I had a particularly awesome Uber driver this summer.
As a dedicated Chicago sports fan, he serenaded me with stories of Derrick Rose autographs and Devin Hester kick returns during the excruciatingly slow journey to O’Hare down I-90. From apartment to airport, he shared stories of his childhood heroes, making sure to compare the glory days to the current woes of the 2020s, especially when it came to his beloved Bears.
As I absorbed the asphalt metropolis around me, I realized an absolute truth about the city I now call home: someone in one of the cars next to us was talking about the Bears. Someone in the building behind me was talking about the Bears. Heck, someone taking a nap in that same building was probably dreaming about the Bears.
And why wouldn’t they? There’s nothing like the history, the heroes, the fandom, but these memories of the Monsters of the Midway also breed expectations. The standard of success dates back to 1921, when George Halas began a coaching run that arguably made the Bears the first NFL powerhouse.
When the Bears lost an ugly game to the Indianapolis Colts Sunday, Sept. 22, Chicago sports media reacted accordingly. Dan Bernstein from 670 The Score wrote an article shortly after the loss titled, “Disastrous Bears offense is careening into crisis.” Yikes.
The main criticism for this game was new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron’s play calling, with the Sun-Times’ Rick Morrissey titling his article, “A high school play call by offensive coordinator Shane Waldron leads to a Bears loss to the Colts.”
Another radio personality, Craig Carton, said, “You could have the undefeated Justin Fields, with Marvin Harrison Jr. and Joe Alt … I think we can slow our roll for the moment on ‘generational talent,’ ‘best rookie quarterback in football,’” on ESPN’s First Take less than 24 hours after the game ended.
Fields, the former Bears quarterback that was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers in March in favor of the soon-to-be-drafted Caleb Williams, ended the first quarter of the season 19th in Quarterback Rating (QBR), a comprehensive statistic that measures the quarterback’s success on all play types from a scale of 0-100, ahead of coveted quarterbacks such as Aaron Rodgers, Trevor Lawrence and Jared Goff. Williams slots in at 29th over that same span.
Unfortunately for Williams, he has had virtually no help from his offensive line. Another stat, pass rush win rate (PRWR), measures how often an opponent’s defensive line beats that team’s offensive line in the trenches. The Bears have the second-highest PRWR, getting beat 57% of the time by their defenders. The best team in the league in PRWR? The Green Bay Packers, only losing 27% of their pass blocking assignments.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Though Bears fans are weary of these front office mistakes, it’s too early to write off Williams and the future of the team. There’s plenty of positives to take away from the first quarter of the season: Williams’ ability to throw on the run, the Bears’ elite defense and a few big moments from rookie receiver Rome Odunze, to name a few.
The worst thing fans can do is give up early. News flash: rebuilding a team that was dead last in blocking and receiver separation last year isn’t going to be night and day. You just don’t go from that bad to a playoff team after one summer. There are too many opponents the Bears face that have been there before and are past the days of rebuilding and rookie mistakes. It’s too competitive a league to beat experience with flashy, young talent.
Still want to do comparisons? I’ll give you my favorite. Baker Mayfield started his career in “the factory of sadness:” Cleveland, Ohio. His Browns put their entire faith in him as their future franchise quarterback after drafting him first overall in the 2018 NFL Draft. The expectations were high, and though Mayfield showed promise, every mistake was scrutinized, and resentment built between the fanbase and their quarterback. The Browns ended up giving up on him after just four seasons, and he is now playing much better in Tampa Bay than current Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson is playing in Cleveland. Ask any Cleveland fan and they’ll tell you that trade didn’t age well.
Compare Mayfield to the fourth quarterback drafted that same year, Josh Allen. The unproven, untested quarterback that played collegiately in Wyoming went to the Buffalo Bills with almost no pressure, with all the attention on the quarterbacks taken before him. Bills developmental coaches spent years re-tooling Allen’s throwing motion, shifting his throwing power from his back leg to his front. Now, he leads the league in QBR at 82.4, sitting six percentage points ahead of second.
Hopefully, the Bears are doing the right thing: ignoring the expectations. No matter how coveted a prospect is, or how anticipated a draft pick is to start playing, it takes time. My Uber driver gave Williams the entire duration of his rookie contract to figure it out; four years. I think more people should be like my Uber driver: calm down.
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