History is Not an Ally Here
By Ron Signore
Growing up in my household, there was a fairly unique approach to our alliances in the sports world. When you live in Chicago your whole life, that uniqueness is almost contrarian. Chicago sports fans align loyalties in baseball between the north side Chicago Cubs and south side Chicago White Sox. The more dominant fan base aligns with those northside fans. In my youth, if you weren’t a Bulls fan for basketball, you were just ignorant. The way the game has changed over the years, especially since the final retirement of Michael Jordan, I am not sure I know where the common alliances are, but its fair to say Chicago backs the Bulls despite their years of misery with a few bright glimpses of success since the dynasty Jordan led in the 90’s. I think hockey is a bit more niche, but support of the Blackhawks isn’t something that typically wavers for Chicagoans.
Then you have football. Chicago has pride in the Chicago Bears that is that of love and hate year after year. They love and support the Bears and hate the laughingstock ownership has made them year after year. In my house, we were first raised 49ers fans, then Packers fans, then anyone who plays the Bears. The root of that 49ers love comes directly through what has arguably been described as Chicago’s football team in college by way of the University of Notre Dame. The reality is that before Northwestern University had some relevant years as of late, the college football team in Chicago was aligned with the Fighting Irish, which produced arguably one of, if not, the greatest quarterback that ever-stepped foot on the field in Joe Montana. My father loved Montana.
That second half of the 80’s was interesting with the years that included Bears dominance beginning in 1984. You had a social respect one way or another for that Bears era. You had arguably the most dominant defense that was fun to watch, and terrifying if you were any other team on the field. They had “Sweetness,” arguably the greatest running back of all time. With the “Punky” QB, Jim McMahon, the “Fridge,” William Perry, Steve “Mongo” McMichael, Mike Singletary, amongst other future hall of fame players, the Bears found themselves in the spotlight having fun displaying their dominant arrogance with the Super Bowl Shuffle. While that defense had pride with defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan, the centerpiece of football attitudes came from head coach Mike Ditka. Whether you loved or hated the Bears, Ditka was someone we still enjoyed in our house to the point I still remember that day he was fired. That day, whether spoken or not, we pushed the anti-Bear agenda at home.
In the year 2024, over 30 years from Ditka’s departure, the sins of the Bears past have continually plagued them. Before the 80’s, with Papa Bear, George Halas, running the show, the Bears produced some of the greatest players to ever grace the field of play despite the public reputation, most famously exposed by then tight end Mike Ditka, for being cheap. Year after year, the Bears have portrayed an organization so poorly run that fans are in an infinite loop of disappointment. Maybe financial conservatism is part of some of the results, but a lack of football IQ in running a franchise has been more the problem.
When the Bears fired Ditka as a head coach, they had an opportunity to pursue and hire Super Bowl winning coach, Jimmy Johnson. Instead, they hired Dave Wanstedt that put together a string of mediocre years as head coach. After Wanny’s departure as coach, hiring Dick Jauron brought some confidence back in some seasons that they had talent that just needed someone to take them to the next level. With that in mind, they brought in General Manager Jerry Angelo from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who brought in defensive coordinator Lovie Smith from Tony Dungy’s staff.
In hindsight, this resurrected the Monsters of the Midway reputation defensively the Bears had seemed to have lost since that 1985 Bears Super Bowl. During the Smith era as head coach, the Bears made it to the Super Bowl, losing to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, and were consistently contenders in the NFC. Jerry Angelo had tried to complete the gap in the circle that was a less than stellar offensive reputation to the dominant one of the Bears D in Lovie’s Tampa 2 scheme by trading to bring in a real quarterback in Jay Cutler.
Cutler, in my eyes, brought a McMahon-like arrogance attitude along with his skills at QB. This was a dramatic upgrade from a game managing quarterback in Rex Grossman. But just like instances in times past, the Bears could never really get over that hump to the next level. They fired Lovie and brought in Marc Trestman, a successful coach in the Canadian Football League. He was supposed to be the quarterback whisperer. He may as well have whispered, because qb play did not evolve to bring the desired success. They fired Trestman, who they probably never should have hired, and brought in John Fox who was clearly not the right choice. So Bear’s leadership brought in Matt Nagy from the Kansas City Chiefs, who traded up to get QB Mitch Trubisky from UNC in the draft, passing up an opportunity to get Patrick Mahomes.
Nagy led the Bears to a playoff loss in his first season to the Philadelphia Eagles in the infamous “double doink” field goal miss game. When things kept going downhill, the Bears drafted QB Justin Fields as a highly touted collegiate performer from Ohio State. That first season for Fields only expedited the firing of Matt Nagy. The Bears decided to replace Nagy with another coordinator who I am not sure I can even find a reason to justify hiring in the first place in Matt Eberflus. Eberflus ran with Justin Fields as his quarterback until he could no longer justify that Fields was not the quarterback he drafted. In a last-ditch effort to save his job in a clearly struggling era of the Bears, they went all in on drafting USC standout, Caleb Williams with the number 1 pick in the 2024 draft.
Williams first year has shown some flashes of good mixed into the valleys of bad throughout this season. It has mimicked the evolvement and development of Justin Fields, who the team sent to Pittsburgh. By week 3 this season, it was clear that the Bears did not have a Justin Fields problem, they had a Matt Eberflus problem. Fields led Pittsburgh to the top of the AFC North in Russell Wilsons absence as a starter. The scramble became obvious. Play callers changed, play remained inconsistent, and it was obvious that Eberflus had lost the team. Granted the final straw was a coaching blunder that embarrassed the team on Thanksgiving Day against the Lions, Black Friday became the day of Eberflus’ dismissal from the team. The firing was inevitable, but that expedited the process to some. Other’s breathed a sigh of relief that he was put out of his misery finally.
Time after time, the Chicago Bears make the wrong move. Chicago is the third largest market in the NFL, yet, when they planned to renovate Soldier Field in 2002, they renovated it to be one of the still smallest capacity stadiums in the league. It was just one of the many signs throughout the years to display their incompetence in running an NFL organization. They’ve displayed this in recent years with the debacle that currently is the talks of a new stadium for the Bears. But business aside, the dysfunctional, impotent, and incompetent football side of the business is a pattern that they are recycling in this latest transition. While there is an interim head coach at the moment, there is no guarantee he earns the permanent role of head coach after this season is done. The Bears would have to show that they fixed many issues of play on the field and prove that he and Williams are aligned for the long run. In fact, the only argument to this point as of today is to keep someone consistent with Caleb Williams.
The more predictable outcome will be that the Bears will look to save face by hyping up a search for the right candidate. Assuming that candidate is not part of the current organization, that coach will be taking a team that has yet another QB that wasn’t drafted by the Bears with them as a coach. Caleb will not be “their” quarterback. He will be the decision the past head coach and general manager decided on, which will again fall into the pattern of trying to draft or trade for who their version of the right guy would be. And if the Bears continue to fall into sub-par performance, they will find themselves with a higher pick in the draft, and the risk could fall with another QB who needs to have time to develop in that transition.
They have fallen into a pattern of insanity under this organizational leadership struggle. Virginia McCaskey, who is the daughter of George Halas, is one of the sweetest people you could meet. Her son, George, is another class act of a person. You will never hear me pose this argument because I believe they are bad people. It is somewhat admirable the Bears have stayed a family owned operation throughout the years. However, they have not been able to keep up with the evolution of the game, and it has put their competence as leaders in the limelight. Bad hire after bad hire, bad personnel decision after bad personnel decision, the Bears barely show they have a keen sense of the immediate picture, let alone have less than hope for the big picture in the long run. This is an organization riddled with a pride of where they came from and what they were that lets their ego get in the way of understanding long term success.
The team as a whole has a pretty stubborn defense, which aligns with the Bear identity as a team. However, there are so many gaps that this is not a team that is at some peak level that just needs the right coach to get them to the next level. This is a team that has bullishly been in an ongoing rebuild caused by the domino effect of each bad decision throughout the years. History has not been on their side to put the puzzle together correctly, and right now, it seems like they are just stuck in this pattern of awful decisions. When we look back at the teams led by Halas, Ditka, and Smith, they had time. They controlled the situation by focusing on their strengths and trying to build up the weak spots. They drafted and developed players while adding appropriate veteran players accordingly as opposed to trying to bring in blockbuster unknowns to build around with the vision of new people to the process. This team needs to figure out the identity they want. If it is dominance in defense and a manageable offense to work on building to be better, that is fine. But the musical chairs version of who’s vision we are going to pursue each year with the short-term coach and general manager stints is not going to be the plan for success. It will just keep them in this infinite loop of disappointment and failure.
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