Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears.

And, I mean, how can any Bears fan not like the Chicago Bears heading into this 2018 season? The organization has done every single thing they could to build a winning roster. Now they take that roster to the field.

Why the Bears Will Win

• Khalil Mack. It simply can’t be overstated. Mack makes every single player on an already-good defense better. The Bears should be able to mount their most ferocious, consistent pass rush in the Aaron Rodgers era.
• Mystery. What the hell are the Bears going to be on offense? Most people have pointed to the Andy Reid units in Kansas City (and kind of Philadelphia) but the talent pool in Chicago right now bears little resemblance to what the Chiefs have utilized the last several seasons. Robinson and Cohen barely showcased at all during public practices and preseason games. Add in offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich’s unique perspective and one has to wonder what Packers DC Mike Pettine is expecting to see Sunday night.
• Better Run Game Than 2017. In Jordan Howard’s two games against the Packers last season he failed to rush for more than 54 yards. Why? Because Dom Capers wisely understood that stopping the Bears run game meant stopping the Bears offense. (Hell, they ran the ball on every first and second down.) But now there are simply too many weapons in the passing game for Pettine to take a similar approach and that should free up a multitude of running lanes for Howard – the best pure runner in the game.

Why They Won’t

• Aaron Rodgers. Do you really require a paragraph explaining that Rodgers beats the Bears just about every time he plays them? He’s 15-4 against ’em. So odds are he’ll be 16-4 against ’em by the time the clock strikes Monday.
• Mitch Trubisky’s Big Night. Anyone who has spent nine seconds on this site knows I’m a big fan of the young signal caller. But this is his first game running a new, complicated offense and it’s on one of the biggest, brightest stages he’ll see the entire regular season. It’s a tough spot. The offense should not be expected to hit it’s stride until 3-4 weeks into the season but can Tru avoid the big mistake early in the season?

Neil Simon’s Best Line

Neil Simon is a criminally-underrated playwright. He never reached the artistic accolades of an August Wilson or Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller but his body of work is unparalleled in the history of American dramatic literature. The man had four hit plays running on Broadway…at one time. RIP Neil.

He also wrote one line I’ve never forgotten and I believe truly changed me as a writer. It’s from Biloxi Blues.

“You’re a witness. You’re always standing around watching what’s happening, scribbling in your book what other people do. You have to get in the middle of it. You have to take sides. Make a contribution to the fight. Any fight. The one you believe in.”

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The start of the regular season is usually the worst thing that can happen to the teams that win the offseason and the Bears can’t let that be the case as they open in Green Bay this Sunday.

It isn’t a stretch to say that losing to Green Bay has cost every coach the Bears have had since Mike Ditka their jobs. The likes of Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron, Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman and John Fox have compiled a 13-38 record against the Packers since 1993.

Smith was the toast of the town when he won six of his first eight meetings with the Packers. He then he lost nine of his last eleven. Outside of that four-year period in which Lovie had success, the Bears have gone 7-36 against the team to the north.  Trestman and Fox both scored prime time victories in Green Bay in their first seasons but it was all downhill after that.

The Packers aren’t just another team. They’re not viewed that way by most fans and they certainly aren’t viewed that way in the big offices at Halas Hall. If Matt Nagy is going to be separated from the poop platter that the team has had since Ditka, he has to beat the Packers.

He has to do it on Sunday.

He has to do it consistently.

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When the Bears kick off their 2018 campaign in Green Bay on September 9th, Packers defensive coordinator Mike Pettine won’t have a clue what Matt Nagy intends to do with Jordan Howard. He won’t have a clue what Nagy intends to do with Tarik Cohen. He won’t a clue what Nagy truly intends to do with any of the newly-assembled Bears weapons on offense. Sure, Pettine and his staff can scavenge old tape of Andy Reid’s offenses but different personnel bring an entirely different set of skills and Reid never hired an outside-the-box offensive coordinator like Mark Helfrich.

No, Nagy’s Bears, at least on offense, will be a mystery in Week One. And that, to start this season, is their biggest strength.

That’s why over these next two preseason contests fans shouldn’t be surprised if very few of this team’s core offensive weapons – Howard, Cohen, Trey Burton, Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel – are featured in any kind of prominent way. They’ll get snaps, I suppose, but those snaps will be more about getting them into the rhythm of an actual game and maybe taking a few hits so the first contact in Green Bay doesn’t jar their livers loose.

Contributors will still be out there. Anthony Miller and Adam Shaheen are young talents who’ll be expected to make an impact but not relied upon like highly-paid starters.

We’re less than a month from the start of the season and some folks have opined Kevin White won’t be on the roster in Green Bay. Others believe he’s going to be given every chance possible to play on game days. Either way, expect him to be out there for these practice games.

The depth wide receivers and backs are all jockeying for the placement at the bottom of the depth chart. Can a good performance in a practice game make a significant difference for an Ayers or Wims or Fowler or Knile Davis? Not likely. But when they are used in these games should let fans know how they’re valued by the organization.

But the guys who’ll be shouldering a bulk of the offensive responsibility will remain shrouded in mystery. It’s what makes the opener one of the most exciting Bears games in recent memory. It’s also what makes this offense impossible to game plan against early in the season.

The Bears will need Roquan Smith against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.

Finally the camp-long nightmare has come to an end. The eighth overall selection in the 2018 NFL Draft has signed his contract with the Bears after a nearly 30-day holdout. Missing nearly all of training camp would typically be enough to rule out a rookie from making an impact in Week One, but don’t be surprised if that’s not the case on the evening of September 9th. While the situation has been far from ideal, a player of Smith’s caliber and skill set should still figure into the Bears’ immediate plans.

Rodgers’ ability to move and make pinpoint throws in the middle of the field make having an athletic inside linebacker a must. It’s why Rodgers calls Brian Urlacher the best defender he ever faced, it’s why Smith was the pick and it’s why they double-dipped taking Joel Iyiegubuniwe in the fourth round.

The plan was for Smith to start Week One. That should still be in play but it’s hard to see the team giving the rookie the nod over Nick Kwiatkoski after the third-year linebacker has, by most accounts, played well in camp. It was to the point that the Bears didn’t even play Kwiatkoski in the first preseason game and he saw very limited action in the second. A bigger issue is that they can’t sell the first few weeks of camp as actually being important if a guy who has never played in the NFL doesn’t need them to be ready to face Rodgers.

Regardless of how well he has played in practice, Kwiatkoski has significant flaws. While many have pointed to his training camp interceptions, anyone who has spent too much time watching camp clips on Twitter has also seen several times in which the Bears got the better of Kwiatkoski. They’ve attacked him in practice, just as opposing teams did in games last year. The Bears actually took him off the field on passing downs in favor of Christian Jones late in the season. Maybe Kwiatkoski has improved in coverage, but it’s unlikely he’s going to cease being a liability there and Roquan figures to be among the elite coverage backers in the entire league.

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Chicago came out of the bye flat, acting like nobody actually wanted to play a football game against their biggest rival. Their terrible kicker was good, but nobody else really was. The only thing that kept this game somewhat close was the fact that Green Bay is terrible, but they still won fairly comfortably on the road.

Let’s break down this embarrassing effort.

Offense

• The first drive was simply awful. After two weeks to prepare, they ran into a loaded box on 1st down and lost a yard. After a nice pass picked up a first down, they again ran into a stacked box and lost a yard. The next play was both an illegal formation and a hold, setting Chicago up in 2nd and 21. At that point, the drive was over thanks to a combination of poor play calling and dumb penalties.
• Rookie quarterback Mitchell Trubisky actually had a pretty good start to the game. He made good throws and got the ball to players in space. That changed as the game wore on and Green Bay dialed up the pressure. Trubisky got happy feet and starting pulling his eyes down from scanning the field too quickly. He also refused to throw the ball away, making him completely inept under any sort of pressure.
• Green Bay’s five sacks weren’t all on the offensive line, but they were bad today too. Hroniss Grasu, making a start at center and shifting Cody Whitehair to right guard with Kyle Long out, was routinely pushed back into the backfield. The unit also picked up way too many penalties, with a nice mixture of pre-snap, during the play, and after the play mixed in.

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Two road games, two blowout losses for the 2017 Bears. Green Bay won the first quarter 14-0 after a great opening drive, followed by a 3-yard touchdown after Mike Glennon turned it over on Chicago’s first offensive snap. Things stayed quiet until the end of the first quarter, when a 47 minute lightning delay led to what felt like the start of another game.

Of course, the Bears still had Mike Glennon in at quarterback, so nothing changed. He turned the ball over 3 more times and shut down the entire offense with his incompetence before racking up just enough garbage time stats to make his performance somewhat defensible if you squint (stop me if you’ve heard that before).

Coaching

• We’re starting here tonight, beginning with the continued ineptitude making appropriate personnel decisions late in a blowout. With all the practice the Bears’ coaches have gotten in these situations in the last few years, you’d think they would be great at it by now, but they’re not. Down 28 points in the 4th quarter, the Bears rode Jordan Howard and Tarik Cohen, their two best offensive players, to a meaningless late touchdown. Zach Miller, their best tight end who has made a career out of going to IR, played while rookie Adam Shaheen sat on the bench. Why? This is literally a fireable offense if the team’s management cares about their personnel at all.

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Prediction

Packers 28

Bears 17

Unless the every Bears player not named Mike Glennon can be perfect once again.

Teething is a bitch.

My one-year-old son already has seven teeth, all of which he toughed his way through with little complaint, but now he has molars coming in and it has been a struggle.

He has one big, dull tooth bulging into into the back of each side of his mouth. It’s created all kinds of problems. He’s had ear infections, boogers all over his face and just doesn’t seem to want to eat sometimes. The most puzzling part is when he fusses for no apparent reason.

But there is going to be an end to this. He’s going to have all of his teeth and proceed through his life like a normal, growing boy.

In a lot of ways, this Bears season has reminded me of my son’s teething. It’s been painful, but there are signs that things are going to turn around. Whether or not they’re able to finish the job is another story.

Last week was a big win. Things didn’t go their way with the officials, a defensive back made a stupid blunder and they got nothing from their quarterback. But they won. They won because they have a pretty good defense that took a significant step against a pretty good offense. They won because they have two studs in the backfield and a coach who is creative enough to know how to use them.

It was the first September win of the Fox regime. They showed there are things they can do well. The next step is consistency. I don’t know what this Bears season will end up being, and I don’t know what the Fox regime will be, but this was a step.

Now let’s see if we can get another tooth to pop through.

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ON THIS EPISODE OF THE (Abbreviated) WEEKEND SHOW:

• Jeff challenges Greg Gabriel’s belief that Matt Barkley is not a professional-caliber quarterback, using quotes from Gabriel’s own column.
• A clip from the classic L.A. Story.
• Reverend Dave believes Josh Bellamy is the Andie MacDowell of the 2016 Chicago Bears. (He get it there, trust me.)
• Prediction. Bear weather. And the team that’s better at running it (Bears) and stopping the run (Bears) wins in -20 wind chill. 13-10!

If you follow a losing team long enough, the crappy seasons tend to all blend together. But if the 2016 Chicago Bears want to be remembered, they can make it happen this week by beating the Packers.

The Bears have been a losing team for most of my life, but there are a few teams I remember fondly. I remember the 2003 team because Charles Tillman ripped a pass out of Randy Moss’ hands and cost the Vikings a playoff berth. I remember Brian Urlacher running all alone down the field after intercepting Brett Favre in a 35-7 Bears win in 2007. I remember the 2015 Bears beating all odds by beating the Packers on Thanksgiving when Favre was being honored at halftime.

Those are the bad teams I remember positively and this year’s team has a chance to join them.

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