Da Dos

Category: NFL, Bears

  • The Hammond Bears

    The Hammond Bears

    GP part deux

    • Welcome to Hammond, Indiana — Please Watch Your Step (and Your Air Quality)

    Let’s talk about the Wolf Lake site, because nobody covering this story with knee pads seems to want to. The Bears’ preferred location — the Lost Marsh Golf Course near 129th Street and Calumet Avenue — is roughly 18 miles southeast of Soldier Field. It sits next to the BP Whiting Refinery, the largest oil refinery in the Midwest. It was built over an old industrial landfill. Drilling crews have already been out there flagging buried water and gas lines.

    Wolf Lake itself has a history that would make even the most enthusiastic real estate agent wince. Gangsters used it as a body disposal site in the 1920s and 30s. It was the dumping ground for a murder victim in the infamous Leopold and Loeb case in 1924. And now, in 2026, Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. stood before a committee and, reportedly choking up with emotion, declared it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.” Maybe he was choking on the shit backing up in his colon.

    He’s not wrong. It really is a once-in-a-generation opportunity — to commit a historic, billion-dollar environmental boondoggle.

    The environmental remediation alone on a site like this — industrial landfill, proximity to a major refinery, underground pipelines, contaminated soil — could easily add hundreds of millions to the project cost. The Bears’ own “due diligence” is still ongoing. Nobody knows what’s actually down there yet. The Indiana bill doesn’t even nail down who pays for cost overruns. What starts as a $3 billion project has every hallmark of a $7-8 billion disaster in the making once you factor in cleanup, infrastructure, litigation, and the inevitable moment when someone finds something truly nasty underground. And when that bill comes due, you can bet the state of Indiana — and the taxpayers of Lake County — will be staring at it. See how eager they are when the Casinos tell them to eat it and pony up. Who knows, Trump may destroy the EPA by then and it’s a non-problem. Just make sure your health insurance is good before attending a game.

    Indiana is committing roughly $1 billion in public funds, to be financed through a cocktail of admissions taxes, food-and-beverage taxes, and hotel taxes. Sound familiar? It should. It’s almost exactly the same structure as the Arlington Heights deal the Bears couldn’t get Illinois to finalize. Except it’s on a landfill. Next to a refinery. In a state that already has an NFL franchise in Indianapolis whose fans are now being asked to welcome a second team that will compete with them for everything from sponsorships to media attention.

    Colts fans: how does Kevin’s dick taste?

    • The NFL Blackout Problem Nobody Is Talking About

    Here’s something the excitement-drunk Hammond boosters and Bears beat reporters apparently haven’t gotten around to mentioning: the Chicago media market.

    The Bears currently play in Chicago. Their entire fanbase — the people who buy tickets, the people who fill the stadium, the people who make home games sellouts — live in the Chicago metro area. Move the team 18 miles across a state line into Hammond, Indiana, and you have now placed the franchise outside the Chicago market for NFL broadcasting purposes.

    Under NFL blackout rules, if games in Hammond don’t sell out, Chicago can no longer be blacked out — because Chicago isn’t in the team’s home market anymore. You’ve now created a situation where Bears fans in Chicago have every incentive to stay home and watch on TV rather than make the trek to Hammond. And if attendance struggles, the revenue projections underpinning the entire Indiana financing structure start to look like they were written on a cocktail napkin. In a casino.

    Kevin Warren seems to have bet that Bears fans will follow the team anywhere. That is a fascinating assumption to make about a fanbase that has been historically loyal despite decades of organizational incompetence — but loyalty has limits. Driving into Indiana, past a refinery, to sit in a dome built on a landfill, to watch a team that no longer officially calls your city home? Some fans will do it. Many won’t. Chicago may show balls and petition the NFL to remove the city’s name from the team. A lawsuit they should easily win. Hammond Bears? Sounds like some shit microbrew.

    • George McCaskey: A Portrait in Incompetence — and Desperation

    Let’s dispense with sympathy entirely and talk about what’s actually driving George McCaskey, because it isn’t football. It was never football.

    Virginia McCaskey, the Bears’ matriarch and daughter of George Halas, did what wealthy patriarchs and matriarchs always do when they want to avoid estate taxes while keeping peace at the Thanksgiving table: she distributed ownership shares across the family. Thin slices — 3%, 4%, 5% here and there — handed out to children and grandchildren who, by and large, care about the Chicago Bears the way you care about a stock ticker. They don’t go to games. They don’t watch film. They watch their bank accounts.

    Virginia is gone now. And those shareholders — the entitled, football-indifferent beneficiaries of the Halas family legacy — have made their position clear to George: generate cash flow or we sell. Not to just anyone, either. There are buyers circling. The Ryan family, among others, has the capital and the appetite to start quietly accumulating those minority shares until someone wakes up one morning and realizes the McCaskey era is over not with a dramatic sale but with a slow-motion death by a thousand small transactions. George was probably instructed by Virginia in her last days to not allow that to happen.

    George McCaskey knows this. He knows the only thing standing between him and irrelevance is a revenue stream large enough to keep the restless shareholders fat and happy; exactly one thing generates that kind of cash flow fast enough to matter: a casino.

    Not a stadium. A casino.

    The “football town” vision — the restaurants, the retail, the hotels, the entertainment district — is the polite version of what this is actually about. The Bears have been in conversations about casino licensing as part of the Arlington Heights development for years. A stadium-adjacent casino, in a state with regulated gambling, attached to one of the NFL’s most historic franchises, in the Chicago metro area, would generate revenue that dwarfs anything the stadium itself produces. That’s the cash cow that keeps the fractious McCaskey shareholders from selling their slices to the highest bidder.

    Which raises a question nobody in the compliant Bears media wants to ask: is the Hammond move real, or is it a pressure play designed to finally shake loose a casino license from Illinois that the state has been reluctant to grant? Because if Illinois caves — if they pass the infrastructure bill, freeze the property taxes, and throw in a casino license to keep the Bears in Arlington Heights — George McCaskey gets everything he needs to pacify his shareholders without Kevin Warren driving the franchise into a landfill.

    And if it’s not a pressure play? If Warren genuinely wants Hammond? Then George McCaskey is a man so thoroughly outmaneuvered by his own President that he’s about to sacrifice the family’s century-old franchise on the altar of Kevin Warren’s ego and his own shareholders’ vacation home mortgages. George Halas is screaming at Virginia right now up in the clouds.

    Image via Associated Press (AP)

    Last year, the Matt Eberflus debacle — firing the head coach at halftime of a game the Bears were losing badly, one of the most publicly humiliating in-season firings in NFL history — prompted Colin Cowherd and others to name McCaskey among the worst owners in the league. The hiring of Ben Johnson and the emergence of Caleb Williams as a generational quarterback gave Bears fans genuine hope. But ask yourself: why did the Bears suddenly get competent on the field right when the franchise value conversation got interesting? A team with a generational QB, fresh off a playoff run, in a massive media market, is worth considerably more to a potential buyer than a perennial doormat. George McCaskey, whether by accident or design, presides over a franchise at peak valuation — right at the moment the stadium situation threatens to crater it.

    He’s not a villain. He’s not clever enough to be a villain. He’s a man in over his head, surrounded by family members who want their money, manipulated by a President running his own agenda, and apparently unable to see that the exit Warren is steering toward leads directly off a cliff. Warren, a man the Big 10 couldn’t shed fast enough

    • Kevin Warren’s Long Con

    Kevin Warren has been running a masterclass in institutional manipulation since he arrived. His open letter framing the Bears as benevolent private investors who are simply asking for “basic infrastructure” while demanding $850-950 million in public funds was, as one analyst put it, a semantic trick — and it worked beautifully on most of the Chicago sports media.

    Now he’s done it again. The Bears were apparently in productive negotiations with Illinois as recently as Wednesday, February 19th — a three-hour session that Governor Pritzker described as “very positive.” The Bears then canceled Thursday’s committee hearing — which, according to Pritzker, was at the Bears’ request — and almost simultaneously dropped a statement praising Indiana’s SB27 as the most meaningful step forward in their stadium history. The blog that covers Springfield politics talks about Pritziker wanting things like affordability in ticket prices so average people can attend, and Warren responds by not showing up to meetings and putting power plays. Maybe Warren will scream “but the Dow is at 50,000!”

    That is not negotiating in good faith. That is a man executing a plan while the other party thinks they’re having a conversation.

    Whether Warren genuinely wants to be in Hammond or is using Indiana as a gun to Illinois’ head, the damage to the relationship with Illinois is real. And if he actually follows through with Hammond — landfill, refinery, Colts country, blackout rules, and all — then he will have maneuvered George McCaskey into presiding over a historic blunder that will define this franchise forever. And with the gravity of the decision, it’s really forever. The Chicago Bears are destroyed by a guy that was given the lowest approval by Big Ten athletic directors in Big 10 history.

    George is handing him the matches. Kevin is already holding the gasoline.

    • The Hype Machine: Who’s Driving the Narrative?

    Within minutes of the Indiana House Ways and Means Committee vote on Thursday, the Bears media ecosystem lit up like a pinball machine. Ben Devine of @Chicago_NFL — one of the more widely-followed Bears accounts — was declaring “The Chicago Bears are indeed moving to Northwest Indiana” and “Breaking: The Chicago Bears plan to commit $2 billion toward building their new stadium near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana” before the ink was dry, before any site due diligence was complete, before anyone had answered the rather important question of who pays for cleaning up an industrial landfill next to the Midwest’s largest oil refinery.

    “Indeed moving.” Not “may be moving.” Not “are signaling a move.” Indeed moving. Done deal. Pack your bags, Chicagoland.

    Now, a few questions worth sitting with.

    When a media personality with a large Bears following unilaterally declares a franchise relocation a fait accompli based on a committee vote and a carefully worded team statement that doesn’t actually commit to anything — is that journalism? Is it analysis? Or is it something else?

    When that same breathless certainty is echoed almost simultaneously across multiple Bears-adjacent accounts, all amplifying the same narrative of inevitability — is that organic reaction? Or does it look, at least a little, like a coordinated pressure campaign designed to make Illinois lawmakers feel like the train has already left the station? It would be fun to look at Devine’s checking account and see if perhaps he’s on the dole.

    Who benefits when Bears fans panic-share “they’re definitely leaving” posts that flood Springfield legislators’ inboxes and social feeds? Who benefits when the move feels so inevitable that Illinois is stampeded into a desperate, unfavorable deal — or, alternatively, when Illinois folds entirely and Warren gets everything he wanted?

    Here’s what we know: Kevin Warren has already demonstrated that he is willing to use media framing as a negotiating weapon. His “open letter” reframed an $850 million public subsidy ask as a modest request for “basic infrastructure.” The Bears canceled an Illinois committee hearing — at their own request, per Pritzker — and within the same news cycle had a statement praising Indiana ready to go. That is not spontaneous. That is choreographed.

    So when the same media cycle that amplifies Warren’s every press release starts declaring the move definitive, based on nothing more than a framework bill that doesn’t even specify financing terms — it’s worth asking who is writing the script, and who is simply reading it.

    And this isn’t just a matter of Devine being enthusiastic or credulous. In December, he posted a claim that has since ricocheted across Bears social media as established fact: that Illinois is “demanding” the Bears pay for roads and infrastructure, framing it as something “even more rare” than a team privately funding its own stadium — as if Illinois were the aggressor shaking down a good-faith franchise.

    This is not a matter of interpretation. It is factually inverted. It’s a lie and Devine is a liar.

    Illinois is not demanding the Bears pay for infrastructure. Illinois is declining to pay $850 million in infrastructure costs for the Bears. Those are opposite things. The Bears chose a site that lacked existing infrastructure — in large part because that’s why the land was cheap — and are asking the state to cover the gap. Illinois saying “we’re not sure we want to spend $850 million on that” is not an unreasonable shakedown. It is a government weighing whether a near-billion-dollar expenditure is in the public interest, especially while taxpayers still owe $350 million on the 2003 Soldier Field renovations the Bears demanded and then abandoned.

    Szymanski amplified it. Others amplified it further. By the time it reached the average Bears fan’s timeline, Illinois had been cast as the villain demanding the franchise privately fund its own roads — a cartoonishly unreasonable position that the state never actually took.

    That’s how the machine works. Warren frames it. Devine broadcasts it. Szymanski validates it. The myth calcifies into conventional wisdom before anyone checks the receipts.

    Devine may be entirely sincere. He may genuinely believe what he posts. But sincerity and accuracy are different things. And a media environment where “Bears insider” accounts race to validate Warren’s narrative without interrogating it — without mentioning the landfill, the refinery, the blackout rules, the Colts fans who didn’t ask for a roommate, the $7-8 billion remediation risk — isn’t covering the story. It’s becoming part of the story.

    Bears fans deserve better than hype merchants dressed up as analysts. The franchise’s future is too important to be left to people whose loudest skill is hitting “post” fast.

    • FAFO, the MAGA Chorus, and the Ghost of Sweaty Teddy Phillips

    Scroll through any Bears stadium comment section right now and you’ll find a particular species of intellectual wildlife repeating the same three syllables with the enthusiasm of someone who just learned what an acronym is: FAFO. Fuck around and find out. Illinois fucked around. Now they’re finding out.

    It’s catchy. It’s also historically illiterate, politically motivated, and being fed to the internet knuckle-draggers by people who know exactly what they’re doing.

    Let’s start with the history since the FAFO crowd apparently skipped it.

    Twenty-plus years ago, the Bears — under their previous CEO Ted Phillips, a man so perspiration-prone that the nickname “Sweaty Teddy” wasn’t even mean, it was just accurate — took the late Mayor Richard M. Daley to the absolute woodshed. The 2002 Soldier Field renovation was a masterpiece of civic fleecing. The Bears got a brand new stadium shell dressed up in the bones of a historical landmark, financed through bonds backed by a 2% Chicago hotel tax. The city and state were told the debt would be manageable. The pandemic gutted hotel revenue. The hotel business never fully recovered. Chicago’s finances, never exactly a model of fiscal health, got worse.

    As of early 2024, Illinois taxpayers still owe approximately $589 million in combined principal and interest on that renovation — $375 million in principal, $214 million in interest, with final payment due in 2032. The Bears’ lease at Soldier Field runs through 2033. Meaning: Illinois will finish paying for the Bears’ old stadium approximately one year before the Bears’ legal obligation to play there expires. At which point the Bears will presumably be gone, and Illinois will own a renovated historic venue with no anchor tenant and a $589 million receipt in the drawer.

    Sweaty Teddy got his stadium. Stayed on as CEO for decades on the strength of that one negotiating win. And Chicago is still paying for it.

    So when Governor Pritzker looks at the Bears coming back to the table with another demand — this time $850 million in infrastructure, a 40-year tax freeze, and a sales tax exemption on construction materials — and says we need to think carefully about this, he isn’t “fucking around.” He is a governor who has watched his state get fleeced once already, who is staring at $589 million in remaining debt from the last time Illinois played ball, and who has some elementary obligation to the taxpayers of his state not to simply bend over and say “thank you, may I have another.”

    But here’s where it gets nakedly political. JB Pritzker is widely considered a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. He’s wealthy, he’s governed a major blue state, and he has ambitions that extend well beyond Springfield. The Indiana Republican establishment — Governor Mike Braun, Speaker Todd Huston, and the rest — know this perfectly well. They are not primarily interested in football. They are interested in handing a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate a headline that reads: Pritzker Lost the Chicago Bears.

    The FAFO chorus in the comment sections isn’t organic Bears fan outrage. It’s astroturfed GOP trolling with a football spin. Indiana Republicans get to look pro-business, pro-growth, and locally triumphant while simultaneously handing their national allies a weapon to use against a Democrat who might be running for president in two years. The Bears are a prop. Pritzker is the target. And the knuckle-draggers happily typing FAFO into YouTube comments are doing exactly what they’ve been primed to do — generate the appearance of popular momentum for a narrative someone else wrote.

    None of them will drive to Hammond to watch a game on a Saturday night in January when it’s 14 degrees and the lake effect snow is coming sideways off Lake Michigan.

    Halas Hall convincing Bear fans Indiana is actually part of Illinois

    But they’ll type FAFO until their fingers fall off, because that’s free, and it’s fun, and someone upstream from them is very pleased that they’re doing it.

    Pritzker isn’t a villain in this story. He’s a governor who looked at $589 million in outstanding debt from the last time Illinois gave the Bears what they wanted and concluded — reasonably — that the state should negotiate rather than capitulate. The fact that his political opponents have successfully reframed “fiscal responsibility” as “fucking around” is a testament to how completely Warren’s narrative operation has colonized the discourse.

    Sweaty Teddy would be proud.

    • Illinois Isn’t Blameless

    To be fair — and fairness requires acknowledging this — Illinois has been a willing participant in its own humiliation. Pritzker treated this as anything but a priority. The state’s response to years of Bears negotiations has been the governmental equivalent of “yeah, we’ll get to it.” The commercial property tax situation in Illinois is genuinely hostile to major development. The Arlington Heights deal dragged on for three years without resolution.

    But none of that changes the fact that the Bears are now seriously contemplating building a $7+ billion stadium complex on an industrial landfill next to a refinery, in a state that has one NFL team already, financed by a public investment structure that is functionally identical to the deals they claimed were unworkable in Illinois — except with substantially more geological and environmental risk.

    Illinois failed the Bears. The Bears are about to fail themselves.

    • The NFL Should Step In — And Chicago Should Play Hardball

    Here is something that has gone almost entirely undiscussed in the breathless coverage of Hammond’s “once-in-a-generation opportunity”: the NFL has a vested interest in this deal not happening, and Roger Goodell should say so loudly.

    The Chicago market is one of the most valuable in American sports. The Chicago Bears brand — one of the league’s founding franchises, the Monsters of the Midway, the team of Butkus and Payton and Urlacher — derives enormous value from its association with that city. Moving the franchise 18 miles across a state line to a landfill adjacent to a BP refinery in Hammond, Indiana does not make the Chicago Bears more valuable. It makes them a regional curiosity with an identity crisis, competing for attention in a market that now has to share its NFL loyalties with the Indianapolis Colts, who did not ask for a roommate and whose fanbase has been notably unenthusiastic about the prospect.

    The league has intervened in stadium situations before. It has influence over where franchises land and how deals are structured. If the NFL is serious about protecting franchise values — and it is, because franchise values are the foundation of every owner’s net worth and every TV deal ever negotiated — then Goodell should be on the phone with Warren and McCaskey telling them that Hammond is not an acceptable outcome for one of the league’s flagship franchises.

    But let’s say the league stays quiet, and Warren gets his way. Here’s a card Chicago hasn’t played yet, and should:

    The city of Chicago owns the name.

    Not legally, perhaps — trademark law is complicated and the Bears have held their marks for decades. But politically and culturally, “Chicago Bears” belongs to Chicago the way “New York Yankees” belongs to New York. If the Bears relocate to Hammond, Indiana, the city of Chicago should immediately and loudly challenge the franchise’s right to continue using the Chicago name. File the legal motions. Make it expensive. Make it embarrassing. Force the NFL and the Bears to litigate in public whether a team playing in Hammond, Indiana gets to trade on the identity and history of a city it just abandoned.

    The Hammond Bears.

    Say it out loud. Let that land. Think that works for Rodger Goodell? I don’t fucking think so.

    Under NFL blackout rules, once the team plays in Hammond, Chicago is no longer the home market. The city cannot be blacked out for games that don’t sell out. Bears fans in Chicago — the actual Bears fans, the ones who grew up with this team, who remember the ’85 season, who endured decades of McMahon and Grossman and Cutler and the rest — will watch from their couches while a stadium built on an industrial landfill in Indiana fills with Indiana residents who six months ago had no interest in the Chicago Bears.

    The Hammond Bears. Playing in a dome next to the BP Whiting Refinery. In a city with a population of 70,000. Trying to sell out a 60,000-seat stadium to a fanbase that mostly lives in a different state.

    Roger Goodell should be embarrassed that this conversation is even happening. And if it happens, Chicago should make sure the NFL feels every inch of it.

    Illinois still has until May 31st to pass legislation. It’s a long shot. The Bears, having now publicly and effusively praised Indiana and called SB27 the most meaningful step forward in their stadium efforts to date, would take a significant credibility hit by pivoting back to Springfield.

    But meaningful step forward toward what, exactly? Toward a dome on a landfill next to the BP Whiting Refinery, in a city that borders Chicago but is definitionally not Chicago, in a state that didn’t ask for a second NFL franchise and whose existing NFL fanbase isn’t thrilled about sharing?

    Bears fans deserve better than this. Caleb Williams deserves better than this. The franchise, at this particular moment in its history, has more on-field promise than it has had in decades.

    And Kevin Warren appears to be steering it directly into Wolf Lake.

    George McCaskey, for his part, will probably be surprised when it happens.

  • GP & the Temple of Doom: I

    GP & the Temple of Doom: I

    Butch asked for an article, here it is:

    Kevin Warren Is Going to Burn It All Down — And George McCaskey Is Handing Him the Matches

    Let’s get one thing straight before we dive in: what you’re watching right now isn’t a savvy negotiating tactic. It isn’t leverage. It isn’t a masterclass in business strategy. This is Kevin Warren we are talking about, a guy who was run out of the Big 10 for being an asshole.

    What you’re watching is the slow-motion implosion of one of the most storied franchises in NFL history, orchestrated by a President who has confused activity with competence, while the owner nods along from the back seat like a golden retriever on the way to what he doesn’t know is the vet.

    Welcome to the Chicago Bears, folks. Kevin Warren is going to become a generational pariah. George Halas will actually try and strangle him when Kevin finally reaches the pearly gates.

    The Setup: How We Got Here

    Three years ago, the Bears purchased the old Arlington Park horse racing grounds for $200 million. For a brief, shining moment, it looked like the franchise was finally serious about a real stadium — a proper home befitting a team with a century of history. Then the property tax negotiations with Illinois turned into a quagmire, Kevin Warren pivoted back toward the city, then away again, then floated a Soldier Field dome, then pointed at Indiana, and now here we are: the “most meaningful step forward” in Bears stadium history is apparently a golf course built on a landfill, in the shadow of the largest oil refinery in the Midwest.

    Congratulations, Bears fans. You waited 40 years for this.

    The “Tax Certainty” Con: How to Beg for a Subsidy Without Calling It One

    Before we get to Hammond, it’s worth understanding exactly why the Arlington Heights deal collapsed — because the Bears’ PR operation has successfully muddied this water beyond recognition, and the truth is both simpler and more damning than anything read in the awful beat coverage. Damn I wish Adam Hoge would get George’s pecker out his mouth.

    When the Bears bought the old Arlington Park property for $200 million, Arlington Heights assessed it the way any local government assesses any newly purchased property: at market value. The resulting tax bill came in around $9 million a year. The Bears negotiated it down to roughly $3 million. Fine. Property owners negotiate tax assessments. That’s legal and normal.

    But then the Bears wanted more. Specifically, they wanted to lock in that discounted rate for 40 years — regardless of what they build on the land. I work in Texas and have heavy interaction with the Railroad Commission, who regulate the oil & gas industry down here. Watch the show Landman with Billy Bob and you will know, that proposal is a fucking joke. That gets you laughed out of the room and nobody takes you serious again. Warren is a clown.

    And here’s why that matters. In every property tax system in America, if you improve your land, the value gets reassessed. Add a deck to your house, your taxes go up. It’s not punitive. It’s just how it works — the land is worth more because you made it worth more. The Bears are proposing to build not just a stadium but an entire entertainment district: restaurants, retail, hotels, possibly a casino. A football town. Each of those improvements would normally be assessed individually, generating tax revenue for local schools, police, fire departments, and yes — the infrastructure the development requires.

    The Bears don’t want that. They want “tax certainty” — which is a beautifully crafted piece of PR language that means: we want to pay a fixed, discounted rate on this land no matter what we build on it, for four decades, so that our tax bill never reflects the actual value of what we’ve created. The city of Arlington Heights can go fuck itself; we want to make Pottersville from “It’s a Wonderful Life” look like a hick backwater town.

    When you hear the Bears throw around numbers like $180-200 million in potential annual taxes, understand what that figure represents. That’s the projected total tax burden across all the improvements they plan to build — the stadium, the restaurants, the retail, the hotels, everything. It assumes the full buildout of their football utopia. The stadium alone wouldn’t generate anything close to that. The number is engineered to sound alarming while describing a completely normal outcome for a massive commercial development.

    What the Bears are asking for, stripped of the euphemisms, is a 40-year tax break worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — money that won’t go to local schools, won’t fund the police and fire services their development will require, won’t pay for the roads and utilities that their patrons will use. That cost doesn’t disappear. It gets redistributed to everyone else in the tax base. Local residents will see their own property taxes rise to cover services that a Bears-adjacent entertainment district generates demand for, while the Bears themselves pay a rate frozen in the era when the land was an empty horse track.

    That is a taxpayer subsidy. It doesn’t appear on any line item labeled “Bears subsidy.” It never will. But that’s what it is.

    The state of Illinois understood this and pushed back. Arlington Heights, to its credit, said no. Kevin Warren’s response was to reframe a rejection of a sweetheart tax deal as the state being “obstreperous” and refusing to cooperate on basic infrastructure. The media, by and large, bought it. Hye guys at the Score 670 didn’t but the news people, or what’s left of the Trib and Sun Times, had nothing to say.

    Nothing is preventing the Bears from negotiating their property taxes every year, just like every other property owner in Illinois. What they can’t do — what the state correctly refused to allow — is lock in a discounted rate on undeveloped land and carry it forward through a billion-dollar buildout for four decades. That’s not tax negotiation. That’s a blank check written by Illinois taxpayers, signed by people who’ll never see the Bears name on the bill. It’s bullshit, but it’s the kind of bullshit that the State of Indiana seems eager to take on. The lawmakers there must pass around jars of Vaseline to each other.

  • Super Bowl LX

    Super Bowl LX

    I rememeber that ’18 NFL Draft when CLE selected Baker Mayfield #1 overall, the Jets selected Sam Darnold #3 overall, while the Bills drafted Josh Allen at #7 banking that he’d be another good ‘project’ like Carson Wentz for the Eagles [‘ 17 Wentz threw for 33TDs/7ints and 101.9 passer rating].

    Incidentally, the Bears drafted Roq at #8, Bills drafted Edmunds at #16, Panthers drafted DJ Moore at #24 and Hippy’s adopted son Chosen Rosen went #11 overall.

    I remember thinking at the time that both Mayfield and Darnold were ‘can’t miss.’
    I loved Mayfield’s mojo to turn around the factory of sadness. I thought Darnold’s steady demeanor and playing in L.A. [USC] suited him well for the intense NY market.

    Yet somehow, the Browns and Jets still broke them.

    I was a bit more on the fence about Josh Allen. Wentz recency bias made me think big physical ‘projects’ from small schools could work, but man, that’s a gamble [as the Eagles found out].

    I wasn’t too sold on Rosen. To me, he was sorta the JJ McCarthy of that draft. Meh.

    However, both Mayfield and Darnold “busting” really made me self-evaluate. How could I have been so wrong on both? I didn’t expect either to be sure-fire HOFers, but BUSTS?

    I mean one, yeah, stats say QBs are 50/50, but BOTH. Maybe draft picks are no better than taking a spin at the Roulette table.

    Well, as it turns out, both Mayfield and Darnold only needed to join functional teams.

    Then it hit me. I was wrong, but not in the way I imagined.

    I erred in believing in that the philosophy of “pick yourself up by your bootstrap” still applies to QBs. It obviously does NOT.

    Like much in life, surrounding greatly impacts results.

    This is an old debate: nature-v-nurture.

    But it’s not binary.

    Browns and Jets have been forever dysfunctional, and as Florio refrains, “dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things” and this can be macro: owners, GMs, coaches, draft…to micro: developing players, ESP QBs.

    Being dysfunctional isn’t a death sentence either. The Bengals, Lions and Bears have also been a laughing stock for 40+ years, yet they seemed to have dug themselves out of the Browns/Jets 9th circle of hell.

    I was mistaken in assuming that a single individual, even a QB, can simply will himself to be an Ubermench regardless of circumstance.

    One might be tempted to retort, “Well, Brady and Mahomes would’ve been great no matter.” Really? What if the Chris Palmer Browns drafted Brady and the Pace-Nagy Bears drafted Mahomes?

    This works the other way as well.
    A successful organization doesn’t automatically generate HOF QBs like some GPT prompt.

    Reid in KC could only go so far with Alex Smith. The same Pats who won 6 SBs drafted Mac Jones. 9ers traded the house for Trey Lance.

    Oops!

    I suppose this is a long-winded way of stating the obvious:

    It takes both nature+nurture=success.

    The formula isn’t written in stone. Who knows about the ratio. 80% to 20% or vice versa.

    But USUALLY [outliers do exist] it is some ratio of both.

    This SB marks the first time two top 5 [drafted] QBs square-off. That’s a remarkable stat given the ENORMOUS amount of resources that go into finding a franchise QB.

    It illustrates how fickle the whole process really is, how maybe one seemingly minute factor could set off a whole butterfly effect.

    Terry Bradshaw’s life literally came down to a coin flip. Steelers won. They drafted Bradshaw, and after a disastrous start he rebounded to win 4 SBs.

    The Bears traded their #2 to the Green Bay Packers for veterans Lee Roy Caffey, Bob Hyland, and Elijah Pitts translating to squat.

    If Bears win coinflip and draft Bradshaw…well, you elder-fans tell me if it results in 4 SBs…

    Overtime:

    Butch’s SB pick.

    I think I’ve been right in every pick [except in Bears over Rams, but I can live with that].

    I think SEA’s D is simply too dominant to allow such a young QB (who’s been a playoff TO machine) to excel.

    When a D has a legit nickname [The Darkside], you know they’re good!

    There’s a risk that Darnold will Darnold, but thus far he really hasn’t [outside Rams]. If he starts seeing ghosts again, it’ll be one epic chokejob.

    On top of that, SEA has a great one-two punch at HB, plus a dangerous returner and solid specials with sound coaching.

    The Pats’ Dline is real, but how tight will the refs call this game? A lot of times they allow WAAAAY more holding [and PIs] than usual in the SB, which may mitigate the Pats’ biggest advantage.

    As such, I predict a slow, tight game, but with huge SEA momentum surges which will be too much for a relatively inexperienced Pats’ team.

    Darnold gets his ultimate vindication while the Queens are stuck with #9 watching the SB in a Cancun bar….

  • Happy Holidays!

    Happy Holidays!

    Like most, gonna be busy for a few days, so just wanna give a quick thanks to all the regs [and lurkers] for being part of a special season no matter how it ends; though obviously, a SB would make it magical!

    So enjoy the eggnog, crazy uncles and football games. Cheers.

  • Bear-lieve!

    Bear-lieve!

    I was going to write up another in-depth Packer Preview, but the Bears just played them not two weeks ago, so nothing much has changed statistically.

    That being said, much has changed personnel-wise, specifically, the INJ report.

    As of Thurs night, here’s the Packers-Bears’ INJ report:

    Packers Final Injury Report
    Out: RB MarShawn Lloyd (calf/hamstring), TE Josh Whyle (concussion), G John Williams (back).[Parsons – OUT OUT]

    Questionable: RB Chris Brooks (chest), DE Brenton Cox (groin), DE Kingsley Enagbare (illness), RB Josh Jacobs (knee/ankle), T/G Darian Kinnard (neck), DE Collin Oliver (hamstring), RT Zach Tom (knee/back), WR Christian Watson (chest/shoulder), WR Dontayvion Wicks (ankle), S Evan Williams (knee).

    Note: Oliver, Cox and John Williams have been designated for return from injured reserve and are within their 21-day practice windows.

    Bears Final Injury Report
    Out: WR Luther Burden III (ankle), WR Rome Odunze (foot), LB Amen Ogbongbemiga (hamstring).

    Questionable: DE Joe Tryon-Shoyinka (personal), LB Tremaine Edmunds (groin), TE Cole Kmet (ankle/knee), RB D’Andre Swift (groin).

    Note: Edmunds has been designated for return from injured reserve and is within his 21-day practice window

    Naturally, Micah Parsons [ACL tear, 9 month recovery] out plus Christian Watson and Josh Jacobs as Questionable are tremendous losses. Even if Jacobs and Watson suit up, they can’t possibly be anywhere close to 100%.

    Bears without Rome/Burden sucks as well, but Bears are a run first, 12 personnel team at heart, so all Zaccheus, Duvernay and Walker have to do is stay upright, block, and catch occasionally.

    I think BJ will be smart enough to target DJ, Loveland and Kmet on key downs.

    What I really want to write about though is that for the first time since maaaybe ’18, I believe the Bears can finish – not just with a winning record, or Wild Card appearance – but with a SB. The ’25 Bears can win it all.

    Yes – all. The whole enchilada. The whole 9 yards. The entire shebang or whatever other phrases exist for them winning a SB.

    It’s a confluence of many factors.

    1. No real super-team this season.
    Week in, week out, I have witnessed playoff teams ‘upset’. Whether it’s Pats losing to Raiders, Pack losing to Browns, Rams losing to Panthers, Bills losing to Dolphins, Broncos losing to Chargers, etc it’s one of those years where seemingly any team can indeed beat any favorite any given Sunday. So why not us?

    2. Bears find different ways to win in crunch time.

    Whether it’s a QB scramble, a big KR, a blocked FG, a forced fumble, an incredible INT, improbable throw/catch, or bruising runs to close, the Bears just get ‘er done. By now, they simply BELIEVE they will win. How barely matters. They’ve essentially been in playoff mode since week 3 [Cowboys], so a little pressure isn’t going to phase them.

    3. Bears’ formula wins late season.

    Don’t know if you noticed, but it’s getting pretty freaking freezing out there.
    Luckily, the Bears are a run first team. The 1-2 punch of Swift-Monangai is now spoken in the same breath as Gibbs-Monty, Kyle Williams-Corum while The Oline ranks top 5 on many sites. And, oh yeah, they have two great blocking TEs in Kmet/Loveland.

    Caleb Williams is arguably the best scrambler too which I appreciate even more after watching Stafford-v-Darnold on TNF.

    Another part of the Bears’ formula is they don’t turn it over much.

    Caleb rarely throws INTs, actually breaking the record for fewest INTs through the first 1K passing attempts. Unlike his predecessors , [looking at you Smoking Jay], he rarely gets strip-sacked [or even sacked].

    Swift also doesn’t fumble much while Monangai at Rutgers attempted 669 rushes with ZERO fumbles.

    So Bears don’t give away many freebies.

    Which dovetails well with CREATING defensive TOs. #1 in NFL with 20, and #2 Texans aren’t even close with 14.

    I, like many, was initially skeptical about Bears’ D keeping it up. As they say, TOs are unpredictable – not a good bet; nevertheless, Dennis Allen has made it just that – bankable. Somehow, someway, that D forces INTs/Fumbles, and they create momentum to win especially in hostile environments.

    So, Bears…

    Run fiercely+ block well+ limit TOs+ Force TOs= Wins

    Oh, and they’re clutch!

    4. Bears have elite coaching.

    Wow. Can’t believe I just typed that. I’m having an out of body experience just reading that aloud.

    Bears have elite coaching for the first time since Zubas were cool; I TRUST our brains outsmarting theirs.

    The easy example is Ben Johnson which doesn’t need much explaining, but Dennis Allen may actually be doing a superior job at DC given what he has.

    It’s not just them either. Look at the incredible turnaround of the Oline in just one season. Gotta give props to Dan Roushar for that.

    The secondary is playing out of its mind, big pat of the back [to future HC] Al Harris.

    Def Line coach Jeremy Garrett may even be sneaky good.
    Sweat has quietly notched 8.5 sacks, Booker in 7 games has 3 sacks, while the run D has recovered from being a sieve early season.

    via Matt Marton/Imagn
    I don’t really believe in ‘moral losses’, but sometimes, they do happen. After Philly, many still claimed Bears were “fun frauds”. However, after nearly stealing a win at Lambeau, the league no longer scoffs.

    I compared this team to both the SB winning Saints and Gmen; the Gmen in their finale took the Pats to the limit, ultimately losing 38-35.

    Now you figure, ‘wow, tough loss. Gut punch and no way to lurch into the playoffs’, but it was quite the opposite.

    “I know what everybody wrote and what everybody said we should do (against the Pats) and all the experts. Well, these are the same people that said we weren’t going to be in this position (10-6) and be in the playoffs, so we really don’t care what they say…[Antonio] Pierce [continued]. “All the experts supposedly said we were going to get beat by 20 or 30 points or whatever it was. That came down to the last couple minutes of the game.”

    “With that mentality, again we are going into a place where our backs are going to be against the wall, where we play our best. And I hope we can go out there and show it off.”

    Sound familiar?
    Let’s hope history repeats. No reason it can’t.

    Bearlieve.

    and FGB.

  • Bears@Eagles Game Preview WK13

    Bears@Eagles Game Preview WK13

    Happy [Early] Turkey Day! Or if you’re vegetarian, Tofurkey Day which actually can double as a football if you play Thanksgiving ball like me and my friends used to.

    Rev reminded me of the Fog Bowl, so if you’re feeling nostalgic, click here.

    Bears@Eagles Preview.

    O/U 44.5; Eagles -6.5

    Eagles’ O.
    PPG. 23.2 [17th]
    YPG. 303.6 [24rth]
    PYPG. 193.2 [23rd]
    RYPG. 110.5 [21st]
    3rd Down conv. 34.56% [27th]
    TOs. 6 [1st]

    As of Weds, the Eagles are still missing RT Lane Johnson. Given how impactful Montez Sweat has been since the bye, that’s absolutely a favorable Bears’ matchup.

    As for the Bears, eyes are on Jaylon Johnson and Kyler Gordon finally returning. Honestly though, how much of a ‘downgrade’ is Nashon Wright from JJ? JJ has dropped some relatively easy INTs, you think he makes some of those spectacular Wright high-points? Wright was also in prime position to end the Steelers’ game at the end if Brisker doesn’t tip it. You have the same confidence JJ INTs that?

    Meanwhile all CJ Gardner-Johnson has done is everything. What does Gordon do better besides strain something?

    These are real questions Dennis Allen must answer soon, and maybe Ryan Poles down the line with the cap and trying to nab and pay a premiere rusher like Jefferey Simmons or Myles Garrett.

    The Eagles’ O doesn’t turn it over, so this is strength vs strength. I think the last time the Bears lost the turnover battle [Ravens], they lost the game. So we’ll see which unit imposes its will. #1 No TO Eagles’ O – or #1 TO Bears’ D.

    Their run game has struggled though. They avg 3.9 per rush, 2.30 yds before contact, and rank 24rth in EPA in last 3 weeks. Flus actually used a 5-man “Bear” front to stuff Saquon Barkley, and I can easily see Dennis Allen following suit with Brisker, Sewell, Jackson, or Gordon[?] and CJ off the corners. Granted, Cowboys had Quinnen Williams, but Grady Jarrett has looked healthier as of late.

    The wildcard will be Jaylen Hurts scrambling; the Bears have struggled vs running QBs like Dart, Huntley, etc and are down to PS squad tier LBs who bit on every misdirection vs Steelers, but as the Giants found out the hard way, that’s a risky gameplan. Bears’ D flies and lays the wood hunting for TOs.

    On D, we all know the Eagles’ Dline is to envy. We are well aware that Poles drafted Darnell Wright instead of Jalen Carter, and that Carter has played at an AP level and is arguably a top 3 DT which we can fantasize about.

    However, the Bears’ Oline has totally rebounded from ’24 and has become an asset coming off a strong game vs Steelers where Ozzy Trapilo stepped in and looked the part.

    Caleb struggling under pressure raises an eyebrow. Would like to see him make aggressive Ds pay, but what QB doesn’t struggle under pressure?

    One thing that could be a gamechanger though is that the Vikings brought edge blitzers to stifle the stretch run and contain Caleb.

    The Eagles’ Dline is talented enough to not need to blitz, which means Fangio will use all kinds of exotic coverages to confuse Caleb. If there’s a rush in his face on top of that, could be a long Black Friday for Caleb.

    Here’s a concise game preview by Bears Now.


    Think Trac said Bears would have to get two turnovers and score over 30 to win this game.

    My response, “So, basically, another Bears’ game.”

    It’s gotten to that point in the season where we don’t have to wonder all that much what teams are.

    The Bears are a feisty, sloppy, opportunistic team with the most dangerous weapon of all:

    BELIEF

    They BELIEVE that if it’s close, no matter how slow, penalty-ridden, or miscued through 3 QTRs – no matter if the opposing team blocked a punt/FG, returned for a TD, strip-sacked TD, are averaging 6 yards per play, or if they’re down to 20 players because lighting struck their sideline…these Bears believe they’ll close it out regardless.

    That’s a 180 from the floundering Fluses which found ways to lose.

    Bears are a scary team to face even if you are the reigning champs and favorited Eagles. Bears are playing with house $ while the entire Philly hate-machine has been pounding on them all season especially after a brutal blown game against their hated rival Cowboys.

    Overtime:

    Couple odd stats for Bears.

    1. No QB with such an awful comp% wins as much as Caleb Williams. It’s not even all that close really:

    2. Bears are also -3 point differential total the whole season. Apparently only the 1987 Chargers were worse through 11 games.

    [Any old-timers recall the ’87 Chargers?]

    I mentioned this before, but this Bears’ team reminds me a lot of the ’22 Vikings when they made that crazy 13-4 run with Kirk Cousins. Felt like every week was that scene from “Airplane”, “Looks like I picked the wrong time to quit sniffing glue!”

    [2023 Vikings? 7-10]

    Then add that the Bears’ D allows 5.77 YPP [20th], 26.5 PPG [27th] yet still count on at least 2+TOs per game [1st], and one can understand why many persist the Bears are “Fun Frauds.”

    It’ll be up to Bears to finally silence the doubters; after all, the only difference between “fun frauds” and epic “Cinderellas” is winning.

    [Go Puke?]

  • When a win is more than a win, or is it?

    When a win is more than a win, or is it?

    By reg Clockwork Orange and Blue

    Aaron Rodgers has a career 25-5 record against the Bears. He famously declared his ownership of the Bears following the Rodgers Packers’ penultimate victory against the Beloved in Rodgers’ final year with the team. Nothing tastes as sweet, or devastates as much, than a win or loss against the Packers, and this was especially true with Rodgers at the helm. And now in week 12 of an improbable 7-3 season, the Bears are faced with an aging Rodgers on a different team.

    8-3 is a mark that would put the Bears one win closer to the magic number of 10, a total that would certainly catapult them to the playoffs and mark the start of what could be the Bears team we have all been thirsting for – one that wins games not in spite but because of their offense and quarterback. Are all wins equal? Do we dare now move the goalposts from “any win is a good win”?

    With Rodgers suffering (my god, I hope he is suffering) a broken left wrist and marked as questionable to play on Sunday, do we hope to see him in the pocket, knowing full well his ownership, his football voodoo, over the Bears?

    You and I know he wants to be dancing out of the pocket after a near sack, twisting and galloping with Bears in pursuit from behind while he angles toward the flat, and with a flick of the wrist, sending a perfect lofted spiral into the waiting hands of a streaking receiver, breaking Chicago’s spirit once more. You just know he wants to do that one last time, to punctuate his career with a defining statement: “I will forever own you.”

    On the flip side, even though he is not with Green Bay, what would be sweeter than to see Rodgers rolling in agony on the Soldier Field turf after releasing a lame duck following a brutal full frontal blow, a ball that flutters gently down into the hands of a waiting safety who then speeds by the scene of the crime and all eyes are not on the motionless Rodgers, but on the celebration in the end zone, the final score that ends both the game and Rodgers’ career.

    Do you take that chance with Rodgers, knowing it could take you back to the heartbreak of the last 20 years, but also knowing that you could find yourself with a real reason to say “this Bears team is different and for real”? Or would you rather not face that prospect and see Mason Rudolph under center, knowing the chances for victory are that much greater. How badly do you want to reach 10 wins – are you a pragmatist or a romantic?

    Mike Tomlin and the Steelers are the quintessential pragmatists. It is why he is where he is in his 19th season, having never suffered a losing season, yet only winning a single Super Bowl. Do we want to be the Steelers? Would you be happy if Ben Johnson’s career mirrored Tomlin’s?

    I would not. I am a Romantic, an Idealist, and I have an inkling that Ben Johnson is too. Does he enjoy the wins? Yes. he certainly does. But in his decisions, I do not see Tomlin, or Lovie. I see a man driven by his ideals. He knows what he wants and he knows what he wants to see. He is a man who will not just be satisfied with a .600 winning percentage and a long career. He wants to feel the adrenaline of a win without excuses.

    He wants to beat Rodgers.

    And so do I.

  • Bears: Subpar, Soft & Stupid

    Bears: Subpar, Soft & Stupid

    I can go into a Dataeque deep dive citing PFF, Next Gen Stats, charts, twitter clips and still-shots, all sorts of links to former players/coaches dissecting every Bear minutia, but frankly, they’re not worth the effort.

    My only take away: the ’25 Bears are subpar, soft and stupid.

    1 Subpar. Or more accurately, substar in that the team rosters no real blue-chips. MAYBE Jaylon Johnson who is INJed. Maybe Thuney who is on the downslope of his career. That’s about it. In a franchise that boasts the most HOFers full of players like Butkus, Sayers, Sweetness, Dent, Hester…studs who made plays especially when the game was on the line; this current Bears’ incarnation of JAGs is the main reason I predicted Bears would finish last in NFCN. What I didn’t expect that they may finish last in the entire league. This mostly falls on Ryan Poles whom naturally the McCaskeys, in their infinite wisdom, decided to extend.

    2. Soft. This is something I suspected but didn’t want to manifest into existence. This team is mentally SOFT AF. I’ve never witnessed a team fold like a cheap tent after one loss like this team did after the Washington Hail Mary. That wasn’t anomalous either, but fast forward to this year. Week 1 they were very much in that game until that bogus Wright holding call. After that obstacle, they never recovered. This week again, very much in it, until that bullshit ending to the half where the Viking should have been ruled down and clock expired. Instead, he was ruled out – Vikings rewarded six seconds back. Predictably they scored a TD, and once more, self-implosion. This team can’t handle adversity or setbacks which is a lethal mix with being…

    3. Stupid. They just keep shooting themselves in the foot, whether it’s drive killing pre-snap penalties, holding, pass-interference, terrible time management, angles, situational awareness, challenges, blown coverages, going for 1st downs instead of kicking easy FGs, not kicking it out of bounds, seemingly NO professional game plan or counter-punch, and that’s not even considering the lack of execution like killer drops, missed running lanes and big plays [see #1].

    This team reminds me of Mush from “The Bronx Tale.”

    We all know a Mush. I have a friend who seemingly gets-off on complaining: work, family, relationships, sports, car, traffic, everything and anything. Just always self-pitying, whining, and somewhat permanently disgruntled. I love him, but I can only take so much before my Boomer-itis kicks-in, “Snap the fuck out of it!” [and he’s OLDER than I am].

    I introduced him to the girl I’m dating at a happening club with plenty of skimpy clad women; he proceeded to spend half the night relaying to her his last 3 breakups. At some point she turns to me like ‘is this guy forreal? I just met him’ I just shrugged and went over to save her. We danced. He hit the bar.

    He expects life to kick him in the balls, and somehow, life obliges.

    “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, in both instances – you’re right.”

    This team is like that. I get it, TBH. I’ve been on some terrible teams where losses completely demoralize players. Everything transforms to doom and gloom. At the beginning of each season, everyone is angelic shining with radiant hope. After a chain of brutal beat downs, that locker room disfigures into “Paradise Lost”. Sometimes a team climbs out of the fall. Often it doesn’t.

    This team can’t apparently. They expect for something in the game to go south, and when it does, they quit. No 3 AM grit. No Lach in Zona refusing defeat. No coach at halftime losing his shit, throwing objects around, calling players out as men.

    Nope, instead we get the same ole same ole

    Mush.

  • Ty-Writer Drops Bombs!

    Ty-Writer Drops Bombs!

    At this point it would be negligent of me to NOT share Tyler Dunne’s trilogy “House of Dysfunction.”

    I won’t cover it all, and TBH, it’s a bit of a bummer reading this right before the season kicks-off. It’s like sniffing a turd emanating from a wrapped gift before Christmas.

    Nevertheless, wishful thinking is no way to prance through life. So buckle up; here’s a summary:

    Part I

    1. Caleb Williams seems disrespectful towards the coaches: Waldron, Brown, and likely Eberflus.

    2. The Vets didn’t like Caleb, a rook, busting on the scene, making coaches and vets conform to him.

    3. Caleb might be football dumb; apparently his mental struggles were so extreme, Dunne muses if Caleb actually possesses a learning disability.

    4. Caleb is not just entitled and learning disabled, but LAZY.

    The Bears offense devolved into an exercise of trial and error to fit whatever the USC rookie demanded.

    All of which would’ve been manageable if Williams was willing to work. He was not.


    Part II

    1. Ryan Poles rigged the selection. Like Kim Jung Un, he let his biases be known and expected the lackies to follow. Here’s a reenactment.

    2. Poles’ autocratic manipulations essentially made Caleb Williams the only viable option at QB despite it being arguably the strongest QB draft since ’83.

    “To those seeking a vibrant debate, these draft meetings were a farce.”

    Part III has yet to drop, but this is their outline:

    In Part III, we zoom out: Who’s to blame? The Bears have become an organization repellent to independent thought. The GM inherited a bad situation and managed to make it worse with a 15-36 record. All roads in this league tend to lead back to ownership.

    I won’t rehash my thoughts. If you’re curious, just click on the previous post; however, I do disagree with Jeff on one point.

    How in the world can this news, if true, NOT impact Ben Johnson’s tenure?

    If the QB is entitled, challenged and lazy, what can the HC do to fix THAT?

    What kind of culture will those traits create?

    [Didn’t we get a sneak peak of that last season when rumors swirled that the vets wanted Bagent to start over Caleb?]

    That being said, as a fellow late-bloomer, this doesn’t mean that Caleb is Jeff-George-Leaf-Manziel-Fated. Even if all those reports are legit, something can click inside Caleb to turn it all around.

    Happens all the time. Everyone loves a 2nd act.

    Still, I expect Poles and sycophants to vigorously deny, deflect, and distort the details because that’s what ‘strong-men’ do when criticized, exposed or challenged.

    Heck, maybe Poles will claim that Dunne is a Detroit constructed AI to undermine the Bears’ season and his reign – Fake News!

    I would absolutely love for some intrepid reporter to ask Mercedes Lewis, Keenan Allen or DeMarcus Walker if the trilogy is accurate. The current Bears like DJ will likely lie through their teeth. That’s fine, but those ex-Bears are free to relay the truth.

    And as with all things, the truth will out.
    The die is cast. The chips are all-in.

    Like those Turkmenistan cabinet members, we too are now forced to cheer, root and clap as Poles raises the fu-bar to another level…

  • The Bears are Finishing Last in the NFCN. AGAIN…

    The Bears are Finishing Last in the NFCN. AGAIN…

    As y’all know, I’m new to this whole Blogging biz. So, I snoop about. Seems like everyone is making a bunch of predictions. I was going to do some in-depth 4-parter… no need.

    Poles whiffed on the previous HC, Flus. And YES, as Jeff the ultimate Bears’ insider has stated emphatically, Poles WANTED Flus; furthermore, Poles vouched for Flus the off-season he should’ve been canned.

    In La Cosa Nostra, when mobsters vouched for Joe Pistone, AKA, Donnie Brasco, they were KILLED. Dead wrong was literal.

    Seems the least that should’ve happened to Poles is a pink-slip. Yet, he somehow stuck like shit on soles, and stunningly even managed to get extended! So Bears…

    Poles hiring, and backing Flus stunted the Bears on multiple levels. But this isn’t the only way Poles has hurt the Bears. In addition, his mediocrity [at best] has left them bereft of not only blue-chip talent, but DEPTH.

    Now the chickens have come home to roost.

    Poles tried his best to compensate for his misses, doing what most mid-GMs do to salvage their rosters and careers – trades for players other teams developed since the Bears can’t develop their own. Plus FA shopping spree.

    Nevertheless, it’s still not enough, is it?

    Too many questions persist: can Sweat rebound, or is he essentially the new Alex Brown? Can Dayo, ya know, sack QBs, or should that $ have been funneled to possibly Trey Hendrickson or Micah Parsons? WTF’s going on at LT? Was Wright overdrafted and merely an avg RT? [cough, Carter, cough] If Jonah Jackson was so good, why did McVey happily send him packing? What happens if Brisker gets another concussion? What if Swift or Byard go down?

    And the million dollar question:

    Can Caleb become better than Jayden Daniels?

    Poles didn’t draft Caleb #1 overall to be Kyler Murray or worse than Bo Nix.

    NTM , no matter how much Ben Johnson is praised, we simply don’t know if he’s an NFL-winning HC.

    Remember when Chip Kelly stormed into the league in a whirlwind of praises?

    Meanwhile, the Lions, Vikings and Packers pose far fewer questions. They won 15, 14 and 11 games, respectively, and all are legit SB contenders.

    Then the lowly Bears.

    That’s a tough road to slog with so many unknowns, lack of All-Pros, and paper-thin depth at key positions under a rookie HC.

    As such, my predicalator computes…Bears finish last in NFCN.

    Now, this might seem pessimistic at first, but don’t throw your laptop at your TV quite yet!

    If the Bears were in a weaker division, say, the NFC or AFC South, I’d argue they could win the division, but that’s not our reality.

    They can win 9 games, yet be last and out of the playoffs. In that scenario, we can still be optimistic as long as the team appears heading in the right direction.

    This is like a middle-weight being thrown into a division with prime Sugar Ray, Hagler, Hearns and Duran – via con dios…

    How the Bears don’t finish last:

    Like Dr. Strange navigating multitudinous futures, I’ll offer some possibilities where Bears leap-frog their rivals. I’ll try to leave the obvious ‘if player-x gets INJed.’


    1. Lions. They’ve been remarkably consistent. In some ways, they’re like the Bills. A blue-collar gritty out. However, both their lauded OC and DC left, and no one knows exactly how it will negatively impact them. It can’t be good, but how bad can it make them?

    2. Vikings. Perhaps the biggest X-factor in the division – is JJ McCarthy a franchise QB? If he’s not, or even just starts off slowly like Bryce Young, well, Vikings could drop to the dredges.

    3. Packers. Much like the Vikings, their future firmly rests on the arm of Jordan Love and the back of Micah Parsons. I just feel something askew with that team. They were a blocked FG away from the Bears sweeping them last season, and they couldn’t beat the Bears in the finale despite the Bears playing for only pride. Jordan Love could be their Sexy Rexy. A streaky, sometimes INJed QB, who can push a team far but always tumultuously. Plus, if Parson’s back is more messed up than previously assumed, then that truly cripples the team as he cost two first rounders and an astounding $46M against the cap.

    4. Bears. Throw all the doubts out. Ignore the lack of a premiere pass rusher, questionable LT, thin depth, rookie HC…

    If Caleb becomes Mahomes, then game on. Not only won’t they finish last, it’s entirely plausible they overtake the Lions and make a strong playoff-push.

    Look at the Bengals. Their ’21 team was OK, but I don’t believe many predicted they’d make it to the SB. Bengals like the Lions were a joke for decades. They made the SB mainly on the phenomena that is Joe Burrow [and to a lesser extent, Ja’Marr Chase].

    If Caleb throws for 4,600, 34TDs, runs for another 500 while earning an 108 QB rating, then it won’t matter what the Lions, Vikings, Packers, or any team honestly, does because Caleb will simply impose his greatness, and all the D and specials have to do is not suck.

    Hey, a gal can dream…