Week Seven: Raiders at Bears Open Thread
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Here’s how I am choosing to treat the Justin Fields injury: it’s a relief. The Justin Fields conversation was growing more tedious by the day. Tyson Bagent provides three opportunities.
First, he could be a long-term backup option for this organization. Those guys are invaluable.
Second, it will be interesting to see how the offense runs when run correctly. There was a noticeable difference, a flow, when Bagent entered the game Sunday. He was limited, of course, by his physical abilities, but the offense moved the ball with more cohesion after Fields exited. The ball was out quick, on-time, in the hands of playmakers. Let’s see if that continues.
Third, the longshot: what if he’s good? What if he goes out Sunday and puts up a 27-38, 310, 2? I know, I know, he’s an undrafted free agent, Jeff! But don’t we have enough evidence to prove NFL franchises are clueless when it comes to evaluating college quarterbacks? And is being an UDFA really all that different than being Mr. Irrelevant, like the fella in San Francisco?
The Sun-Times caught hell for their cover, but Bagent makes Sunday’s game against the Raiders more fun for this aging Bears blogger. My story is written on Fields.
(10) The Siamese Cats, Lady and the Tramp (1955)
__________________
(9) All 52 Cats of Grey Gardens, Grey Gardens (1975)
__________________
(8) The one on Marlon Brando’s Lap, The Godfather (1972)
__________________
(7) Blofeld’s Cat, From Russia with Love (1963)
__________________
(6) Cheshire Cat – played by Telly Savalas, Alice in Wonderland (1985)
__________________
(5) Thomas O’Malley, The Artistocats (1970)
__________________
(4) Oliver, Oliver & Company (1988)
__________________
(3) Garfield, Garfield’s Thanksgiving (1989)
__________________
(2) The Cat, Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
A cat so interesting it has caused the brilliant Dana Stevens, who wrote an essential book on Buster Keaton, to pen think pieces for The Atlantic about it.
__________________
(1) The Orange Guy, The Long Goodbye (1973)
Is this the best sentence ever found on the internet, re: The Long Goodbye? “Another website claims the cat was played by a feline thespian named Chauncey Scratchet.”
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Thought experiment.
Pretend Matt Eberflus’ brain didn’t turn to hot soup against the Denver Broncos and the Bears won that ballgame. The team would be 2-3, on the periphery of the wildcard conversation, with a chance to win their third straight against a Justin Jefferson-less Minnesota Vikings this Sunday. This would be a massive contest.
But Eberflus’ brain did turn to split pea, and this is not a massive contest. But that doesn’t mean it is unimportant. Just remember, if the Bears win Sunday, they will be 2-4, with a mediocre Raiders team coming to town next week, bringing with them a big, shiny opportunity to be 3-4. And isn’t hovering around .500 with an improving Justin Fields exactly what most of us expected from this campaign?
The Bears could not lose that Broncos game. And they did. Because of that, they needed to win the next three in order to insert relevance into their season.
Washington. √
Minnesota. [ ]
Los Angeles [ ]
Abbreviated game preview for an abbreviated week.
Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Mike Francesa is a legend of sports radio, a national pioneer of the form, and a New York City icon. Much of how I think about the world of sports has been framed by Mike and his longtime partner, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, as the pair provided the soundtrack of my youth, their voices blaring from an old beat-up radio as my brothers and I engaged in a series of intense Wiffle Ball battles in our driveway. Many of the phrases I fall back on as a sportswriter came directly from their mouths.
Mike does a podcast now, and during football season he reflects on each Jets and Giants game immediately after the games conclude. Late Sunday evening, he took a single detour from his commentary on the Jets loss to the Chiefs, to laugh at Matt Eberflus. Why? Because Matt Eberflus is now a national punchline.
When projecting the Bears to an 8-9 record this season, a campaign meant to be defined by progress, two assumptions were made. First, that the quarterback would elevate his game from a C+ to a B+ and provide the evidence required to end the endless search at the position. The second, far less ballyhooed, that the coach would be a stabilizing force within the organization; his program one that can produce a champion. The former is still a question to be debated. The latter is a question settled. Eberflus cannot be the head coach of the Chicago Bears in 2024. The question that remains is should he remain the head coach in 2023?
Eberflus is a defensive head coach, and the Bears have the second-worst defense in the league in his second year. We can criticize the talent on that side of the ball all we want but Flus had the assets required this off-season to build whatever defense he wanted. What is the point of having a defensive head coach in the modern NFL if that coach CAN’T DO MORE WITH LESS? If Flus requires stars at every level of the defense, he is no different than three dozen other defensive coaches around the league, most of whom carry titles like “Outside Linebackers Coach” (and the appropriate salary to accompany that title).
And his in-game management is shocking. He has no feel for his own players. He has no feel for the opposing players. He is a nightmare when it comes to clock management. And last Sunday, he quite simply cost his team a victory with decisions late that defied reason. It’s over for Eberflus. To quote the great Clifford Odets script for Sweet Smell of Success, “The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”
If the Bears lose tonight, the organization needs to be strong and move on from Flus tomorrow.
Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
(The following is a work-in-progress introduction for a longer piece I’m developing about a fascinating period of cinematic history. And it seems quite fitting to be writing about rubble right now on a Chicago Bears blog.)
“Let’s go up to my apartment. It’s only a few ruins away from here.”
-Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich), A Foreign Affair (1948)
Robert Shandley, in his book Rubble Films, argues that “the end of World War II not only brought with it the destruction of the genocidal German nation state, but it also signified the end of an entire people’s understanding of itself.” (Shandley 1) This existential crisis not only permeated the psyche of the post-Hitler German citizenry, grappling with the innate evil of their actions and the questionable morality of their inaction, it was also pervasive in the nation’s once proud film production industry which, spearheaded by Joseph Goebbels during the war, had been relegated to a propaganda tool for the Third Reich’s vile notions of “a master race.” The national cinematic machine responsible for influential expressionist works such as Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) was now enlisted to produce contemptible, antisemitic detritus like The Rothschilds and The Eternal Jew, both in 1940.
The work produced in Germany in the period immediately after the war (1946-1949) is referred to as trümmerfilme, or rubble films. These pictures, created as “Germany lay in physical, political, and moral chaos” (Shandley 2), were shot directly on the ruins of major cities like Berlin and Munich; their mise-en-scene providing an immediate historical reminder for the spectator and a sociopolitical context for the action depicted. The “rubble” of rubble films suggests that while the war may be over, the German people will be attempting to excavate a postwar identity from the landscape for years to come.
But categorizing this period of German cinema as exclusively German ignores an essential nuance of its production structure. One must navigate beyond a formalist investigation of the texts and engage in a broader historiographic approach. Cultural historian Mary Rizzo, analyzing representations of Baltimore in her book Come and Be Shocked, provides a framework for such an inquiry:
Understanding how a film or TV show shapes and reflects society requires more than examining its depiction of a place. We understand the political economy by asking, Who gets to produce culture? Who has access to funding? Whose work is circulated? How does the meaning of text change as it circulates? Culture is a space of struggle over power, politics and place. (Rizzo 13)
It is Rizzo’s “space of struggle” that applies to any properly considered discussion of the trümmerfilme period. As the allies came to occupy German territory, and specifically German cities, they sought to limit cultural and religious activity, “passing laws such as Law 191 of the Military Government, Germany…which transformed the German film industry from an industrial superpower to a cottage industry in a matter of weeks.” (Shandley 10) In the year immediately following the German surrender on May 7, 1945, no films were produced in Germany; a period historically known as the “Filmpause”. As the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union apportioned sections of these cities, cinema production was slowly resumed, with the allies installing their own censorship guidelines and insisting that German cinema in the aftermath of the war be an antidote to the poisonous cinema of the war.
Another emerging dynamic of the period was the blossoming ideological hostility between the Americans and the Soviets, portending the Cold War that was to define the remainder of the 20th Century. The American sector was frequently visited by emissaries from Hollywood, including German émigré Billy Wilder, and it was believed the primary focus of these tours was to “seek ways for the Americans to establish a monopoly in Germany.” (Shandley 13) The American motivation was unsurprisingly driven by economics while, by contrast, the Soviet motivation was politically driven, as they sought to “establish ideological control” over those they now occupied. (Shandley 17)
Understanding this context, the trümmerfilme period should not be considered an explicitly German one, but instead a transnational artistic, commercial – and perhaps most importantly – moral collaboration between a defeated Germany and the colonizing forces that had stripped the nation of its sovereignty. While there is a collection of films written, directed and produced by Germans, including the period’s seminal work, Wolfgang Staudte’s The Murderers Are among Us (Die Mürder sind unter uns), these films were produced under the strict moral “guidance” of the allied occupiers. Subsequently, the period’s most commercially and critically popular efforts were not German at all, instead reflecting an international intervention in postwar morality by Hollywood and two young, immigrant directors: Wilder (A Foreign Affair, 1948) and Austrian-born Fred Zinneman (The Search, 1948).
Jeff and I are LIVE talking #Bears-Chiefs — come join the conversation!https://t.co/9zbYktsjgE
— Robert Schmitz (@robertkschmitz) September 24, 2023
