Control: Bears Game Thoughts…

I, Dalton Lewis, didn’t want to write a column about the Chicago Bears and their 26–6 loss to the Cleveland Browns, but I changed my mind. I decided that I had to say something. People are talking: saying to fire the coach, fire the general manager. People are screaming all over the news and social media that this is the worst disaster ever. They say that the offense having one passing yard is a disgrace and that everyone should be fired. I disagree. I think that we should wait for the rest of the season before firing anyone. I think that we should wait to see how Nagy reacts to the current crisis.

Teven Jenkins was drafted to be the offensive tackle of the future. He showed up injured. Larry Borom was drafted to be another tackle, for depth and competition. He was injured within fifteen plays of his first snaps. That’s something that the team couldn’t know about or plan for. They hired an ancient, lumbering man who used to be able to play left tackle because it’s an impossibly difficult position. There aren’t 32 humans on the planet who can do it well, and there are 32 teams. They anticipated having rookies at both tackles. Well, that was a reasonable guess until both rookies turned out to get injured. Now everyone says that they have a terrible front office and a terrible coach. Well, no. Their starters got injured. Their backups got injured. Now they had to hire a 39 year-old off the street to man the left tackle position, one of the most important positions in football. To be fair — a tight end should have been helping Jason Peters on every play, and there should have been some screens and some bootlegs to make passing easier. The quarterback should only have looked at one half of the field — he’s a rookie. The receivers needed to get open in two seconds, a difficult thing to do when the defensive backs know that their line will cause pressure in three seconds. The fact is — they have been given an impossible situation, injuries to multiple tackles, and have to fight past it.

Justin Fields shouldn’t have had to face this during his first pro start. Playing quarterback is crushingly difficult, and now it’s going to get harder for him because of this. I don’t want him to be scarred by this opening to his career and get scared and play poorly. There was nothing that he could do. Nothing. He had a suspect offensive line due to injuries, and Nagy didn’t give him enough help. He’s a smart kid, a good kid, and I hope that this doesn’t ruin him or his ability to be a great quarterback in the National Football League. I want him to succeed in the future.

The defense played great until they got tired and the game got out of hand. Until then the defense kept the game close for a very long time despite no help from the offense. Khalil Mack and Robert Quinn have made life very difficult for opposing offenses, especially quarterbacks. They have a lot of sacks in three games. The Bears hired Sean Desai to be their defensive coordinator and did the right thing when they did so. He has done a good job through three games of keeping the games close for the first half of the games.

I haven’t given up on the season. I think that things might improve. Schemes might improve, and people might come back from injury. If one of the two rookie tackles returns from injury soon then that will change things enormously. I know, I know — one yard passing is bad. I just think that this could get better without firing everyone.

I believe in players and their ability to improve. I believe that Robert Quinn looked like a bust last year but has multiple sacks through three games this year. I wrote poorly in the beginning of my career but think that I’m improving at the quality of my writing now. I believe that people can, simply, get better at what they do. I think Nagy deserves another chance.

Thanks, and take care, friends.