already.
He’s going to be the guy (we hope) eventually, getting him reps now will only help down the line.
He’s much better at evading contact than Dalton is. QBs that are good at evading pressure can make any offensive line seem better. If anything, Dalton is at a much greater risk than Fields. A fascinating study done by PFF also found that QBs get hit around the same rate in their careers no matter who is blocking for them. In other words, a QB that gets hit a lot behind a bad offensive line will get hit around that much no matter how much better his situation improves. That eased some of the concerns I had about Fields well being, because he’s good at avoiding contact. (And yes, him getting his helmet knocked off — which was his fault — is the exception.)
So even though the offensive may not be good under Fields, through little fault of his own, the time should be now no matter what. He’s going to have to play good NFL defenses eventually, waiting — knowing what we know now — just doesn’t make enough logical sense to me.
As for Nagy and Pace, the fog (Justin Fields) that has covered their blunders for months is about to clear up. Without him on the field and an ass-kicking on the horizon, they’ll be left with an offensive guru as a coach who has never had a good offense, a bad special teams, and a worse defense because of their cap deficiencies and the signing of Robert Quinn.
And, the quarterback that supposedly held them back the last few years just proved that he’s capable when given the right situation — a situation they could not give him for three years straight.
Other than that, everything else is going well.
The Chicago Bulls projected win total is out for 2021, and let’s just say, another hype video is on the the motherfuckin’ way. If my roommates are reading this, do not be alarmed by the “Remember the Titans” hymns and slow speaking you hear on the first floor next month. All is well.
While the morons who have only watched the Lakers, Warriors and Nets games in the last two years talk about the “fit” that the Bulls are going for, and how it could be problematic, I’m writing a letter to the lender of my graduate school loans to let them know they’re going to be paid in full by the end of the NBA season.
The Bulls O/U opened up at 42.5 wins, meaning 43-39 would do it. For reference, that’d be about the same winning percentage as the Memphis Grizzlies last year, or a hybrid between the 6th and 7th seeds in the East — the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, respectively.
ESPN ranked the Bulls as the 10th best team in the East heading into this year. Whoever wrote that (Nick Friedell) should be fired. The Bulls were better than the 10th team in the East this year. Had Zach LaVine not missed 11 games to COVID-19, they could have been the 8th best team.
Now, give them Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso, and DeMar DeRozan, plus more developed versions of LaVine and Patrick Williams and that takes them to 10th in the East?
That thought process is asinine. It’s more than okay to have reservations about how the Bulls got DeRozan and what they paid him. It seems people are convoluting “winning the offseason” and winning in general.
This team was on the way up anyway. If they had made zero moves I’d still have picked them to make the playoffs, frankly. The idea that they won’t be significantly better now that they have another facilitator and scorer in DeRozan, a great defender and shooter in Caruso, and a legitimate point guard in Ball makes zero sense to me.
Plus, they won’t be relying on the minutes of guys like Ryan Arcidiacono and Denzel Valentine — at all. That alone is worth a lot, ladies and gentlemen.
Finally, they still have another move to make. They either hit a home run and sign-and-trade Lauri Markkanen’s bum ass for a far superior player in the Mavs’ Maxi Kleber, or, they keep his bum ass to be a back-up far better than what we had last year when he was a primary option.
Bulls Fridays are less than two months away. My 10-game season ticket package is purchased and my next paycheck is just dying to go straight to a Bulls OVER 42.5 wins bet.
See you on in the PlayPen next summer.
The Sox last critical stretch of games against above-.500 teams will come to a close tomorrow, and it’s looking like they will come out of it about .500 — they are currently 6-6 on that stretch right now.
And that sounds about right. After all, no good teams beat the hell out of all good teams in the league. If they did, and beat the bad teams, they’d likely have one of the best regular season records in the history of the MLB. This fact seems hard to understand for some.
The season is long enough in baseball where the panic button needs to be pushed so much less than it does in other sports, but because we’re fanatic sports fans, the panic button stays as near as it does in a 16-game or 82-game season. It’s natural and stupid all at the same time.
The Field of Dreams game was truly one of the best baseball games I’ve watched in the last couple of years. Had it not been in Iowa, it still would have been, but all that went into that night made it so much cooler. To have Tim Anderson finish it off in that fashion against a team with the worst fanbase in maybe all of sports, was awesome.
It was kind of funny that they acted as if Kevin Costner actually was a hall of fame baseball player or a guy that literally built a field that ghosts came out of, but that’s besides the point.
I was thinking after that game what sort of novelty games you could play elsewhere in sports, but I’m not sure any would hit like that one. I don’t even have all that fond of memories of the Field of Dreams movie, mostly because it’s one of those that I’ve seen parts of thousands of times, thanks to its regular play on various channels and my father’s ability to watch the same movies over and over… and over and over.
But the way the MLB put that on was pretty impeccable, and they had the right teams in the contest. Hell, I don’t even know if I want to see the Cubs and Reds in it next year, despite the Cubs obvious history and their ties to Iowa. I don’t know if you could recreate that kind of game anywhere — the little league MLB game is actually quite awful. Do I want to see NBA players in an Indiana high school arena or NFL football players at Permian in Texas? Not really.
Joe Buck’s observation of how the kids playing on the real Field of Dreams field in dim light reminded him of playing under the bleachers or on another field as a kid during a Friday night high school football game was so on point and nostalgia-evoking. Then to have it end how it did on the other field, with fireworks in the background, was just incredible — reminiscent of a superior baseball movie, the Sandlot.
It felt like more than just a game, which is the idea with these sorts of creations. And it worked — the idea that it was the most-watched regular season baseball game in almost 20 years felt about right.
Jose Abreu has a .931 OPS in August and 8 home runs. That would be impressive if it wasn’t for the fact that his OPS in August in his career is .981, an insane number and one of those Aramis Ramirez-type stats that shows its just hard to figure baseball players out sometimes.
(Just checked and saw that Ramirez has a .905 OPS in August over his career, 170 points higher than his OPS in April in May.)
The only two things that seem glaring for the Sox right now are figuring out the right bullpen combination on each night and getting Yasmani Grandal back.
As for the first issue, I don’t think it should be hard to figure out the best way to use all of the arms the Sox have in their ‘pen. I do think the Kimbrel-in-the-8th worries have more merit to them than some people would admit. He still hasn’t given up a run in the 9th inning all year, after all, and has been awful in the 8th. But that probably won’t last, and there’s also ways to use both Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks in places they feel comfortable.
Kimbrel’s stuff is always there — but he really does seem to me like a guy that takes time getting accustomed to a new situation. Now, hopefully it doesn’t take a year and a half like it did on the North Side.
The good news is that they have plenty of time to figure it out.
Grandal was pushing for an August comeback, and there’s still a chance he will get there, but I don’t blame the Sox for not rushing him back when they have the lead they do in the Central.
His value has been displayed in his absence though, as the Sox have relied on Seby Zavala and Zack Collins — two players with serious warts in various parts of their games — to hold down the fort.
Each is fine, especially Zavala, as a second option. As 1a and 1b, their weaknesses intensify.
Zavala got admonished by La Russa on Monday after he didn’t convince Lance Lynn to walk Vlad Guerrero Jr. on a 3-0 count. Guerrero predictably unloaded on the 3-0 pitch, scoring a run and potentially costing the Sox the game.
The Chicago broadcast didn’t show the La Russa unleashing (an interesting note), but the Toronto one did. Some Sox fans objected to La Russa’s very open criticism of Zavala, but La Russa was right. Could he have done it in private? Sure. But it was clear that it was a heat-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t exactly see it as a major problem, and who knows if Lynn would have even obliged if an intentional walk was suggested.
What makes everything better, too, is that after the Sox wrap up their series in Canada, they’ll get the mighty Cubs and the pesky Pirates. I’ll be in attendance with neutral colors at one of those games, lord help me.
It was nice to see the Cubs fans still around in the seats at Wrigley get a walkoff homer against the Rockies the other day to stymie a 13-game home losing streak.
Meanwhile, the Ricketts posted a shrine to themselves — literally — and made a documentary about how they saved Wrigley Field.
No, really:
Trade the best players away, announce a sports book. Watch it all burn, and honor yourself for fixing the concrete of a place you purchased knowing it had problems with its concrete.
Congrats on the scoreboards, Tom!
Thank you for reading, as always. Thank you for sharing it with your friends, as always. Keep doing so. And have a great rest of your week. SGCTC.
Andrew, get a head start on early retirement with a Bulls’ over and Bears’ under parlay. If you don’t like parlays, just pound the Bears’ under. Everything you wrote was true comparing last year’s team to the current group but you failed to mention the difficulty of their schedule. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a very long year, in my opinion. I really enjoy the newsletter. Keep it up- JJ
Alright let me break it down for you. I want Justin Fields to be the starter week 1- plain and simple. But how on earth did Pope just know how to operate that crane on the cruise ship? And what was he possibly thinking trying to drop that giant cross in the water? Rafe has some slept on core strength holding that thing up by the rope.
John B needed to finish the job with Ward on that cruise ship. As soon as Sarah gave him the nod, he needed to give him one last crack in the head and toss him overboard. Not that it would have done anything for them now being stranded on an island, but it would've given them all a little piece of mind. Glad they were able to catch fish and start a fire so quickly. I imagine a perfectly placed fresh water source is in their near future.
Friedell is a moron. I think with the exception of the Nets, Bucks, 76ers and Celtics, the Bulls are right there. I'm lower on the Hawks and Knicks being able to replicate last years success. I will be hammering over 42.5, and will also bet they're off the island by the end of Season 3 episode 2 (hypothetically or course, if I did watch the show).