As you’ll notice in the title, I’m restricting myself to the first half of the game here. In part, that’s because I turned the game off after that 4th and 3 Aaron Jones touchdown. In part, it’s because of the intense nausea I feel thinking about how the game eventually shook out. I’ve never been more thankful to have an 8 month old daughter at home, because it’s never been easier to just shut the game off and do something fun when we look that bad.

Anyways, here are some observations in no particular order:

Even after the long sought after roster turnover, there are players on this team that might not have starting roles anywhere else in the NFL.

The rest of Eddie Jackson’s head, heart, and athletic ability aint walking through that door. The Packers’ first touchdown was, very simply, a play that should have been made. But he bit hard on an outside route and, at this point in his career, simply couldn’t recover.

It’s hard to know if that was by design (I don’t have cable or access to anything to re-watch games unfortunately, and as always I don’t know exactly what the play call was), but it seemed like Doubs entered his zone and was his responsibility, and he just locked on and played it badly. Combined with what he’s shown over the last two seasons and his much maligned tackling abilities, are there really rosters out there hurting for safeties so badly that he would play for them? None come to mind for me.

I will mention Chase Claypool because it would be malpractice not to, but I just really don’t want to talk about him. He is, at this point, an obvious mistake, and I would be shocked if they don’t completely move on from him sooner rather than later.

I am sure there are others, especially in the trenches, but without the ability to re-watch, these are the two that stuck out to me.

What is Luke Getsy doing?

There’s been a decent amount of chatter about the passing gameplan. 37 passes with 3 going 10 yards or more is, to be straight to the point, bad. It makes fans like me wonder what the plan is for Justin Fields. Is the roster around him just still so bad that we don’t know what we have? Is the coaching staff not confident enough in him to unleash him still, in year 3? Is the offensive gameplan still not catered enough to his skill set? Regardless, how can you watch this team and think that A) Getsy is doing enough to help him succeed and B) he’s the quarterback you want to hitch your wagon to long term? It just doesn’t seem like those things can both be simultaneously true.

Again, I only watched the first half of the game, but how many plays are in Getsy’s playbook where the edge is left unblocked? To me that would indicate slide protection or the hope that the option threat or Fields’ speed to the outside would freeze the edge for long enough to make the play, but how many NFL-caliber players are getting frozen like that? Especially a Green Bay Packer defense that has good players along their defensive line? Is this really a strategy that works elsewhere? Am I this out of touch that this works in most places? Was Justin supposed to get the ball out faster on those plays? That’s a lot of unanswered questions!

Jordan Love is not as good as that final statline showed.

I sound like a Furby with limited dialogue options here, but I only watched the first half.

But in that first half, he didn’t do a lot to impress me. The drives where they moved down the field easily, the throws he was making were wide open. These were mostly Bears miscues as opposed to throwing dimes into tight coverage like his predecessor would do all game long.

Does this make it hurt less? Not necessarily. But eventually, the Packers are going to be playing against teams where he actually needs to hit those 3 or 4 deep balls that he sprayed around the field, and I don’t think he’s going to be able to just turn that skill on when he needs it.

He’ll be a solid game manager by the looks of this game. But the chatter about how he looks ready to take the "Favre -> Rodgers -> Love" torch is a little insane to me.

Now that "Poles’ Guys" are starting to play out, it’s legitimate to start to question his moves.

I’m definitely more of a wait and see type of guy. I like to believe until it’s reasonable to not believe.

That being said, there’s some cracks in the belief in Ryan Poles can truly overhaul this roster in the way it needs to be overhauled.

The offensive line simply did not look very good. We can talk day and night about whether or not this is due to injuries and shuffling around, but the facts stand: Poles didn’t do enough on the offensive line.

Teven Jenkins is often injured. That’s not an attack on him, it’s just a fact. Braxton Jones is shaky, and could develop, but that’s not a certainty. Our center position is not good, regardless of if Whitehair or anyone else is playing there. Darnell Wright is obviously a rookie, but that means he’s an unknown. It’s simply not enough to add Nate Davis and call it good, and that was evident on Sunday afternoon.

Chase Claypool. Again, I don’t want to beat a dead horse and keep talking about it, but this move looks worse by the minute.

Robert Tonyan was supposed to add some 2 TE versatility and played 4 snaps.

To his credit, the linebackers looked good (in the first half), but with the cap space we had, there was simply not enough done to make this a competitive team, and it’s time to start questioning that.

I hate this franchise.

I hate them with my entire soul.

I used to blog about the Bears. Not in an impressive way, on a site where my articles and podcasts got about 5 clicks and 4 of them were from my Mom. But I had to stop because it was just so depressing to write about these failures over and over and over.

Like I said in my last post, I’ve been watching the team more seriously and understanding what I’m seeing since I was 13. That puts me at about 2005.

In that time, the Bears are now 11-31 against the Packers. 4-31 since 2010. They have had 5 double digit win seasons in that span. 5 playoff appearances. 3 playoff wins.

It’s just a season’s worth of misery nearly every year. It’s mediocrity with silver linings. It’s constantly having to only have hope during the offseason. It’s the draft becoming our Super Bowl, because we sure as shit won’t sniff the real thing. It’s constant wrong decisions at manager, coach, and player level. It’s a refusal to evolve and trying to only when it’s completely too late. It’s humiliation both at the conference and national level. It’s a constantly present feeling that we will never figure it out. It’s going into every primetime game not even hoping for a win, just hoping to not get completely embarrassed. It’s a loss of so much of the excitement that makes the game of football fun. It’s a lack of confidence that anything good will happen to your franchise ever again.

It’s so deflating, it makes you wonder if 18 years or so is enough, and if it’s time to just finally let go. We’ll see if that’s true, or if I’m still clinging to the last lifeboat of hope at the draft again in April.