Couch: Bears Are Going To The Super LALALALALA I'm Not Listening

You didn’t see that, Chicago. You didn’t. It didn’t happen. Mitch Trubisky did not play like a Hall of Fame quarterback. He was not better than Deshaun Watson. The Bears’ defense did not sack Watson six times, force a turnover and get a safety.

The Chicago Bears did not beat Houston 36-7, and CBS did not keep showing the Bears as a team In The Hunt for the playoffs.

Please, can we just pretend that none of that happened, that the Bears weren’t great Sunday? It’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to them. Here’s to hoping the Bears' owners, the descendants of George Halas and the McCaskey family were napping at the time. There is a 50-50 chance.

The Bears can’t even lose right.

Everything was in perfect position. Trubisky was going to be let go at the end of the season. Coach Matt Nagy was going to be dumped. General manager Ryan Pace was, too. Maybe even president Ted Phillips, though I doubt that one. When he completed a stadium deal years ago to keep the billionaire family awash in everyone’s tax dollars, he became an honorary Halas.

Leave it to the Bears to start 5-1, then blow the season, and then, maybe, blow the teardown afterward. They ruined a good year early and now could very well ruin a bad year late.

One good game does not make up for the other six years of Pace’s time. We cannot take three or four more years of Trubisky, Nagy, Pace.

You didn’t see it, Chicago. Pace is the guy who traded up to take Trubisky second in the draft, ahead of Patrick Mahomes and Watson. Nagy is the guy who didn’t develop Trubisky. And Trubisky is, well, Trubisky. I’m not really sure what Phillips does anymore, other than sharpen pencils and put things in spreadsheets, but he’s the closest thing to a Halas or McCaskey who can be fired.

The Bears ended a six-game losing streak and are now 6-7, one game behind Arizona for the final playoff spot with three games to go. Is it possible that the Bears can sneak into the playoffs, lose by 40 in the first round and then save everyone’s jobs? Yes, it is. And that would add about three more years toward actually building toward a Super Bowl.

Besides, the new trend in the NFL is to fire coaches and GMs as soon as possible. The Bears are never burdened by modern football, though. On Sunday, they wore uniforms from the 1930s.

Put your fingers in your ears, Chicago. Close your eyes and yell “LALALALALA’’ while I write this next sentence.

Sunday’s quarterback ratings: Mahomes 91.9, Watson 101.9, Trubisky 126.7.

I didn’t write that. You didn’t read it. 

On a human level, it was nice seeing Trubisky beat Watson. They were the buildup before the game. Back in 2017, the Bears bypassed Watson for Trubisky, and some wondered whether Watson felt some need for revenge for that. Personally, I think he should be grateful. Trubisky, meanwhile, has had to pay for four seasons for the crime of being taken above Mahomes and Watson, as if it were the fault of a mediocre athlete that some idiot franchise paid him to be a superstar. If the Bears wanted to give me $29 million to quarterback the team, I’d do it, too.

And I can’t read a defense, either.

This is Trubisky’s fourth season, and it took until Sunday for Nagy to finally match his offense to the talent on the field. It has always been the players’ fault for not executing Nagy’s genius plays.

Nagy was supposed to be an offensive genius, but all this time he kept trying to force Trubisky to fit into his ideas, not the other way around.

On Sunday, finally, he used Trubisky the only way Trubisky can work, getting him out of the pocket, handing off or throwing short screen passes. Give Trubisky 2 seconds to actually think, and you’ve ruined it.

Last week in the embarrassing loss to Detroit, Nagy had Trubisky stand in the pocket in a crucial moment. Trubisky fumbled.

What Nagy did Sunday was not the revelation of a genius. Pretty much all of Chicago had been screaming at Nagy to do this for maybe two years. It’s one thing to make it work against a bad team in a blowout. But it’s hard to see it working against a good team, and certainly not in crunchtime of a big game. 

Imagine the final game of the year against Green Bay, and Trubisky trying to drive for a last-minute touchdown that gives the Bears that last Wild Card spot. Trubisky drops back, stands in the pocket, runs through his progressions, reads the defense and. . .

Ha! That’ll never happen. Never mind. I won’t write it. You won’t read it.