WCG Sunday Livestream: NFL Week 9 - Bears vs Saints

Good morning folks.

On Tuesday, after a big loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, the 2-6 Chicago Bears sent a second-round pick over to the Washington Commanders for 9 more games of Montez Sweat. They then on Saturday spent $98 million in new money to retain him for another four years.

There are certainly arguments to be made about the timing of the deal, the price of the initial deal, the status of GM Ryan Poles and HC Matt Eberflus, and the overall state of the Bears. However, it shouldn’t get lost that the Bears added a very talented player at a desperate position of need for a good period of time beyond whatever the rest of this year turns out to be.

At the time of writing, it’s unknown if Sweat will take his first snaps as a Chicago Bear (and finally give us pictures of him in Bears gear for our lead photos!) against the New Orleans Saints. We’ll see when the inactive report comes out later.

The Bears could really use a player of Sweat’s caliber today against the Saints, with an offense that features very talented skill position players in Chris Olave, Michael Thomas, and Alvin Kamara. This should sound somewhat familiar compared to last week.

For now though, it’s Tyson Bagent getting his third start in place of Justin Fields, who returned to practice in a limited manner on Friday. Fields has a possibility of starting on Thursday against Carolina.

Last week was a struggle for the rookie (and, well, most players wearing Bears uniforms at the time), and the line for the game suggests more of the same. However, maybe the Navy and Orange get a bit of a burst from the acquisition of Sweat. They need it if they hope to salvage anything of this season beyond a high draft pick.

Bear Down, my friends.

This week, WCG probably set a record for the number of articles featuring a player in non-Bears gear, which will happen when a team trades for and extends a guy before he’s had a chance to take his PR shots.

I hope you remembered to set your clocks back this morning, because we’ll need every extra second of it to cover this week in Bears. We’ll have the Jaylon Johnson trade request that resulted in nothing, of course the Montez Sweat trade and subsequent extension, Justin Fields’ return to practice, and of course reaction to last week’s game and a look forward to today’s.

If you want to share your thoughts and comments, there are several ways to do that:

• Here, in this post. The comments are below. If there’s a comment insulting me in good fun, you’re in the right place.
• Over on the Twitch site.
• Over on the social medias - Twitter (@WCGridiron, @SJS_illini, @SamHouseholder), BlueSky (@sjsillini, @samhouseholder), Hive (sjsillini).

We’ll be live at 9:30 AM CT. See you all then...