Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears. And yes, they may have fooled me last week. Again.

Poem

once more unto the breach, dear friends, he wrote

and so i do commit myself to battle

many know not to trust these capricious lads

many, like i, are merely cattle

so unto the breach i go, once more

believing, yes always believing

and surely you know, come saturday night

i shall, once again, be grieving

Five Thoughts on The Actual Game

• Don’t look now but Jordan Howard is only 73 yards behind Le’Veon Bell in the race for the NFL rushing title. In their first meeting this season, Howard put 125 yards on the board and the Lions defense has actually gotten worse at stopping the run since. Just last week they allowed the Bucs, one of the league’s worst running teams, to average nearly 5 yards a carry. Could be a big Saturday afternoon for the unheralded Bears superstar.

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The Bears looked like a professional football team Sunday. Well-coached. Brilliantly quarterbacked. Dynamic. Passionate. Tough. Young! From the second Mitch Trubisky was drafted with the second overall pick, 2017 became about building optimism for 2018. That’s life with a rookie quarterback, especially when there are first and second-year players littered across the roster. For the first time this season the future looked beyond bright for this organization. It looked downright special. Because of the quarterback. Because of the kids.

Now they need to do it again.

Detroit is still playing for something. A lot of things, actually. They’re home. They are only a game out of the playoffs. They have a head coach they love, currently resting his tuchus on one of the league’s warmest seats. They need this game. And believe me, they’re going to play like it.

Historically, at least in the history of John Fox’s tenure in Chicago, Saturday afternoon in Detroit is where the Bears would lay an egg. As soon as the slightest bit of optimism creeps into the minds of fans and onto the pages of the daily newspapers, Fox’s Bears no-show. There are a lot of damning statistics when it comes to this head coach but none more damning than his 0-7 record when favored. That means every time Vegas has expected the Fox Bears to perform, they have failed to do so. Every. Time. That’s hard to do.

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He’s not quite a lion. But he is Bear the Cat. And on this album cover he represents how I feel about this Bears team right now.

Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I always like the Chicago Bears. And they can’t play as badly as last week, right?

An Original Limerick

I once bet a horse called Fox

Who slowly came out of the blocks

He’d pick up some speed

And get near the lead

But leave me with only my socks

Three Reasons The Bears Win

This section is now an exercise in futility since the Bears have shown little interest in studying their opponents and attacking their weaknesses.

• Detroit Can’t Run the Ball. Only Miami, Arizona and Cincinnati get less on the ground weekly and those are three terrible offensive teams. The Bears defense looked bad a week ago but the primary reason is they were pushed around at the point of attack by Green Bay and delivered their worst performance against the run all season. Shouldn’t be an issue this week.
• The Trubisky Development Train Keeps a’ Rollin. While the film of the 2017 season was taken over by director Lars von Trier Sunday, the future was not so bleak. Mitch Trubisky had his most prolific day throwing the football and Detroit’s secondary can be beaten through the air. (The Lions were the first secondary to make DeShone Kizer look like a professional quarterback.) Seeing Adam Shaheen and Dontrelle Inman develop a rapport with the young signal-caller, even with limited opportunities, should lead to some productive performances down the stretch and those performances should start Sunday at home.

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Watching the Bears beat the Panthers a second time was not much more entertaining than watching them do it the first time. But I wanted to focus on the offensive snaps. Here’s what I thought:

• Trubisky was hard on himself in the postgame presser but he only made three mistakes in the game: taking the sack before the Barth missed FG, overthrowing Zach Miller and the delay of game in the fourth quarter. Could he have taken a few shots when the pocket collapsed around him? Sure. But why would he in a game the defense was dominating.
• I’m sure other franchises have done it but I’ve never seen a team so relentlessly run the ball into 8 and often 9-man fronts. The plays are only mildly successful (if that) because Jordan Howard is one of the toughest runners in the league. He gets every inch out of every carry.
• Kendall Wright played 8 snaps Sunday. Reminder: he is the best wide receiver on the team by a wide margin.
• Trubisky’s back shoulder fade to Cohen early was an absolutely perfect throw. It literally hit Cohen on his back shoulder. If Cohen catches the ball, he’s got a strong chance to take it to the house.
• Is there a chance these conservative game plans were specifically designed for Baltimore and Carolina – two solid defenses? Is it possible these two games were early run calls setting up a more explosive approach in the weeks to come? Am I only dreaming?

Mitch Trubisky will start against the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night, October 9th. And so begins the future of the Chicago Bears. Three thoughts:

(1) There was no other acceptable decision for the Bears organization at this time. Their Mike Glennon plan was a colossal failure and they could not turn the reigns over to a journeyman like Mark Sanchez. The locker room and fan base were at wit’s end. If they had any intention of making 2017 a season of value, Trubisky had to start Monday night.

(2) Offensive staff, especially Dowell Loggains, were fierce advocates for the move of late. It wasn’t entirely about Mike Glennon’s limitations, either. The injuries to both Cam Meredith and Kevin White required changes to the team’s offensive approach and those changes did not fit Glennon. This crop of receivers need time to win their one-on-one battles. Trubisky’s legs can give them that time.

(3) This will not be a smooth and easy twelve games for Trubisky. He will make mistakes, just like all rookie QBs do. But those mistakes now have value. Interceptions now have value. Losses now have value. And as Bears fans, we must not hope that come January we’ve seen enough from the kid to have excitement and anticipation for the 2018 campaign.

(3a) Thank the lord.

The 2017 Chicago Bears have played four games, all against teams that finished 2016 with a winning record.  It is easily the most difficult four-game stretch of their entire campaign and, at 1-3, they’ve dug themselves a hole. But it’s not an inescapable one. But they can only escape the hole by embracing reality and turning the football over to the future of the franchise.

At home they ranged from respectable to downright terrific, sporting a powerful rushing attack and a tough, improved defense. They should have beaten the defending conference champions and without the use of a professional quarterback, they hung on for dear life to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.

On the road they were a disaster worthy of J.J. Watt’s charity. The quarterback was an embarrassment and as a result the team was rendered non-competitive.

Now the Mike Glennon Experience must come to its humiliating end. Signing Glennon can be viewed two ways. Many believe GM Ryan Pace committed starter money to the Once & Future Backup in an act of draft-jockeying subterfuge, allowing the Bears to pursue their quarterback of the future (Trubisky, Mitch) without the other thirty-one clubs getting wind of their intentions. Even if you buy that theory, it doesn’t answer one important question: why did they still play Glennon in September when he was so poor all summer?

Other folks, including the author of this piece, believe the Glennon signing to be a grotesque evaluative error. Pace and his pro personnel people believed Glennon was good enough to hold down the starting gig for the entirety of 2017 and win a bunch of games. Remember, the Bears were not guaranteed Trubisky. Two weeks before the draft the Browns were rumored to be considering him with the top pick. Pace thought Glennon was a viable NFL starter. Everything the misshapen signal caller has done since his signing in March has proven him 100% wrong.

[Author’s Note: I can’t tell you how happy I am to wrap up that paragraph and wrap up my Mike Glennon writing career. I took little joy in the last seven months of DBB. And I’ll never understand why the Bears did what they did.]

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On this episode of the Weekend Show:

• Jeff breaks down the BS surrounding the Bears not playing Mitch Trubisky, including their “plan”.
• Adam Jahns of the Sun-Times on injuries (“too big, too strong”), Loggains/Fangio (I got him leaning Loggains) and the main event at QB – where he disputes much of what Jeff believes, including arguing for an actual plan based upon the career of Drew Brees.
• Reverend Dave on Patriots fans in London, with a special shoutout to St. Croix and Puerto Rico.
• Music from The Beatles! New opening number! Same closing number!

On this episode of the Weekend Show:

• Jeff continues his obsession with the Glennon/Trubisky saga (with help from Eric Carmen).
• Sun-Times beat Adam Jahns discusses the Bears plan for Adam Shaheen, the emergence of the rookie class, when Trubisky will be on the field and why he’s still concerned about the secondary.
• The Reverend spends way more time on Newcastle than he should. Bear down!