By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes
The prism of snagging a COVIDY playoff spot doesn’t change the reality of the Bears’ performance. Plus: Breaking Up With Jed Hoyer; Bulls No Longer Totally Sucking; Jonathan Toews’ Mystery Illness; Evanston vs. Champaign; Citrus Pat; and Red Stars Blockbuster.
–
SHOW NOTES
* 337.
* Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock.
* Rhodes: “It doesn’t mean anything! They’re exactly what you see in front of you.”
* Lieser, Sun-Times: Bears Backing Into Playoffs Likely Means Pace, Nagy, Trubisky Stay Despite Disarray.
If the Bears were looking for a reason to keep the core of their team intact by bringing back coach Matt Nagy, general manager Ryan Pace and quarterback Mitch Trubisky, they can probably talk themselves into this semi-competitive loss to the Packers being the justification.
They shouldn’t.
The Bears are on an endless road to nowhere, and hanging with the Packers into the fourth quarter before losing 35-16 is hardly a counterpoint to that assessment. They’re in the playoffs, though, because the Cardinals lost to the Rams. That barely qualifies as something to celebrate.
It all but assures Pace and Nagy of keeping their jobs despite how disheveled this team looked on paper (Pace) and on the field (Nagy) throughout the season. And if those two are back, bet on Trubisky joining them.
The Bears finished 8-8 for the second season in a row, and whether they made the playoffs is arbitrary. Stumbling into the postseason because of a lucky break in a game 2,000 miles away – and even then, only because the NFL added a seventh playoff spot in each conference this season – doesn’t somehow make this 8-8 more impressive than meandering to 8-8 last season.
It’ll be confusing inside Halas Hall to see someone ripping an 8-8 season, because that generally passes for acceptable. It’s the second-best record they’ve had in Pace’s seven seasons running the team. They’re now 42-54 under his watch and have scored the fourth-fewest points in the league during that span.
* Absolute Assassin.
Absolute assassin @packers @GBPdaily pic.twitter.com/XjvjhYUsQl
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) January 3, 2021
* via Brad Biggs’ 10 Thoughts:
“They were just giving us looks that were more advantageous to go to Mooney than to A-Rob,” Mitch Trubisky said.
* ibid.:
“That was a situation where they had a better call on than we did and they executed better than we did,” Trubisky said.
* Rhodes: Eddie Jackson misses Adrian Amos.
* Bad teams overvalue high draft picks:
The Cleveland @Browns have made the playoffs for the first time since 2002 after adopting the behavioral economics strategy of trading top draft picks for lower and future picks following the advice of @R_Thaler–@bcmassey as I wrote in the @WSJ 2 years ago https://t.co/mGi8uWdE4G
— Jon Hartley (@Jon_Hartley_) January 3, 2021
–
53:17: Breaking Up With Jed Hoyer.
In some ways (well, one) I came to like Jed more than Theo, & that way was how candid he really was compared to Theo’s vaunted but totally fake “transparency,” which really amounted to nothing more than carefully sculpted corpospeak. Now Jed has lost his goodwill with me. #Cubs https://t.co/VeSDYtcNQ1
— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) December 30, 2020
* “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” – Hunter S. Thompson.
–
1:07:54: Bulls No Longer Totally Sucking.
* Zach LaVine, Coby White Combine For 62 Points As Bulls Drop Dallas.
–
1:11:01: Jonathan Toews’ Mystery Illness.
* ‘Drained and lethargic.’
–
1:15:28: Evanston vs. Champaign.
* No. 19 Northwestern about to become No. Nothing.
* Illinois Now No. 4.
–
1:18:30: Citrus Pat.
–
1:21:20: Red Stars Blockbuster.
–
STOPPAGE: 27:59
–
For archives and other Beachwood shows, see The Beachwood Radio Network.
–
Comments welcome.
Posted on January 4, 2021