Three Thoughts on the Bears
- Mentioned it on KFAN in Minnesota earlier in the week but I can’t remember this much enthusiasm and excitement around the Bears heading into a season. This might be the most I’ve seen since 2005 – the Year of the Blog – and that season’s optimism seemed to dwindle with Rex Grossman’s summer injury. (I wrote and produced my first play that year so it took me a month to get sad.) The Bears don’t believe they’re going to be 8-8 this season. They believe they’ll be playing football in January.
- Had drinks with an NFL GM Monday afternoon and he summed up the Bears off-season perfectly: “They did everything right. But right in the spring isn’t always right in the fall.”
- This is more anecdotal than anything else but the player other fans and media covering other teams keep bringing up to me is Anthony Miller. There’s a real buzz about him in league circles. I’d still keep expectations low for any rookie wide receiver entering a new offense with this many pass-catching options but many others are not, including Miller himself.
Jay Cutler: Television Star
😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/4rr0FHq9A9
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) July 9, 2018
What makes me laugh is that many of us knew Cutler’s personality was incredible. It just wasn’t a Peyton-Manning-endless-quarterback-cliches-that-talking-heads-love personality. He has no patience for morons and apparently this program is chock full of them. (I will never watch a single episode of it on TV. Ten second clips are just fine.)
Bernie LaReau Passed Away
From a profile by Jeff Bonty in Kakakee’s Daily Journal:
Bernie LaReau spent a lifetime as an athletic trainer for several professional teams, most notably the Chicago Bears.
Not bad for a farm boy from Beaverville who graduated with a degree in accounting from St. Joseph College in Rensselaer, Ind.
The St. Anne High School graduate spent more than 52 years as a trainer for several professional teams.
“I’m real happy the way things turned out,” LaReau said in a 2011 interview with the Daily Journal.
LaReau passed away July 5 in San Antonio. He was 81.
After his years in professional sports, LaReau came back to Beaverville in 1998 and worked for Riverside Medical Center and Orthopedic Associates of Kankakee. He worked for 11 years as a substitute teacher and athletic trainer for several area high schools, including Central, St. Anne and Momence.
He capped it off with St. Anne’s boys basketball team winning the Class 1A championship in 2008.
“He took great care of our kids,” St. Anne coach Rick Schoon told the Daily Journal on Monday. “He was a really nice gentleman.”
LaReau did two stints with the Chicago Bears and was beloved by those he worked with in the organization. Rest in peace, sir.
Taylor Gabriel…Look Out
Best Golf? Links!
- Adam Jahns provides, unsurprisingly, the best profile of Matt Nagy thus far.
- There are some funny photos of Staley in this collection from the PNC Chicago Bears 5K. (Check out #2) This seemed like an amazing event and I wish I was in Chicago to be part of it.
- There are two “blueprints” folks point to when trying to project Bears success in 2018: last year’s Rams and last year’s Eagles. Trey Burton, part of that Eagles blueprint, seems to find the similarities there striking. From the CBS piece: “We were picked to finish last place in the division last year in Philly,” Burton told told SiriusXM NFL Radio on Monday. “There are a ton of similarities. You look at Philly two years ago, the majority of our games were lost by less than a touchdown. If you look at Chicago last year, there’s a good amount of those games that they lost. It’s just about getting over that hump. You have to be able to win close games. There’s so many small details that happen in order for you to lose those games.”
- Jordan Howard thinks Mitch Trubisky has “more command of the team this year”. Well, yea. This time last year the Bears went out of their way to bury Trubisky on the depth chart and kept him buried there despite everything they saw on the practice/preseason fields. Trubisky has command now because Trubisky has the team.
