Source: NFL owners officially passed the resolution on a one-year trial basis allowing head coaching interviews in the last two weeks of the regular season. Interview requests can go out starting 8 a.m. Tuesday Dec. 28. Employer clubs can deny.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) December 15, 2021

[Note: The game preview will be published Monday, as it seems pointless to analyze a game three days out when both teams are already in advanced Covid protocols.]

On Wednesday morning, the Las Vegas Raiders were the only team affirmatively looking for a new head for the coming season. And while there is certainly some appeal to coaching in Vegas, that job comes with an expensive question mark at quarterback and 17 road games.

On Thursday morning, after the late-night firing of Urban Meyer in Jacksonville, there is now a second team looking for a new coach. That team plays their football in Florida, a state with no income tax. That team possesses Trevor Lawrence, a quarterback that has as much talent as any player at the position in the league. While it may be the league’s worst professional football market, the job will have significant appeal because of those two elements.

On December 28th, the interview window opens for assistant coaches. And the Bears must be active in that window. That means two things:

• George McCaskey must make his determination on Ryan Pace quickly and decide who is going to hire the next head coach.
• Matt Nagy must be let go prior to the 28th so the Bears can begin conversations with a host of capable assistants that are likely to make a deep run into the postseason. It is conceivable the Bears could identify their man before the end of the regular season and allow that coach to begin assembling his staff prior to the end of the postseason. (Not officially, of course, but that’s how it’ll happen.)

The decision on Nagy is made. He is not going to be the coach in 2022. Jacksonville’s sacking of Meyer means the Bears will now have serious competition in the head coach market and there is another team that can match Chicago’s offer of a young, potential star quarterback.

This is the time for an historically reactive franchise to be proactive. They have to get this coaching hire right, for their future and the future of Justin Fields. That process begins December 28th.

Evaluating a rookie quarterback requires two things: patience and perspective.

Patience is obvious. Most quarterbacks who start in their rookie year are drafted into undesirable situations with a dearth of talent. For Fields, the situation is even odder, as he’s been drafted into a lame duck coaching regime. So, while the flash plays are nice, and next year it will be exciting to see Fields in a proper offensive structure, it’ll likely be his third season before any reliable verdict can be reached on Fields as franchise quarterback.

Perspective requires understanding/recognizing the positives and negatives of the quarterback’s rookie campaign. There have been many positives.

• Fields is a natural leader, and his teammates respond to him. Many a promising quarterback’s career has been derailed by an absence of this trait.
• He’s tough as two-day old steak. Fields should not have played Sunday night. He was openly wincing on throws. But he’s always fought through injury.
• His ability to extend drives with his legs is – right now – the most thrilling part of his game. And that’s not uncommon for this new wave of young quarterbacks. Josh Allen was essentially a runner for the first year and a half of his career. Fields runs when he must, which, sadly, is often in this offense.
• He’s got a short memory. Pick six? No worries. Two throws later a 70-yard touchdown. Fields’ ability to forget the bad play has been a hallmark of his playing career since college.
• There’s not a throw on the field he can’t make. The right coach will salivate at that prospect.

There have also been negatives.

• First, the offense is entirely dysfunctional. There’s nothing coherent about it.
• His accuracy has been questionable at times, mostly due to timing. He’s often either a tick early or a tick late with throws. And when you have receivers getting zero separation, that tick is the difference between a positive and negative play. This would be an element to watch closely, especially if the new coach sees a mechanical issue.
• He’s turning the ball over too much. Why? Because it takes young quarterbacks time to recognize how fast their opponents are at the professional level.

These final four games of the 2021 season are preseason games for Fields. They are useful experience, to a degree. But his development is on pause until the Bears hire their next head coach. The next meaningful snap he’ll take is in September.

If your instinct is to doubt Justin Fields after this game, keep in mind he went on the road with two rookie OTs, was pressured on 54.3% of his dropbacks, played through a ribs injury that caused him pain on every throw & needed X-rays on his non-throwing hand after the game.

— Adam Hoge (@AdamHoge) December 13, 2021

Late night. More to come later today.

We’ll just leave this thread up for the day.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

And the game has significantly more juice with Justin Fields in the starting lineup. The idea of Nick Foles starting at Lambeau Field, in primetime, had some Henry Burris vs. Tampa (2002) vibes.

On Rodgers.

This could be the last time the Bears see Aaron Rodgers in a Green Bay Packers uniform. And it is very difficult to contextualize his tenure with the team. So here are a bunch of thoughts.

• My biggest disappointment is the Bears never fielded a quarterback to go toe-to-toe with him. For all the talk of his “owning” the Bears, look at the opposing quarterbacks he owned. (I own a 2005 Chevy Cavalier with 206k miles on it. I don’t brag about it.) Jay Cutler was his best opposition, and nobody puts Cutler and Rodgers in the same sentence, unless that sentence starts, “If I were to rank quarterbacks by how much I didn’t want to be trapped in an elevator with them, it would go Cutler, Rodgers…”
• There’s an odd symmetry between the regular season careers of Rodgers and Tom Brady, as both dominated weak divisions for the entire careers. But the symmetry ends there. Rodgers’ stats don’t fall in almost any important category in the postseason, except one. He is 135-65-1 in the regular season and 11-9 in the postseason, reaching only one Super Bowl. But is he really to blame for that?
  • His numbers do plummet in the NFC title game. He is 1-4. His TD/INT is 9/8. His rating is 83.7, a good 20 points lower than his regular season and non-title game ratings. If there is a fly in the ointment of his career, it is those games.
• People have tried to assign logic to Rodgers’ desires to leave Green Bay, questioning why he’d want to abandon one of the better rosters in the league. But you can’t apply logic to people as thin-skinned and temperamental as Rodgers. If something the organization did offended him, it is unlikely he’ll ever move on from it. (This is a guy who cut off his entire family over a woman and she was like five women ago.) Rodgers is still on the Packers in 2021 because GB knew they had a title-contending roster this season and they also knew that wouldn’t be true with Jordan Love.

Sondheim at the Cinema

Once again, I’ll be writing more extensively about Sondheim this off-season when content is harder to come by, but I am using these game previews to simply share his work. Sondheim was a cinephile to an intense extent (I know the feeling). He and Anthony Perkins co-wrote the excellent film The Last of Sheila, which you can rent on Amazon or anywhere else you do those things. Here are some other contribution to the world of movies.

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Stavisky (1974)

Sondheim wrote the absolutely lovely score for this underrated Alain Resnais picture.

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Reds (1981)

Sondheim provided the song “Goodbye for Now” for Warren Beatty’s score. It’s a gorgeous melody that stands out dramatically in the film.

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Dick Tracy (1990)

Sondheim won the Academy Award for “Sooner or Later” but I actually think “Back in Business” is the better song. However, I don’t know a Sondheim junkie that doesn’t consider Mandy Patinkin and Madonna’s gorgeous duet of “What Can You Lose” their favorite musical passage in the film.

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We got apathy, my friends. That’s right we got apathy here in the Windy City. With a capital A, and that rhymes with J and that stands for Just Get this F’n Season Over With.

John Patrick Shanley’s brilliant play Doubt opens with a simple line that sets the ideological foundation for the entire evening: “What do you do when you don’t know?” A similar question can be asked for the current state of the Bears fan base: “What do you do when you don’t care?”

(Okay, that’s two theatre references in two paragraphs. I think that’s enough.)

Justin Fields was the antidote to apathy this season. Every game he played, every snap he took, allowed fans to commit emotionally because Fields is going to be the quarterback of the Chicago Bears for at least the next several seasons. His development, his flash plays, were all that 2021 was supposed to be about and those moments would provide hope for 2022 and beyond. To a large extent, they have. Fields has a long way to go but he has shown the kind of excitement he can bring to this organization, under the right tutelage.

Without him, what were fans left with to care about?

• The team is out of contention. There’s no potential playoff berth with which to concern oneself.
• The head coach will not be here next season so the performance of the roster under his leadership – on both sides of the ball – is inconsequential. By and large, we know who is good, who is not good, and who will be interesting to watch under new coaches.
• Does it really matter how the young players – Kmet, Mooney, Borom, etc. – develop in this failed program? Is it even development? If they don’t fit what the next coach wants to do offensively, they may not even be on the team. Investing in hypotheticals is not an exciting proposition.
• Injuries have ravaged them. What started at left tackle this summer has permeated the rest of the roster. It could still be fun to watch the Bears defend Aaron Rodgers with Khalil Mack and Akiem Hicks out there but without them?

Fans want to care, even when the team isn’t winning. That crowd in Seattle was passionately supporting the Seahawks Sunday as they fought the Niners for their fourth win of the season. Why? Because they still have emotional stock in a coach and quarterback who have brought them tons of success. The Lions fans that showed up in Detroit Sunday were in tears as they beat the Vikings for their first win of the year. Why? Because they hope against hope this will be the coach who rights the ship, and it all starts with that first victory.

But this coach is righting any ships. He is weeks (if not days) from walking the plank. And not only has he been unsuccessful as the head coach, but his offenses have been wildly unentertaining. (Most of the Fields-based entertainment had little to do with Matt Nagy.) Every one of us knows exactly what we’re going to see when whatever non-Fields plays quarterback. And every one of us knows it’s going to be a long, boring failure. How is it possible to commit emotionally to an athletic contest when the outcome is negatively predetermined?

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The league is bananas. And there’s a lot to digest every week. Here are some general thoughts.

• Texted a friend of mine about this year’s quarterback class in the draft. Got a succinct response: “No starters”. So, if you are the Giants or Eagles, and you’re loaded with early picks, you’ll have to determine whether to wait a year before pulling the plug on your current starter. Daniel Jones and Jalen Hurts may not be “the guy” but replacing them with a high-profile veteran like Watson, Rodgers, Wilson may prove too costly.
• Lamar Jackson is always going to have physical limitations with his arm. But his decision making is what’s proving costly for the Ravens. He’s playing recklessly and that team isn’t good enough to survive reckless quarterback play.
• Not sure I’ve ever seen a tight end cost his team 14 points, but Gerald Everett did Sunday. He bobbled a touchdown pass into an INT and fumbled at the goal line. Without those two errors, Seattle blows out San Francisco.
• Nine of Minnesota’s games this season have been decided on the final play. They are 3-6 in those games. That team is inexcusably out of the postseason right now and it looks like it will cost Mike Zimmer his job at season’s end.
• It was not unexpected to see the Jaguars struggle this season. But I never expected an Urban Meyer team to be consistently blown out. (And Trevor Lawrence has not improved as the season has progressed. If anything, he looks burnt out.)
• Joe Brady is to blame in Carolina, huh? Was it Brady who made a ridiculous trade for Sam Darnold? Did Brady try to rescue the season on the arm of a washed-up Cam Newton? Did Brady build an offense entirely around a running back that can’t stay on the field?

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Dave Wasserman is the savviest political analyst in the country. He’s not a partisan hack, pontificating endlessly to halfwits like Chuck Todd about why Issue X plays in rural Virginia and Issue Y doesn’t in Maricopa County. Wasserman is focused on the numbers, the data, and made his bones focusing on congressional redistricting maps. (His Twitter feed is aptly handled @Redistrict.) On election nights, Wasserman pours through the data, county-by-county, and is often able to call races (accurately, mind you) well before the networks. When he’s ready to make the call, he turns to his catchphrase: I’ve seen enough. 

Well, I’ve seen enough.

Forget reassignment. Forget restructuring the front office. When George McCaskey finally fires Matt Nagy, he must also fire Ryan Pace. Pace has done several valuable things as GM of the Chicago Bears, but this organization’s dearth of talent at several key positions – positions vital to the development and success of Justin Fields – can no longer be overlooked. It is time for a new direction.

There are two fatal flaws of the Pace tenure: he drafted Mitch Trubisky and he hired Matt Nagy. Those mistakes have been discussed ad nauseum and need not be reiterated here. But watching the Bears fall to the Cardinals Sunday, a third fatal flaw became all-too-apparent once again. The Bears have simply failed to add enough game-changing playmakers in his seven years on the job.

Darnell Mooney is a terrific player and will thrive in a more coherent offensive system next season. But is there another pass catcher on this roster that even mildly concerns opposing defenses? Allen Robinson is headed towards a one-year prove it deal in New England. Goodwin, Byrd and Grant are practice squad players for the top teams in the league. Cole Kmet is a viable piece of an offensive attack but he’s not in the conversation with the marquee tight ends and he never will be. (To Kmet’s credit, that was not the expectation of him coming out of college.)

Their backfield is good. David Montgomery is a brilliant running back and there will be teams calling for his services this off-season. But while Tarik Cohen’s production earned him a hefty payday, his injury seems to have completely derailed any semblance of an explosive screen game. The Bears valued that role to the tune of $17 million but have seen no reason to replace him in the lineup. Has anyone asked why?

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