By Jim Coffman
A Chicago sports fan could turn to the Blackhawks on Sunday evening . . . yeah, that was the ticket. And here were the Hawks scoring one, two, three, four goals in the first period!
They gave one up late but still led 4-2 after 20 minutes. That was more goals than the Hawks had scored in most recent games. They were clearly building on the momentum started the night before, when they rallied from a 3-1 deficit in the third period to beat Carolina 4-3 in overtime.
And then the Devils scored four before the end of the second. New Jersey went on to win 7-5.
Anyone have a Cubs trade rumor? Any more reports of White Sox prospects tearing up the, well, the fall leagues are over right? How about winter ball, has that begun?
We are now officially grasping for anything here at Beachwood Sports. But first we have to spend some time with the now 3-6 Bears after their abysmal 23-16 loss to the Packers.
I suppose John Fox has to go after this one. I will say, if they are going to dump him, it would be great if they would go ahead and do it now. Make Dowell Loggains the head coach and we can see for sure whether it is the ultra-conservative Fox forcing his offensive coordinator to deploy a crushingly careful game plan or not.
But beware overly simplistic prescriptions. My overall assessment of the Bears offense on Sunday is as follows:
The offensive line didn’t play well enough, but on several occasions, the quarterback held onto the ball too long. The quarterback held it too long because at least most of the time, the receivers didn’t get open. The receivers didn’t get open but even if they had, the line too frequently didn’t give the signal-caller enough time to find them.
And on and on it could go.
And that wasn’t even the worst part of this game. The worst was the Bears’ defense’s inability to rattle Packer back-up quarterback Brett Hundley in any way shape or form.
And it wasn’t just that Aaron Rodgers was out with a broken collarbone. By early in the third, the Packers were down to their third-string running back. The tight end who had shown the most potential to catch the most passes for the team in the first half of the season, Martellus Bennett, had been released in the middle of the week.
I have no idea what is going on here. Kind of like John Fox, who shouldn’t be the solo fall guy for Ryan Pace’s failures to draft and sign impact players in his three years as general manager, but almost certainly will be. If Fox goes so should Pace but very few people expect that to happen.
In the end, it comes back to the one, true problem yet again – the team is run by legacy owners who have never accomplished anything independently in their privileged lives and have no clue how to build a successful organization.
How long is it until pitchers and catchers report?
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Comments welcome.
Posted on November 13, 2017