Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews – Vegas Golden Knights

By Matt McClure 1588 0

How does an expansion franchise follow up one of the most improbable runs in professional sports history after reaching the Stanley Cup final in their first year of existence? Well, in the case of the Vegas Golden Knights, they have zero self awareness regarding all of the good fortune that fell their way the year prior, and bitch relentless about a perceived screw job at the hands of the refs that apparently led to their ouster. Furthermore, their cap situation is already a complete nightmare going into their third season of existence thanks to Brain Genious and Lorne Molleken Puncher George McPhee, who got kicked upstairs in the middle of this summer. The entire on-ice product is a house of cards that could come down at any point, but they are basically guaranteed a playoff spot given the state of affairs in the Western Conference and specifically the Pacific Division. What a competitive league!

2018-2019

43-32-7 93PTS, 3rd in Pacific
3.00 GF/G (13th), 2.78 GA/G (10th), +19 GD
54.36% CF (3rd), 54.66% xGF (3rd)
16.7% PP (24th), 80.8% PK (14th)

Goaltending: We talk a lot of shit here at the FFUD Offices, and a topic of fixation two years ago was that after a spike in performance in his first year in Vegas sporting a .929 overall save percentage, Marc-Andre Fleury would come crashing back to reality with a .907 the following year. It wasn’t quite that precipitous a drop to the .913 he put up last year (.917 at evens), and with goaltending down league wide that number didn’t look as bad as it would have in years past. But it still was a major contributing factor in the Knights dropping to third in the division after winning it the year prior. Flower will turn 35 in November, and while the general rule is that goalies age a bit slower than skaters, keep in mind that he’s been in the league since he was 19, with multiple deep playoff runs. There are a ton of miles on him, and asking for the 61 starts he gave last year is asking for trouble. Subban The Younger, Malcolm, will resume his role as Fleury’s backup, and he was servicable if not scintillating in 21 starts and a .902 save percentage. Realistically he should be making at least 6 to 8 more starts this coming season, and if he can’t improve a little bit on his .912 at evens, they’ll have to work very hard in spotting him in favorable matchups. Assuming Fleury stays in one piece, which is always a question.

Defensemen: Once again the Vegas blue line managed to not get their skulls caved in while regularly trotting out and giving meaningful minutes to Derek Engelland, but as they have shown over two years, with forwards as fast as they’ve got, they can pretty much blindly fire the puck out of the zone and the wings will track it down. Colin McDonald and his Wisniewski-eque wind-up were cap casualties and sent to Buffalo for nothing, but Nick Schmidt and Shea Theodore remain. Theodore still has all the tools to be an actual #1, but hasn’t quite put it together yet at 24, but he’ll get the top assignments whether he’s ready or not. Blog favorite Nick Schmidt is one of the few Vegas defensemen that can skate himself out of trouble if he needs to, but his problem has been staying healthy, as he’s never put together a full 82 game season. Brayden McNabb is a poor man’s Radko Gudas, and Nick Holden couldn’t find his way in the defensive zone if he were led by sherpas, but having a forward corps as fast as the Knights do will continue to mask a multitude of defensive sins.

Forwards: Even though his goal scoring predictably fell off the table last year, William Karlsson still centered one of the most dynamic lines in hockey with Reilly Smith and Jonathan Marchessault on his wings. The three of them together had a 54% share, and regularly drew top assignments, particularly on the road. Karlsson’s drop from 43 to 24 goals (and a commensurate drop from a 23.2 shooting percentage down to a more human 14.2) allowed the Knights to sidestep one of the bigger RFA deals they may have had to dole out, and were able to give Karlsson a relatively reasonable $5.9 mildo over the max 8 years. Of course, what they saved on that deal, they immediately pissed away in wildly overpaying in extending  pre-deadline acquisition Mark Stone, who was promptly given $9.5 over 8 years. Now make no mistake, Mark Stone is a hell of a player. He drives possession and certainly has finish, and is a large boy at 6’4″ 220. But his two best marks in points per game are 1.06 and .94, which are the last two seasons, neither of which he played 82 games in, and he is also now 27. Even as salaries climb year after year, this is still a big overpayment for a guy who is being paid the same as Nikita Kucherov, who has 228 points in that same time frame. He’ll likely be joined on the second line by Paul Stastny and Max Pacioretty, which sounded a lot more fearsome back in 2012. Patches is looking to put together a rebound season after failing to hit the 30 goal mark for the second year in a row after doing so 6 times in the past. They’ll need to get more out of Alex Tuch than the 20 goals he put up for what they’re paying him, particularly if Pacioretty has indeed aged out of effectiveness. Cody Eakin and Tomas Nosek provide plenty of bottom six speed and nuisance, and Ryan Reaves is still here to bark and fart and get skated around.

Outlook: Once again, the Knights have enough forward depth and the Pacific is bad enough elsewhere that even if Fleury declines further or is hurt, there’s probably enough here to get one of the guaranteed spots in the Pacific. And undoubtedly there will be countless bouquets thrown at the Vegas brain trust for putting together this team if only because hockey journalists like visiting Vegas as much as opposing players do, completely ignoring the cap issues this team will have in perpetuity having now paid all of their inagural roster and losing some players (McDonald, regarded import Nikita Gusev) to do so. It’s probably not enough to come out of the West in June, because the first time took two months of Fleury heroics, but clearly stranger things have happened with this team already.

 

Hockey

Preseason Game #6 – Hawks 2, Bruins 8 – Stanley Cup Finalists Play Minor League Team, Results as Expected

By Rose Rankin 1350 0

Um, yeah, so this game was a thing that happened.

Box Score

–This was never really going to be a game, and indeed it wasn’t. With the Hawks in Europe right now the Rockford Ice Hogs took the ice against the Bruins this afternoon. And it wasn’t a bunch of AHL’ers for Boston—by and large it was the Bruins actual lineup. So essentially we learned that our minor league team is not as good as last season’s Stanley Cup finalists. You’re shocked, right?

–That said, it was still an utter beat down by Boston. Obviously the score tells you that. The fact that there were two hat tricks tells you that (DeBrusk and Pastrnak). The Bruins dominated possession to the tune of 80 CF% in the first, 62 CF% in the second and a measly 48 CF% in the third but by then no one cared and it really didn’t matter. The Bruins just took the puck from the “Hawks” at will. Boston pushed them off the puck in open ice, at either blue line, on the boards, wherever and whenever they wanted it. The Hawks passing was pretty dismal too, which didn’t help, so when Boston wasn’t manhandling them, they were able to intercept bad passes and get possession that way.

–I want to be Adam Boqvist’s #1 fan, but he was practically invisible today. He can get the puck out of his own zone, that much I know. But he got dispossessed or turned it over once he got anywhere near the offensive blue line. This isn’t to say he sucks or even that he’s overrated, but it shows there’s a huge difference between how he looked playing against children earlier in the preseason versus how he looks playing against top-flight teams.

–Philipp Kurashev had a nice goal. The Bruins were clearly not giving a shit by the time they got to the mid-way point of the second, and Kurashev jumped on a puck that dribbled away from the D-men as they were entering the Hawks’ zone. He took it all the way down and had a nice shot bank off Tuukka Rask. So there was that.

–Brad Marchand is still a piece of shit, in case you were wondering. He basically laid on top of Matthew Highmore in the third period and pinned him like a bully doing the “stop hitting yourself” routine. Fuck this guy.

–Oh, and Kris Versteeg still sucks. So we’ll definitely be seeing him with the top club shortly.

Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: Vancouver Canucks

By Sam Fels 1507 0

If the Canucks had a true plan, you’d look at Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Quintin Hughes, and Bo Horvat and think, “Hey, that’s probably the start of something, with a long way to go.” But these are the Canucks, who have surrounded those young stars (stretching in Horvat’s case) with a litany of incomprehensible contracts and decisions, all in the name of not rebuilding. Which means the rebuilding that they’ll be doing anyway is going to take longer. It feels like an entire organization spinning one wheel and wondering why it’s not going anywhere. Let’s get to the heart of it.

2018-2019

35-36-11  81 points (5th in Pacific)

2.67 GF/G (26th)  3.02 GA/G (18th)  -29 GD

48.0 CF% (24th)  45.9 xGF% (28th)

17.1 PP% (22nd)  81.1 PK% (11th)

Goalies: We’ve heard about Thatcher Demko for roughly 17 years now, and it might finally be the time for him to take the Vancouver net so he can be treated to having garbage thrown at him and his every move, thought, and essence debated nonstop in the Vancouver media which has all the subtlety of a hungry and deranged jackal (and about the same IQ). At least he can hold that off until the Canucks play games that matter again, which could be a while. Demko looked all right in a brief cameo of nine games last year, but missed most of the campaign in the AHL with injury, which is kind of his thing.

He’ll have to work hard to unseat Jacob Markstrom, who had a huge second half to the season last year. Well, he had a big February, and ended up with a .912 SV% overall, which was a tick above league average. Markstrom is 29 and headed into unrestricted free agency, so you can expect that or better. But you can also expect that the Canucks desperately want Demko to prove he can take the job on from here out so they don’t have to cut another moronic check to Markstrom, which they probably will anyway given their nature.

Defense: It starts with Quinn Hughes, who will get his first full season in the NHL. He got a brief sniff last year after Michigan had one of their worst seasons in recent memory, which begs the question how could they be that bad if Hughes was so good? Let’s save that one for another time. Hughes promises to be the quick, suave puck-handling d-man the Canucks have never really had, aside from when Alex Edler’s elbows were down, he was healthy, and younger. So never. Edler and his elbows are still here, by god.

But as it is with the Canucks, wherever there is a promising youth there is also a wildly overcompensated, wildly overrated veteran taking too much of the oxygen. BY GAWD, THAT’S TYLER MYERS’S MUSIC! Myers to Van City seemed a fait accompli for years, and it did indeed happen. Apparently the Canucks simply never noticed that Myers sucks to high heaven, as he’s not that offensively skilled and doesn’t play anywhere near to his size and his own zone is the Bermuda Triangle to him. All they noticed was that he was from there.

If you moved Myers out of the way, you certainly could get solid enough play from Troy Stetcher and Chris Tanev (before yet something else falls off of him) to shield Hughes. Jordie Benn was brought in to do more of that, but mostly to glare at people while they’re getting behind him to score. Tanev should be a deadline piece to be sold off, but we keep saying that and it never seems to happen. Anyway, the blue and green clad throng will certainly be in love with Myers as he charges out of position for the 164th time in December to let in yet another forward down on an odd-man. God it’s so beautiful.

Outside shot of Olli Joulevi to somehow scratch out a role. He could have if Myers and Benn weren’t here, but again, these are the Canucks. Logic and reason were beheaded in the town square long ago.

Forwards: You certainly have a great top line for a while with Boeser and Pettersson to anchor it. JT Miller is the kind of player you get when you’re a piece or two away from really competing, not barely scratching to get in a playoff discussion Fine work here. Horvat is a good second center to have when you already have Pettersson. That’s all fine.

But it’s balanced out by still having Loui Eriksson and his confused gape wandering around the ice in some indiscernible pattern. Or Antoinne Roussel doing just about the same, just yappy-ier and stinky-er (because he’s French, y’see). Or at least until the Hawks trade for him because they like that element, and don’t deny that it’s going to happen. Brandon Sutter makes $4M a year. I can’t stress this enough. Michael Ferland will find a home on either of the top two lines and get a fair share of goals, and you won’t remember any of them. After that it’s a big bag of suck and anonymous punters with stupid numbers. It’s actually a good thing that Podzolkin can’t come over for another two years, because the sight of him having to share the ice or lose time to the likes of Jay Beagle would probably send the seven remaining Nucks fans who still care throwing themselves of the Rogers Arena upper deck.

Prediction: Since the Hawks-Canucks rivalry died, it’s been hard to think of the Canucks at all. And it’ll stay that way. Their games are late, they don’t matter, and no one there seems to think they’ll do anything worth mentioning. There’s certainly some young talent to keep an eye on, but you know it’s pretty plain when even those fans don’t have the energy to bitch about conspiracies against them. The Canucks won’t matter until they clear out the dead wood around their promising kids, and even then there’s no guarantee they won’t just shuffle in even deader wood with bigger contracts because they can’t help themselves. Stuck in second gear, miles behind the Flames, Sharks, Knights, and probably tussling with the Yotes to see who can finish outside the playoffs by the least.

Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Cardinals: And Now, You Will Watch This

By Sam Fels 1250 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 82-77   Cardinals 90-69

GAMETIMES: Friday 7:15, Saturday 6:15, Sunday 2:15

TV: WGN Friday, Fox Saturday, ABC 7 Sunday

OUR EXECUTIONER: Viva El Birdos

PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Cardinals Spotlight: The Next One

Two years ago, which seems like an eternity now, the Cubs came into St. Louis in the last week of the season. They put the NL Central to bed in front of their greatest enemy, and then the next night ended the Red Menace’s flickering wildcard hopes even though the game meant nothing to them. Fate can be cruel.

Having ended the Cubs playoff hopes, the Cardinals will likely celebrate taking the NL Central right in front of them and their fans deluded enough to enter the gates for this one. Perhaps an interested or even breathing Cubs team could knock the Cards down to a date with Max Scherzer on the road on Tuesday night, but that is not this Cubs team. It’s also incredibly beat up now, which won’t make for much of an excuse as they watch that celebration.

The Cubs will roll into this one with Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Hendricks, Yu Darvish shelved for the season to protect themselves from themselves. Cole Hamels is only getting a start to try and prove to prospective suitors in the winter he’s not in fact dead. The lineup is going to be utterly hilarious, and you can already hear the Brewers bitching about it from Denver. This is what the Cubs have become, and it does not feel good.

The Cards still have plenty at stake. They need to match whatever the Brewers do in Denver to avoid a 163 and/or wildcard, plain and simple. That’s motive enough you would think. So Dakota Hudson and Adam Wainwright are the first two out of the chute, with Jack Flaherty waiting for a 163, wildcard, or Game 1. It could be any of those. He could even go Sunday if the Cards need it. Considering the lineup the Cubs might put out that day, he could throw a perfect game in 80 pitches.

That’s where it stands. the ultimate humiliation for the Cubs. Who knew it could fall so far in just two seasons? We thought a sea-change had been engineered, and yet here we are forced to watch yet another installment of St. Louis getting one over the Cubs. Perhaps it’s an image that will serve to light a fire under next year’s team, but they’ll need more than that. What is pretty clear is that this is Joe Maddon‘s last series as a Cub manager. Though every fan has been back and forth on what Maddon is and what maybe he should have been, what he definitely was is the most successful manager in the team’s history. It hardly seems like it was only five years ago that his hiring signaled something new about the Cubs, the combination of hope and expectation. If this is how it ends, no matter how you feel, you can’t deny it’s bene a ride.

That article can be written another time, though. And it will.

On a sentimental level, it’s perhaps the last time we’ll see Nicholas Castellanos in a Cubs uniform. There are others who could be doing so for the last time as well. That’s a worry for another time. This is just about getting through it, or pretending it isn’t happening as I’m sure a lot of you will understandably opt for. Some pains are too great to endure first hand. Just knowing it’s happening is enough.

 

Baseball

Cardinals Spotlight: The Next One

By Sam Fels 1441 0

Perhaps it all started with David Eckstein, who wasn’t even really the Cardinals go-hard that always seemed to play above his head but infatuated Cardinals Nation anyway (and they’re always white. So, so white). Eckstein came from somewhere else, of course. But there’s always one Cardinal who you just know is going to annoy the piss out of you for a decade because they’re just so…Cardinal.

Oh there have been failed attempts. Skip Schumaker. Brendan Ryan was actually cloned from Eckstein but never really worked out. Colby Rasmus was going to be the outfield version until he bitched his way out of town. They even imported Ryan Theriot to be that guy. There was a time when it was feared Daniel Descalso would be that (and he ended up annoying the piss out of us anyway). Randal Grichuk or Stephen Piscotty or Peter Bourjos definitely had chances which they never really took. So we guess it’s been a while since the Cards have had that squeaky clean, try-harder-than-you piss-ant that their fans hold up as all that’s good and right about baseball and why they’re just better than you because they recognize it and you don’t. Usually it’s right alongside a minority actually doing the work, but we’ll leave that this time. Sadly, this year it’s worked.

We give you Tommy Edman.

It’s always a bad sign when they have a y at the end of their name, just to more greatly portray their down-home-ness. Go by Tom, you’re a fucking adult, dude. Or supposed to be.

Anyway, Edman came up in July and all he’s done is hit, field, and run exceptionally. He’s been worth nearly three WAR in barely half of a season, and at 24 he’s going to be the rash in our ass for a long while it seems.

Is he a product of the Titleist baseballs? Yeah, a bit. Edman had never slugged much over .400 at any level in the minors until getting to AAA this year, where of course they’re setting all kinds of records for homers and power. Suddenly he was slugging .513 in Memphis when he’d never managed over .403 before. That’s continued in the Majors, where he’s got 11 homers in 89 games after hitting seven all of last year in AA and AAA.

Yeah, Edman hits the ball pretty hard, with a near 25% line-drive rate and a 40+% hard-contact rate. Whatever. This shouldn’t be happening and fuck him.

Still, the dude knocked Matt Carpenter out of the starting lineup, and Carpenter had been the Cardinals’ most consistent hitter for years, doing whatever they needed. That’s no small feat. And we can’t take Edman’s fielding and speed away from him, and they’re not going to go anywhere even if the baseball returns to the land of normal physics soon. Because of that speed, Edman is always going to run a high BABIP as he beats out infield singles more than most. Because of course this guy for the Cardinals has to beat out infield singles. It’s like a goddamn law.

If they aren’t already, the stands of Busch are going to be littered with Edman jerseys soon. There will be shots and shots of home-schooled children (if they even get that) in Edman shirseys while their parents tell them about how Edman plays the game the right way as they wait for his autograph. You can see it now in your head. You know it to be true. He’s going to get some sort of game-winning hit in the playoffs too, probably off his knuckles that has no business landing in the outfield unscathed as you go reach for your revolver. It’s going to happen, accept it now.

With Edman, DeJohn, Wong, and Goldschmidt, the Cards infield seems cemented for a long while now. You know the targets, you know the opposition, so you might as well plan for the “Edman-is-better-than-Baez” debates now. They’re coming, you can’t stop them. What it will mean is that Edman isn’t nearly as fun as Baez, and that’s why they’ll say he’s better. Better fundamentals. Respects the game more. Doesn’t need attention. Just wants to win. You know what they’ll really be saying.

You can script it out from here.

Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: San Jose Sharks

By Sam Fels 1550 0

It’s not often a team loses its captain and its leading goal-scorer and is still considered among the conference favorites. But such is life in the West where no one has really jumped forward aside from the Colorado Avalanche. The San Jose Sharks return Erik Karlsson, which if he can remain upright for even 60 games and more importantly the playoffs, is about half the battle in itself. While Joe Pavelski may be gone, they still return a host of nifty forwards who can fill the net on at least three lines. Brent Burns might be overrated by a factor of 12, and losing Justin Braun may turn out to be nearly as big as Pavelski. Still, this team never felt like it clicked for very long last year and ended up with 101 points and in the conference final (WHERE THEY FAILED US ALL MISERABLY AND SHALL NEVER BE FORGIVEN). Can they do it again?

2018-2019

46-27-9  101 points (2nd in Pacific, lost in conference final)

3.52 GF/G (2nd)  3.15 GA/G (21st)  +31 GD

54.9 CF% (1st)  54.3 xGF% (4th)

23.6 PP% (6th)  80.8 PK% (15th)

Goalies: The only reason the Sharks didn’t end up with 110 or more points last season was their goaltending. Martin Jones was simply awful, Aaron Dell wasn’t any better, and the Sharks had to overcome it most nights. And most nights they did. Doug Wilson has bet that Martin Jones simply can’t be that bad again. And with good reason.

In the three seasons as Sharks starter before that, Jones never had a SV% below .912. That’s the thing with the Sharks, they don’t need Carey Price back there. They don’t need a Vezina finalist. They just need league average. Jones couldn’t even manage that in the playoffs and they still got to the conference final. Jone will turn 30 during the season, so it’s hard to imagine last season was the begin of age-related decline. It feels like a very weird and ugly outlier, and the Sharks need to hope so. Dell isn’t going to ride in like Mighty Mouse if Jones is coughing up his esophagus again, which would mean Wilson would either have to look for answer at the deadline or close his eyes, clinch a towel between his teeth, and hope his team can plow ahead dragging Jones along.

The Sharks always have the puck as well, giving up the least amount of attempts last season and in the top half in expected goals against. The job is just about as easy as it can be for a goalie. And they merely need to pass on a pass/fail course. Do that, and the Sharks can take this division.

Defense: That doesn’t mean they’re without questions. The first is will Erik Karlsson ever finish a season healthy? His groin having all the gremlins doomed them in the playoffs (NEVER FORGIVEN), and he missed large chunks of the season. He hasn’t managed a full slate of games in four seasons. They’re nowhere without him, so expect him to get a regular slate of games off to try and preserve him for April and May. When he’s on the ice he still dominates, as his metrics were seven or eight points ahead of the Sharks as a whole, who again, were one of the best possession teams in the league. He’s still otherworldly when on song.

After that though…Mar-Edouard Vlasic loses his main defensive running buddy in Braun and there isn’t an obvious candidate to take the hard shifts with him or to cover for whichever of Burns or Karlsson Pickels doesn’t. Brendon Dillon is a post. Tim Heed and Dalton Prout are seat-fillers at best. Jacob Middleton is a kid that will get a look, but coach Peter DeBoer famously hates any young d-man. One outside candidate is rookie Mario Ferraro, but he’ll also have DeBoer to overcome.

Burns was completely exposed as a runway in the playoffs last year, and there’s no reason that won’t be true this year. He’ll pile up a ton of points again, which will be close to empty calories. This unit could use some buffeting at the deadline too, because Burns can’t really be trusted with anything than a third-pairing yahoo deep in the playoffs.

Forwards: Losing Pavelski is a ballsy call. This is still a team that features Logan Couture, Timo Meier, Tomas Hertl, and Evander Kane. It shouldn’t hurt for goals, it just might not have a wealth of them as it did before. Kevin Lebanc stepping up into a top-six role would help the cause, and maybe they think he’s ready for that. Joe Thornton is back for another go-around, and while he can still make a play here and there his days of being a genuine top-two center on a team are gone. Luckily, Couture and Hertl don’t require him to do that. There are enough foot soldiers to fill out the bottom six without standing out. But the Sharks always seemingly round out their bottom six with pieces from their system.

Prediction: It doesn’t feel like the doomsday machine they could have been last year but fell short of. The loss of Pavelski and Braun will be somewhat canceled out if Martin Jones can escape from whatever pod person took over his body last year, but not entirely. They look short a top four d-man and maybe one forward.

But there’s more than enough here to win the division and conference. The Flames haven’t gotten away from them, and whether the Knights want to admit it or not they have the same questions in net and on their blue line. Another 105-110 points seem on offer if Karlsson can manage 60-65 games or more. The bet is that Couture and Hertl at center can take some wingers with them even if they’re not Pavelski. Perhaps. But nothing the Sharks do will be judged until they get into April again. They could be in any kind of shape by then.

Football

Bears Week 4 Preview – Minnesota at Chicago: Spiderman Pointing at Spiderman

By Wes French 1824 0

vs.

 

Records: MIN 2-1 at CHI 2-1

TV: 3:25 pm – CBS

Radio: WBBM 780 AM/105.9 FM

All I’ve heard in my head this week is that goddamned horn: Dailynorseman.com

Another week, another seemingly must-win game for the Chicago Bears. Okay, maybe not MUST win, but a home date with a division rival and staring at either a share of the division lead or 4th place and an 0-2 division start. Call it what you want, but this one is big. It’s also about as close to a look in the mirror as this team gets.

Minnesota and Chicago come in with identical records, albeit early in the season, but the similarities are pretty striking:

  • Strong, steady defenses with a core that’s played together for years. Tops in the league.
  • Above average offensive lines that also have continuity.
  • Many offensive weapons, yet underachieving/lackluster QB play holds them back.
  • Both can’t conquer Aaron Rodgers, even with his bullshit supporting cast.

The starts to this season aren’t identical, but both sides have losses to Green Bay that were very winnable and one victory over terrible teams (OAK and WSH). Minnesota can boast a complete game in their victory at home over Oakland, while Chicago had some nervy moments late in their two score road victory in Washington. So what else can we glean from the early season picture? Kirk Cousins might be something Mitchell Trubisky strives to be, which honestly sucks a whole lot.

The Vikings have Dalvin Cook, though, and that’s helped to shield Cousins a bit thus far in 2019. Cook has gone over 100 yards every game so far, something a certain former Vikings stud RB never even achieved. Cook is also leaned on in the passing game when Cousins is missing Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs with regularity. You can expect a bounty of touches for Cook on Sunday as the Vikings look to protect Cousins from a scary but banged up Bears pass rush and ball-hawking secondary. It’s been a very successful formula through three weeks and there won’t be much variation in Week 4. Here it is, Khalil Mack. Come stop us.

Chicago will look to keep building on the momentum of the last two weeks and the gains on the offensive side of the ball, but that’s going to be tough sledding against the Minnesota defense. Matt Nagy has shown that he can definitely coach this team up and work through the problems of the Week 1 debacle, and he’ll need to show even more progress to carry a three-game winning streak into the London trip. The plays are there to be made, and a lot will come down to whether or not Trubisky can hit the wide open receivers his head coach sets him up with. The Vikings will pressure Mitch all afternoon, so getting another quick, rhythm-building start will be paramount to how the offense goes. If they’re stalled and struggling early, this one will be over pretty quickly. Falling behind by multiple scores against a league league leading defense is a test this team hasn’t encountered so far in 2019, and it’s not one I’m sure Nagy and the Bears can come back from.

The biggest key will likely be to further establish the running game and backfield assignments. This new look group has mostly been a work in progress through three weeks, with rookie David Montgomery gaining touches each week and distancing himself from Tarik Cohen, Cordarrelle Patterson and Mike Davis. Speaking of Davis, where the hell has he been? Getting Davis and COhen more involved will help to confuse defenders and opposing coaches, so ideally we’ll see more of that diamond formation but with different RBs in each role so as to better disguise identical plays.

We’re going to learn a lot about this Bears team in Week 4; whether they can continue to adjust and create an offensive identity, whether they can game plan for such a standout offensive performer like Cook, whether they can counterpunch if the early game plan stalls a la Week 1. The progress is beginning to look encouraging, and a win would be another massive boost for a team with playoff expectations. Nagy and Trubisky need to embrace this moment and use it to define Chicago’s 2019.

Prediction: Bears 17 – Vikings 15