I remember way back prior to the 2010 season Mongo had a post where he essentially predicted that the Bears would go either 5-11 or 11-5, there would be no in-between with the team given its construction. Either the defense would return to form and Cutler would rebound from 2009, or it was a team about ready to bottom out with a lame duck coach. 11-5 seemed unfathomable for a lot of us given the disastrous 2009 but we all know we did happen in 2010. Obviously, there are practically zero similarities between the 2018 and 2010 Bears. The 2010 team was chockful of veterans who had played in a Super Bowl, led by an experienced defensive-minded coach, and a QB who had four NFL seasons under his belt. The 2018 Bears are very much the opposite of all of these. Yet I see same binary with the 2018 team as some did in 2010. Either Nagy is an offensive-minded guru who greatly enhances Trubisky's development while being aided by a rising top 10 defense under Fangio, or Nagy (maybe like Juicebox) is in over his head and the defense struggles without a consistent force at edge rusher. I'd like to think that luck falls our way finally and we avoid the major injury bug, given how snakebitten we've been the last 3 years. So far so good on that front. We've also seen worst to first teams nearly every season, the 2017 Rams of course seem to be a team we could most closely resemble. Maybe the Packers good fortune is slowly diminishing after missing the playoffs for the first time this decade. Rodgers missed a lot of time last season, he's not as tough as Favre, and their defense is mediocre. The Lions are never better than 9 wins, and the Vikings won't come close to 13 wins again with Cousins. Do you guys think that the two most likely scenarios are 11-5 or 5-11? If so, which are we closer to? I think we'll get a good grasp of where this team is week 1. Anything other than a blowout loss would mean the arrow is pointing in the right direction. Not that I'm one for moral victories, no fucking way, but it might signal this team is closer to the playoffs than drafting top 10 in 2019.
Maybe I’m just indecisive, but I predict 7-9 to 9-7 for the Bears an awful lot, and I’m leaning towards 7-9. I’m a believer in Fangio, and if the offense is even slightly better that makes the Bears a middle-of-the-road team. If. If...... Sorry, had a Juicebox flashback.
This Mongo dude you speak of... He seems to be a genius. 2010 was also the year the Bears decided to let the Packers into the playoffs by handing them game 16. 14 or 15 years ago, my friend (he lives in boca) bought himself a 911 Twin Turbo manual. He let me drive it. I don't remember what he bought it for, but I want to say it was close to 6 figures. Now, I love driving, and have driven manuals my entire life. But when I got behind the wheel, I was a little intimidated. I took it nice and easy. Slow off the clutch, didn't gun it or pop it. Nice and easy into gear... My friend told me to pull over and followed up by calling me a pussy and to get the fuck out of the drivers seat. He told me that cars like that need to be really driven. He said they're like a race horse. Or an athlete. They need to run, and run fast. You don't trot a race horse through a meadow and you don't drive a performance car like a Ford Taurus. After that, I tore Miami up. I hit over 120 MPH on A1A. I think this team will be very lucky to win 5 games. Based on what I saw this pre-season from the starters, we are not a cohesive team on either side of the ball. And i honestly don't know if we're talented. With that, the truth is there really isn't much tape to work with. Trubisky threw 16 passes this off season. interestingly, he threw more than 3x that last preseason. Remember last year when we finally brought him in and noted how few reps he got in pre-season as to why he started out so mediocre.... But Trubs isn't the only one. The starters in general have gotten less reps this pre-season than last. The "we play 5 pre-season games" excuse is bullshit. Mainly because players who will not even make the team played game 1 and will play game 5. They'll all get more reps than our first or 2nd team. I wonder if Shaheen and Floyd not gotten injured, would we have played our starters last week? If so, then the only thing you can say is Nagy/Pace are acting like scared little pussies. Get them a Ford Taurus. This staff has no fucking clue how to drive a real car. Or maybe they know this team is filled with Ford Taurus'...
I'm going to ignore Mongos reasonable post and instead say....here's the thing. The NFL is wildly up and down year after year. Until the games are played, we can't say for sure that this team is hot garbage. New coaches, new schemes, new talent while retaining Fangio's solid D scheme. Sure we're a bit talent deprived but what team isn't. What will matter is when the lights come on Sunday night at Lambeau, we'll find out if this team has any fire under Nagy. The packers are impressive offensively as always due to the damnable Rodgers, but that defense shouldn't terrify anyone - we don't have Jay Cutler "Jay will throw us the ball" anymore. And yes, I have forgotten 2017, why do you ask? It was a lockout year right, no games played?
You know, this whole post was joking but I just went and looked up the Why Your Team Sucks for this year for the Bears and I can't believe the stuff I HAD forgotten. I won't even link it here in case someone was blissfully sitting in that same area of willful ignorance. The second Packers game....just wow. I apparently not only watched that but probably commented on it here.
