• Prediction: Patrick Mahomes is going to be the first NFL quarterback to need Tommy John surgery.
• The Chiefs catch everything and I’m glad some national folks are finally noticing. When you watch the Chiefs weekly you notice that all Mahomes has to do is get the ball in the general vicinity of his pass catchers. Every single one of them has great hands. Mahomes isn’t particularly accurate yet and he doesn’t have to be.
• Chiefs clearly saw something on tape and got their hands up on the defensive line. Andrew Luck couldn’t get a ball beyond the line of scrimmage for the first quarter and a half.
• Colts offensive line was abysmal, including All Pro guard Quenton Nelson. If you block the Chiefs, you can rip them apart in the secondary but the Colts never got them blocked.
• 273 rushing yards for the Rams? In a playoff game? Against a good Cowboys defense? How is that even possible? The Rams are not a particularly difficult team to defend. Take out their run game and make the quarterback throw it 35 times. How are Rod Marinelli and Kris Richard managing to get to sleep?
• Sean McVay needed that win. The “what has he won” crowd was starting to grow in numbers and volume. In fairness, it’s not McVay’s fault that Kliff Kingsbury and Matt LaFleur – two supremely unqualified individuals, but McVay friends – are now head coaches in the NFL. McVay put in nine years as an NFL assistant.

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What a ride.

The Bears’ 2018 season ended with a doink a few weeks before anybody wanted it to, but man oh man what fun it was. After four straight years of shifting attention to the draft by November, the Bears went 12-4, established themselves as one of the best teams in the NFL, and laid waste to the division. Along the way, they got to officially end the season of both the Packers and Vikings and made the entire city of Chicago go crazy with football fever.

Lest we forget some of the highlights of 2018:

• After three brutal games to start the season, Mitchell Trubisky finally had his coming out party when he laid waste to the Bucs in week 4. Just to make sure you knew it wasn’t a fluke, he followed it up with 300 yards and multiple touchdowns in both of the next two games.
• Khalil Mack, Eddie Goldman, and company embarrassed the Rams on Sunday Night football with the whole world watching (and picking against Chicago), proving once and for all that this team was in fact for real.
• Eddie Jackson just kept scoring touchdowns, Kyle Fuller led the NFL in interceptions, and the defense as a whole made big play after big play.
• Linemen and linebackers kept scoring touchdowns on trick plays, just for fun.
• The Bears finished the season winning 9 of their last 10 games, with the only loss coming on the road in overtime with their backup QB.
• The Bears finished with the NFL’s 3rd best W/L record, 4th best point differential, and 3rd best turnover differential, all key indicators of the best teams in the league.

And then…

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Outside of the Bears, my only other serious sports fandom belongs to the wayward New York Knicks. The Knicks only flash of national relevance in the last twenty years was quickly snuffed out by a ballhog unwilling to share the limelight. The team has drafted in the top ten for the last three years and only missed it in 2014 because they had traded their pick away for the chance to get Carmelo Anthony a few months before free agency. When the reports came out in the summer of 2017 that Phil Jackson was shopping Kristaps Porzingis because he didn’t show up for an exit interview (really), I hit the point where I seriously considered resigning my allegiance to the team. That was a bridge too far.

I mention all this because I know what the hopelessness of fandom can feel like.

That’s what confused me so much throughout this Bears season. Despite winning nearly every week it felt like all I was seeing (from both Bears fans and the national media) were questions about the quarterback. While life has interfered with my Bears fandom over the last few years, Nagy, Mack, Hicks, Cohen, and, of course, Trubisky, made it fun to watch the team again this season. I didn’t miss a game on TV, I taught my three year old “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” (it’s very cute), and I read all the Bears coverage I could find every Monday morning for the past 19 weeks.

Sports are entertainment and this team was nothing if not entertaining. So what’s the point in trying to pick apart a kid who holds the keys to a decade of possible relevance? I trust Jeff and the rest of the crew here are going to spend quite a bit of time breaking down the game, the season, and what’s in store for the next nine months, so I thought I’d spend a bit of time trying to get inside the head of the fans who love to hate Trubisky.

Here are my three best guesses for why people feel the need to pick apart a player who offers them their greatest hope for football salvation:

Protection From Disappointment

This is the most understandable reason, but then why be a fan? The difference between liking a sport and liking a team is whether you feel something when your guys win and lose. For the past 10 years in the NBA I’ve liked the sport more than the Knicks. It’s fun, I watch a bunch of games on League Pass, but there’s no real emotion there. I wanted LeBron to beat the Warriors, but I didn’t care when he didn’t. We are human and we crave feelings, both good and bad. It makes some sense to try and protect your emotions by playing down the hope, but if you really care about the team you’re going to lose that game with yourself.

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Three initial thoughts:

• I’ve never been one of the Fangio sycophants. I think he’s a good, solid, stable defensive coach but his genius has been overstated for years. The Bears defense took a leap this season because the Bears added one of the two best defensive players in the sport and drafted a star inside linebacker. That’s why sacks, turnovers, performance increased.
• Fangio deserved this opportunity, probably years ago. But Bears fans should get used to this feeling because I predict they will lose multiple coordinators in the Matt Nagy/Mitch Trubisky years to head coaching gigs.  That’s what comes with sustained success.
• This simplest solution is Ed Donatell, who has done a wonderful job with the Bears secondary. But the Bears shouldn’t rush. They need to find a defensive mind that mirrors the folks running their offense: aggressive and exciting. Fangio liked his corners to play off the ball and liked to take his best pass rushes out of the pass rush in big moments. This defense has all the talent in the world. It needs a little meanness.

Before one sits down to write a eulogy, a central question must be asked. What would the deceased, lying in their wooden box, want you, those who loved them, to hear? What are the final words they wish to have associated with their existence?

Tears are easy. This is death. It’s sad.

Laughs are also pretty easy. With sadness and pain comes tension and an inherent desire to laugh. That which would not garner even a chuckle at 2 AM in your local pub can easily bring the house down from the pulpit.

Profundity is more complicated. An attempt to BE profound can often ring hollow. There’s nothing worse than someone trying to draw great human lessons from situations that don’t present them. 

Who were the 2018 Chicago Bears? They gave us joy. They gave us excitement. They gave us laughter. They gave us hope. And ultimately, because in this sport only one team ends their campaign with champagne, they gave us the heartbreak of what might have been.

The 2018 Chicago Bears were a lot like life. It wasn’t always pretty. It didn’t always make sense. It was sometimes tense, sometimes boring and often predictably unpredictable. Read More …

Tomorrow is guaranteed to no one and Super Bowl contenders don’t come around often, especially in Chicago. And the Bears are home because Ryan Pace ignored what everyone else knew was a fatal flaw and kept Cody Parkey at kicker.

The fact that the last second kick was officially changed to a block doesn’t really matter. That tells us Parkey didn’t get enough air on what should’ve been an easy kick. A 43-yard kick shouldn’t have to be a line drive and it shouldn’t be blocked at the line of scrimmage. That’s just as bad as missing it outright.

Blame Parkey all you want, but did anybody think he was going to make it? If you let a toddler poor milk into his cereal, he’s going to spill the milk. If a cat sees a pen on the counter, he’s going to knock that fucking pen OFF THE COUNTER. If a bad kicker has a shot at a big kick, he’s going to miss.

These are commonly known facts. Why didn’t Pace know them?

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Sunday’s loss to the Eagles is going to be discussed for a long time and Cody Parkey will remain the centerpiece of that conversation. But here are five (I think) unique observations from inside the building.

• The crowd wanted to be the loudest and most intense crowd at Soldier Field in thirty years. But oddly, the defense deflated them constantly. The Eagles converted way too many third downs, and converted them with relative ease, with Foles throwing to wide open receivers under little pressure. Third down is when the lakefront faithful reached fever pitch. Building back up to that level, on a cold windy night, was not easy.
• There was a distinct change in Mitch Trubisky after completing the 3rd-and-11 late. His confidence seemed shaken. His receivers were not winning on the outside. He wasn’t able to create with his legs because he was clearly nursing an injury. But after he completed that pass, he took control of the game. He was brilliant down the stretch and would have been the story of the game if…well, you know.
• When the Bears spread the Eagles out, the Eagles had no answer. I wrote last week this was not a game the Bears should plan to win on the ground. That’s a great Eagles front. When Nagy spread them out, Trubisky had open receivers everywhere. Why didn’t the Bears change their approach in the second half? Why didn’t they recognize those mismatches? This was not a banner day for the coaching staff on either side of the ball.

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Saturday January 5th – 12:19 PM 

I love the Drake Hotel. It’s old. It’s beautiful. The Coq D’or is my favorite hotel bar in the world. (Go there just to have the Bookbinder soup.) When I come through those doors on Walton Street, I feel like I’m stepping into the history of Chicago. It doesn’t have the amenities of a newer hotel. But it has character. A ton of it.

This morning I decided to order breakfast to the room. Two eggs, over easy. Home fries well done. Bacon. English muffin. Orange juice. Pot of coffee. Room service at a good hotel is one of life’s delights, especially for someone who has spent years crafting an existence centered around the avoidance of pants.

I rented a movie. I hadn’t seen Can You Ever Forgive Me. $20 too steep? Probably, for a movie that I’ll be able to rent for $6 in a week or two. But I’ve been dying to see it. (You too should see it. It’s brilliant. And Melissa McCarthy gives the performance of the year.)

I did all this because Noah isn’t getting to town until the afternoon and I can’t be trusted to wander the streets and not end up in a saloon. With the great football coming later, I didn’t want to be asleep at 6:30 pm. (It would not be the first time.)

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I decided Monday’s column  (what you’re currently reading) won’t be the standard bullet-point recap of Sunday’s game with the Eagles. I’ll be in the building and I find it hard to get the full context of a game in that environment. Plus, I’ll inevitably miss stuff waiting to take a piss. And with a playoff game, there will be so much coverage for you to wade through. Why not create something different?

Instead I’m going to write a little now. Write a little more tomorrow morning. Then write something Sunday night/Monday morning. Walk you, the reader, through this experience. Emotionally, mostly. And right now my emotions are steady. I’m confident. Here’s why:

• The Bears are the better team. They’re just better at almost every single element of the game, outside of the kicker position.
• The Bears are a dominant defense with a dominant home field advantage. Those almost always hold up in the postseason.
• I’m expecting an insane crowd. Unlike most games I’ve attended in Chicago, the town is not covered with Bears gear. The hotel lobby and elevators aren’t laden with fans here to see the team. Partly because the tickets are expensive, I’m sure, but mostly I think it’s because people plan trips around those Bears games during the season and they would only have had a week to prep for this. This is going to be a local crowd.
• Nick Foles has never thrived in an environment like he’ll face tomorrow.

Let’s see how I feel in the morning. But right now, I expect great things from the Bears.

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