We Were So Excited and Now We Are Afraid, Frustrated and Funky
We Were So Excited and Now We Are Afraid, Frustrated and Funky
It Felt Like Boogers In The Brain
September 5, 2019
The Baddest Beginning
The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers kicked off the NFL’s 100th season at Soldier Field in Chicago on Thursday night by playing a game that resembled chess more than football.
And bad chess at that. Played in mud. By drunk people with cold hands.
The Bears lost this one 10-3, looking clueless on offense, timid on special teams and frustrated on defense. Sure, the defense played well but it generated no turnovers or touchdowns which it will likely need to do because Chicago’s offense couldn’t move the ball if it had Lewis Hamilton driving a Howitzer.
It’s only one game but that might be a very bad thing.
The Bears defense was great last season and looks to be solid again but, unfortunately, Chicago’s offense and quarterback Mitchell Trubisky seem to have taken a step back. Actually, a bunch of steps back like when you’re getting sacked five times which is what happened to Trubisky.
The Bears defense also sacked Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers five times and held #12 to only one good drive the entire game, resulting in a lofty TD pass to Jimmy Graham in the second quarter. But that was enough for those Packer fellas.
Trubisky wasn’t, really, awful. He was just nothing. Not enough zip on his passes, not able to find a secondary receiver, and, with the game on the line in the final moments, he threw into triple coverage in the endzone resulting in a game-killing interception.
It was the only turnover in the contest and came at the wrong place with not enough time. Trubisky, actually probably should have been picked off a few times before that but luck, at least for a while, was on his side.
The Bears simply looked like a team that needed a lot more practice. And hey, isn’t that what the four preseason games are for? We are not sure because Bears coach Matt Nagy had Trubisky and the rest of his top players sit on the sidelines for nearly the entire exhibition slate.
Do you know what team tends to play its starters in the preseason? We’ll give you a hint; it’s the team that has a quarterback named Brady and wins the Super Bowl all the time.
Would the Bears be as good as the Patriots, or even the Packers for that matter, if they played their top guys for even just a little bit in the preseason? We’ll never know. At least not this year.
With the Bears trailing 7-3 in the second quarter they had a third-and-one and handed the ball off to lanky wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson who ran up the middle and got stuffed for a two-yard loss.
You need one tough yard and you hand it off to a giraffe in a den of pit bulls. This wasn’t just bad play-calling, this was weirdness.
Maybe they should have given it to Jordan Howard. Oh…that’s right, he’s with the Eagles, now.
The Bears at one point in this game had third and 40. And now Super Bowl aspirations, here in September, look like fourth down and a billion.
Sorry. We are piling on.
Trubisky is tough and Nagy is smart and it’s just one game and we love our damn Bears. But now they head to Denver whose head coach is Vic Fangio, who is the Bears’ former defensive coordinator and if there is anyone who knows how to stop Nagy and Trubisky we think Vic would be the one.
One loss does not make a season. But it does make us sad.
And worried. --TK
Thursday, September 5, 2019