Brad Biggs 10-Thoughts after the news conference. It's a good read but a sad read. Basically they blew a bunch of smoke up the fan's butts, or tried to. I was thinking of that old saying about pissing on someone and then trying to tell them it was rain.
It's not the 8-8 record that depresses fans. Give them more credit than that. It's just "more of the same" mediocre crap we've endured for so many years as Bears fans. You just don't have that gut feeling the team has the people in place to build a great team and win a super bowl. Ownership, Ted Phillips, GM, HC and even the roster don't inspire a feeling of being at the level needed to overcome Green Bay as the lead dog in the division, make deep playoff runs & win super bowl(s). No. It feels like an 8 win team that will sometimes back in to the playoffs and promptly be 1-and-done. That's the vibe I get.
Any way here's the link to the article.
LINK The Chicago Bears lost the news conference — and it was a blowout. Brad Biggs’ 10 thoughts after the team’s brass addressed the franchise’s future.
If you think they didn’t have a prayer Sunday in the wild-card-round playoff game, in which they were a 10-point underdogs against the New Orleans Saints, these odds were worse. The Bears were a five-touchdown underdog to pull off the upset Wednesday morning, so it should come as no surprise they were blown out.
The fan base has been out for blood since things deteriorated early in the 2019 season, and calls for change only amplified as the team stumbled to the finish line this season, losing eight of its final 11 games after a 5-1 start.
It sounds like Ted Phillips tried to give an inspiring speech to the fan base:
“The popular opinion is to make a change because we hit adversity,” Phillips said. “I get it. But holding people accountable is much more than just starting over. Other teams looking for new football leadership, they point to the ability to overcome adversity, the need to adapt to challenges, the need to have a collaborative working environment between the head coach and the general manager. We have that strong foundation in place. Not all the decisions may be the right ones, but when you can collaborate and trust each other, and you have the ability to challenge each other and come out united, you stand a better chance to make more right decisions than wrong ones. Those are the strong leadership skills that both Ryan and Matt possess."
Fans were looking for the Bears to provide hope Wednesday, but that wasn’t going to happen. Hope doesn’t arrive in the form of words, statements or guarantees. What would a stirring speech from McCaskey ripping into the team for a poor second half or condemning the team’s quarterback play accomplish? Nothing. Hope can arrive in the form of staff changes that coach Matt Nagy makes, and then it will have to be delivered in the form of personnel moves and coaching of the players. That’s the Bears’ only way out of this middle ground.
I believe if the Arizona Cardinals had defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Week 17 — which would have meant the Bears missed the playoffs — that general manager Ryan Pace and quite possibly Nagy would have been fired a day or two later. I don’t think McCaskey, who is the one in control, provided Pace and Nagy a pass because the team reached the playoffs. To me, a bigger factor is the Bears would have been a week late to the process after participating in the wild-card round. They would have been behind in an offseason with a high level of turnover when it comes to general manager jobs, which are beginning to fill up with the Denver Broncos on Wednesday hiring former Bears pro and college scout George Paton . The Bears met Monday and again Tuesday, and whatever Nagy and Pace told McCaskey and Phillips — the four men were super short on details in an 85-minute news conference — resonated.
It sounds like Ted Phillips tried to give an inspiring speech to the fan base:
“The popular opinion is to make a change because we hit adversity,” Phillips said. “I get it. But holding people accountable is much more than just starting over. Other teams looking for new football leadership, they point to the ability to overcome adversity, the need to adapt to challenges, the need to have a collaborative working environment between the head coach and the general manager. We have that strong foundation in place. Not all the decisions may be the right ones, but when you can collaborate and trust each other, and you have the ability to challenge each other and come out united, you stand a better chance to make more right decisions than wrong ones. Those are the strong leadership skills that both Ryan and Matt possess."
Fans were looking for the Bears to provide hope Wednesday, but that wasn’t going to happen. Hope doesn’t arrive in the form of words, statements or guarantees. What would a stirring speech from McCaskey ripping into the team for a poor second half or condemning the team’s quarterback play accomplish? Nothing. Hope can arrive in the form of staff changes that coach Matt Nagy makes, and then it will have to be delivered in the form of personnel moves and coaching of the players. That’s the Bears’ only way out of this middle ground.
I believe if the Arizona Cardinals had defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Week 17 — which would have meant the Bears missed the playoffs — that general manager Ryan Pace and quite possibly Nagy would have been fired a day or two later. I don’t think McCaskey, who is the one in control, provided Pace and Nagy a pass because the team reached the playoffs. To me, a bigger factor is the Bears would have been a week late to the process after participating in the wild-card round. They would have been behind in an offseason with a high level of turnover when it comes to general manager jobs, which are beginning to fill up with the Denver Broncos on Wednesday hiring former Bears pro and college scout George Paton . The Bears met Monday and again Tuesday, and whatever Nagy and Pace told McCaskey and Phillips — the four men were super short on details in an 85-minute news conference — resonated.
Translation from Biggs' article:
Pace and Nagy barely survived, only because Arizona lost week 17, not because of what the team actually did.
Pace and Nagy both have 2 years left on their contracts, which means 2021 is a "hot seat" season
McCaskey in effect just kicked the can down the road 1 year to save himself some coin. Which only delays the inevitable rebuild by a year.
Pace jacked up the Robinson situation and now will end up paying the piper as predicted
The biggest problem is: we have no QB and there's no easy answers to that problem
It sounds like Ted Phillips tried to give an inspiring speech to the fan base:
“The popular opinion is to make a change because we hit adversity,” Phillips said. “I get it. But holding people accountable is much more than just starting over. Other teams looking for new football leadership, they point to the ability to overcome adversity, the need to adapt to challenges, the need to have a collaborative working environment between the head coach and the general manager. We have that strong foundation in place. Not all the decisions may be the right ones, but when you can collaborate and trust each other, and you have the ability to challenge each other and come out united, you stand a better chance to make more right decisions than wrong ones. Those are the strong leadership skills that both Ryan and Matt possess."
Translation from Biggs' article:
Pace and Nagy barely survived, only because Arizona lost week 17, not because of what the team actually did.
Pace and Nagy both have 2 years left on their contracts, which means 2021 is a "hot seat" season
McCaskey in effect just kicked the can down the road 1 year to save himself some coin. Which only delays the inevitable rebuild by a year.
Pace jacked up the Robinson situation and now will end up paying the piper as predicted
The biggest problem is: we have no QB and there's no easy answers to that problem
We still have no QB
30 years and.....still no QB
Did I mention we have no QB?
My take on it is simply your 3rd point. They KNOW the team is going to need a new GM/HC and a better roster including QB. But they chose to not begin fixing anything substantive until 2022. This coming season is just a filler. The fans will get another season with ~8 wins. Time really doesn't matter to the McCaskeys that much. Seriously. It will generate the revenue this year for the family (it will) and the fans will still be here in 2022. They may toss the fans a bone by drafting a long-shot QB so we have something to talk about after the draft. But there is zero chance the QB position gets impacted by that move in 2021 because the guy won't be starting now (and maybe never).
I've said this in a number of threads today. I'm not angry over all of this. I'm not even disappointed. It's just another year with the Bears. None of this surprises me. The Packers fans must be thrilled. We are incapable of escaping mediocrity here. I mean. That's just the state of the franchise for most of the past 30 years or so. It's how we roll. But we should get 8 wins... and it will be fun like it was last season when we beat teams like the Lions. I did enjoy a few of those last games where we looked pretty good against the weak teams. Maybe we even back into the playoffs again with an 8 win season as we did this year and we can brag about being a "playoff team" but LOL, that really doesn't trip my trigger with the one-and-done thing. But no biggie. Life goes on.
I missed the press conference, but from reading the articles it must have been a hum-dinger dud. It also looks like the McCaskeys absolutely worship Ted Phillips. No way that guy is EVER getting fired here. Never happening. The McCaskeys LOVE Phillips.
LINK Who knew the Bears’ worst loss of the 2020 campaign would come three days after the season ended?
Wednesday’s Zoom press conferences – particularly the one that included chairman George McCaskey and president Ted Phillips – sent all the wrong messages to a fan base that is fed up with mediocrity.
McCaskey and Phillips had one goal to accomplish Wednesday: Send a message to Bears fans that they can be trusted to fix what is broken. They failed miserably...
... And this was just moments after McCaskey praised Phillips by saying, “The leadership that Ted Phillips has displayed during the pandemic has been extraordinary. It is yet another example of why our family has so much faith in him as the Bears’ president and CEO.”
Guess what? The fans don’t. The Bears have made the playoffs six times in Phillips’ 22-year run as team president. They haven’t won a playoff game in a decade.
Only the Bears could find a way to turn a six-game losing streak into a positive.
Including the playoffs, the Bears have gone 42-56 under Pace’s watch since 2015. The last three seasons have included a 28-22 run with Nagy as coach. But an impressive and truly enjoyable 12-4 season in 2018 was followed by consecutive 8-8 campaigns that have confirmed to the rest of the football world just how far away from championship contention the Bears truly are.
Somehow, McCaskey and Phillips don’t see it that way. They dished out self-incriminating sound bites for sports talk radio on Wednesday as if they were distributing Halloween candy. The day’s lack-of-true-awareness award went to Phillips’ big-picture assessment of his team.
“Have we gotten the quarterback situation completely right? No,” he said. “Have we won enough games? No. Everything else is there.”
There was an immediate earthquake warning in Cook and Lake Counties due to the force with which so many jaws hit the floor.
We don't have the balls to take decisive action so we are gonna kick the can down the road for a year to save ownership some money. Then, after a wasted 2021 in which the team will win 5 or 6 games and again get blown out by Green Bay twice, we will grudgingly and belatedly start the rebuild that could have been started now. We don't really care....as long as we can get butts in the seats again soon.
Which means the Bears, barring a miracle, won't be in a position to compete until at least 2024.