Nose Count

Nose Count

Back in the day, they would call yesterday’s steady snow and nippy temperatures “Bears’ weather,” which would make the home team play all that much harder and the fans root with ever more heart.  On Christmas Eve 2017, the now 5-10 Bears played hard enough to beat the now 0-15 Browns by a score of 20-3.  The no-shows amounted to 17,539 fans, a figure to leave any Scrooge—or McCaskey—of an owner grumpy, to say the least.

The snow didn’t do any favors for Mitch Trubisky, either.  Inclement weather was the perfect excuse for “coach” John Fox to keep the ball on the ground; Trubisky attempted only 23 passes on the afternoon, completing 14.  I can imagine the Bears’ “brain trust” (sorry about all the qualifying quotes, but it is the Bears) holding its breath, old man Halas spinning in his grave, each time Trubisky dropped back to throw.  And I can imagine the collective smiles after each of the 24 times he handed the ball off.  As for the seven times Trubisky took off on his own, no doubt the soon-to-be unemployed coaches shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, at least he didn’t throw the ball.  That’s dangerous.”  Just look at Tom Brady, or Jimmy Garoppolo, who started and won for the fourth straight time with the 49ers.  No sir, we don’t want to overthrow that pigskin.

As a social Bears’ fan (I do it instead of drinking) at best, I envy if not outright resent the attention allotted to an absolutely atrocious team—five pages in today’s Tribune sports’ section alone.  The McCaskeys bear out that old adage about there being no such thing as bad publicity.  They keep misrunning their team, the media keeps calling them out, and they keep on owning the team.  At least they didn’t have that many ticket receipts to count yesterday.  That’ll pass for a good lump of coal.