Truly, Nothing to See Here

Train wreck, natural disaster, nightmare on steroids—these are your 3-9 Bears, where “legacy” ossified into “stupidity” a very long Halas time ago.

Sunday’s game against the now 2-10 49ers is the latest case in point.  For reasons that were never fully articulated, the Bears cut Robbie Gould, their best-ever kicker, at the start of the 2016 season.  Since then, Gould has made 36 of 38 field-goal attempts for the Giants and 49ers, including five in San Francisco’s 15-14 win over whatever it is John Fox “coaches.”  That’s John Fox, as in the guy who said after the game, “We felt good about the block we had on a potential field goal.”  Block, what block?  Somebody reel Fox back in from whatever universe he’s inhabiting and tell him Robbie Gould the ex-Bear made five frickin’ field goals for the win.

About this time last year, Bears’ GM Ryan Pace in true broken-clock fashion finally got it right about incumbent quarterback Jay Cutler, that it was time for an upgrade.  There was even talk about trading for Jimmy Garoppolo, Tom Brady’s then-backup with the Patriots.  Garoppolo is only 26, hails from the Chicago suburbs and attended Eastern Illinois University.  Talk about your feel-good stories, and Garoppolo did not disappoint in his Soldier Field debut Sunday, going 26/37 with one interception for 293 yards.  Only he did it in his first game as a starter for San Francisco, who managed to swing a trade for him where Pace could not or would not.

Mitch Trubisky is supposed to be the Bears’ quarterback of the future, though what year—or decade even—no one can say for sure.  It would seem logical that developing a quarterback would include having him throw the ball, which Trubisky did all of 15 times against a miserable 49ers’ defense.  Trubisky has yet to come out throwing, and he treats over the middle of the field as a very dangerous place to put a football.  Once upon a time, a McCaskey must have stumbled face-first there the way to the bathroom.  How else to explain why no Bears’ quarterback ever frequents the area?

Ideally, the Bears could go on stinking from now until the end of time or that point when their fans finally rise up in revolt.  What I hate is that the front office and ownership are protected from experiencing the full brunt of the stupidity of their moves.  You see, the Bears play in Soldier Field, a publicly owned facility, and they have themselves a real sweetheart of a lease.  As long as fans keep coming, the McCaskeys don’t care.  On Sunday, there were a little over 8,000 no-shows.  Once that figure triples, the dumbest ownership in Chicago will finally start paying attention.

Of course, the McCaskeys won’t know how to fix the problem.  They never do.