If you’ve never seen the movie, Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray — no, not the Bears’ offensive lineman — do yourself a favor and go watch it. You might be able to relate to it.
Because… here we go again, Bears fans. We’re reliving not the same day, but the same year over and over and over again. We’re witnessing the same failures and afflictions that we’re all too familiar with watching.
The latest misery comes at the hands of the — previously — worst team in football, the New England Patriots, whose own fans have come to expect losses this season as the team tanks for a better draft pick in 2025. The Bears, widely expected to win and given nearly a touchdown edge in the betting market, were pantsed in front of their home crowd to the tune of 19-3.
We fell for it. In Groundhog Day parlance, we went to bed with the hope that we’d wake up and it’d be the start of a brand new day. We got built up with optimism by offseason changes, most notably a new offensive coordinator, a first-overall rookie quarterback, two new high profile wide receivers, and pretty solid additions with a pass-catching tight end and a starting running back.
Surely the Bears’ offense would be good, or at least league average, this season, right?
But what happened? The clock struck 6:00 a.m. and that gosh-forsaken Sonny & Cher song, I Got You Babe, started playing and we were left wanting to smash the alarm clock in pure, unadulterated anger and frustration over reliving the same Bears season over and over and over again.
“There is no way this winter is ever going to end,” Murray says in the movie, which adequately sums up our collective agitation at the perpetual ineptitude of the Bears offense specifically, and at the organization in general.
“It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last [us] for the rest of [our lives].”
I can’t fathom how in the year of our Lord 2024, the Bears still can’t field a good offensive team. What has to be done to make this happen? Why can’t they accumulate enough assets on that side of the ball, and hire a good coordinator who knows how to make his scheme run like a machine?
There was cause for concern on Sunday when an already bad Bears offensive line was made worse by the deactivation of both starting offensive tackles. Immediately, the red flags went up when that injury report was released late last week. Add to that the fact that Ryan Bates was appearing in his first action with the team and suddenly you had a makeshift line that was collecting theater admission tickets to the horror flick showing in the backfield. The Patriots defenders got free passes to enjoy the show.
This offense is in such disarray. Matt Eberflus said in his postgame presser that they would be evaluating all possible changes, and he reiterated that at his Monday afternoon meeting with the media. If ‘Flus were going to be fired — as so many Bears fans had hoped — it would have been done already. So take that option off the table.
What seems like a foregone conclusion — although I could be wrong — is that Shane Waldron might be done as play caller of this offense. And not a moment too soon.
Obviously, don’t expect major changes to the product on the field. The team will be trotting out the same Swiss cheese offensive line with the familiar offensive playbook. You’re not going to change a playbook in the middle of the season even if it were possible to do so.
At the very least, we can hope for some fresh new ideas and game planning from whomever is calling the plays — presumably passing game coordinator Thomas Brown. I would hope it’s a scheme that continues to utilize D’Andre Swift and the run game while also calling for short, quick strikes to get the ball out of Caleb Williams’ hands before he gets squashed by a herd of angry defensive linemen.
It’s sad that we’re only halfway through the season and we’re already checking Tankathon for where the Bears’ draft pick currently resides. And it’s depressing to think that the Bears have been embarrassed in back-to-back weeks and they haven’t even faced their tough divisional opponents yet.
Coming up next are the hated Green Bay Packers who have owned the Bears throughout Matt LaFleur’s tenure as Packers head coach — and even more beyond that. Incoming is FOX’s No. 1 broadcast team where they can give play-by-play details of the Packers thoroughly dismantling this discombobulated mess of a team. And I would half-expect Tom Brady to tell the audience he was only kidding about seriously considering coming to the Bears years ago.
If you have tickets to Sunday’s game, you might as well try to sell those for as much money as you can get.
But if you insist on attending, go ahead and have the brown paper bags at the ready for when the Packers are up 3 touchdowns before halftime and the offensive line is peeling their beleaguered quarterback out of the Soldier Field turf.
