The Difference…

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By Mark Koruba

My family has had Chicago Bears season tickets since the team was playing football in the ill-fitting(one of the end-zones was too small by quite a bit) Wrigley Field. We have also been frustrated by the team’s play, ownership, management, scouting, drafting, coaching and general ineptitude for the majority of those fifty plus years. All of the aforementioned issues are on grand display this season.

Let us start with ownership. Virginia McCaskey knows less about football than my dog. The NFL tries to portray her as the Grand Dame of the league when she has always been a figurehead, nothing more. She initially passed responsibility for operating the team to her son Michael McCaskey after her father, George Halas, passed away. Mike waited three years to do anything of import, the Bears won a title in 85, he gutted management and scouting and named himself GM, kind of. The Bears had no GM for fifteen seasons, but Lil’ Mikey never took the blame for anything, he passed that along to his underlings. One of those underlings is team president Ted Phillips, a man that could ruin a wet dream. Phillips still holds his position even after Mikey was kicked upstairs to serve as chairman after several highly publicized screwups. The Bears remained without a true GM for another three seasons.

After an exhaustive search that included a head hunting firm, the Bears settled on Jerry Angelo, former director of player personnel for the Tampa Bay Bucs, a team in the Bears division, yet they somehow missed him for the 14 seasons he spent with the Buccaneers. Jerry was a spectacular assessor of talent if you played defense. In eleven drafts Jerry never chose an offensive player that made two pro bowls while with the Bears. However, he did bring in as first round picks the likes of Rex “F##k it, I’m Goin’ Deep” Grossman, Cedric “I’m Too Good for This Team” Benson and David “No One Remembers Me” Terrell. Angelo also traded two firsts, a third and a starting NFL QB for “Smoking'” Jay Cutler, a boy from Santa Claus, In. who behaved like Jeff George’s illegitimate brother that had been kicked in the head by a vicious rogue mule.

After Jerry was let go in 2011, the GM position was given to Phil Emery a Bears scout in the South-Eastern part of the country. Phil’s drafts were borderline masochistic, as were his coaching choices. He did not last long, being replaced by former New Orleans Saints scout/player personnel guy Ryan Pace.

Pace was saddled with John Fox, a decent but not great coach, who had a few more years on his contract The McCaskey’s don’t like to pay coaches to go home and sit on their couches, so Fox remained with the Bears for two more seasons. In Fox’s last season with the club Pace traded up, only he knows why, to draft Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick Fox wanted a different QB, Mahomes and Watson were still on the board, but he was ignored. Every analyst on the planet, and some in the Crab Nebula, saw Mitch as a huge reach and believed trading up one spot for him with a team that didn’t need a QB was about as asinine as it gets. History has proven those analysts to be correct, as Mahomes and Watson are the #1 and #2, respectively, qualified QB’s in quarterback rating of all time. Mitch isn’t even in the ballpark parking lot on that list, he’s driving by on Lake Shore Drive in a 1962 VW Beetle carrying a clipboard. Pace should be let go at season’s end, but he is under contract, and as previously stated, the McCaskey’s do not like to “waste” money.

The Bears are on a roll, they have not hired an experienced GM since George Halas died on Halloween in 1983. Enough with the tricks already, bears fans deserve some treats.

I will get into the Bears coaching blunders at a later date. Also, I am open to any and all commentary, from knowledgeable fans and blockheads alike.

The Wallflowers are a decent rock band fronted by Jacob Dylan, son of Bob. The band has gone through a few changes, with Dylan being the sole remaining member of the original band. I wish him luck, but there is not much to discuss in this regard.

The Wallflowers – The Difference

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