Hot Take Tuesday: This ain’t rock bottom

I was all set to have a nice afternoon. I had already accepted a loss. There was no way this Chicago Bears team was going to go into Arrowhead Stadium and win. I knew it wasn’t going to be close, so I was all set to have tweets throughout the game with Taylor Swift references to generally annoy everybody on X and just take it all in stride.

The problem was that it was pretty clear early on that this wasn’t even going to be fun to watch, it was just going to be flat embarrassing. There isn’t one positive that can be taken from that game. You could isolate a few decent performances here or there, but it’s irrelevant when the team plays as a group like this.

I know we are only three games in, but I think it’s time to call the Matt Eberflus error, I mean, era, worse than Marc Trestman’s. Do you realize over the last 6 regular season games dating back to last season, the Bears have averaged losing each game by over three touchdowns? 21.5 point differential per game! They aren’t even competing!

I snapped at halftime of this game and just vented on social media.

I still stand by the frustration I spewed out here. Firing Luke Getsy right now won’t do a damn thing. The Bears never fire anyone in season anyway, this season is lost, so what’s the difference? If you want to fire Getsy and promote a position coach, go ahead, but it won’t make a damn bit of difference.

Justin Fields will never be the guy here. There’s just no way it’s going to happen. And that really bums me out. I think in the history of failed quarterbacks in Chicago, this one hurts the most. I had the most faith that this was going to work out, and it just didn’t.

Could Fields have success elsewhere? I hope so. Let’s see who still believes they can make something out of him. Could it be the New York Jets this year? Let’s find out. Could it be a team this offseason? If Trey Lance got a 4th, Justin Fields should be able to get a 3rd, I would think. Maybe even a 2nd, who knows. But let’s give Fields a chance elsewhere.

At the end of the year, blow out this entire coaching staff, there’s no point in keeping any of them. Ryan Poles is going to be the big question mark. Matt Eberflus wasn’t really his hire and Justin Fields wasn’t his quarterback. Will those two facts be enough to allow him to draft a QB and hire a new coach this season? Maybe. But if Kevin Warren wants to clean house and have a new GM, new head coach and new quarterback all in line for 2024, this is going to line up for him to do so.

But what has Poles done that’s impressed you? His process of getting the Bears plenty of cap space was sound, he’s gotten some draft capital which is nice, especially after Ryan Pace, but the evaluation process has to be questioned. He paid Cole Kmet and he’s underperformed. He paid Tremaine Edmunds and he’s certainly not off to a good start. He said he would build up the trenches and there hasn’t been much progress in two years there. Even the smaller deals like PJ Walker, Alex Leatherwood and Justin Jones have been poor. And let’s not even start on Velus Jones. There’s reason for concern.

Finally, my comment about Caleb Williams. If the Bears have the first overall pick, do I expect Caleb Williams to return to USC? No, I don’t. But when you see the historic mess that the Bears have been, especially around the QB position, if I was Caleb, I would at least give pause and I would have my reps contact the Bears and try to pull a serious power move and be involved in the head coach decision. He could have that kind of power and just the threat of returning back to school for $12 million in NIL money could certainly have the Bears play ball with his team.

Look, if Kevin Warren is competent, and we won’t find out this year, and he’s fully in charge of football operations and he can bring in his guys, perhaps the Bears can fix this. That’s the optimism for 2024, a new regime could have two top five picks and another pile of money to utilize in free agency. It could be done if Warren can finally put the right people in place.

But it’s beyond brutal that it’s still September, we aren’t even 20% the way through this season, and it’s already time to pivot to 2024. Life as a Bears fan is, well, in a word, awful.

Quick Hits

Today it’s going to be a numbers game:

• 1 is the total number of sacks on the year this defense has generated
• 2 is the total number of interceptions the defense has on the year, both against Blaine Gabbert in mop-up time
• 3 is the total number of times in 3 games that the Bears’ opponent scored first
• 4 is the total number of catches Chase Claypool has on FOURTEEN targets
• 5 is the total number of touchdowns the new and improved offense has scored in three games, it’s also the total number of touchdowns the Chiefs scored in 3 quarters
• 6 is the total first downs the offense generated through 3 quarters against the Chiefs before the Chiefs pulled most of their key players
• 7 is the total number of touchdowns opposing running backs have scored on the Bears in just three games this season
• 8 is the number of first-round picks the Bears have used to try and get the QB position right over the last 30 years
• 9 is the total number of times the opposing quarterback has been hit by Bears’ defenders this season
• 10 is the number on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is an absolute dumpster fire and 1 is everything is copesetic on the 2023 Chicago Bears