Yesterday was like Ground Hog Day, more of the same, with a hopeless feeling of inevitable despair. Of course I'm talking about the Bears deciding to keep Ted Phillips, Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy for at least one more year.
It's hard to know where to even start with this franchise. The Bears are coming off uninspiring, back-to-back 8-8 seasons. Mediocrity at its best. It may be time for the McCaskey family to find another business and sell this team. You would think that they could get a pretty penny for the founding team, of the richest league, in American sports.
As a long time fan, when you hear the CEO, say out loud, that he sees a lot of great things from his management team, you have to wonder if they know what the hell they're doing. It literally makes you want to sit down and cry.
The team the McCaskey family is laser focused on, as are most fans of the Bears, are the Green Bay Packers. It is the oldest rivalry in the NFL. They have played each other 200 times in the regular season, and the Packers hold a 100-94-6 advantage over the Monsters. This is a one way rivalry, if you can call one team beating up on the other, a rivalry.
It's more like your big brother kicking your ass every day and then laughing at you crying in pain. If you ask most Packer fans they will tell you that the real rivalry, for them, is with the Minnesota Vikings. But since we are in the era of fantasy football, let's continue to pretend that there is still a rivalry between the Bears and the Packers. How do they stand up to each other?
Well, not good. Pre color television, the Bears held their own, however, in the Super Bowl era, not so much. The Packers lead in Super Bowl appearances 5-2. They have an 18-12 advantage in first place finishes with 14 of them coming in the Favre/Rodgers era. The Bears lead in last place finishes 17-6 and not surprisingly 10 of them have come in the same Favre/Rodgers era since 1992. The insane stat is that the Packers have had 2 quarterbacks since 1992 while the Bears have had 15 different starters. This does not include all the clowns who actually played, just the starters.
I think you can see why the McCaskey's are pumped up for this team and its leadership. I realize that I don't get paid the big bucks to make horrible decisions, I actually do it pro bono, but even a dope like me can look at this mess and say, maybe we need to try something different.
In speaking to a few fans this week, I was not surprised to hear that most feel the same way. Responses to the announcement of no changes ranged from, "I'm dropping my football package from cable", to "F**k them, I'm done."
Chicago sports fans are nothing if not resilient, and will put up with a mountain of horseshit if the hope for glory at the end of the rainbow is possible. The problem with the Bears is that nobody on earth, not named McCaskey, actually thinks this team is headed in a positive direction.
In the back of your mind you tell yourself that the Packers, at some point, will not have a hall of fame QB, and then, there may be a slight chance of something good happening for the Bears. But then you wake up and realize that they are already grooming the next HOF'er and we don't even know his name. Hell, most Packer fans couldn't tell you his name either, but they know he's on the bench someplace already.
Doing the same things over and over, and expecting different results, is the very definition of insanity. We've been living in a madhouse for more than fifteen years while the Bears ownership tries to figure out how to run a professional football team.
Right now if you are a Chicago sports fan you can count on one finger the teams headed in the right direction, the White Sox have it going and are the only team in town worth watching right now. The Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, and Cubs are a complete mess, and there is no hope in sight.
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