Pregame

Without Matt Nagy,

Bears try to save their season.

On number one’s back.

Quarter One

Deebo cannot catch.

Slye, one for two from distance.

Snoozer tied at three!

Additional points:

• Soldier Field turf is an absolute embarrassment. I hate the Arlington Heights move but if the city can’t maintain grass, what’s the point?
• Robert Quinn remains the team MVP.
• Two big drive-killing penalties from James Daniels can’t happen. He’s supposed to be the team’s best offensive lineman.
• Justin Fields looks far more comfortable running the offense when he’s not being harassed on every snap. (He looked a bit “happy feet” early but that’s settling down.)

Quarter Two

Fields rolls to his left,

His eyes see him, “The Outlaw”

Touchdown. Touchdown, Bears.

Additional points:

• Ryan Pace has done a nice job building a rotation on the inside of the defensive line. Both Tonga and Blackson are players. But the team’s pass rush can’t hold up when there is an elite left tackle on Quinn and no Khalil Mack.
• The drops have been a serious issue for the Niners all season. They have three critical ones in the first half of this game already.
• Two ineligible men downfield in a half? I’m not sure I’ve seen that before.
• Khalil Herbert is 100% a starting running back in this league. (And he’s going to keep the Bears from paying Montgomery.)
• Third down and short and Lazor dials up a designed swing screen. Don’t take the ball out of the quarterback’s hands in spots like that. His legs are a serious weapon.
• The Bears only have one corner and no pass rush, sans Mack. The bomb to Deebo to end the half isn’t surprising. What will be surprising is if the Niners don’t try a ton more of it in the second half.
• It has become very apparent the Bears don’t have a top wide receiver. They have a pair of second options but they don’t have anyone capable of being the centerpiece of an offense. They need that if they want to play modern football.

Bears 13, Niners 9

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

But currently there are elements of the franchise I like far more than others.

Offensively, the team is an off-night at the Comedy Cellar: predictable, boring, bad. Every time you think things might improve, maybe THIS comic is the next big thing, you are drowned in a sea of discarded Louis C.K. material.

And it is very hard to like the them defensively without Khalil Mack and possibly without Robert Quinn. The entire defense is built on the availability and dominance of those two players. Without them, and without a pass rush, what are they?

Loser Goes Home Match?

The Bears are 3-4. They’ve been embarrassed in all four of their losses. Another loss sends them to 3-5, and leaves them needing a 6-2 finish to play in the tournament as the likely 7-seed. (And hey, that might earn them a return visit to Tampa!) Their head coach even has me calling for his firing. This is it. This game is the fork in the schedule.

The Niners are 2-4. They’ve lost four straight and their season is drifting away from them. They don’t know what they’re doing at quarterback. They’ve played about 28 running backs. Their head coach – who until this point has received zero criticism from anyone – is now being asked to defend a pretty poor NFL coaching record. A loss Sunday and it’s another wasted season.

There’s always a mathematical argument to keep a team alive but the loser of Sunday’s game at Soldier Field is dead. The Bears will not lose to a bad Niners team at home and then go on the road, in primetime, and beat the Steelers. (Especially without the ability to pressure Roethlisberger.) The Niners won’t be marching Jimmy G. out there much longer as the losses mount. And a move to Trey Lance, while inevitable, will announce the end of their 2021 prospects.

No, both of the teams are desperate to win Sunday. But more honestly, they are desperate not to lose.

HughesReviews: The French Dispatch

It is often hard to explain what one doesn’t like about a particular filmmaker but in the case of Wes Anderson, I have never found that to be the case. His films – at least the films since Rushmore – have always felt like artifice for artifice’s sake; polished, pretty, planned within an inch of their lives, while being devoid of all human life. They are admirable works, sure, in the same way a high-end French restaurant can deliver a plate of beautiful cuisine. But at some point you have to pick up your fork and eat the fucking thing.

The French Dispatch is a distinct, and powerful, departure. Because of the picture’s narrative framing – stories told by the brilliant writers of an expat periodical in the fictional village of Ennui, France – the visual devices that might have previously felt indulgent instead feel essential to the storytelling. Dispatch is, in my ways, the first perfect marriage of story and style for Anderson. And in that regard, it is arguably his best picture: a beautiful story, beautifully told.

And while Tilda Swinton’s toothy lecturer had me cackling in my seat as she announced the crowd she’d be taking her drink, the entire cast, even in truncated form, are delightful. Anderson lets his performers breathe in this film. He frames them beautifully, of course, but he lets them live in that frame. And we should all be thankful for that.

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Let me walk you behind the DBB curtain.

Every Monday, for about 5-6 hours, I watch the Short Cuts presentation of every NFL game played on Sunday through the digital Sunday Ticket package. If you have the time, this makes the exorbitant cost of that package somewhat worth it, as you find many of the national narratives surrounding these games are just wildly inaccurate. (It is amazing how many games are decided by big drops and even bigger penalties but we never hear about those things.)

During these sessions, I take specific notes on all future Bears opponents. I’m not trying to get an advanced degree in this stuff; these are aren’t thorough, multileveled notes. But if I see a team struggle to defend a certain concept Week One, I will note it. If the team struggles with that concept again Week Four, I note it again. Alas, when the Bears play this team, I suggest they involve this concept. It’s that simplistic.

But the Bears never do it.

Any of it.

And it’s exhausting.

Because I am not Nate Tice or Robert Mays or Brian Baldinger. I have made it a point over the years to avoid being too technical when writing about football. How much do people really want to read about sluggo routes and robber technique? Do you really want to read about why dagger concept is more effective against Cover 2 than Cover 1? I value the X and O writers tremendously; they make us all smarter. But I’m just far more interested in the big player, making the big play, in the big moment. That’s what makes me want to write about the sport. (That’s what really, in a sense, makes me wanna write about anything. I’m far more interested in Tevye battling against the crumbling of religious/cultural tradition than in learning how he supports his family selling milk and cheese to poor Russians. Mays would be giggling through his podcast, discussing Tevye’s wagon/mule overhead.)

What do the Bears need to do to beat the Niners?

They need to block them. They need to tackle them. They need to catch the football. They need to hit Garoppolo. The Bears are underdogs at home to a two-win mess of a team. They need to play like they’re embarrassed by that fact. If they do these things, no matter who their coach is, they’ll be 4-4 Sunday afternoon. If they don’t, their season is over.

Yes, I have moved on from Matt Nagy as the head coach of the Chicago Bears. (And hopefully George McCaskey will do the same soon.) The Bears are not going to out-scheme any remaining opponent on their schedule. But they can still outhustle and outwork them. They can still give their fans something to care about on Sunday. They can still win games despite the ineptitude of the fella on their sidelines.

So let’s see it. Because I’ve got a bunch of Steelers notes for next week and I’d like to use them.

#Bears Pro Bowl pass-rusher Khalil Mack is not expected to play this week, per @MikeGarafolo and me, as the team will allow his ailing foot to rest. Giving him three weeks while on Injured Reserve to heal and rehab is being discussed. A significant blow to the Chicago defense.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 27, 2021

Stat #1

The Chicago Bears have now played three of top five teams in the NFC. The combined score of those three games was 96-31.

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Stat #2

The top five teams in the NFC are Arizona, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Green Bay and Dallas (in no particular order). Their yards per game, when averaged, is 404.26. The Chicago Bears are averaging 255.4 yards per game.

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Summary

In a league that is designed and officiated for maximum offensive output, the Bears are simply not playing modern NFL football. And they have zero chance to compete with the league’s best teams consistently until they do so.

So here’s Adam Jahns.

There are 10 games left but there is only one question that should matter to the McCaskeys right now: Is rookie quarterback Justin Fields in the best hands?

My column from Tampa (deals available in the link). https://t.co/URZZQdT2no

— Adam Jahns (@adamjahns) October 25, 2021

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

But let’s be honest: it’s quite difficult to like the Bears in this spot. The Bucs are inevitably going to score a bunch of points and the way to beat them is to score more. Does anybody believe a Matt Nagy offense can win a shootout, even with a rookie quarterback who looks like he’d thrive in that situation?

The Bucs are scoring 32.5 points per game. A great Bears defensive effort should be able to keep them in the 24-8 range. So the Bears will need 30. Do they have it? Doubtful.

HughesReviews: The Velvet Underground

I’ve always thought the great documentaries fall into two categories. The content docs captivate you with information. Alex Gibney is the master of this form (Enron, Client 9, Going Clear, etc.), but the binge-worthy, true crime doc drug – of which I must admit an addiction – has elevated the medium from high art, coffee shop conversation to pop culture phenomena. (Tiger King felt like the most talked about documentary in the history of the country.)

The form docs are a trickier enterprise. Whether it’s Errol Morris’ interrotron locking into the eyes of Robert McNamara or DA Pennebaker’s fly-on-the-wall witnessing Elaine Stritch’s cast recording breakdown or Barbara Kopple’s penetrating look at the coal miners of Harlan County, the form docs seem to change the way we look at the world by changing the way that world is framed for us, the viewer. (Great recent examples are 2019’s American Factory and Minding the Gap.)

The great music docs almost exclusively fall into this latter group. Sure, The Sparks Brothers was an intriguing look at an intriguing band, and History of The Eagles was endlessly entertaining, but ultimately those films are limited by how much the viewer actually cares about the work the band produced. (In both the aforementioned cases, my level is somewhere near zero.) The great music docs – The Last Waltz, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Stop Making Sense – captivate you with the originality of their storytelling.

What is so stunning about Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground is how intimate the experience feels. (It definitely helps that I saw it in a theater and not on my couch, with the ability to pause and take piss breaks.) The filmmaker’s decision to rest the faces of his subjects on screen for extended periods of time had a near-hypnotic effect. You find yourself studying Lou Reed and John Cale as younger men. You find yourself searching their faces for clues to a puzzle that’s never been solved. And all the while they are mapping out their journeys to the band. It’s thrilling.

I’ll write more about this film in the year-end piece. But I want to use this space to encourage you to see the film. (It is on Apple+ if you can’t find it in a theater near you.) Whether you like the band or not – and I do not – it’s one of the more remarkable documentaries every produced.

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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are favored over the Chicago Bears by anywhere from 12 to 13.5 points, depending on the sportsbook of your choice. But this is not an unwinnable game for the Bears. There’s a path. Will they take it?

[Note. This space will operate like Robert Quinn’s positive Covid test on Monday will keep him out of this game.]

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Split Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Offense:

• Abandon the run.
  • This is a team that salivates at the thought of an opponent running the ball on first and second down. It allows their pass rush can tee off on third and their terrible secondary to take a deep breath. The teams that have had offensive production against them have taken the opposite approach.
    • When the Cowboys scored 29, Zeke and Pollard totaled 14 carries. Dak Prescott threw for over 400 yards and 3 touchdowns.
    • Sony Michel was given 20 carries by the Rams against the Bucs and totaled 67 yards. (The Rams had a pretty significant lead in this game.) Matthew Stafford threw for 343 yards and 4 touchdowns.
    • This is a game where Marquise Goodwin and Damiere Byrd should log snaps and see targets. And it would be a nice opportunity to throw the football to Jimmy Graham a few times.
  • Jalen Hurts was terrible throwing the ball against Tampa but his legs became a serious weapon as the game progressed. This is another reason to run this game plan through Fields. When it’s not there, let him run. His legs might be their only productive option on the ground.
  • It would also be nice to see Fields with the ability to throw the football away on an EARLY down. On third downs, he’s trying to force the issue to keep the chains moving. But on first down he should be far more willing to fling a ball into the sixth row if there’s nothing available downfield.

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Hit Em, or What Must the Bears Do on Defense:

• Pressure up the gut.
  • There’s no reason to belabor the point. Tom Brady has been playing in the NFL since the 80s and people have been writing the same stuff since the 80s. The only way to make him uncomfortable is to get him off his spot; pressure him up the middle. This will be far more difficult without Quinn.
• Tackle the quick toss.
  • Brady’s been as accurate as any quarterback in the league this season and he has brilliant short-yardage options in Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Antonio Brown, Leonard Fournette, Gio Bernard, etc. If the Bears continue to tackle as they have, especially at the safety position, it’s hard to imagine the Bucs not going 70 yards for a score on what looks like an innocuous 5-6 yard slant.
• Take one away with JJ.
  • Sean Desai has a difficult decision to make with Jaylon Johnson. Where does he deploy him? If he chooses to take one receiver away, that receiver should be Evans. Godwin and Brown do more of their work underneath the defense. Evans is the homerun hitter. Preventing the homerun might be the key to keeping this game competitive.