The following is Reverend Dave’s response to Adam Hoge’s suggestion that the Bears buy the Arlington Park property in Arlington Heights and irrationally move the team into the suburbs. 

I like Hoge, but what is the point of this article?

Question answers itself.

Didn’t stop me from getting riled up like everyone else.

“Soldier Field offers nothing in terms of convenience. It’s hard to access, with limited public transportation options…”

The fuck it does.

Hoge claims the Arlington Metra stop makes it more accessible than Soldier Field. Accessible to who? The northwest suburbs? Are those the only people who count? From Joliet south and anywhere East, Arlington is a longer drive than Solider Field.

Meanwhile, there are multiple Metra stops in walking distance of the stadium. There’s the El train. Hell, Union Station itself is only 40-minutes. I can already hear the outcries at that ambulatory demand, but as someone who has taken the train from the Meadowlands (departing a mere 50 yards from the stadium entrance) many times, a 40-minute walk is way better than 40 minutes squashed in a mass of humanity waiting on that one method of egress.

“What Chicago needs – a legitimate multi-purpose, 80,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof.”

The fuck it does.

Why do we need a roof? I don’t romanticize freezing but sitting in the cold can be fun at a Bears game, even if it’s not for Hoge. Feels a lot more like football in the cold. Would the Pack put a lid on Lambeau?  

More importantly though, how does the fan experience benefit from an extra 20,000 people? Will that make parking or accessibility easier? Do I want the air to be even thinner when I buy tickets in the nosebleeds? Do I care if the McCaskey’s make more off ticket revenue?  

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Russell Wilson has told the Seahawks he wants to play in Seattle but, if a trade were considered, the only teams he would go to are the Cowboys, Saints, Raiders and Bears, his agent Mark Rodgers said to ESPN.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 25, 2021

(1) The only time I’ve gotten a scoop wrong on Twitter was during a conversation I had with Robinson last spring, suggesting he would be extended shortly. That suggestion came from directly inside the organization and there was a firm belief the deal was done. It was not. Robinson wanted more. (Way more.) And now it seems ARob has taken his situation to the media in hopes of avoiding the franchise tag and securing about a $100 million contract.

That same individual inside the organization told me this week the team has NOT ruled out a long-term deal with Robinson. An extension is still their best case scenario, despite what Robinson says publicly.

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(2) Tagging Robinson is a no brainer. And if any team is willing to part with a first-round pick for him, the Bears should not even hesitate to make that move. As Andrew wrote Tuesday, if trading Robinson makes it possible for the Bears to acquire a potential franchise QB, nothing else matters. Make the deal. If the Bears don’t find themselves acquiring an established starter (Watson, Carr) before the draft, they must come out of that first round with a quarterback to inspire the fan base and give hope for the future. With two first rounders, that should be fairly easy to accomplish.

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(3) This piece at CBS from Cody Benjamin has a passage I simply don’t understand:

If Chicago hasn’t met his demands by now, it’s hard to believe the team will retain him any longer, unless it’s on the franchise tag Robinson doesn’t want.

Who cares what Robinson wants? This is a business. The Bears are not going to determine whether or not to tag Robinson based upon the player’s preferences! It’s been amazing to see national writers only see the team’s options as tagging (and keeping) him or letting him go onto the open market.

Some days we just have to fill the space around here. This is one of those days. Here are some links worth reading.

• Brad Biggs raises an issue one can’t imagine is on the front burner for the Bears right now: re-signing Cairo Santos. (For the record, I can’t see a scenario where Santos is not back but the Bears are trying to solve the most important position in sports. That takes a bit of priority.)
• Albert Breer at SI lays out the most updated franchise tag numbers and explains why teams won’t be rushing to tag players until the salary cap for the 2021 season is settled.
• The quarterback series at The Athletic has been terrific but I’m partial to Adam Jahns’ piece on Jim Miller, one of the more ludicrous figures in Bears’ quarterbacking lore. Miller was once fined a fortune and (I believe) suspended for diet pills. That only happens to one position in sports: Bears QB.
• The Colts have their new starting quarterback. But he won’t be playing with number 11 because of…Michael Pittman? How is that possible? ESPN has the story. (Somewhere, in the deep recesses of Bears twitter, folks are still wrongly arguing the Bears had interest in Wentz. They never made a single offer.)
• Eddie Goldman has told Sean Desai he’ll be returning to the Bears for 2021 – something that was certainly not a foregone conclusion. (This link does not overtly confirm Goldman’s return. But he’s coming back.)
• ACTUAL BEAR STORY: ‘Something bit me’: Woman surprised by bear while using outhouse. (People call it ‘clickbait’ but how exactly would you avoid clicking THAT link?)
• ESPN’s Dan Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham produced a stunning piece of journalism on NFLPA boss DeMaurice Smith, one of the more complicated figures in the business of professional sports. Why was Smith so fundamentally opposed to 18 games but open to 17? Why would he allow the franchise tag to continue to exist? Every question you’ve ever had about Smith’s role in the game is addressed in this piece.

Sometimes really good things are posted on Twitter. And then they’re gone. I found Bill Zimmerman’s thread –  documenting what the Bears would need to give up to move up in the draft – quite illuminating. So I’m sharing it here.

Hadn’t seen this video posted in the last few days but I wanted to make sure to get it posted here.

Sometimes as a silly hobby, specifically in years where the Bears might draft an early quarterback, I find myself scouring mocks in February to see which way the wind is blowing. Yesterday, I looked at three such mocks.

Daniel Jeremiah at NFL.com had the Bears taking a wide receiver at number 20.

Kadarius Tony, WR, Florida

The Bears are going to need more offensive playmakers whether pending free agent Allen Robinson is re-signed or not.

Chris Trapasso at CBS had the Bears taking an offensive lineman at 20.

Alijah Vera-Tucker, OL, USC

Vera-Tucker is a valuable prospect because we’ve seen two high-caliber seasons from him at different positions (guard then tackle).

John Clayton at the Washington Post (apparently) had the Bears also taking a receiver at 20.

The NFL personnel man I refer to as [REDACTED] has been a friend of mine for more than a decade. He’s not a cultivated source. He’s a guy in a high-profile NFL gig and his family lives in my neighborhood. He’s also one of my most valuable resources in the league. So I asked him three questions.

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DBB: I won’t ask you to weigh-in on the Houston situation, or any other front office, but give me your general response to the Deshaun Watson availability.

[REDACTED]: Unthinkable. But based on what is happening down there, totally predictable. I will weigh-in on Houston. Nick (Caserio) aside, those are not good people running the program. Deshaun is above all a truly good person. He sees the caliber of individual leaving the organization and the caliber of individual staying and he knows which groups he belongs in.

As for the trade itself, I don’t envy Nick’s position. Three first round picks are nice but they’re not Deshaun, you know what I mean? You can hit on all three and not equal the value of a player of his status and ability. And none of the quarterbacks rumored to be in the packages back to Houston are half the player he is. Nick almost has to take this further along so he can convince his fans he had no other choice but to trade him. He has to exhaust his options.

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DBB: Many Bears fans believe Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy are in a “lame duck” season. I’m not one of those people, but it seems to be the general perception. You’ve been in a front office, in that spot. Can you describe the experience?

[REDACTED]: Yeah, it sucks. 

First thing, and I have told you this previously, nobody I spoke with believed Ryan or Matt was getting fired. And if they were, both would have been hired again within 12 hours if they wanted. I would have pushed hard for us to bring Ryan in but he’d more than likely go back to Sean. 

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Matt Nagy’s offense has had zero success against the Green Bay Packers. A lot of that blame falls upon the quarterback position, but not all of it. Nagy has known what he has at quarterback in each of the six meetings between the clubs and has not been able to compensate for Chicago’s historical deficiency. He’s tried the quick passing attack. He’s tried to force the run game. He’s tried the trick plays. Nothing.

They were mildly successful in 2018, splitting the games, and scoring in the 20s both meetings. 2019 was an abject disaster, totally 16 points in the two contests, and looking (somehow) even worse than that. The 2020 season brought no improvement, with a garbage-laden 25 in the first meeting and an impotent 16 in the regular season-defining finale.

The man running the defense in Green Bay for the entirety of Nagy’s tenure was Mike Pettine. And dominating Mitch Trubisky was apparently not enough for him to retain that role. This week, Pettine was hired by Nagy and new defensive coordinator Sean Desai as a senior defensive assistant, or something. It’s an amorphous position, without a definable role on game day, but one can assume Pettine is being brought into the organization for two distinct reasons.

First, he’ll be a veteran mind on which Desai can lean. Sometimes this kind of role can be a bit overstated but in this case, it seems appropriate. Desai has never called an NFL game. He’s never made halftime adjustments. He’s never been responsible for organizing the whole of defensive meetings during the week, or motivating the entire unit on game day. Having someone on your staff who HAS done all those things can not be considered anything other than useful.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, Pettine knows every flaw in Nagy’s approach. And it is this element that suggests another step in Nagy’s growth. The first resources Pettine will surely provide the Bears, and Nagy, are his scouting reports/game plans from their previous contests. What did Pettine view as Nagy’s (and subsequently Bill Lazor’s) play-calling tendencies? What did Pettine think the Bears offense was incapable of doing? What did Pettine view as the weaknesses of the good players on the offensive roster? For instance, how did they want to play someone like Allen Robinson? (Because whatever they did worked.)

And it doesn’t stop on the offensive side. Pettine can also lay out, in full detail, how the Packers have chosen to attack the Bears’ better half, their defense.

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Assuming the trade compensation is fair, would you want to see Carson Wentz starting for the Bears in September?

— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) February 9, 2021

Two thoughts:

• Ten or eleven points is nothing to sneeze at. It’s hard to get that kind of majority in a Twitter poll on ANYTHING these days.
• “Fair” is the important word in the poll. Fans seem to be okay with the Bears giving Wentz the second chance he deserves, but they don’t believe that second chance should come at significant risk to the team.