Football

Long Journey To The Middle – Bears Positional Report Cards: Quarterback – If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say, Say Something Anyway

By Brian Schmitz 1188 0

Let’s get this out the way immediately – if Ryan Pace didn’t draft Mitch Trubisky, then Trubisky wouldn’t be the Bears starter, he probably wouldn’t even be on the team. But he did, so he is; and we are going to have to learn to deal with it.

Not a single player on the 2019 Bears took a more precipitous fall from grace that the Bears #10. It was, in a word, bad. Just plain bad. Inconsistency was the only constant you got from Trubisky week in and week out.

But why? And how?

Well, you can blame the head coach, who is calling plays as a generality, and not really tailored to a specific player or offense. You can also blame an inept O-Line, who were inexperienced and couldn’t protect a QB who was desperate to check down every time he felt some pressure. You can blame a running game, which was non-existent much of the year, and let defenses tee-off on a sub-standard passing game. But at the end of day, the lack of success at the quarterback position must be the responsibility of the player himself.

So, let’s unpack Mitch Trubisky’s 2019 season according to the numbers:

The Good:
Trubisky continued to do a great job of protecting the ball this season, finishing with 10 interceptions against 17 touchdowns. These are numbers that reflect more of a game manger than a gunslinger, but with the dominance of the Bears defense, this is not a team that needs a guy who is going to throw for 5,000 yards. In addition to throwing only 10 INTs, Trubisky only fumbled three times. Ball security in the NFL cannot be understated, and this is something a struggling QB and a struggling offense can continue to build on heading into next season.

The Bad:
For a guy who operates on check-down first philosophy, Mitch Trubisky finished 18th in the league with a 63.2% completion percentage. This must improve, especially given his yards per completion rank 32nd league wide.

The Ugly:
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of Trubisky’s 2019 season was the regression we saw, both statistically and with a simple eye test. In 2018, Trubisky had:
• A higher completion percentage (66.6% vs. 63.2)
• More passing yards (3,223 vs. 3,138) in less games
• A higher yards per completion (7.4 vs. 6.1)
• More TD passes (24 vs. 17)
• Less sacks taken (24 vs. 38)
• A higher passer rating (95.4 vs. 83)

This is not at all what you want or expect from a guy who had other year of experience in the same system in addition to an improved receiving corp.

How bad was it this season?

When you look at the four most important QB categories (Yards, TD’s, INT’s, QBR), the highest Mitch Trubisky ranked in any single category is 18th. In the three other categories, he ranks in the bottom five in two, and the bottom 10 in one. This is what you expect from a guy who was searching for some semblance of confidence all season. Mitch developed a check-down to touchdown mentality, whereas this has become a touchdown to check-down league. Above all, this is why this team and this QB struggled this season. A positive to take from this is that this mentality can be corrected and changed, often very quickly.

Final Grade = C-

If I was to grade Mitch Trubisky on his play alone, it would have been worse. But you cannot evaluate his season without considering an offensive coordinator who did him zero favors and a general manager who didn’t have the greatest supporting cast in place.
I expect a huge bounce-back year from #10 in 2020, because I expect him and everyone around him to be better. Doesn’t that sound horribly familiar?

Football

Bears Safety Net – Eddie gets Paid

By Wes French 1661 0

Well, no one can say Ryan Pace has no idea what he’s doing. He locked in All-Pro Safety Eddie Jackson on a Four year, $58M contract extension on Friday afternoon and managed to deflect at least a little bit of the unsilent majority that’s been killing him for his NYE press conference the last few days.

Jackson takes home $22M in guarantees at signing and $33M overall, so you can assume he’s been given a healthy bonus, small cap number in 2021 (unless this tears up his 2020 $735K of his final rookie year, either way the team will really need it) and the first two years at least fully guaranteed. Jackson, deservedly so, becomes the highest paid Safety in football at just under $15M/season.

Jackson earned that top-salary-in-the-league title with his play, starting way back in 2017 when he picked off Cam Newton and scooped up a fumble, taking both to the house with each TD return going over 75 yards. That’s a single game NFL record and Jackson did nothing but build his resume as a playmaker and takeaway specialist from there. He had monster pick-six returns in huge moments to seal wins down the stretch for the 2018 Division Champion team, though he didn’t record a TD in 2019  as opposing teams avoided throwing his way almost exclusively. Not matter, Jackson just set a career high with five tackles for loss as Chuck Pagano used him more in the box and mixed him in with blitz coverages closer to the line. And the whole “don’t throw at Eddie” game plan helped the Bears hold opponents to a top three finish in plays of 20+ yards at 40 total.

Eddie Jackson is the real fucking deal and he earned this contract. The team is better with him in it, period.

So what does this mean for the rest of the offseason? Well, it’s definitely good that Pace got this order of business out of the way early in the offseason and didn’t let anything linger into OTAs or training camp and the specter of a hold out. Jackson would have gotten all this and possibly more if he’d hit UFA status, so the deal is timely and warranted. This could, however, impact what they do at the opposite Safety position. Jackson is now the lone (true)Safety on the books for 2020 and beyond, with Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, Deon Bush and DeAndre Houston-Carson all UFAs come March.

Bush and Houston-Carson should be cheap enough to bring back, assuming they’d both like to be here. Dix is the more curious case, as he didn’t exactly shine in his new home. He was very steady, though, and didn’t really show the issues of poor tackling that have plagued him in the past. Pace would do well to lock him and one of the lesser depth Safeties up next to save himself from scrambling later this offseason, though he doesn’t have a ton of cap room to work with. If Dix wants a big, 3+ year deal he’s likely going to have to find it elsewhere, so it might come down to how much he wants to continue with his Alabama alum partner and the rest of this defensive core.

You can probably bet that this move will seal Danny Trevathan‘s fate unless he takes a huge pay cut, but Nick Kwiatkowski is also due new money and he showed he’s ready to step into that role after Trevathan and Smith’s injuries this season. The offense is noticeably absent from the any discussion of core players locked up. Pace would be wise to prioritize a new deal for WR Allen Robinson, who was arguably the only good thing the Bears can point to from 2019 on his side of the ball.That, though, can be left for later as everyone celebrates Steady Eddie and his new paper. This gives the Bears a very sound, solid defensive core locked in through at least 2022 including Jackson, Khalil Mack, Akiem Hicks, Kyle Fuller, Roquan Smith, Eddie Goldman and to a lesser extent Buster Skrine and Bilal Nichols.

Enough of the future what-ifs, enjoy some of Eddie’s best work. Congrats to #39. Roll Damn Tide.

 

 

Football

Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Season Ending Edition: The Long, Dark, Cold Winter

By Sam Fels 1287 0

Our Bears wing gets together one last time to work out their feelings about whatever it was that just went down.

 So now it’s all over, and we couldn’t glean anything from the finale. Where are you? How far away do you think the Bears are from getting back to contending next year? What’s most important to you this offseason?

Brian Schmitz: As I have clearly shown this season, I am a Bears pessimist. And to be totally honest with everyone, I took some pleasure in watching this team self-destruct time and time again. That probably says more about the person I am than anything; but…whatever. 

With that, I think the 2020 Bears, with a few tweaks, are a 10-win playoff team. The schedule will get easier next year and you have to expect  improvement from the major cogs of this team: coaching, QB, d-coordinator, kicker, tight end to name a few. 

Tony Martin: I’m excited to see what the front office does to right this ship, you know? It should be pretty clear where the faults lie, and the question is now wether or not the front office can fix the personnel holes with their limited cap space, and if they can wrestle away play calling duties from Matt Nagy. 

Wes French: I, too, am very interested to see what Pace has planned for this offseason. His and Nagy’s fates are predicated on a run at the playoffs if not a division crown in 2020. They’ve got some big decisions to make between QB, OL and a few key contract decisions on defense. 

I can say I didn’t take much pleasure in watching this team punch itself in the dick over and over again and I sure hope they have more of a plan for next season. 

Did you guys take anything out of the postseason press conference at Halas Hall? Other than as an organization the Bears are extremely weird…

Brian: My biggest takeaway is that the entire organization is trying to build up a quarterback that clearly has confidence issues. Pace’s job is tied into his quarterback, so in order to protect his own best interests, he is forced to ride or die with Trubisky. 

Wes: I was a bit disappointed with the press conference as a whole. I know, you can’t expect them to come right out and declare the QB sucks and needs to be replaced, but to continue to talk up his development and that he was very raw coming out of college is like….why did you take him at #2 then??

I think the thing that pissed me off the most though was talking up Adam Shaheen in a similar fashion. Pace almost seems more like he has to defend that pick more than Trubs, citing the same stuff of him being raw, playing at a small school, etc. Then why take him in the 2nd round? Why reach on a guy you know is going to be a major project when you’re trying to set up for a SB run? 

The OC/his staff took the blade as they were mercilessly let go, and I’m curious to see if they bring someone in with a big pedigree that would wrestle play calling or at least game prep away from Nagy. Juan Castillo is familiar with the type of stuff Nagy wants with the O-line/run game to do given his background with the Reid coaching tree. I’m trying to remain optimistic but until we see other hires/FA-roster moves I don’t think anyone at Halas Hall gets the benefit of the doubt right now. 

Tony: This is the last offseason that I’m going into with the full faith in Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy. They’ve had their fingerprints all over this trainwreck, and it should be noted that this is their chance to reflect on the job they’ve done thus far. It’s one thing to assess the talent left on your roster and to try to build around it, but now we get to see how they’ll address the setback that was the entire 2019 campaign. As a professional educator, I embrace mistakes because they are an important part of the learning process. True learning comes from identifying where you went wrong, understanding the error, and fixing it, and I hope the dudes at the top are willing to look at their faults in an honest way for the benefit of the organization and most importantly my Sunday afternoons.

Football

Three Things We Learned From…Whatever The Hell This Bears Thing Was

By Sam Fels 1518 0

There wasn’t too much to be gleaned from the Bears finale, given was a dead rubber it was. So I guess this is the Three Things from the entire season. God help us.

The Bears Offseason Is Going To Be A Mess – I mean, they all are, but this one especially could turn into a real circus. Without knowing exactly who will be available and what the Bears are going to do or want to do, any offseason where this many questions that are this big about the quarterback position is a real swamp to get through. And there aren’t really any good answers.

Look, you can pop up and get to a Super Bowl with just about any goofus as your quarterback. You can even win one. Nick Foles won one. Matt Ryan should have. Somehow, Eli Manning has two and yet the Giants were barely ever a playoff team other than those two seasons and I’m fairly confident he always sucked. A completely decrepit Peyton Manning managed on with the Broncos, and they’ve yet to be heard from since. So the idea that the Bears could tailor an offense to Mitch Trubisky’s strengths with an improved offensive line and a world class defense and maybe have everything go right for a year isn’t completely outlandish. Fuck, they came within inches last year.

But if you want to be consistently around the picture, look at the NFC playoff picture. Rodgers, Wilson, Brees. Cousins is going to embarrass his entire lineage next week, and we can’t be totally sure what Garoppolo is yet (though he looks more like the first group than Cousins), but you get the idea. And Wentz probably deserves more credit for putting together nine wins with rodeo clowns and janitors as his receivers and running backs this season.

The thing is, you don’t get the QB who keeps you around the picture for multiple seasons off the scrapheap. Andy Dalton will not do that. Cam Newton will not do that (although there’s a big part of me that wants to see Bears fan/media reaction to his first sulky press conference after a loss here. Great theater that will be). Fucking Marmalard will not do that. Teddy Bridgewater will not do that, and all will be insanely expensive for a team that will not have that much cap space no matter what kind of binds and inversions it performs this offseason.

Which means you have to draft one, or find one masked as a backup somewhere else like Garoppolo. Can you do that in the second round? Maybe, it’s not unheard of. Or maybe you think Bridgewater is that guy and make the commitment (highly skeptical).

But if the guy isn’t there in the second round, and Bridgewater goes elsewhere, what’s really going to piss Bears fans off is that Trbuisky with a revamped offense is just about as good of an option as any. Sorry, it’s the truth.

No, that doesn’t mean I think Trubisky will be more than ok ever. Even with the perfectly tailored offense he’ll probably never be more than just a shade north of acceptable. And that’s almost certainly not going to be a plan for sustained success, unless the defense can remain dominant for a longer stretch than most manage (even the Seahawks one was only together for about four seasons). What I’m saying is that for next year, it very well may be as presentable of an option as any.

And that won’t make you feel good.

The Offensive Line Has To Be A Priority, But It Has So Much Ugly Money – They couldn’t handle a Vikings defensive line shorn of starters and desire. This is a problem.

We already know that Kyle Long’s spot will be open for next year. I feel like I want to say that Cody Whitehair and James Daniels can be ok if surrounded by other good linemen. I’m fairly sure Bobbie Massie and Charles Leno Jr. need a swift boot in the ass out the door. Except Massie comes with at least $8M in dead cap space for next year. Leno’s penalties are worse in 2021, and maybe the Bears will think they can kick the can down the road a bit here.

But part of the offense’s problems, and the ghosts Mitch was seeing, is that he rarely had time and the o-line rarely opened holes for Montgomery either. Sure, the running game looked better when it was moved to a simpler I-formation and not the RPO’s and zone blocking. But let’s be real, the Bears are never going to move to that full-time, and they’re still going to need to pass block a good portion of the time. The line needs at least one big addition, probably two. Maybe Massie improves with more quality around him, but the Bears had better find out.

The Bears Need To Find Akiem Hicks A Sidekick And Heir Apparent – We can at least try to argue that turnovers are cyclical, but the Bears didn’t get enough of them because they didn’t sit on the quarterback’s head nearly enough. 32 sacks this year, after 50 last year. In a vacuum, slightly more than one per game doesn’t sound like much, but if you think about where those sacks and pressures could have come and you realize how much the Bears lost out on. And almost all of it is not having Hicks pushing linemen into the QBs face and giving him nowhere to go. You saw it in the first two games of the season.

Sure, Nichols or Robertson-Harris or Goldman flashed plays here and there, but not nearly enough. It affected Mack’s season and probably Floyd’s too (though his own limitations are equally to blame if not more). The Bears cannot depend on one player so much next year for so much. They can’t buy another one, but finding someone under the radar, or through the draft, or the development of someone has to be the biggest order of the day for the defense. Hicks isn’t going to play 16 games next year, that you can bet on. He’s also 30, so just how much more time do you have?

I’ll worry about young linebackers in the middle and a secondary that will lose some veterans a hell of a lot less if they only have to do anything for about a second and a half every play.

 

Football

Week 17 – Bears 21, Vikings 19: It’s An Ending, That’s Enough

By Sam Fels 1287 0

It doesn’t mean anything, unless Anthony Miller’s shoulder actually detached from his body this time. The Bears finish 8-8, which seems more fitting for this team, the very definition of completely mediocre and pointless. They couldn’t be more in the middle. They couldn’t block the Vikings’ backups, and the defense did just enough to put the game on a knife-edge both good and bad.

It was somehow telling and symbolic that the Bears only TD drive, the first of the second half, was when they cut out the bullshit, lined up in the I, and ran the ball. David Montgomery had 57 yards on six carries and a touchdown on the drive. Mitch Trubisky had to throw one pass, and it was for a first down.

And then we never saw it again.

Also symbolic that on the biggest play of the game, a 4th and 5 at midfield as the Bears were trying to find the winning field goal, Mitch finally got out of the pocket (not sure it was designed that way) and found Ridley for a first down and set up the winner. That was just about the only time we saw it.

So the game was more of what we already knew. When Mitch gets to be an athlete–getting on the move or stepping into his throws and being decisive–he’s ok. When he’s doing all the gadget stuff, he doesn’t make plays. When the Bears keep it simple, they can move the ball. But they don’t keep it simple. They didn’t get enough sacks, though they did get the turnovers today and even a safety.

No questions will be answered by this. We’ll have to wait some months for those.

Everything else…

-I would imagine Riley Ridley is being groomed to take Taylor Gabriel’s role next season, as that’s one spot the Bears can get some cap savings.

-Khalil Mack will end the season with 8.5 sacks. No matter what else was going on, that’s just not going to get it done.

-Yeah I think I’ve had enough of Ha-Ha. Try something else next year.

-Mitch didn’t even end up with 3,000 yards. That’s hard to do these days. And while it certainly speaks to his struggles, it also speaks to an offense that could never push the ball down the field. Some of that is the o-line, a lot of it is Mitch, but a lot of it is the playcalling. We’ll at least hear whispers of someone being brought in next season to take that over. Don’t know if it will happen, but it should at least be discussed.

-The Bears actually got two turnovers today, which has been a problem this season. That they only resulted in six points is why this was a game at all.

Ok, that’s enough. It’s over. We lived. That’s about all we can say.

Football

Week #17 – Bears vs. Vikings Preview: Escorted Out By Al Bundy

By Sam Fels 3218 0

vs.

RECORDS: Bears 7-8   Vikings 10-5

KICKOFF: 12pm

TV: Fox

READY TO BE KICKED IN THE NUTS AGAIN: Daily Norseman

It was only a year ago that the season ended in the same exact spot with just about the opposite feeling. The Bears marched up to Minneapolis, with nothing to play for essentially as the Rams were up big by the 2nd quarter to eliminate any chance of grabbing a playoff bye. The Vikings however, had everything to play for, needing to win to get into the playoffs. And the Bears used their face to mop the floor simply because they felt like it, because they wanted to. It really felt like they were on to something then, that it was just the beginning. After all, a team that does that simply for the sheer joy of it must’ve been capable of so much more.

One scared playoff game, one missed kick, and a broken coach and QB later and now it feels like that game might as well have taken place in another dimension. Of course, the funny thing to think about is if the Bears had rested everyone, let the Vikings in, would they have simply kicked their ass again a week later on the Lakefront? How would that have changed things? Rather pointless to think about in the end, but you can’t let it go completely, can you?

Either way, the Bears will slink off the stage tomorrow after a dead rubber against the Vikings. Minnesota is locked in as the 6th seed, preparing to watch Kirk Cousins embarrass himself in Green Bay, or Seattle, or New Orleans. Take your pick. So they’ll be resting everyone who matters, making it unclear what the Bears can get out of this other than a win that makes the record look a little better. And hopefully no major injuries to carry over into training camp or something.

The Bears are intent on playing the full team, or at least the one they have. The long-term casualties are still out. You get the impression if the Bears had even been representative last week, not even won necessarily but played well, they might treat this as a time-filler as well. But last week so helpless and sad, they probably can’t end the season with two of those. The offseason will be long and unpleasant enough without that kind of stench hanging over it. Or at least they can fool themselves into thinking there’s less stench.

Maybe 8-8 looks way better to them than 7-9. The difference in draft position won’t matter all that much, they’ll be entrenched in the middle of the second round either way. There won’t be any answers tomorrow, and those won’t come for a few months. The post-mortems have already started.

It’s funny, there have been far worse Bears teams in recent memory. But rarely has a season been this unenjoyable. Even the wins were whiskey-dick experiences. Only the one in Denver due to its excitement and the still very much present hope that was around in just Week 2, the first Vikings game, and the Cowboys win were ones you could get excited about. Feel good about. Washington was what was supposed to happen. The two over the Lions were far harder than they needed to be. The Giants suck. When were you excited to watch the Bears past September?

So we’ll dispose of this season tomorrow, slamming its head into the wall before throwing it out the door, cursing its presence in our lives at all and hoping to never see the likes of it again. We probably will. It’s the Bears after all. But at least there will be time to cleanse.

Football

Week 17 – Bears vs. Vikings QB Spotlight: Chilling Vision Of The Future?

By Sam Fels 1368 0

The Bears won’t get to see Kirk Cousins Sunday. Because the Vikes have nothing to play for, they’re the 6th seed who will get murdered by the any of the Packers, Saints, or Seahawks. Which is unfortunate, because seeing Kirk Cousins is usually high comedy. Until now, because it might be what’s coming for the Bears.

You probably know the records by now. Cousins is 6-30 against teams with winning records. 0-9 on Monday night. Not much  better in other primetime games. Whenever the Vikings need Cousins to be good, he’s been terrible. This includes last year’s finale when they needed to beat a Bears team that essentially had nothing to play for. And the Bears whacked him around simply because they felt like it.

Cousins changed the narrative around him a bit after the first Bears games this year, where once again the Bears sat on his head without Akiem Hicks. He threw 22 TDs and just two INTs before last week. There was some hope in Minneapolis that maybe he’d turned a corner. And then he took a big shit against the Packers on Monday night, ending the Vikes’ hopes for the division, once again puking it up against a good team, and the Vikings are left with all the same questions.

And this could be the Bears’ future. Not Cousins, of course, as he’s slotted to make all the money in the world for one more season yet. But if the Bears decide to move on from Mitch Trubisky, and that’s still a rather sizable if, they choices from there are of the same ilk of Cousins. Andy Dalton? He has the same amount of playoff wins that you do. Cam Newton? One Super Bowl appearance that he pissed down his leg in and one other playoff win where he didn’t even break 200 yards and both of those were five years ago. Teddy Bridgewater? Way more questions than answers. Phillip Rivers and his arm that was 107 years old when he was 25?

All could be steadier than Trubes, that’s for sure. And maybe steady is all the Bears need that figures to be at or near having a contender-level defense next year (especially with a healthy Hicks). But you’d be asking QBs to do things they haven’t proven they can do or haven’t done in a very long time. How’s that working out for the Vikings, who in the Cousins era will have one wildcard berth and a playoff tonking to show for it?

Bears fans should know that once you get on the QB carousel, it’s really hard to get off of it. Maybe you draft someone in the second or third round you really like and hope they just provide competition for Trubisky, thereby still keeping your QB costs down so you can have the rest of the roster in place. That’s the other thing about the names available. They’ll still cost a lot. Cousins himself has a $31M hit next year. Any of the others really coming that much cheaper?

Maybe paying $9M with reasonable competition through the draft doesn’t sound so bad here.

Football

The Vault: Bears/Vikings 2018

By Tony Martin 1392 0

Welcome back to the last regular-season edition of THE VAULT, my weekly column dedicated to giving you 700 or so words about a nightmare of games past. For the 4th straight season, the Bears and Vikings will clash on the final week of the NFL’s regular season, and the words I’ve seen being used to describe this game are as follows:

“meaningless” (NBC Sports)
“disappointing” (BearsWire)
“miserable” (CBS Local)

This shit reads like a Kafka short story. So, in the interest of keeping myself interested in this bit, I’m going to go in-depth on last year’s season finale (a 24-10 Bears victory) as seen through the eyes of a fictional Bears superfan going through what could be best described as an “existential crisis”.

As Gregor Olson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into Don Wachter (AKA “The Bearman”). He lay on his bed in suburban La Grange, Illinois, and looked at the dark ceiling. His alarm was going off, it was 3am. Time to get ready. Gameday. Noon. Bears/Vikings.

“Who am I? How did I get here?” It was no dream. Gregor’s room had transformed from the modest empty desked cold space he knew into one adorned with pictures. Pictures of him.

But that wasn’t him; it was just a facimile of him, like a bad photocopied picture. Him, with so many of his heroes: Bryan Cox. Donnell Woolford. Steve Stenstrom. What he wouldn’t have given to remember times like those. Times that he could use to help explain the situation he found himself in. How long had it been since he became The Bearman?

As if one might breathe or reach a hand to rub a bruise, Gregor was instinctively already at his dresser. His makeup was already halfway applied before he realized he was doing it. “What sort of rabbit hole have I fallen into? Hello?” he yelled. Silence returned his cries, and as the echo bounced off the walls of his rented room, he looked back at the mirror to see his costume for the day already applied. Everything fit perfectly, as if he had worn them in for years, though Gregor’s eyes still saw his old body. His soft limp now gone, he began to operate the body of The Bearman as if it was his own.

In a weird stasis between disoriented and confident, he got into his 2010 Toyota Bear-olla and made his way to Soldier Field, ready to watch the 11-4 Bears face off against the 8-6-1 Minnesota Vikings. In the car, Gregor began to feel more and more uneasy, considering he wasn’t even a sports fan, let alone a football fanatic! His brain began accessing stored knowledge of the current roster, the past legends, and a bunch of useless knowledge about RPOs. Gregor decided to fight it, for if he couldn’t control the whims of the body, he could certainly call out to the world for help, to free him from this prison.

Soldier Field was empty for gameday, and the security guard welcomed him as “Don” before asking why he was there if the Bears were in Minnesota to play at 3:25, having been flexed into an afternoon slot.

“Don, are you feeling okay? You look kinda queasy.” The man said.

“Please help me!” Gregor screamed. Gregor was trying his best to get out. He needed to be free. Free of Bearman. This had to end, Gregor was not welcome in the body of the Bearman. Gregor protested from inside of the Bearman, struggling in a way that to outside observers probably looked like a mild panic attack.

“Don? Um, I’m gonna call 911. You just stay here, okay?”

“PLEASE HELP ME!” The words exploded from Don’s mouth, propelled with all the force Gregor could manage to summon. Without another word, his foot pressed down on the gas and before he could blink an eye, the Bear-olla was on Lake Shore Drive. Gregor was no longer in control, the Bearman was in the drivers seat, literally and figuratively.

Gregor found the Bearman suit appalling, and when it dragged him into the Buffalo Wild Wings, he found himself even more disgusted. A lifelong vegetarian, Gregor knew this B-Dubs was where the final confrontation between himself, the very notion of free will, and his flesh prison would take place. As the game was playing on the TV, people came up to buy free drinks and take pictures with the Bearman. Everyone loves the Bearman. Let’s buy a beer for the Bearman. Let’s buy some wings for the Bearman. Boneless. Low heat, because the Bearman has low tolerance for spicy food.

“NO” he bellowed, the fake teeth on his Bear-hat rattling with the force of his rebuke. “I AM NOT THE BEARMAN.” As the bar fell silent, Jordan Howard ran in for his second TD of the first half, putting the Bears up 13-0. Cody Parkey’s extra point was unsuccessful, and for a moment, the eyes of the bar were no longer on the Bearman, but nervously darting around the room wondering if this team would be looking for a kicker before the playoff run. 

“Bearman, what do you think? Should the Bears sign someone off the street?” A patron said, handing Gregor’s prison a steaming plate of wings. This was it, the time was now. The body of Bearman reached for a wing, and dipped it in the ranch. Gregor fought. Bearman won. The meat entered his body, and the soul of Gregor Olsen became infuriated. As if a medieval army about to unleash their final charge, he balled up all that he had and exploded.

Chunks of Bear jerseys with human remains littered the floor like so much confetti. The playoffs began next Sunday, at home. 3am. There remained a room full of fans who would not see it, nor anything ever again.

Tarik Cohen was running in for a touchdown. The Vikings season was over.