Hockey

Game #35 – Avalanche vs. Hawks Spotlight: A Guy With A Nazem Problem

By Sam Fels 1206 0

When trading for Nazem Kadri, the Avalanche knew they were taking on some risk. While Kadri had been a dutiful soldier in Toronto and did a lot of the dirty work that Auston Matthews or John Tavares wouldn’t be concerned with, there is always the chance that Kadri goes off the deep end and gets himself suspended at crucial times. Kadri has been suspended five times in the past six years by the league, and fined or sent him by his own team a few times as well. The risk seemed worth it though, because A. Kadri is one of the more dynamic two-way centers in the league and B. perhaps being out of the pressure-cooker of Toronto which frays just about everyone’s nerves would calm him down a bit.

The latter we won’t find out about truly until the playoffs. The former is the problem, because Kadri hasn’t been what he was in Toronto so far with the Avs.

Kadri has 22 points in 30 games, which is certainly more than enough. It puts him on pace to match or even exceed his career high of 61 points, set three seasons ago. And that’s what the Avs do, get up the ice ASAP and fill the net.

But you’re supposed to get a possession-driving checking center with Kadri as well, and the Avs haven’t seen that yet. Kadri is carrying by far the worst relative numbers of his career. Kadri was continually above the team-rate in T.O. and with far worse zone starts. He’s -9.2 in his xG%, and -4.0 in his Corsi percentage. Both would be nearly double the worst marks of his career in Toronto. And the weird thing is, Kadri is starting more shifts in the offensive zone than ever before. So why is he backing up all the time?

Is it teammates? Hard to say. Kadri has spent most of this time this season with Joonas Donskoi and Andre Burakovsky. Donskoi is certainly no moron when it comes to the defensive side of the puck, Burakovsky can be a little more flaky. But there are certainly worse combinations. And that isn’t really that much worse than Leo Komarov and Patrick Marleau, whom Kadri spent most of his time with the past three years in Toronto.

Maybe it was Babcock’s more conservative system that kept him buffeted, where in Colorado you have a fair number of yahoos (in a good way) on the back end. Toronto certainly had no less speed and skill than Colorado does, but the criticism of Babcock (among others) was that he rarely unleashed it. Jared Bednar certainly does, and maybe Kadri is just finding his way in a more open spaces.

And maybe the Avs don’t care. They have Pierre-Edouard Bellmare to take the true dungeon shifts, with Colin Wilson and Tyson Jost doing some of that work as well. Maybe the Avs just need a straight-up #2 center. At the end of the day, the Avs are outscoring their opponents 22-15 at evens with Kadri on the ice, whatever the possession numbers are. For now, that’s probably enough.

Still, the Avs will be holding their breath come April. The Avs don’t have a blood feud with anyone like they do with the Leafs did with the Bruins, so Kadri’s blood won’t be boiling yet. Especially as all the Leafs heard about last year during the season was how they couldn’t beat the Bruins (and they didn’t). Still, put Kadri in the middle of the cauldron of an extended series, against someone annoying like the Flames or Blues, and you wonder if he can keep in check for the first time.

 

Hockey

Game #35 – Avalanche vs Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Muggers, Buggerers, and Bushwhackers

By Sam Fels 1135 0

J.T. Compher – Sometimes you’re not a prick, you just keep scoring against the Hawks even if you’re no damn good. Compher might be good, he might not be, but against the Hawks he’s some sort of HYDRA creation. Five games last year, four goals and five points. He scored a goal against them last time the Avs were here, and three of his 17 points are against the Hawks this season. All in one game. He hasn’t scored more against anyone else in his career than he did against the Hawks last season. He has two goals this year. He’ll probably double that total this weekend.

Nazem Kadri – Ah, here’s our prick. Maybe being out of the pressure cooker of Toronto will un-fuck his brain, but Kadri has helped torpedo a couple seasons with selfish and dirty hits that ended in suspensions. A wonderful checking center who can score, that is when his brain is turned on. But can’t help himself with being a dipshit, and the Avs can only hope that doesn’t rear its ugly head again at the absolute worst time.

Ian Cole – BAYBAY!

Hockey

Game #35 – Avalanche vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

By Sam Fels 1060 0

Avalanche

 

 

Notes: The Avs are much stronger, or healthier, at forward than they were the last time the Hawks saw them. Rantanen only played one of the games, and Landeskog neither. They’re both back. Calvert also didn’t play last time. But they’re much more beat up on the blue line, where neither Makar or Johnson are on the trip with them and Girard took a puck to the face Monday in St. Louis…MacKinnon has 34 points in his last 21 games…Kadri scored twice the last time these two met…

Hawks

Notes: That’s right, Seabrook is in his suit tonight, as the Hawks look to go younger. Finally. Sure, doing it for Dennis Gilbert isn’t really a move forward, but this was going to happen when actual promising defensemen are here, or would need to, so might as well get this going. It’s a formation they should get used to, and Seabrook is lucky injuries kept him in the lineup this long…we actually don’t mind “pairing” Dach and DeBrincat, because it gives Dach some actual skill to play with and spreads out the scoring in theory. Strome and Kane still looked dangerous, so it’s worth a look because one of those three lines should get a decent match-up at least…

Hockey

It Actually Might Be A Little Worse Than You Think

By Sam Fels 1641 0

Last night, with their win in Boston, the Kings leapfrogged the Hawks to officially put the West Side Hockey Club in the basement of the Western Conference. The Hawks are one point ahead of the Ottawa Senators. That’s the Ottawa Senators, who had been the laughingstock of the NHL, purposely heading to the depths to try and turn around their future. With the owner who has a scuba tank full of paint so he can continually huff it, and turns it up before meeting the press. The Senators, who don’t have three players you can name right now. They’re right on the Hawks’ ass, in probably the tougher conference

And it’s almost a year to the day the Hawks were last in the basement of the West, which lets you know just about all the progress they’re making. All their moves and bluster and assurance they knew what they were doing and you would see. And not only are they running in place, they’re running place behind everyone.

And here’s the thing, the Kings are actually better than they are and by a decent margin, when you look at what’s really going on. The Kings’ possession numbers are actually some of the best in the league. So are their expected goal numbers. What they can’t get is a save or shots to go in, even with all the decent ones they’re creating and the ones they’re not letting up. They have one of the worst PDOs in the league. They’re a touch unlucky to be where they are, but that’s what happens when you count on Jonathan Quick and their aging snipers.

The Wings and Devils, the only two teams below the Hawks, also have shitty PDOs. But they have shitty goalies and a lack of true scoring talent as well. So that adds up.

Here’s the thing…

THE HAWKS HAVE BOTH OF THOSE.

They have good goalies. They have talented scorers. They’re not unlucky at all to be where they are, which doesn’t make any goddamn sense because if you have good goalies and you have talented scorers you’re supposed to be unlucky if you’re in the bottom of the standings. Something is supposed to have gone off the boil. Something is not aligning.

But now, that’s how bad the Hawks are structurally. Their goalies can make a very good proportion of saves, and their forwards can pot a decent amount of chances…and none of it matters because of the avalanche of shots and chances going against them. You probably realize how fucked up that is, but they certainly don’t.

So any other organization would conclude it’s all not working and would have to start over. We’ve talked and talked incessantly about how a start-over/tear-down just isn’t possible, but I become less and less convinced of that. Let’s see if we can’t get there.

I never ascribed to the theory that a GM gets only one coaching hire before he too has to hit the bricks. Every situation is different, and if it were completely clear that a roster were being completely mangled by an incompetent coach that just totally went off the reservation, well the GM should get to replace that guy. Take the Bulls…well, actually, don’t, because that front office might be even more fucked up. But in a vacuum, the roster isn’t that bad, has some promise, and if there weren’t two morons in there playing the Simpson Men Pot-on-a-head game constantly you could argue they should be allowed to hire a competent coach to see what they have.

But this Hawks roster is obviously not good enough, and it didn’t have to be this bad, so clearly Stan and Kelvin have to go. But what would someone with fresh eyes see here?

The going theory is that with the NMCs all the Hawks stars have, they can’t get out from under all of it. Well, here’s a question: How much longer is Patrick Kane willing to put up with this shit? He’s still playing at a near-MVP level, and he might not have that many years of that performance left. Maybe he feels he’s got all the hardware he could ever need, and he wouldn’t be wrong. But he’s also a sociopathic competitor and this has to kill him to be playing meaningless hockey for a third straight year.

That’s the main domino. The $10.5M cap hit for another three years makes it a tricky move, and the Hawks will have to eat at least some of it if not half, but do we really think that if Kane asks out–or volunteers out as it’s dressed up as some sort of favor to the only team he’s ever known–that no one would call? No one would at least see what they could do? If they only had to pay, say, $7M a year for him? Absolutely no one would think about that?

How many teams could use the kickstart? Nashville? San Jose? You can always convince Vancouver to do something stupid (and isn’t that an image!) If you took some of their bad money back too that came off the books sooner? It’s not impossible.

And really, that’s the only tear down you’re going to get. But if Kane goes, Keith probably does too or simply retires. Toews is here for life because he has way less value at his salary and questionable role in the future. But he’s also probably a good torch-bearer for those who will lead the next rush. And you could finally employ the Seabrook plan we’ve been pushing since last season.

That’s not going to happen, of course. The Hawks plan is one more run with #2, #19, and #88. But how’s that going to happen? We’ve constantly outlined how even with Mitchell signing and being crowbarred into the lineup and maybe Beaudin that the Hawks max out as a wildcard team. They don’t have the room to do anything up front to have the depth they need to be a contender. .

That’s not a plan. Good thing they’ve told us they don’t have a plan, then. It’s time for the Molotov cocktails.

Football

Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Week 15: Well It’s Over Now

By Sam Fels 1769 0

Our Bears wing gets together to sift through the rubble of the now-over 2019 season.

So now that the season will officially end in two weeks, what are you feeling?

Brian Schmitz: To be honest, I actually feel better about this team than I did 4, 8, 12 weeks ago. I was never on this Super Bowl bandwagon, because it had, and has, some gaping holes. But it’s encouraging to know that Mitch Trubisky can play and excel at this level, with this team. Montgomery is in the same boat.

 The coach needs a re-boot this off-season, and it starts by looking at himself, which leads to his in-game play calls. An improved O-Line and a real tight end will make a huge difference next season. Finally, the Bears will play a 3rd/4th place schedule next season, similar to 2018.

 

Tony Martin: This season just hurt a little bit more because while I was also doubting the Super Bowl hype, the regression was painful to watch and the Bears did not play fun football. It makes me wonder if it’s worse to lose like a Jameis Winston team or like a Mitch Trubisky team. I hope the tight end room grows stronger, the offensive line gets their shit together, and the playcalling improves. Since Week 1, Nagy has called plays that resemble the gameplan of a 14-year-old playing Madden online while using a new playbook. I’m hoping Mitch calling him out again in the post-game will reap benefits next year, because Mitch is sticking his neck out to win, not simply to start a pissing contest. 

As for how this season makes me feel, like I said it felt like a nightmare. Even when they won it felt gross. Even when they lost games we expected them to lose they made it close enough to sting more than usual. This team has quite the offseason ahead of themselves, and it’s going to tell us exactly what Nagy and Pace can do and if they’ll be part of the future. Or fuck it, if next year starts off poorly the Bears have enough assets to get 10 picks in the first two rounds of the 2021 draft, which they will immediately use seven of on undersized small school skill position players. 

Wes French: I’m feeling more like Tony than Brian.  The regression was stark, and while we all knew it was inevitable on defense the offense was supposed to take a leap. Nagy went from Coach of the Year to potential first firing of the 2020 season if he can’t get the playcalling and offense as a whole sorted out. Mitch calling him out in the media lately is very telling; I think it speaks to more people in the room agreeing with him than Nagy. We’ll see what they do about it. 

The Bears dealt with some key injuries as well, but Khalil Mack, Leonard Floyd and Roquan Smith have to go down as major disappointments. Mack and Floyd seemingly disappeared after Week 4 and Smith had that weird inactive stretch. He did come back and look good only to go down to injury, leaving him with questions to answer instead of being discussed as an anchor in 2020.

Tony: The last play of the Packers game is a perfect encapsulation of the Bears season: they backed themselves into a corner, Nagy drew something up that was unique/interesting, and it wasn’t a fit for the personnel they had on the field. Look at the guys who ran that last route: Allen Robinson, Tarik Cohen, Cordarrelle Patterson, Anthony Miller, and… Jesper Horsted. Naturally the ball fell into Horsted’s hands and his lack of awareness in that moment caused him to hold onto the ball too long, and just like the 2019 Bears he wasn’t prepared to make the play to win the game (or tie it, to be more accurate). 

Riley Ridley, maybe? Javon Wims? David Montgomery? Players you expect to have the ball skills to advance a lateral like that, a la Kenyon Drake in last year’s Miami Miracle? The 2019 Chicago Bears: a real fuckin head-scratcher.

 

There will obviously be time for season autopsies in a couple weeks, but let’s turn to the defense. If there’s one criticism of them this year is that they didn’t take the ball away enough. The defensive scoring is not something you can count on, but are the turnovers just cyclical/market correction too? Or is that going to have to be a focus next year?

Wes: The Bears paced the league in 2018 at 36 takeaways, which currently leads the league in 2019 (Evil Empire NE). The 2018 top five was rounded out by CLE, LAR, HOU and DEN. All five teams have dropped to the middle of the pack in 2019, landing between 16-18 total takeaways so far. I think this speaks to the cyclical nature of the turnover game, and the Bears were even more of an outlier because we did see them score so many times off of them in 2018. 

You can argue you’d expect them to do better than halving the number from the year before, but even that’s picking nits IMO. I do think you could say the lack of consistent pressure on the QB and getting hands on the ball at the line of scrimmage helps deflate those numbers. It’s also a new scheme, so even though the personnel is near identical they’re not doing the same things as last year that likely helped produce some of those takeaways. Playing a 3rd/4th place schedule in 2018 doesn’t hurt things, either. 

Brian: The shocking thing about the lack of turnovers forced is the fact they haven’t exactly faced a murderers row of QB talent this season. They have also been trailing in a lot of games, which lends itself to a much more conservative playbook for teams playing with their 2nd or 3rd string QB. Above all however, I think turnovers caused is most often a matter of chance.

Tony: I tend to believe that numbers like that are always prone to regression to the mean, but let’s be real here: pressure creates turnovers, and the 2019 Bears defense hasn’t gotten consistent enough pressure to make those things happen. Interceptions and fumbles happen when QBs are swarmed, and the speed with which the defense got to the QB last year forced a lot of quick routes that the Bears jumped for turnovers and scores. When the pressure comes back, the defense looks more like 2018s.

 

Hockey

Angry At Numbers – 12/17

By Sam Fels 1606 0

Thought I would take the time to dig deep into some nerdlingers for you. Let’s get to it.

60.4, 42.7

We talked last night, you would have heard it this morning if you were so inclined, on the podcast about Jonathan Toews and Kirby Dach. The idea since Dach was drafted is that he would one day supplant Toews as the #1 center, and hopefully soon in that it would only make the Hawks stronger, not due to any decline of Toews. And after a slow start, Toews’s metrics are actually pretty stout the past 15 games. 54.9 CF%, 55. 2 xGF%. That’s probably more than stout. Dach’s numbers are obviously less so.

But what you’re seeing above is the offensive zone starts for Toews and then Dach the last 15 games. Which has to raise questions about how exactly you’re going to develop Dach by starting him outside the offensive zone 60% of the time, not to mention saddling him with fourth-line players. Dach’s certainly going to have to learn to play in his own zone, but right now he is a gifted offensive player and the Hawks are actually short on scoring. So why is he taking the ass end of shift starts?

If the Hawks would like to know why Dach hasn’t registered a point in 12 games, here you go. He’s not being given the best chance. And this is the future for your team, at least it had better be. Is there no confidence that Toews can turn the ice? It’s hard to know because this is how Toews has been used all season. But if the Hawks hope to get more out of Dach this year, they have to get him up the ice. And we know the Hawks can’t do that themselves.

+8.9

That’s Connor Murphy’s relative xGF% above the Hawks rate. It’s the 7th best mark in the league among d-men. To boot, no one else in the top 20 is getting worse zone starts than Murphy. Only Jared Spurgeon and Patrik Nemeth are even close. So next time Pat and Eddie are bellowing about how good Keith and de Haan have been and how they’re the two best Hawks defensemen, just remember this and that neither is anywhere close to Murphy. Who will have to be traded in the offseason for cap and roster space because no one is going to want de Haan and his one shoulder or Maatta and his no talent. And you should throw your hands up frantically accordingly.

.859

That’s Corey Crawford’s high-danger save-percentage at evens, which ranks third in the league behind Tuukka Rask and Henrik Lundqvist. This has been something of a specialty of Crow’s the past few years, as he tends to make just about the most amount of saves he shouldn’t make in the league. The past five years, only Sergei Bobrovsky has a better high-danger SV%, and Ben Bishop is right behind him, and both have been Vezina finalists while Crow never has. In that time, Crow also has the best dSV%, which is the difference between a goalie’s expected save-percentage and his actual. Hopefully, for his sake, there’s a contending team out there that sees these numbers and makes the Hawks a boffo offer for Crow at the deadline, because he deserves playing behind better than this utter trash fire as well as the lack of recognition he gets here. But I tend to doubt that will be the case, and instead he’ll just walk in favor of Robin Lehner and his gaping maw of a mouth to tell you just how hard he’s working behind the same shit defense.

Baseball

My Brian Hurt Like A Warehouse, It Had No Room To Spare

By Sam Fels 2031 0

I’m with you, dear reader. I know you’ve come here of late, perhaps the past couple months, and all you find is anger and despair. That’s not very fun. And we could sit here and say it’s not our fault. We didn’t make the Hawks, Cubs, and Bears so frustrating, and the White Sox a bit confusing. Thank god we don’t cover the Bulls yet! There’s probably a more reserved tone we could take at times, maybe see the long view a bit more. Find the positives. Find the path to happiness again and such.

But then I read this like this.

Let me help you out with the hammer:

Trading Schwarber and Bryant would seem excessive for a team that intends to contend in 2020. The Cubs, however, are hellbent on avoiding the fates of teams such as the Phillies, Giants and Tigers, who entered down cycles after going all-in for extended periods in recent times. The Giants and Tigers are headed for their fourth straight losing seasons. The Phillies have not had a winning season since 2011.

The Cubs are three years removed from their World Series title, and their window is starting to close. Left-handers Jon Lester and José Quintana are entering the final guaranteed years of their contracts. Schwarber, Bryant (assuming he loses his service-time grievance), shortstop Javier Báez and first baseman Anthony Rizzo are under club control only through 2021, Contreras through ’22.

The clock is ticking. A recalibration is in order. Let’s not forget, the Cubs are changing managers from Joe Maddon to David Ross. If the front office does nothing, it would place unfair expectations on Ross to win with Maddon’s team, a team that was less than the sum of its parts in finishing 84-78 last season.

I don’t even know where to start. And this isn’t Ken Rosenthal’s doing, he’s just reporting what he hears. So let’s just take it in order.

First of all, the “intends to contend in 2020” is goddamn laughable when you’re out here so publicly flogging your best player, the best player you’ve had in a generation, and the best player you’re going to have in a generation. Even more so when you’ve made it clear you’re not trying to trade him for help right now. I would argue until my dying day, which the Cubs seem intent on bringing about sharpish, that this is still a team that needs more minor tinkering and moves around the edges to win the Central again, but we’ve been down that road.

It’s the “hellbent on not being the Giants, Phillies, or Tigers” that is just…I mean galling doesn’t even get there. Enraging? Exasperating? Utterly incomprehensible? Pure nonsense? You can mix and match your own adjectives and see what you come up with.

I really shouldn’t have to point out that the Giants won three World Series in five years, and their being bad now is a trade I doubt you’d find any Giants fan unhappy with. We all know there’s a price of success, especially success at that level. And the Giants certainly made their missteps afterward and maybe even during, though anything built on that level of power pitching has an itchy foundation. The Giants also had another playoff appearance two years later (you may remember it), so in total they had seven years of being a relevant team at worst. Seven, keep that number in mind.

So to the Phillies. They won a single World Series, just like the Cubs have and seem intent on only doing. Except they went to two consecutive Series, made the playoffs five straight years, and weren’t all that far from adding a second consecutive title. Yeah, the crash was hard, but the core of that team when it was all over were all in their mid-30s, something NONE of the Cubs current core will even be in 2021 or 2022. The Phils’ success came later in their careers. The oldest at that time of reckoning for the Cubs–or so they seem hellbent on telling you it will be– will be Rizzo at 32. The youngest of the Phillies was Utley at 33 when their cycle came to a close. It’s just not a clean comparison.

Right then, the Tigers, who don’t come with any of the flags that the previous three teams mentioned have. They do have two WS appearances, which the Cubs have yet to manage, but fine, no one cares when you only win a total of one game in them. The Tigers were competitive for seven season out of nine. A couple dice rolls here or there and they add a third or maybe fourth Series and maybe even win one. Again, nine seasons. Seven competitive.

The Cubs have managed five. That’s if you even include this past one, which I will because they were better than their record, or should have been. But you don’t have to, which makes it four. Five. How is five years an acceptable run at it? Especially what’s already here? And why would we assume punting on this one and maybe the next one guarantees anything beyond that, given that you still might see the Ricketts not pay whoever’s left or whoever develops into another piece in that time?

Rosenthal mentions their window closing, and uses Quintana’s and Lester’s contract situations as reasons why. Except they’ve pitched themselves to the bottom of the rotation and also their contracts ending opens up $35M+ of payroll that you could, oh I don’t know, improve the team with? I know, I’m fucking nuts and should be locked away from society for your safety. Out here with ideas like that. I mean, starting with Baez, Bryant, Rizzo, Contreras, Schwarber, Hendricks, and Darvish with $35M in space to use however you see fit seems like a nice base to me, but again, the sky is plaid in my world.

The last sentence is just weird and paradoxical, because if last year’s team was less than its parts it would seem that David Ross is kind of in a sweetheart spot as the team would have an excellent chance of improving simply because of market corrections and health. Not that you’d want to count on any of that, but still.

And again, this is all horseshit, a word that’s becoming synonymous with everything Cubs right now. The Cubs aren’t trading Bryant because they think it improves anything, short-term or long. It’s because they don’t want to pay him what he will earn in two years, and they don’t even want to pay him what he will get this year in arbitration. It’s not a “strategy.” It’s simple greed. The new buildings are up, the luxury suites are in, and Ricketts doesn’t have to do much to watch the money flow in. So he’s not going to.

I recognize that Ryu at $23M a year or so is a risky investment, and he’s just about the only difference-making starter on the market right now. And I will accept a baseball trade of Contreras to find another starter, if possible. What I won’t accept is the idea of an extra $20M-$25M breaking the Cubs financially. There is nothing the Yankees have, or should have, that the Cubs don’t.

So fuck off with all of this.

Football

Three Things We Learned From Week 15: Not Enough I Need More

By Sam Fels 1272 0

In The What I Learned Category, It’s Probably The Coach: This has been the big debate about the Bears all season, and will be this offseason and even into next season. It won’t be helped by Patrick Mahomes swaggering on in here next week either, but that ship has sailed. The fact is the Bears can win with Mitch Trubisky at the helm, whether or not it’s as fun to watch as Mahomes would have been.

To me, the ship on Mitch being great has sailed too, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be good. And good, with what this defense can be in the next year or two, is enough. Maybe more than enough. But as we’ve gone week to week here I’ve started to lean from “Mitch doesn’t have it” to “It’s Nagy.” And maybe a little of the offensive line mixed in.

There have been a few things that could have caused Matt Nagy to go off the deep end. The throwing up all over himself as KC offensive coordinator in the playoffs is only two years ago. Repeating that feat with the Bears last year, and then trying to blame the kicker for all of it is still fresh in the mind as well. And maybe Nagy is trying to overcompensate for losing his marbles (mental and the ones down there) in the playoffs this year by being fully creative all the time.

Again, we know what Mitch does well. Rollouts, actually running the ball, play-action. Pick and stick. This should have been the whole game plan from Week 2 on when Week 1 didn’t go so well. It hasn’t been until lately, and then it basically went away again in Green Bay to the point that even Mitch was bitching about it in the post game presser.

The Green Bay defense is certainly better than what had come before, and going to show you a lot of looks. But at some point you’ve got to do what you do well and figure out the rest. Nagy has outthought himself pretty much the entire season, and a better-than-it-feels season from the defense is now going completely to waste.

That doesn’t mean this is unsalvageable, because it’s far from it. All it takes is Nagy seeing what is in front of him, and maybe a tight end and one or two changes on the line. And then presto, it could be 12 wins again. But sometimes admitting things about yourself is the hardest thing to do. Is anyone going to tell him?

I Love Akiem Hicks But Don’t Want To Watch Him Play Again This Season: As fun as Khalil Mack was to watch last year, Akiem Hicks might have been just as much. Regularly putting two linemen on their ass and destroying entire offensive gameplans by himself, and looking like he was having a blast doing it, the joy seeped through your TV. So like most Bears fans I was delighted when it was announced he’d be back, because he’s the difference between this defense being really good and something from a distant moon in a another galaxy.

And then we had to watch him clearly in a world of pain, gut through it, and for what? I can’t imagine what state that elbow is actually in, but two or three times you saw him drag that thing to the sideline and try and comprehend the pain he was in. And football players don’t like to show much. In the 4th quarter when he was just lying on the Lambeau turf for a minute, it was just a metaphor for life. You can suck it up and gut it out and think you’ve got it measured by the world always has another jolt for you to leave you in even more pain that you thought possible.

Nagy is saying he still might play in the last two games. I don’t know what the point would be other than risking literally tearing his arm off below the elbow. That’s enough.

Packers-Bears Games With Something On The Line Are The Best And Worst: They rarely happen, which is maybe why they’re both. The past two seasons they’ve met in the opening week, which hasn’t gone well, but it’s hard to know what the stakes are. Most of this decade, one team has sucked and the other has been good (and you know what that alignment has been most of the time). Last year, by the time the second meeting came around the Packers season was over. These kinds of things rarely mean something to both teams in the long run. Of course, they all did in 2010…and look how that ended. Maybe it’s better if they don’t.

But there was something about the fading winter sunlight, the cold, and both teams having urgency and desperation that carried over into the fans and the whole experience. I don’t think I’d live through another playoff game between the two, but at the same time wouldn’t it be nice to get one over on those assholes when it really meant something? Just once?

One day.