It turns out the Bears are pretty much who we thought they were
Apologies for my optimism, being on record for the Bears finishing 5-12. Oh, it is still possible I guess, given as how the playoff Packers have no good reason to win next Sunday against the Bears, other than, of course, they always do.
I had not figured on a 10-game losing streak to reach this point, supposing chunks of faith mingled among the usual regret, and this with the White Sox still a fresh example of the intolerable.
Nor did I imagine Caleb Williams to be as flawed as he is, still somehow remaining apart from the failures, costing one coach and soon another, and probably the general manager before he’s done. I’m giving Williams two more years before reaffirming Jim McMahon’s old judgment that Chicago is where quarterbacks go to die.
When “Wait ‘Til Next Year” gives way to the chant of “Sell the Team,” hope has been replaced by despair, and thank you to the Reinsdorfs and the McCaskeys for their contribution to community gloom and general hopelessness.
As Williams was saying, Chicago sports fans have been around longer than he has so their frustrations go back longer than his. No matter how long Williams lasts, he is never going to catch up.
Blame is elusive, although general manager Ryan Poles seems to be the latest to take his turn in the barrel. He built the roster, a collection of used players, imperfect punks and receiver DJ Moore, the candle in the darkness. To be able to point to Moore as the breakout star is to point nowhere else. We shall see on Rome Odunze.
For Poles to have overrated the team he put together is quite natural because it then becomes the fault of the players for not being as good as he thought they were.
If he insists this losing bunch is better than his last losing bunch, that’s like comparing litter. It is never too soon to panic, and in the case of the Bears it is too late.
Matt Eberflus is gone, Thomas Brown is an inadequate seat filler and the perpetual McCaskeys are simply too remote and too unaware. Owners own and do not share.
The Bears are a collection of bad choices, bad plans, bad results, unrealistic expectations. Maybe that last one is the most conspicuous because, while no one believed Williams would be instant Patrick Mahomes, it was assumed that the rest around him would be better.
This season was going to belong to Williams, from the early press flim flam, to podcast delirium, to jockcast jibber-jabber. Quarterback is the easy place to look, a distraction like a magician’s assistant in net stockings.
And Williams now discovers that 17 is more than 11, or however many games he played in a college season, that the responsibility for all of it weighs more than he thought, that with failure comes review.
The offensive line has cracked and creaked and deteriorated from undependable to a do-it-yourself patchwork project, this leading to the battering of Williams and the exposing the ordinariness of whichever running back gets the ball.
What is not an issue is that Poles has choices, whereas the Bears have only obligations. Roil the whole internal structure of the place. Get a better team. Pick a coach from the usual suspects, but forget septuagenarian Pete Carroll, today’s and yesterday’s Tony La Russa.
A hot coordinator is more likely, one whose team is in the playoffs, as if somehow success is the fault of “all those little people” whom the winning coach thanks while holding up the trophy. That would be Detroit’s Ben Johnson.
The get-a-better-team part is more important than landing a coach for a franchise that even the “Sell the Team” chanters believe to be every coach’s goal. There is a comfort level here, as loyal and uncomplaining a fan base as can be found, a mostly compliant media, a secure spot at the top of the local sports pile and ownership slow to panic.
The Bears can fire a head coach, a cliché move, and end up with a worse team, and now they will need to start all over again.
With so much to fix, the simple seasoning of a young quarterback seems the easiest thing to get done. We optimists believe that.