Lincicome: My eight fantasies about the 2023 Chicago Bears

All football is fantasy football before the NFL season starts and never more necessary than this year for the Chicago Bears.

How do we fantasize thee, let us count the ways.

Fantasy 1 — Now in year three and in his second under the same coach, Justin Fields is ready to lead the Bears.

The silliness of expectation is no better illustrated than the calculation by Fields that he can pass for 4,000 yards in a season, something no Bears quarterback has ever done. In fact, the Bears are the only NFL team to never have a 4,000-yard quarterback.

Considering Fields' career average of 150 or so per game, the Bears would need to play 27 games, and considering his average of 7 yards per completion, he would need to complete 570 or so passes, which is 86 or so more than Tom Brady ever completed in one year.

To quote offensive coach Luke Getsy, Fields “is not making the same mistakes twice.” Yes, a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a wide receiver for?

Which brings us to Fantasy 2 — D.J. Moore is just the exciting, game breaking, pass grabbing, crowd gasping wide receiver that the Bears have not had since — well, since Alshon Jeffrey? Or maybe Harlon Hill. Wide receiver is a muddled memory and not exactly a Hall of Fame position for the Bears, with Mike Ditka being the only receiver of any kind in Canton, his selection more as a cartoon than as a player.

This failure to launch is at least as much the fault of iffy Bears quarterbacks as it is of flawed Bears receivers, wide, tight or backfield. (See Fantasy 1.)

Fantasy 3 — Tremaine Edmunds, the new middle linebacker, will fill the storied shoes of Butkus-Singletary-Urlacher, become the face of a feared Bears defense and be worth every one of the $72 million he will be paid over four years, which is $71 million more than Butkus made his entire career. And Butkus is still the face of the Chicago Bears.

Fantasy 4 — D'Onta Foreman will be the dependable ground grabbing running back the Bears are used to, while avoiding injury, and even if he does not there is always Kahlil Herbert, the often used scatterback, while both of them together do not make one David Montgomery, who fled to Detroit — yes, Detroit.

A string of serviceable runners since, oh, Walter Payton, have created the myth of the plug-in Bears running back, when what might come in more handy is a plug-into-the-end zone running back, which Foreman is supposed to be. Otherwise, it is befuddlement or a field goal.

Fantasy 5 — The Bears don't have Aaron Rodgers to worry about any more. Ownership of the Bears has been handed down to a quarterback whimsically named Jordan Love, the patient in-waiting behind Rodgers and with more unknowns than Fields has knowns.

After conceding to Rodgers year after year, the Bears finally get a chance to beat their habitual rivals while both the Lions and the Vikings have moved ahead of both of them.

Fantasy 6 — The secondary is the best part of a defense that was last in the league in any category worth measuring, giving up 27 points a game, entering the season on a 10-game losing streak. The difference between promising and pathetic is one bad Sunday.

Fantasy 7 — Out of sheer numbers and draft picks and pick ups, the defensive line will find someone who can (1) rush the passer (2) clog up the middle (3) apologize later.

From having defensive linemen falling all over each other the Bears shrank to defensive linemen simply falling out, from ineptitude to injury to dismissal, leaving the remainders no closer to a cohesive, functioning unit capable of stopping the run or getting to the quarterback. A rookie cornerback led the Bears in sacks.

The likely starting defensive line of Yannik Ngakoue, Andrew Billings, Justin Jones and DeMarcus Walker would be different (save Jones) from the line that started the last game of last season, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Fantasy 8 — Every new Bear is better than every Bear he replaces.

In sum, there will be at least 10 fresh Bears starters, not including Fields, who is still more fantasy than fact.