Bears at Vikings Monday Night Football Open Thread!
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Bears.
Should the Bears have beaten the Broncos? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.
Should the Bears have beaten the Lions? Yes. They didn’t, because of the head coach.
Mediocre work on the sidelines would have the Bears 5-6 this season, which is exactly where most of us believed they would be at the Thanksgiving holiday. But the coaching, specifically the work from head coach Matt Eberflus, is the reason the Bears are (well) behind their 2023 targets/expectations.
Will Justin Fields be the starting quarterback in 2024? Who knows, but clearly his performance against the Lions last week made some of his more vocal critics, including myself, leave that door slightly ajar. Personally, I just don’t care anymore. Bring him back, don’t bring him back, whatever. I think Fields is good enough to win games but not good enough to be the reason you win a championship. But Josh Allen can’t even get to an AFC Championship Game while Brock Purdy is throwing up perfect quarterback ratings in blowout victories…so maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. I mean, would you rather have Fields or Jared Goff? I think I prefer Fields.
But Eberflus is never going to be a top head coach. That’s apparent on the sidelines almost every week. If the ceiling for Fields is “not the reason you win a championship,” the ceiling for Eberflus is .500.
This year, I’m going with ten films. Ten films only. I’ll be watching more than 40 Christmas movies over the next month, but it is time to make the difficult choices. It is hard to leave off films like Santa Claus the Movie and Jingle All the Way and Christmas with the Kranks and Noelle. It was not hard to leave off films I simply don’t like, including the perennial downer It’s a Wonderful Life and the wildly overrated A Christmas Story.
Three films worth noting here.
10. Scrooged (1988). The most beautifully written and performed speech in the Christas movie canon.
9. The Santa Clause (1994). The sequels are unwatchable, but the original is both sardonic and sweet hearted.
8. Die Hard (1988). I have gone back and forth on the “is Die Hard a Christmas movie” debate but I think Michael Kamen’s use of Silent Night in the score solidifies its standing in the corpus. It is the best movie on this list, but only the eighth best Christmas movie.
7. Home Alone (1990) *
*Home Alone 2 should be consumed for ironic purposes only, but it SHOULD be consumed. I will have a full game preview section on Home Alone 2 before Christmas.
I.
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Chicago.
Bears.
How many great quarterbacks are there currently in the NFL? How do we even define a great quarterback anymore? What if we reframed the question as…how many teams are currently not looking to upgrade the quarterback position? I’ll be conservative: Mahomes, Herbert, Russ (he does look pretty good) Lamar, Burrow, Deshaun (they have no choice), Tua, Rodgers (he’s old but he counts), Allen, Lawrence (I think), Stroud, Hurts, Dak (right?), Goff, Cousins (leave him there), Purdy (I know, I know), Kyler (maybe?). Some of those guys are elderly. Some of those guys are on the bubble. But even at my most conservative, only half the league has the QB position close to sorted.
How many great defenses are there currently in the NFL? Only nine units currently allow less than 20 points per game. But after watching the Browns and Ravens play a shootout and seeing the Saints get torched by Josh Dobbs, I would question whether there is a defensive group in the league capable of manhandling a decent opponent. The great defenses (a) bully bad offenses and (b) keep you in games with the good ones.
Is there a conclusion to be reached?
For me, the NFL has come down to a six-point lead with 1:41 on the clock. And two questions beg to be asked.
Do you have a quarterback that can put the ball in the end zone?
Do you have a defense that can keep the opponent out of the end zone?
If you can answer YES to those questions, you have a team that is likely to win double-digit games and make the tournament. Trying to find the next Peyton Manning/Tom Brady, or build the next ’85 Bears, seems a fool’s errand. Constructing a roster with the league’s financial impositions is too difficult. Find the right answers to those questions and become competitive on a weekly basis.
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Heading into tonight’s game, the draft order is as follows: (1) Cardinals, (2) Panthers -> Bears, (3) Bears, (4) Giants, (5) Patriots. This is the complete list of teams with two wins or less and, I believe, they are the only five teams currently competing for the top pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
The Cardinals are going to get Kyler Murray back, likely this Sunday, and one would expect his presence to help them win a few more games. The Patriots are not a good football team, but does anyone think Bill Belichick won’t squeeze out a few victories over the second half of the season? And, honestly, the Bears showed good fight against New Orleans and will likely be better on both sides of the ball moving forward. 5-6 wins for them is not out of the question.
No, if the Bears want the first pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, they need it to come from the Carolina Panthers, and that means the Panthers need to finish with a worse record than the house-on-fire New York Giants. The Giants go to Dallas this week as 16-point underdogs, with Tommy Devito as their starting quarterback. If Devito continues to struggle, they’ll turn to #BarkleyTime. Even with their easy schedule on the horizon (Commanders, Patriots, Packers, Rams, etc.) there is a scenario wherein the Giants don’t win another game in 2023.
The clearest path to the top pick for the Bears is via the Panthers. And the Bears need to bury the Panthers tonight at Soldier Field to keep that path unfettered.
Killers of the Flower Moon is unlike anything Martin Scorsese has ever done, while also fitting perfectly into his remarkable canon. To see an 80-year-old takes these kinds of aesthetic leaps is a testament to the man’s genius. The film of the year, and the most emotionally and intellectually paralyzing final 20-minute passage I can remember.
