About Philadelphia

W.C. Fields had it wrong about Philadelphia—he should’ve been talking about the Bears visiting the City of Brotherly Love.  Right now, first prize for any team is going up against those monsters of the midway.  Talk about ineptitude.

I was at my accustomed station on a Sunday afternoon in fall, atop the excercyle with the Bears on the TV.  As God is my witness, I knew they were in trouble the second play of the game, when quarterback Mitch Trubisky barely got the play off before incurring a delay-of-game penalty.  The Bears were very good at penalties yesterday, by the way.  They managed nine of them.

Here’s what I don’t understand about Coach Matt Nagy; he keeps trying to minimize the damage Trubisky might do.  So, Nagy calls a run, another run and then a sidelines’ pass, the sequence varing from possession to possession but never altered.  This formula was good for a net of nine yards in the first half.  Holy Crawl Under a Rock, that’s bad.

Nagy refuses to drop his Boy Scouts’ routine; it’s all about joint effort, not giving up, blah-blah-blah.  If it’s me, I can see the writing on the wall.  Rather than continue the Halas/McCaskey tradition of never throwing over the middle for fear of a mortal sin, that’s just what I would have my quarterback do, that and scramble.  You see an open receiver, Mitch, you throw to him.  Otherwise, run.

Along those lines, the Bears might be better off going without anyone in the backfield with Trubisky; it’s not like they actually run the ball, far.  (They could also save money, another longtime interest of the McCaskey family.)  The invisible genius that is general manager Ryan Pace dumped running back Jordan Howard and drafted David Montgomery to take his place.  Howard rushed for 82 yards against his ex-team on Sunday.  That’s more yards rushing than his entire ex-team managed (a whopping 62, with Montgomery accounting for 40 of them).  Right now, Trubisky turning into another Bobby Douglass would be an improvement.

Judging from what I heard on talk radio after the game, those sheep otherwise known as Bears’ fans seem to be dropping their passive attitude.  If Trubisky and company (think linebacker Khalil Mack complaining about Eagles’ center Jason Kelce causing four off-sides’ penalties against Bears’ defenders) don’t show up big next Sunday at home against the Lions, things could get loud and ugly, or deathly quiet and ugly, depending on the weather.

I wonder which one the McCaskeys would prefer.