Hot Take Tuesday: Wait a minute, the season is only halfway over?

Man, oh man. We still have 8 games left in this Chicago Bears season.

I feel like ending the column there. I mean, what else is there to talk about?

The Bears may have only lost by 7 on Sunday to the New Orleans Saints, but it certainly felt like more than that. An offense that looked pretty good in the first half, but mustered one 3-point, 62 yard drive in the second half, and on their other 6 second half drives, the results were 18 plays, 20 yards, two 3-and-out punts, 2 fumbles lost and 2 interceptions.

The defense tried its best to keep the team in the game, but made no significant plays in the second half (or in the first half for that matter). The Bears stopped just 2 plays behind the line of scrimmage, Jack Sanborn stopped Alvin Kamara behind the line of scrimmage for a 2 yard loss, but that drive still resulted in a touchdown, and TJ Edwards and Andrew Billings stuffed Taysom Hill on the 1-yard line for a 1-yard loss only to have Derek Carr hit Hill for a 2-yard touchdown the very next play.

Other than those two plays that still led to touchdowns, the Bears forced zero turnovers, had zero sacks and only two quarterback hits.

Over the last two games, the vaunted Matt Eberflus defense hasn’t sacked a quarterback once, and players have only even laid a hand on QBs four total times (three of them by TJ Edwards). It’s a defense that doesn’t make offenses uncomfortable and therefore never shifts the momentum of a game.

The Bears are a rudderless ship. There’s nothing left to assess from this coaching staff, they need to be fired. There’s nothing more to hope for from this season, it’s officially lost. There’s really nothing to even hope for from Justin Fields because I don’t see a path that he’s back as QB1 next year.

There are 8 games left in this season, half a season of football, and there’s really nothing more to watch. I still enjoy Justin Fields, I hope he returns and plays, and watching him develop could at least lead to some modicum of joy on Sundays, even if that development will come to fruition in another uniform.

Will I watch every Sunday? I will. Maybe I’m some sort of masochist. Maybe I’ll just watch Teven Jenkins, who continues to be one of the few bright spots on the season.

For the most part, I’m going to spend the rest of this football season spending way too much time looking at the bottom of the NFL standings and the schedules of bad football teams and figuring out exactly where the Chicago Bears will be drafting next year.

As the standings currently sit, the Bears would have the second and third overall picks, hello Drake Maye and Marvin Harrison. But according to ESPN’s FPI, the Bears project out to have the 3rd and 4th overall picks, and that kind of feels like a continuation of this season-long nightmare.

The Bears actually have an important game this week! They need to beat the Carolina Panthers to continue to push them down at the bottom of the standings. That’s what this season has become, cheering against the Panthers, and cheering for the New York Giants, Arizona Cardinals and the rest of the bottom of the NFL standings.

That’s all we have for the next two months, so for that, I say thank you, Matt Eberflus. Thank you, Ryan Poles. And most importantly, thank you George McCaskey for continuing to captain this rudderless ship.

Quick Hits

• Teven Jenkins has become one of the top five guards in the NFL. He’s incredible.
• If Jack Sanborn was given MIKE duties in the offseason and the Bears didn’t spend $18 million a year on Tremaine Edmunds, would the defense be equally effective with $17 million less invested at linebacker?
• Braxton Jones was decent in his return, but the penalties must stop.
• I thought the S in “HITS” was for smarts, but the way Eberflus’ team is penalized, pretty sure it stands for sh... nevermind.
• It may only be half a season, but I don’t see Gervon Dexter or Zacch Pickens becoming true disruptors. Contributors? Sure. But the Bears still need to invest heavily on an impact IDL for 2024.
• Matt Eberflus has the NFL’s third worst winning percentage of head coaches over the last 50 years.
• Curious if Cris Collinsworth still wants Justin Fields to study Tyson Bagent’s tape.
• The Dolphins were 5-1 without Chase Claypool and 1-2 with him.
• A tale of two conferences: the Buffalo Bills are currently NOT in the AFC playoffs, meanwhile the Minnesota Vikings ARE in the NFC playoffs.
• What was your favorite play of the Doug Kramer era? The kneel down on first down against the Raiders or the kneel down on second down against the Raiders?