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Interior, vape filled room of indeterminate location. Could be Hollywood, Bristol, Lake Forest, or an underground bunker in the UP. All we know is that these folks are grizzled, unchiseled, and confident they made something that sizzled. 

Executive Producer: We fucking did it. Magic in a fucking bottle. EVERYONE had to have watched that.

Producer: Finally we caught a team with history and a huge fan base, an intriguing rookie QB, the best WR room in the league, AND they went 4-0 in the preseason!

Studio lackey: Don’t forget the Bueller homage. We struck gold!

EP: Yeah so like I said, we nailed it. Our target demo, white dudes with disposable income between 20 and 50, had to all be glued to it. Can you even imagine a real Bears fan in that demo not watching every second of every episode?

/DOOR FLIES OPEN

What’s up, bitches? Did you know that it’s fucking NOVEMBER, the Chicago Bears are 4-7 (NOTE: I drafted this part on Saturday, was confident Darnold and the Vikes would make it accurate), and not only did I fail to watch ANY of the Bears season of Hard Knocks, I also completely failed to finish a barely started season preview AND blew through the Bears post-UK trip coital bliss bye week update without so much as a scintilla of a post for DFO.  Hell, I’ve barely watched a full football game this season.  But I said I would do this preview months ago, and I’m nothing if not a man of my word.

So let’s ditch the entire conceit I had thought up here and get down to brass tacks.

The Bears are the Bears. Thanks to general suckitude and the generosity of the Carolina Panthers and Lovie Smith, they have positioned themselves with great fucking talent on the field and have been right in almost every game this season.  And yet…

They still suck.  We all know about the horrible ending against the Commanders, but that’s really the taint of the iceberg. The team is on a five game losing streak right now, with each week seeming like a new way to lose in em-bear-assing fashion. Week in and week out, it’s just a little bit of hope, and then eat a big steaming pile of Bearsenscheisse.

Some of it is personnel, but it’s mainly coaching. Simply put, Matt Eberflus is terrible.  His decision-making is terrible. His in-game management is terrible. His explanations of (in and out of game) decision-making are terrible. Everything except his beard makeover is terrible.  He is really good at choking away games, though:

And it’s not like we didn’t know Eberflus sucked last year. He was overmatched on and off the field in his first year as head coach. I knew he wasn’t the answer by how he handled (or didn’t handle) the Chase Claypool debacle.  No matter what you think of the decision to trade Claypool, mysteriously ask him to not be around the team, and/or even to trade him away, this press conference screams “I have no idea what I’m doing and you shouldn’t trust me to wipe my own ass, let alone coach a professional football team”:

Seriously, watch this whole thing (starting at 2:38):

It has only gotten worse since then. He has been the Bears head coach only since 2022, and 13 of his assistant coaches have resigned or been fired, 8 in the last 14 months.  That includes firing this year’s new offensive coordinator already, which was like putting a bandaid on a gaping axe wound. The coaching staff is dysfunctional, the whole organization is dysfunctional, and even those of us that didn’t watch Hard Knocks know ownership group’s views on naughty language is incongruous with the approach and feeling the whole fucking fan base has about how big of a fucking clusterfuck this whole thing is?

Do we know if Caleb Williams is the answer?  No, the jury is still out, but he is leading this team to hang around close games (that they blow like a drunk high schooler with daddy issues). The locker room has already had to deal with some bullshit on that front, but fans and players alike undoubtedly see the flashes of brilliance and despair that it is unlikely the organization will put him in a position to succeed,

As some of us said when they fired offensive coordinator and continued failure Luke Getsy, if you’re going to get rid of the OC and get a new rookie QB with the number one pick….clean fucking house entirely. In fact, it has been over a year since I called for Flus and Getsy to get fired, just after Eberflus gained the ignominious distinction of earning the worst winning percentage of any Bears coach get ever. That should have been a package deal, bet the future on Caleb, and give him a head coach and an OC that will be able to build together for a few years.  Poles and crew didn’t do that, and it is inevitable Eberflus is gone after this year (if not sooner), so your franchise QB will be on his second head coach and second or third offensive coordinator learning a NEW system when he should be taking the leap. I don’t care how talented a QB is coming out of college, he cannot succeed without stability both in terms of personnel and playbook.

Bears fans have seen this movie before, and it stinks.

My gift to you, this Thanksgiving, is the confidence of knowing that the Bears-Lions game won’t be worth watching. So feel free to spend that early window talking to family, or informing your relatives that talking to them is even more painful than watching the Bears continue to pile up fecal matter.

As you may have noticed, Rev is off tonight. Given that he usually proposes a movie as counter programming, I’ll recommend one for your viewing pleasure:

Dogma.

Kevin Smith in his prime, sparing no sacred cows. Carlin, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Salma Hayek, Jason Lee, Chris Rock, Alanis Morisette, this movie is the club jellybones of movies.

Fucking love that flick. Unfortunately, the POS Weinsteins didn’t, and since they retained distribution rights, it isn’t available for streaming anywhere….YET.  Kevin Smith bought it back and will make it happen next year. I own a DVD copy, and theoretically you could watch it on youtube here.

But if you want another recommendation, I also am a big fan of Accepted.

It’s probably a little dated by now but still charming. And I’d watch anything with Diora Baird in it even if it wasn’t funny.

If you would like to ignore my advice, like so so many foolish people, there are some sports on tv as well.

What’s on tonight?

NBA:

Bucks at Heat, 6:30PM DFO time on TNT
Lakers at Suns, 9PM DFO time on TNT

NCAA Basketball:

Men’s Maui invitational semifinal, 5PM DFO time on ESPN

Kansas Men at Duke Men, 8PM DFO time on ESPN

A bunch of men’s and women’s games on ESPNU and ESPN+ and other shit

JV NFL:

Toledo vs Akron, 6PM DFO time on tWWL ESPN2

NHL:

Some shit on ESPN+ and Canadien TV.  Figure it out.