Control: Sports Team Lost…

Why didn’t my beloved Chicago Bears win? I am screaming at the screen. My team lost! This is unacceptable. Someone should be told. Why didn’t we win?I, Dalton Lewis, don’t know what to say. In fiction one’s team almost always wins. They get first place, win the Pulitzer, save reality from a baby-raper, and get the girl. That’s what happens in fiction. In sports, however, your team wins half the time. Half. That sucks. It plain sucks. My team didn’t win the Super Bowl. They only won half their games. Half! And then they lost the first playoff game. I always wonder, when the Bears are behind, how they will pull this one off the way the Avengers do. Spoiler — they don’t. They often just lose.

My beloved Chicago Bears went 8–8 and barely made the playoffs. They lost in the first playoff game to the New Orleans Saints 21–9 or so — with 6 of the Bears points coming in garbage time at the end. The Bears seemed like the Bears always seem — good defense, terrible offense. I don’t know what to say except to say that they aren’t perfect and aren’t guaranteed to win the way they are in a fictional story. They will probably not win the Super Bowl anytime soon.

What will happen? They might look for a new quarterback. They had some good rookies this season. Jaylon Johnson impressed from the cornerback position until he got injured towards the end of the season. The rookie wide receiver — Darnell Mooney — played very well as well, catching a number of good passes until the last few games. Cole Kmet played okay and has potential.

The vaunted Bears defense had an impossible job: stop the opposing offense over and over while the Bears offense did nothing for three and a half quarters. That’s not possible. The Bears needed something more from the offense, and that has to change. The quarterback position isn’t working, I’m sorry to say, and I think that something new — someone new — has to be brought in to fix that position. I feel badly for the quarterbacks who fail. I mean — to get that far and then not succeed is brutal. It’s so hard to make the pros, and then to make the pros and then fail? Brutal, brutal, brutal. I want Mitch Trubisky to do well — knowing that he won’t.

We stare into the screen watching our favorite players compete. Competition is brutal and unfair. It rewards ridiculous amounts of effort on all sides. I applaud every athlete who trains like crazy to get into shape to play football. And the injuries! The injuries are often and ghastly. I remember the year Johnny Knox got injured and was never the same. I remember when I was growing up a player for the Lions got paralyzed. The players play football even though it will destroy their minds and bodies. We don’t even know everything about the concussions the game will cause.

What happens going forward? The Bears coach has made the playoffs two of the first three seasons. That’s not bad. He hasn’t won a playoff game, though, and his team seemed outmatched yesterday. He needs to do better. Chicago needs a higher quality of football team, and we’re going to hope for it.

A friend of mine, Finnegan, pointed out that the Bears play fine until the defense gets tired and gets sick of the offense doing nothing for two to three quarters and collapses. Then the opponent scores a lot of points and beats the Bears by a couple of scores. That’s what happened here. Too much was expected of the defensive stars. Too little was expected of the offense. They needed to do something great and didn’t perform.

In conclusion I would like to say that more stories should pay attention to sports and the way that the teams don’t always win. They should follow this pattern. Everyone shouldn’t save the galaxy and be great at everything and get the girl. Some people should struggle and fail. It’s what actually happens.

Thanks, and take care, friends.