Comedy of Errors

Here are your Chicago Bears, a team trying to shake down the General Assembly for close to $1 billion to fund infrastructure needs related to their planned stadium in Arlington Heights. Ravens 30 Bears 16. Caleb Williams, the first pick in the 2024 draft, couldn’t move his team against a mediocre Ravens’ defense. Williams also continued the disturbing habit of getting lost in the red zone. Two early forays there led to six points; good teams would’ve generated fourteen. And a good quarterback would avoid throwing an interception deep in his zone with his team trailing by three points with just over nine minutes left in the game. The defense, which had excelled at takeaways, came up with none against a 1-5 team led by a backup quarterback. But they did pick up penalties. Then again, so did the offense. The Munsters managed eleven—let me repeat, eleven—penalties on the afternoon. Guys, figure out how to line up on the right side of the line of scrimmage and when to move, as in with the snap and not before. As for coaching, you have to wonder. Ben Johnson said in the postgame that team leaders need to deal with the penalty problem. Funny, I thought the coaching staff handled that. And who decided to have Cairo Santos handle kickoff duties? Baltimore gained good field position on Santos’s kicks all afternoon. Sure looks like Santos is suffering from a thigh injury, but what do I know? Poor McCaskeys. Well, not poor in any financial sense. No, more poor as in pitiful. Here’s a family that sees their pot of gold from a new stadium, yet they can’t make their team play well enough to excite the fan base. How do you expect folks to pony up for personal seat licenses, again, when the product on the field doesn’t look a whole lot better than it did last year? Beats me.