It is an incredibly silly exercise to project wins and losses when a schedule is released but that doesn’t stop the whole of social media from doing just that. Here are some thoughts on the schedule overall.

• The bye comes at the perfect point in the season for a young team. They will be off the first week in December and follow that break with three of their final five at home, against Detroit, Arizona and Atlanta. If Chicago Bears want to build momentum for the 2024 season, a season where they should be expected to compete for January football, the schedule makers did them serious favors.
• Realistically, the Bears would be in position to have a successful 2023 campaign if they’re hovering around .500 at their bye.
• It *looks like* DBB will be eschewing our love for the New York City Marathon and venturing to New Orleans for Bears at Saints on November 5th. We could be hosting a fan meet-up somewhere OUTSIDE of the Quarter so stay tuned. (This will most likely be at The Beaded Oak in the Garden District.)
• Still want to see the league move away from these divisional matchups in the opening weeks. With so little contact all summer and nobody playing the practice games, it makes no sense to have games that matter so much so early. Start the season with a month of non-conference games.
• When is the last time the team with the first pick in the draft had four primetime games the following season? If the Chicago Bears were ever a consistently good club, they’d have double digit games in front of a national audience.
• The Thursday Night Football structure is…interesting. They’ll play Washington (without a quarterback) and Carolina (with a tiny quarterback) on short weeks, and then have mini byes before divisional matchups with Minnesota and Detroit. It’s odd but I think the Bears probably like how this shook out.
• For weeks, after Chiefs/Bears in Germany was leaked, I stressed that I didn’t believe the report. Why? I was told by someone who knows that Kansas City received numerous complaints from their local hospitality partners about the potential loss of the Chicago tourist horde. Folks don’t understand how important these relationships are in the smaller markets. New York, Chicago, New Orleans don’t care. They don’t need tourists. Kansas City is a football destination, and it is no coincidence that they are playing Miami – with one of the notoriously invisible fan bases in the league – in Frankfurt.
• I’m breaking the schedule into the following sections and will use these as evaluative check points during the season. You’ll notice the third section is short but I’m structuring this around moments in the season where the Bears will be able to self-evaluate and make adjustments.
  • Section I: home Packers, at Bucs, at Chiefs, home Broncos, at Commanders (TNF)
  • Section II: home Vikings, home Raiders, at Chargers, at Saints, home Panthers (TNF)
  • Section III: at Lions, at Vikings (MNF), Bye
  • Section IV: home Lions, at Browns, home Cardinals, home Falcons, at Packers

The NFL has not only decided to delay the release of the 2022 schedule until mid-May, but they have also decided to allow the networks to trickle out their individual schedules in the days leading up to Thursday’s release. Why? Because the NFL is led by buffoons. That’s how Criss Angel ends up hanging from a rope at the draft. Someone on Park Avenue said, out loud, “What if we have the MINDFREAK dangle from a rope and do an escape act right before the draft starts?” Then another one of the brain surgeons in the home office responded, “Genius!” 

The release of the schedule is a very big deal to many NFL fans because it sets their travel agenda for the fall and winter; a point missed by most beat writers who have no choice but to attend every game and only concern themselves with how many Marriot points they can accrue in Atlanta. The Bears play two games in NJ this season. Fans want to know if the league will run those games back-to-back, creating a killer vacation in NYC and a chance to have a beer with me. Bears at Cowboys will have far more appeal to Chicagoans in December than early September.

Here are some things I’ll be looking to see as the schedules trickles out on social media over the coming days.

• How many times does the league put the Bears in primetime? The Bears are a massive, national draw – no matter how good they are – but this figures to be a season where the NFL could err on the side of a developmental season and keep Chicago in a lot of early Sunday slots.
• When does Josh Allen come to town? The non-division QBs on the home schedule are seriously underwhelming. Hurts, Lance, Wentz, Tua, and Mills aren’t going to be putting many asses in the seats. Allen and the Bills are the marquee attraction, and if that game is in December, I’ll have my flight and hotel booked Thursday night.
• What is the December slate? Yes, the Bears are likely to be more competitive in 2022 than many – including myself – thought. (Especially with their secondary upgrades on draft weekend.) But 2022 will still be primarily about 2023 and how the team, and quarterback, finish this campaign could go a long way towards building fan enthusiasm for the off-season.
• Could there be a hot start? NFL seasons are weird animals, and expectations can change quickly. What if the Bears find themselves playing the Giants, Jets, Texans and Lions in the first quarter? They could easily be .500 or better and dreaming of meaningful football in late December/early January.
• The guaranteed losses. How many really are there on this schedule? Packers probably sweep them. Belichick handles this offense comfortably at home. The Bills are probably the best team in the league. It’s unlikely the Bears will be significant underdogs in any of the remaining 13 games.

This is going to be an interesting season for the Chicago Bears. By the end of the day Thursday, we’ll know where and when the story will play out.

The NFL has turned everything into a television program. And who can blame them? The NFL Draft now does better ratings than almost every other sporting contest AND the damn Academy Awards. (How in the hell did that happen?)

The schedule release does not have the same ratings appeal for two reasons: (1) every local beat leaks the schedule as the day goes on and (2) we consume the schedule in one shot, in about 30 seconds, and then sort of move on.

Three things I’ll be watching with the release tonight at 8 PM ET.

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Number One. Where is the Bears bye?

With a seventeen-game schedule, most teams will be hoping their bye lands as close to the middle of the season as possible. A Week 4 or Week 5 bye leaves a long stretch of uninterrupted football (barring wildcard weekend off) in order to get to the Super Bowl.

But for the Chicago Bears the bye is entirely about one thing: Justin Fields. If the Bears stick with their current plan, and give Andy Dalton the opener, the bye will be every fan’s target to get Fields on the field. A few questions should be asked.

• What’s the difficulty level of the schedule pre-bye? If the Bears face a murderer’s row of teams and are likely to be going into the bye with a losing record, the transition to Fields will be far easier to execute.
• Who is the opponent post-bye? If I was making the NFL schedule, I would have the Bears at home to the Lions after their bye. Soft team, terrible defense, crazy atmosphere on the lakefront. (I know right now you’re thinking, “That’s brilliant! He SHOULD make the schedule!” You are right.)

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The strength of the teams on the schedule is always hard to predict. But if the teams are as good — or close to as good — as most expect, the placement of three home games could ultimately be important for the Bears.

While “Bear weather” is kind of a silly term, there is truth to the fact that a lot of warm weather teams just don’t handle the cold and windy weather that tends to hit Chicago late in the season. At least part of the reason the Bears were able to thoroughly handle the Rams last year is because they didn’t want to be there. And who could forget the Josh McCown game against the Cowboys in 2013 or Michael Vick desperate to be ANYWHERE else in mid-aughts?

This year, three of the Bears five non-division home games are against warm weather teams: the LA Chargers, New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys. The last two could significantly impact playoff seeding.

Drew Brees’ struggles in cold weather have been well-chronicled and there’s no real reason to think that won’t continue as he ages. Shoulder issues early in his career impacted his arm strength and sometimes he struggles in just a brisk wind. That game won’t even have to be in prime time to impact Brees, as long as it isn’t in September. The splits will tell you that Phil Rivers and Dak Prescott actually play well in cold weather, but those don’t define cold adequately. Prescott has thrown nine touchdowns and zero interceptions in sub-40 degree weather over the last two years while Rivers has a career record of 8-4.

But who in Chicago considers 40 degrees to be cold? That would be a wonderful November or December night in this part of the country. Take warm weather players — not just quarterbacks — and put them in wind chills below zero and they’re going to struggle just to breath, much less play football.

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Scheduling Notes

Two things have leaked regarding the 2019 Chicago Bears schedule: (1) Packers are rumored to open the season on Thursday night at Soldier Field. (2) Bears will be in Detroit on Thanksgiving Day…again. What do these two reports mean, if anything?

• That’s 1/8 of the schedule not being played on Sunday. And with the Chiefs, Rams, Saints, Eagles, Giants and Cowboys on the schedule, don’t get used to that Sunday routine. This team is going to be in primetime a lot. And anybody who knows me knows I really, really, really hate it.
• The league should stop putting games as important as Packers at Bears in Week One. They won’t but they should. What’s becoming obvious is teams are no longer considering the preseason a viable method of preparation and it seems most don’t start playing decent football until midway through October. (The Pats waited until January last season.) I’d like to see the NFL use the first four weeks of the season to play exclusively the non-conference schedule.
• I know the league’s instincts will be Chiefs at Patriots as the Sunday night opener. But if the league were smart, they’d put the Browns in that spot. Elevate that franchise. Excite a fan base that hasn’t seen a relevant primetime game in years. (And a game as potentially important as Chiefs at Pats should be played on Thanksgiving night.)

Coaching Staff Complete

From Pat Finley in the Sun-Times:

Bears coach Matt Nagy finished up his round of hires Friday, promoting two coaches to finish up the team’s defensive staff.

Sean Desai, a Bears defensive quality control coach for the past six seasons, will serve as the team’s safeties coach. Deshea Townsend, who was hired to coach the Bears’ defensive backs last month, had his title changed to secondary coach. Bill Shuey, who spent last season as a defensive quality control coach, has been named defensive pass analyst/assistant linebackers coach.

I have absolutely nothing to add to these two paragraphs.

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