Last year I published a listing of my favorite 100 bars (open or closed) in the world. This year I planned to write an amended list, profiling a few from last year that did not get an extended write-up and bringing some new joints into the mix. But it’s been a weird few months, with most of the world’s great bars closed, and I have decided to go in a different direction. 

In lieu of just being on vacation (which I will be), this space will be dedicated to profiling some new spots that didn’t make last year’s list. Spots that will be in desperate need of your patronage should the world find any kind of normal again.

The Gantry – Long Island City, New York

I go to bars. A lot of them.

I also go to the movie theater weekly. I also see a lot of plays and live music and go to art galleries and museums. I choose to live in an expensive city and pay too much money for too little space so I can have access to these things.

Then Covid-19 happened.

A few weeks ago I found out from a friend that The Gantry was allowing people to come in and have a drink. Many joints were letting people drink on their sidewalks but I don’t like drinking near bars, I like drinking in them. I walked a few miles to this place. And sure enough, they were. I’ve been back seven times in three weeks.

Discovering a great bar is often about a singular moment. There’s a guy sitting next to you who’s a VP at Subway corporate and knows everything about cheap ham. Somebody plays Oscar Brown Jr’s Somebody Buy Me a Drink just as the sun sets. The bartender used to be a regular on the soap Guiding Light. (All three of these things happened to me at one bar, the legendary Spring Lounge.)

The Gantry’s greatness revealed itself at a moment in time. It was there when I needed it.

Last year I published a listing of my favorite 100 bars (open or closed) in the world. This year I planned to write an amended list, profiling a few from last year that did not get an extended write-up and bringing some new joints into the mix. But it’s been a weird few months, with most of the world’s great bars closed, and I have decided to go in a different direction. 

In lieu of just being on vacation (which I will be), this space will be dedicated to profiling some new spots that didn’t make last year’s list. Spots that will be in desperate need of your patronage should the world find any kind of normal again.

We start in Chicago.

Pippin’s Tavern – Chicago, Illinois

This is the first place I had a drink in Chicago.

This is the first place I had Malört in Chicago.

This is the place I bring people to give them Malört for the first time, and often watch the liquid dribble from their lips shortly after consumption.

One time I was leaving the Billy Goat and told Rick Pearson I was heading to Pippin’s on the way back to my hotel. He responded, “Why would anyone go to that shit hole?”

Exactly.

I’ve written quite a bit about Chicago’s offense so far this offseason, but not as much about the other side of the ball. I want to change that in the next series of articles, using advanced defensive statistics from Pro Football Reference (PFR). We’ll start today by looking at missed tackles.

Baseline Rates

Let’s start by establishing a baseline for what is a normal rate of missed tackles.

I compiled all missed tackle stats from the PFR database for 2018 and 2019 (the only 2 years it has) and sorted them by position. In order to compare starters to starters and avoid rates skewed by backups, I assumed a base nickel package of 4 defensive linemen (DL), 2 linebackers (LB), and 5 defensive backs (DB). For all 32 teams over a 2 year span, this would mean roughly 256 DL, 128 LB, and 320 DB. This gave thresholds of 20 tackles for DL, 60 for LB, and 40 for DB.

Looking at those sample sizes, you can see the spread of missed tackle rates in the table below for each position group.

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As the fate of the Bears franchise rests on their ability to find a franchise quarterback, it is easy to question a general manager who has missed at the position so often. But history suggests Ryan Pace has as good a shot at finding the team’s first franchise quarterback in more than 50 years as anyone else does. Because if there is one thing that can be gleaned from studying how some of the best franchises in the NFL have obtained their leading signal callers, it’s simply that finding quarterbacks is an inexact science that can have many misses before a big hit.

The gold standard team in the NFL is the New England Patriots. They built their dynasty on the back of a sixth-round quarterback from Michigan named Tom Brady. But, before we give them too much credit for some secret they knew but the rest of the world didn’t, we should probably ask why they didn’t take Brady earlier.

The Patriots have more hits than Brady. They took Matt Cassel in the seventh, Jimmy Garoppolo in the second and Jacoby Brissett in the third. All three eventually became valuable trade pieces. But there’s also Zac Robinson in the seventh in 2010, Ryan Mallett in the third in 2011 and, if they really had that much faith in 2019 fourth-rounder Jarrett Stidham, they wouldn’t have signed Cam Newton on Sunday. Because they hit on Brady, they have had the benefit of letting other players develop and play in a consistent offensive scheme while they have continued to win games. It’s easy to develop talent at a position when those players never have to contribute.

And, of course, we can look at Green Bay.

Can you imagine the outrage we’d see today if a team traded a current first round pick for a player who was drafted in the second round and barely made the roster the year before? That’s how Ron Wolf grabbed Brett Favre. And he deserves credit for finds like Mark Brunell in the fifth, Matt Hasselbeck in the sixth and Aaron Brooks in the fourth — although that one is debatable. Wolf also drafted guys you’ve never heard of like Jay Barker and Kyle Wachholtz.

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When deciding not to sell DBB earlier this year I wrote this:

Not only was I not ready to get rid of DBB, I was more inspired than I ever have been to make it better, to be more engaged, to make it more profitable. The charitable component will never go away but it doesn’t have to be the only financial component.

So I sought out companies that I loved, companies that could become part of the fabric of this site. And being that our readership is, to a large part, outside of Chicago, they needed to be either national companies or Chicago-based, but delivering across the country.

Lou Malnati’s checked every box.

The process took a few months but I’m extremely pleased to announce today that Malnati’s is now DBB’s first corporate partner. And I’m using the word “partner” and not “sponsor” on purpose. This is not gonna be a chuck-up-a-banner-ad-and-send-a-monthly-check relationship. I’m going to write about my many experiences at Lou’s and highlight their Tastes of Chicago line. We’re going to do a bunch of giveaways to readers. Lou’s likes DBB and I am a big fan of theirs. So over time we’re going to evolve this relationship in a way that’s both (a) mutually beneficial and (b) integrated in a way that never disrupts getting our content to you, the reader, in a simple and seamless way.

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Allen Robinson

Why isn’t he extended?

Look to the virus.

Chicago Sun-Times

What happened to this paper?

Lieser ain’t no Jahns.

How are QBs judged

if there is no preseason?

Who wins by default?

Anybody writing good stuff out there? Well certainly!

• If you’re not a subscriber to the Hoge & Jahns podcast there’s very little I can do for you at this point. It’s the only Bears podcast that doesn’t stink on ice. Also, it’s very good, even if it’s stupidly named. (You’re both called Adam! Roll with it! Adam-2-Adam or AdamsBomb or something!) Their interview with safeties coach Sean Desai is relevant and resonant.
• Dan Kaplan for The Athletic is reporting the NFL is set to allow individual NFL franchises set their own capacities for home games. I’ll repeat what I wrote Monday: I don’t see a scenario where there are fans in NFL stadiums come September. But who knows? Things change with this virus weekly.
• This is a two Bears for one story! HaHa Clinton-Dix used to be a bear. Then he wasn’t a bear. So what happened? THE BEARS ATTACKED!
• ESPN’s Jeff Dickerson with a depressing look at poor QB play in Chicago during the Super Bowl era: “According to ESPN.com’s own Quarterback Index, the Bears rank last in the Super Bowl era in terms of QB production (48.3 out of a 100 point scale). During that time, the Bears have started a total of 50 quarterbacks, per ESPN Stats & Information research, the most of any NFL team in that span.”
• Tarik Cohen is coming off his worst season. He’s entering a contract year. And the NFL is facing financial uncertainty for the foreseeable future. JJ Stankevitz breaks down the situation for NBC Sports Chicago.

After a disappointing 8-8 season, Ryan Pace moved aggressively this off-season to revamp the Bears for 2020.

On defense, he re-signed Danny Trevathan, upgraded Leonard Floyd with Robert Quinn, signed Tashaun Gipson as a cheap replacement for HaHa Clinton-Dix, and drafted Jaylon Johnson to replace the aging Prince Amukamara.

On offense, he traded for Nick Foles to compete with upgrade Mitchell Trubisky, replaced oft-injured veterans Taylor Gabriel, Kyle Long, and Trey Burton with Ted Ginn, Germain Ifedi, and Jimmy Graham, and drafted Cole Kmet to hopefully give Chicago their first long-term solution at tight end since Greg Olsen was shipped out of town a decade ago.

That’s an impressively long list of moves for a team that entered the off-season with surprisingly low amounts of cap space and draft capital. And it has left the Bears with what appears to be a pretty solid roster, at least on paper, though it’s fair to say that questions at quarterback certainly limit the optimism.

But things start to look much more questionable when you gaze beyond 2020. You see, the only way Pace could spend money this off-season was by borrowing from the future salary cap, and he did that quite heavily. Several players have had their contracts restructured within the last year+ to clear up immediate cap space by moving money to 2021 and beyond. This totaled around $20M from a combination of Khalil Mack ($7.8M), Kyle Fuller ($4.5M), Charles Leno ($4.2M), and Cody Whitehair ($3.2M).

On top of that, most contracts Pace handed out this off-season were absurdly back loaded.

• Robert Quinn has a $6M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a 3 year, $43M deal (a 2020 savings of over $8M from the average cap hit for the deal). The downside is he will still have total cap charges of $37M remaining in 2021 and beyond, and will likely only play in Chicago for 2021-2022. To make matters worse, those will be his age 31 and 32 seasons, when his play will likely start to slip. He’s a speed rusher that relies heavily on that one skill, so it’s possible that decline will be very pronounced.
• Danny Trevathan has a $4.2M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a three-year, $21.7M deal. That saves about $3M in 2020 cap, but means the Bears will still have $17.5M on cap charges for his remaining 2 seasons, in which he will be 31 and 32 and likely start to see his play decline.
• Jimmy Graham has a $6M 2020 cap hit on what is essentially a one-year, $9M deal. That saves $3M in 2020, but means the Bears will have that cap hit in 2021 when he is likely not on the team (if he is on the team, he’ll have a $10M cap hit, which is not ideal for a player who will turn 35 during that season and has already started showing signs of decline).

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National pundits be damned, the outlook for the Chicago Bears in 2020 and beyond isn’t nearly as bleak as some have made it out to be.

In a column published last week, supposed Bears fan-turned-national-football-writer Robert Mays essentially wrote that the Bears are stuck in mediocrity, with no way out. Most of his points ranged from “off the mark” to “WHAT?!”

Mays posits the absurd argument that even if Nick Foles plays at his Super Bowl MVP level the Bears have no shot at winning a Super Bowl. He determines the Bears would lose on the road to the Saints, a team that just lost a home playoff game to Kirk Cousins. But his general point is one with which most would agree. The Bears are more likely going to finish somewhere in the 7-11 wins range in the coming season. It’s what Mays extrapolates from that potential win total that seems out of touch, lacking historical backing. He believes it is “no man’s land”. It’s not.

The Kansas City Chiefs were in no-man’s-land not all that long ago, with a quarterback who could consistently get them 10 wins but never make noise in the playoffs. One could argue that the Bears are actually better off than Kansas City was then because they have a quarterback they know can win a Super Bowl. Realistically, Nick Foles isn’t the long-term answer. Mitch Trubisky probably isn’t either. But that doesn’t mean the Bears have to fold as a franchise.

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The PGA Tour returned to action a week ago at Colonial.

European soccer seasons have restarted.

And yet Dr. Anthony Fauci sounded concerned about the possibility of the NFL arriving in September, as planned:

Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall. If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.

The NFLPA’s head medicine man was forced to respond. From a piece at PFT:

“Dr. Anthony Fauci’s words carry important weight as he has served our country with expert guidance and moral clarity through many crises,” Dr. Thom Mayer said in a statement. “As we have communicated to our players throughout the spring, we know that there are significant challenges to the operation of football during a global pandemic. So far, we have been guided and made decisions based on the best available science and current slate of infections and hospitalizations. Our joint task force is comprised of experts in multiple areas who are working everyday with health and safety in mind.

“In addition to stringent protocols and workplace safety, we continue to reinforce the importance of widely available testing. It is not just a key to restarting football, but also a matter of public health. While the information we currently have indicates it will not be an issue in the near future, we all agree that ethically, we cannot as a non-essential business, take resources away from our fellow Americans.

“We will continue to update you as we move forward through the summer.”

Let me state something out front. I not only live in New York City, the hardest Covid-hit location in the world, but I live in Woodside, Queens, just about a mile from Elmhurst Hospital, the building that saw some of the worst carnage of this virus. My friends and I have often joked (it’s called gallows humor) that we live in “Coronaville”. When antibody testing became readily available locally, everybody took the test. And I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that 75% of the men I know who took the test, tested positive for antibodies. Some of my friends got very sick. But thankfully nobody went to the hospital and had the death tube shoved down their throat.

I state this information to make it clear I understand the seriousness of this illness. And beating this illness is far more important than playing some football games. But that’s not the choice. The choice isn’t football or death. We can continue being vigilant against Covid-19 and have professional sporting contests. And that’s being proven by the two other sports that have returned to full-time action: golf and soccer.

So what can the NFL learn from these two sports? I’ll tell you.

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