The 2022 Season Finale: An Open Thread
Why do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
With Justin Fields, who accounts for about 90% of the offense, not playing, and Nathan Peterman, one of the worst starting quarterbacks in modern NFL history, playing, the Vikings will have their starters on the bench by early third quarter.
Vikings 33, Bears 9
Houston is simply playing better football, week in and week out. And while folks will argue they have no impetus to win this game and fall out of the first pick, the Deshaun Watson trade gave them more than enough ammunition to ensure they come out of the 2023 draft with whomever they deem their top prospect.
Texans 19, Colts 13
And with this prediction, the Chicago Bears will secure the first pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
As I sit to write this on Wednesday morning, a report has just come across MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Damar Hamlin has been moved onto his stomach in a Cincinnati hospital bed to promote blood flow out of his lungs. Hamlin is in this position, fighting for his life, ventilator snaked down his throat, because of cardiac arrest sustained while playing of a football game. The injury might have been a tragic fluke – “one in a million” a doctor friend told me – but it doesn’t happen if Hamlin is watching the game from a barstool at Applebee’s. It happened because of football, and the unpredictable violence associated with the game.
Years ago, the New York Times had a piece about the Israeli response to attacks within its borders. Less than a few hours after a bus explosion on a major thoroughfare in Tel Aviv, the explosion site was entirely cleared, and the bus route resumed. Their approach could be defined as anti-disruption; they would acknowledge the tragic nature of the event but not let it alter the life of its citizenry.
As Hamlin was being ambulanced from the field, the NFL wanted to restart the game. Joe Burrow began warming up. Stefon Diggs delivered a fiery pep talk to his teammates. Everyone involved in the game seemed ready to put the trauma behind them and resume football as usual.
And then Zac Taylor walked across the field to Sean McDermott. He said something, we don’t know what. Shortly thereafter, the teams were heading into the locker room, and soon the majority of the Bills, those not heading to the hospital, were flying home to Buffalo. Years from now, Taylor’s gesture will remembered in documentaries because in that moment, he saved football from itself; saved Roger Goodell and 32 billionaires from a masochistic public spectacle. As players cried and prayed and stared emptily into space, Taylor recognized that playing a football game in the wake of the Hamlin tragedy was not just bad optics for the league, it was absurd behavior for a collection of human beings.
And “human beings” is the key phrase. For too long, media and fans (forget the owners and league) have been nonchalant about the physical well-being of the men, human men, responsible with providing the greatest entertainment in professional sports. I was struck to see how many NFL-based podcasts simply decided to sit out the discussion Tuesday, afraid, I assume, of saying the wrong thing. Tuesday morning was the opportune time to get on the microphone and speak to the fans. Remind them that the men on their fantasy teams are, in reality, men. Remind them of the physical risk these men endure each and every Sunday.
Tua Tagovailoa has had three diagnosed concussions this season. Three. With hundreds of men and women covering this is sport, has any written a column imploring him to retire from the game? Has anyone associated with the Miami Dolphins come out and said, “Tua is done for this season, and we’ll reevaluate his status next summer after what we hope is the appropriate healing.” No. Of course not. Because the NFL is imprisoned by a “warrior mentality” that praises short-term health risk while eschewing long-term ramifications. Jim McMahon forgets where he lives when he drives to the store for bread. But he’s not on anyone’s fantasy team so it does not register anymore.
The other sports don’t have this issue. Justin Morneau missed an entire season with the Twins after sustaining a concussion. Penguins’ legend Sidney Crosby was concussed in January 2011. He didn’t return to light skating until mid-March of that year. Why do the other sports take major injuries to their athletes much more seriously? What is wrong with the culture of the NFL that the mindset not only shifts quickly to “next man up” in the locker room but also seems to incorporate “last man, fuck him?” What has shifted in the wiring of Burrow, Diggs and McDermott that they actually believed a football game should be resumed Monday night? What is fundamentally wrong with Goodell and the owners that they would make that decision?
Dave Birkett, a good friend of this site, writes about the Lions for the Detroit Free-Press. Dave decided a few years ago to refer to concussions as “brain injuries.” Why? Because concussions are brain injuries. If you injure your knee in the NFL, you are listed on the injury report with (Knee). You are not listed as being in the Ligament Protocol. Dave decided, as a journalist, to tell a vernacular truth; to use the weaponry of the writer, language, as a tool for change. Fans on Twitter gave him hell for it. Why? Because fans don’t want too much humanity in their football.
Our downplaying of concussions, and every other injury sustained in this brutal game, is what leads to a reaction like the one we saw Monday night. Over the last few weeks, I have received countless emails from Bears fans that read, essentially, “Chase Claypool HAS to get on the field.” Does he? Does any fan know what physical pain/trauma he is currently enduring? Does any fan know the potential long-term effects Claypool could deal with by returning to action too quickly? Of course not. But to a large faction of fans, these are not men. These are gladiators, sacrificing their lives in the arena for the amusement of an adoring public.
No one is to blame for the tragedy that has befallen Damar Hamlin. And the league should be praised for having the proper medical personnel at the ready in that moment. But one hopes that Hamlin’s humanity, widely reported since he left Paycor Stadium and reflected in the fan support for his charitable endeavors, reminds us that he is not alone in this league. Perhaps we should all be less concerned with our clicks, and our fantasy points, and our fandom, and more concerned with the well-being of those providing us this remarkable joy six months of every year.
Many will read this and respond, “Boo hoo hoo, they make millions to play a game.” How much money is Damar Hamlin going to make in 2023? How much money is enough for Tua to sacrifice a working brain in his forties and fifties? We all love this sport. And we need to reevaluate what form that love takes.
One must suffer pain
to relish budding pleasure.
This year is the pain.
Is Fields fully formed?
No. But the thrills he provides
are reason for hope.
Our expectations,
non-existent this season,
rise in September.
The injury risks should outweigh the developmental rewards at some point for Justin Fields.
The Bears are down to their third-string RG. Chase Claypool has barely played.
And Fields has been stretched out, hit awkwardly, sacked five times and treated in the medical tent.
— Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) January 1, 2023
Chicago Bears 34, Detroit Lions 31
Why do I like the Chicago Bears this week?
I always like…
Thoughts on the opponent…
Stats that matter…
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.
There is only one relevant question facing the Bears as they head to Detroit Sunday: should the team actually want to win? It is hard to argue that answer is yes.
The team is currently positioned with the second pick in the NFL Draft and, as Dannehy pointed out yesterday, they should be considered the frontrunner for the top pick, as Houston is playing their best football in the final weeks of the season. Winning might provide some cosmetic confidence but it would also throw the Bears into a jumble with Denver, Arizona, and Indianapolis, three four-win teams with considerably easier strengths of schedule, the tiebreaker when it comes to draft order.
(Gaining confidence from meaningless victories is inherently nonsensical. A great number of 2022 Chicago Bears won’t be 2023 Chicago Bears. And the ones that stick around won’t require meaningless victories for confidence.)
If it were just about selecting a player, one could argue the difference between picking second and fifth isn’t that big a deal. Selecting players is a crap shoot. Don’t tell me you know what Jalen Carter or Will Anderson will be at the next level because you don’t. The fourth and fifth picks in 2022 – Sauce Gardner and Kayvon Thibodeaux – had significantly more impactful rookie campaigns than first overall pick Travon Walker. (Is there any question the Jags would take Sauce in a 2022 re-draft?)
What is not a crap shoot is the league’s consistently absurd overvaluing of quarterback prospects come draft time. The best years to select at the top of the draft are years where your team doesn’t need a quarterback and four-to-five QBs are projected into the first round. That’s exactly what 2023 looks like for the Chicago Bears. Ryan Wilson at CBS Sports projects four QBs in round one. Jamie Eisner at The Draft Network also projects four, with three of the first four picks being quarterbacks. Walter Football only projects three but all three gone in the first six picks. This may not be a draft deep at quarterback, but it is top heavy. And that’s when you want your pick at the top.
When you’re rebuilding your roster, the key is word is options. You re-sign key contributors to give yourself options in free agency. You’re judicious in free agency to give yourself options in the draft. And the higher the draft pick in the first round, the more options you have at that event. If the Bears have the first or second pick, they will have multiple teams making offers. There is no question about it. Look at how many teams currently slotted in the top 15 need QBS: Houston (1st), Seattle (3rd), Indianapolis (5th), Atlanta (6th), Detroit (7th), Carolina (8th), Vegas (9th), Tennessee (13th) and the Jets (15th). You can nitpick these quarterbacks all you like, but historically NFL franchises err on the side of hope.
The Bears will play Sunday. And with their rushing attack, and the porous Detroit rush defense, they could actually win the game. But with a roster in turnover, and the rostered group decimated by injury, it is hard to argue the positives of that potential victory. Having the first pick in the 2023 NFL Draft gives the Bears the clearest path to a quick turnaround. That means losing on Sunday.
I have nothing more to say about the 2022 Chicago Bears. So here are some thoughts on the other teams.
