The Chicago Bears are forever hopeless until new ownership arrives

I’ll never be free of this.

We’ve written it all by now. The Chicago Bears are an embarrassment, a laughingstock, hopeless, backward. And it will never change. It will be this way after I’m long dead.

There isn’t a convenient starting point. So we’ll start with the broken quarterback who is going to start quoting all the text from a college philosophy class within the next day or two:

Fields might be spewing this Deadhead-in-the-parking-lot-while-coming-up twaddle because he was dealing with a head injury that their coach felt the need to reinsert him back into the game with while trailing by a million. The reason Fields might be so lost is because his offensive coordinator, Luke Getsy, has no idea what he’s doing or how to run an offense or develop a quarterback. Fields knows he’s either gone after this season or the coaches will be, so why not just turn on the tunes and listen to The Truth through Jerry’s guitar, man.

And why is Getsy there? Because he was hired by the coach, Matt Eberflus, who was brought in to raise the standard of professionalism and culture after the clown shoes that was the Matt Nagy era. Except none of Eberflus’s players have any idea where to be or who to cover or block and they don’t always try hard and they’re also all hurt. But that’s ok!

They spent training camp on a ropes course and playing pickleball, apparently.

Also, Eberflus was a DC before becoming a head coach for a team that needed to develop the most physically talented quarterback they’ve ever had, or the next one they might have to draft when this campaign of foolishness ends, except his team can’t play defense. They don’t know how to tackle, they can’t pressure the QB and they can’t create turnovers, the last two things being the entire point of Eberflus’s antiquated system. Oh, and the DC he hired was seemingly doing something inappropriate and now he’s gone. But Eberflus has an acronym, dorks.

Not a single player that carried over from the team last year, players that were supposed to at least be contributors to the next good Bears team (there’s a term to make everyone’s colon explode), has gotten any better, and in most cases have gotten noticeably worse.

Those coaches and players are there because of a GM, Ryan Poles, who hired the coach. Poles has yet to draft anything that looks like an impact player, traded for Chase Claypool with the 32nd pick while punting Roquan Smith because he wanted too much money and then paying a much worse player for the same position just $2 million less per season while having $100 million in cap space. Either Pace believes in these players and is as upset at their deployment under the coaching staff as the fans are and everyone will be fired forthwith, or he believes in the coaches he hired and nothing will change. Given how this usually works in Lake Forest, it’s easy to pick which.

But it’s no different than what’s gone on before for decades because the ownership never changes. It’s still Virginia McCaskey, who everyone says is a very sweet woman and still very much with it even if she’s 187-years-old. But she’s not with it enough to see now that two of her sons have driven this team into a ditch over the past 35 years, from which a mole person could never, ever bang them back out of.

So her dope sons hire a dope GM who hires a dope coach who hires even more dope coaches who either turn the players into dopes or they just draft dopes that stay dopes. Hell, they just hired a team president whose only job was to secure a new stadium and they’re as far from that as they’ve ever been thanks to somehow screwing up the large piece of land they already bought in Arlington Heights for the specific purpose of building a stadium there. Even the Oakland A’s somehow got a stadium deal through a local government and the Bears couldn’t even figure that one out.

And it will remain this way.

The McCaskeys have spent their whole life in the NFL and yet have no connections or knowledge of the game to hire the right people. This is all they’ve ever done. They didn’t get rich in another business and acquire the Bears. This is all they know, and they suck at it worse than just about anyone has in history.

And it won’t be any different because Virginia has no plans to sell her dad’s, (George Halas) team. Maybe her kids will when she passes, given that the Bears are still somehow worth billions and that’s hard to turn down when not as bonded to that team. And that’s where Bears fans are. Waiting for a sweet woman to die. Is a football team worth the life of one woman? Of course not, don’t be silly. We’re not that awful. But also, maybe.

Until then, it’ll be the same rerun over and over. It’s never going to change. Dumbasses beget dumbasses all the way down the line. Twas ever thus.

Megan Rapinoe goes out in style

Anyway, on the Bears home turf there was actual class and quality on display on Sunday, as Megan Rapinoe played her last international game for the USWNT.

There was so much to admire about Rapinoe, from her skill on the field to her habit of showing up in the biggest moments to her unmatched class and personality and quest for what’s right off the field. What I found so mesmerizing about Raps was just how above it she seemed. That she just was too good for all the muck.

She certainly had enough mud slung at her from the dregs of society, and yet it all seemed so laughable that any of them tried to besmirch her name. Her play on the field rose her to a level, but her rapier wit, intelligence, and uncaring bravado only lifted it to the clouds. Anyone trying to take her on seemed to be showing up with a toy knife to a gunfight. It was like they were attempting to throw stones at the 90th floor.

Women’s soccer certainly has its issues, but is in a better place than it was. It doesn’t feel like it a lot, and those changes take place far more slowly and far more incrementally than we’d like. But they’re there. And the issues that are now part of the discussion in the sport, and in society, are there because of Rapinoe, at least in part. Because she was beyond reproach on the field and off. We tend to follow those who talk and back it up, and no one did it better than Rapinoe. She didn’t leave room for argument.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Felsgate and on Bluesky @Felsgate.bsky.social.