October 2, 2022

The Devil Was Daniel Jones (And Ourselves)

Giants 20, Bears 12

The Chicago Bears lost to the New York Giants, 20-12 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon in a game that made us envy the blind and damn the spirit of Philo Farnsworth.

The Bears are now 2-2 which makes us feel sad for that long respected numeral. Old #2 deserves better than to have a crappy team like the Bears associated with it twice. Even more sadly, the Bears are likely to be stuck on two wins long past the midterms and maybe well into the second administration of Kamala Harris.

Let’s look at the last play of this thing they called a “game.” The Bears, following a missed New York field goal attempt, took possession on their own 27-yard line trailing 20-12 with little time (17 seconds) and even less hope, and, two plays and few miserable seconds later, from their own 33-yard line this happened:

Bears quarterback Justin Fields threw a short pass to the right side to Trestan Ebner who then lateraled it to Equanimeous St. Brown who ran around a bit then fumbled, the ball was recovered by Fields who tossed it back to St. Brown who gave it back to Ebner who then decided it was his turn to fumble but hey, don’t worry! the ball was recovered by Bears lineman Lucas Patrick who got it back to Fields who gave it to Teven Jenkins who fumbled (seriously), then Ebner scooped it up again and did we mention that the Bears were pretty much going backwards the whole time? And then Ebner promptly coughed it up, the Giants recovered, the clock had long since said 00:00, and this bowl of pig slop was officially flushed into hell.

The whole game was sort of like that, except even messier.

The Bears lost to a team that for a while late in the game didn’t even have a quarterback as Giants starter Daniel Jones got hurt, then his backup, Tyrod Taylor also got popped.

This game was more shameful than Republicans dancing.

The Bears lost in large part because the Giants ran for a whopping 262 yards, 146 of them by running back Saquon Barkley. There is little shame in giving up a bunch of yards to Barkley who is one of the best in the league. But Chicago also allowed the aforementioned Mr. Jones to run for 68 yards and two touchdowns, including a bootleg left for 21 yards in the first quarter and another eight-yard endzone scamper in the second.

The Bears made Jones look like Barkley and made Barkley look like Batman. Ick.

But let us remember the Giants only scored 20 points including just two field goals after halftime and the Bears continue to hold on to an impressive yet also somewhat puzzling statistic of not having allowed a touchdown in the second half so far this season. Four games in, this Bears coaching staff, headed by Matt Eberflus, has proven to be good at making halftime adjustments. So here’s a thought, maybe all week long at practice they can just pretend it’s halftime so the Bears might actually play well for an entire game.

The Bears’ play-calling in this game was, um what’s the word? Craptastic. Fields was always running for his life and the few times he did get a pass off it was usually dropped. Fields is far from great and we’re not sure if this was his best game of the season but we’ll take it as some sort of progress to say that this defeat was not his fault. Bad play-calling, unimpressive receiving, and some type of voodoo curse once again kept Chicago’s offense stuck in the 1940s.

Fields passed for 174 yards, which is good for him, and was not intercepted, but he was sacked six times, fumbled once, and we’re pretty sure had at least three thoughts of asking for a trade back to Ohio State.

The Bears’ 12 points came on four field goals from Mike Badgley, whom they signed just this weekend. When their regular kicker Cairo Santos returns maybe the Bears can keep Badgley on as a receiver, offensive coordinator, good luck charm, something man, something, because with this offense the only way the Bears are going to win another game is if they can convince the NFL to let Ginni Thomas run the scoreboard.

Next up for the Bears is a trip to Minnesota to face the Vikings then they have two more road trips in the next three games after that. At this rate the Bears might not land in the win column again before Thanksgiving…2024.

Oh, stop you’re bitchin’, right? These are the Bears! Have faith! It’s October and October can bring more than just falling leaves and fun size Snickers. It can bring hope. It can make you sip a warm drink by the autumn fire and forget about football, global warming, and your college girlfriend. Forget! Remember to forget! --TK