Join Robert and I for our Twitter Spaces Season Preview.
Saturday August 31st.
1 PM ET.
We’re taking your questions!
There is a selflessness to being a sports fan.
For a few hours each week, I allow my emotional existence to be impacted by a collection of individuals with whom I have zero personal connection. They don’t know me. They don’t care about me. To paraphrase a great Jerry Seinfeld bit, the only thing linking us is the laundry the fellas wear.
But emotions are only involved when there are expectations, and it’s been five years since I’ve had any expectations when it comes to the Chicago Bears. After sitting in the building and watching Cody Parkey shank away the 2018 season, Noah and I drowned our grief at the Lou Malnati’s bar. There was immense sadness, but that sadness was accompanied by hope. 2018 was a site to build upon, and 2019 would be the erection of a championship tower. I predicted the 2019 Bears to go to the Super Bowl, but Mitch Trubisky had other plans. (Those plans, it would turn out, were that he would play the quarterback position badly.)
Ryan Poles made two moves over this last week, trading for a pair of defensive linemen in Darrell Taylor and Chris Williams. To the outside observer, these would be considered minor moves, depth moves, backend of the roster stuff. But they struck me, symbolically, as the moves of a GM who thinks his roster is close to competing for a title. And I happen to think he’s right. The 2024 Bears have a terrific defense and the best collection of “skill” players in organization history. This is a team that should win double-digit games and be in the tournament come January. And one has to look no further than last year’s NFC playoffs to understand that every team in the tournament has a prime opportunity to play on the final Sunday.
I took a twenty-year sabbatical from the world of fantasy football, returning in 2022 and stunning the fantasy world with a third place finish that season in the Thomas H. Bowden league. (The league is named after one of our original members who passed on 9/11.)
In 2023, my expectation rose, and my draft haul of Tyreek Hill, Davonte Adams, Deebo Samuel and Michael Pittman suggested those expectations would be met. But this is a keeper league. And I kept Justin Fields. I also took an earlyish-round shot on a tight end I thought was going to have a monster year: Darren Waller. I finished in third place once again, but most of that was luck.
Other than listening to The Fantasy Footballers podcast – a delightful show I make part of my daily NFL season routine – I do zero research before the draft. But I’m still asked to discuss the Bears on fantasy podcasts around the country. This year, the Bears are fantasy relevant, and those requests have tripled. (My acceptance rate has not.) Here are some thoughts I have shared.
D’Andre Swift is being under drafted.
Most platforms have Swift being taken as the RB22-25, behind the likes of Rhamondre Stevenson, Najee Harris and Aaron Jones. But there are three reasons I’m targeting Swift.
(1) The Bears did. This was a player the franchise identified and acquired extremely early in free agency and for good reason. He is going to be a focal point of this offense.
(2) Preseason usage. One screen. 50 yards. No snaps since. If the Bears are planning to platoon Swift and Herbert evenly, they sure aren’t suggesting that with their summer snaps.
(3) Receiving game. Shane Waldron’s two backs in Seattle last year – Walker and Charbonnet – caught 62 balls for 468 yards. And neither of those backs presents the threat in the passing game that Swift does.
Another Back I Love: Isiah Pacheco. It has been a long time since Andy Reid has fielded a proper three-down back and I think Pacheco is destined for that kind of season.
Nobody is playing.
My analysis of the lifeless, tedious, horrifyingly boring first episode of Hard Knocks was met with Twitter outrage! Why? Because a lot of sports fans are children. “HOW DARE YOU NOT LIKE THE TV SHOW ABOUT THE TEAM I LIKE!!” So let’s see how many followers we can lose this week (and then gain back in the following days).
8:56 PM ET. Full disclosure: I am deeply regretting the commitment I made to review these episodes. I don’t even want to watch them. But I do love a Liev Schreiber voiceover. For me, he stands with Peter Coyote as our finest documentary voiceover artists. (Coyote does many of the epic Ken Burns films.)
8:59 PM ET. How many of these Game of Thrones series need to exist? I watched a few episodes of this latest one and it’s just people arguing in old timey conference rooms about tactics. Boring as boring can be.
9:03 PM ET. Blues Brothers music…already. This is going to be a tough watch.
9:05 PM ET. Liev sounds a bit weathered. The depth of his vocal is missing. Not happy about this.
9:06 PM ET. I guess Cole Kmet is not a draw for White Sox fans. What was the attendance that day? 11?
9:06 PM ET. Eberflus: “Winning doesn’t make you a winner.” I disagree, Matt. I believe that’s the only requirement.
9:08 PM ET. They are MILKING the first ten minutes of this episode. They can’t have much.
9:12 PM ET. Caleb couldn’t sing. “You don’t have to be able to carry a tune, to carry a team,” Liev says. This show is written by children.
9:16 PM ET. Very excited about the Harris/Walz ticket. Walz seems a genuinely good dude who’ll connect with the union/rural voter that Dems have lost to the Trump types over the last eight years.
9:17 PM ET. If they knew Saban was going to be there this week (episode) they should have made the entire thing about him. Let him host the episode. He’s a compelling figure.
Devin Hester was the only active player interview I ever enjoyed. He was charismatic, honest, funny, and he was not pleased to see Josh Cribbs stealing some of his limelight while he was sidelines with an injury. Hester was also the most electric athlete of my lifetime. Data wrote a terrific piece, Quantifying Devin Hester, in 2017. Robert even reflected on Hester in his early days as editor here. We’ve written a lot about Hester around here, but attention must continue being paid.
The NFL ridiculously prohibits their YouTube highlights from being embedded on non-affiliated websites, even sites that have been promoting their product for two decades. So, in order to watch the videos below you need to click the links and go over to the YT site. But these are my three favorite Hester performances/moments.
Kick returners have won games in the NFL, but this is the only game I can remember where a kick returner singlehandedly won an NFL game. The Broncos outplayed the Bears on BOTH sides of the ball for four quarters, but Hester’s two returns (a kickoff and a punt) were the difference.
Video: Monday Night Meltdown! (Bears vs. Cardinals 2006, Week 6) (youtube.com)
The wildest night I spent at Josie Woods, and the most inconceivable football game I’ve ever witnessed.
Video: [HD] Devin Hester Opening Kickoff Return | Superbowl XLI | Extended Version (youtube.com)
It is the sporting event I choose to forget, but one can’t deny it had the most thrilling opening moments in Chicago Bears history. With that kick return touchdown, Hester solidified his historical status with the organization. I remember, in a somewhat drunken haze, screaming, “This is our year! This is our year!” It was not.
Fan and media access to NFL training camps is a double-edged sword. On one side, access is fun. Fans seems to genuinely enjoy going to camp practices and reporting what they see on their social feeds. Media members know how voracious the fan hunger is for new NFL content and gets tons of mileage out of their analysis of 7-on-7s and late-practice red zone sessions. And if you have video?!?! Click click click click click click click click click.
But one must always remember that we are in an era, despite this unprecedented access, of intense franchise secrecy. The access is measured, controlled. Teams are not going to show a single supporter or reporter anything that could potentially put them at a competitive disadvantage when they start keeping score in September. And that is what makes the prospect of the Chicago Bears appearing on HBO’s now ubiquitous Hard Knocks series this summer a complicated endeavor.
Hard Knocks Schedule
Hard Knocks is reality television, and not since the days when Herm Edwards and Rex Ryan were involved has it been particularly good reality television (if such a thing exists). Reality television thrives on big personalities and fabricated drama. The ripped, Australian deckhand and the one-arm chef both like the busty second stew! But only one can make out with her in the hot tub! Which one will it be? (For those of you unfamiliar with Below Deck, those sentences will be gibberish.)
