Chicago Sports

Patrick Finley and Jason Lieser break down another amazing Justin Fields performance — and a predictable finish — in Sunday’s loss to the Lions.

New episodes of “Halas Intrigue” will be published regularly with accompanying stories collected on the podcast’s hub page. You can also listen to “Halas Intrigue” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Luminary, Spotify and Stitcher.

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Five people were killed and 20 others wounded in shootings across Chicago over the weekend.

o In the weekend’s first fatal attack, a would-be robber and a clerk who tried to stop the hold-up fatally shot each other Friday night inside a South Shore neighborhood grocery store.

The exchange of gunfire started shortly after 6:20 p.m., when Nicholas Williams walked into the El Barakah Supermarket near 73rd Street and Coles Avenue and showed a handgun, Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said. Williams, 24, shot Ali Hasan, a 63-year-old worker at the store, in the chest and back, authorities said. Hasan, who had a Firearm Owner’s Identification card with a concealed carry license, then pulled a gun from his waistband and fired back, hitting Williams in the chest.

The younger man, who lived in the neighborhood, ran from the store but collapsed about a block away and died, authorities said. Hasan, a Palestinian immigrant who lived in Berwyn, was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

On Saturday, a man died after being shot in Chicago Lawn. The man, believed to be in his 40s, was dropped off about 9 p.m. at Holy Cross Hospital with a gunshot wound to his neck and died a short time later, police said. The shooting occurred in the 6300 block of South Fairfield Avenue, but investigators were not immediately able to obtain additional information from people at the scene. Early Sunday, another man was fatally shot on the Near West Side. Officers were investigating about 2:40 a.m in the 2200 block of West Walnut Street after hearing multiple gunshots in the area. When they arrived, they saw a suspect fire at a man, then get into a gray car and drive off, police said. The man, who was shot in the back, was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A man was shot to death Sunday afternoon in Archer Heights on the Southwest Side. The man, 29, was shot in his arms about 4:15 p.m. in the 4800 block of South Tripp Avenue, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released yet. Less than two hours later, a male was fatally shot in a South Austin drive-by on the West Side. About 6 p.m., the male was on the sidewalk in the 200 block of South Laramie Avenue when he was shot in the face and leg, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, but he died from his injuries, police said. His age wasn’t immediately known.In other shootings, two men were wounded early Saturday on the Lower West Side while standing in the 2300 block of South Damen Avenue about 2:10 a.m., police said. One man, 19, was hit in the leg and hip; the other man, 22, was grazed in the hip. Both were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were listed in good condition.Sunday morning, a 12-year-old girl was shot in the neck while walking in Calumet Heights. The girl was in the 8900 block of South Chicago Avenue when someone in a dark-colored car fired at her. She was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in critical condition.A 17-year-old boy was shot Saturday evening in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. The teen was walking about 6:30 p.m. in the 5300 block of West Harrison Street when he was approached by someone who engaged him in conversation and then fired shots, police said. He was struck in the groin and taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, where he was listed in good condition.A 15-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting Sunday evening in Greater Grand Crossing on the South Side. The teen was in an alley about 6 p.m. in the 4900 block of South Indiana Avenue when he was shot in the right leg, police said. He was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital, where he was listed in good condition, police said.

At least 15 other people were wounded in gun violence across Chicago since Friday evening.

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Bulls rookie Dalen Terry spent the summer before his first NBA season getting work in and playing pickup games wherever he could.

He spent most of his time working out in Los Angeles. Asked whom he spent time working with, Terry responded, ”Everybody.” But there was one specific encounter that stood out among the rest.

”I was playing two-on-two,” Terry said. ”It was me and Kyrie [Irving] against [Kevin Durant] and somebody else. Kyrie was like, ‘You got KD?’ I was like, ‘Dang, all right. Bet.’ ”

Terry said he stole the ball from Durant once before the two-time NBA champion reminded him who was boss.

”There was nothing I could do about it, but he had to guard me, too,” Terry said, laughing.

Terry lit up while telling the story, emphasizing all he wants to do is play basketball. So when he was assigned to the Bulls’ G-League team Thursday, he didn’t perceive it as a demotion as much as an opportunity to get some quality minutes. Terry hasn’t logged more than 10 minutes for the Bulls so far this season.

”It felt good to go against somebody besides the imagination in my head,” Terry said. ”There’s no better way of getting back in game shape than playing some games.”

On Sunday, Terry scored 14 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for the Windy City Bulls in the afternoon, then was recalled to the NBA for the Bulls’ game against the Nuggets.

Coach Billy Donovan’s message for Terry when he went to the G-League was simple: ”Help the team win.” Terry did that by contributing significantly in back-to-back victories by Windy City. On Saturday, Terry nearly had a triple-double with 18 points, nine assists and eight rebounds.

Donovan said opportunity lies in a player’s mindset, and Terry had the right one during his first tour of duty in the G-League.

”In those situations, it’s so imperative that a player not go down there and think, ‘I have carte blanche to do whatever I want to do because it’s all about my development,’ ” Donovan said. ”The other guys on the roster are all being impacted by that. If you can impact the roster in a positive way, that’s a good sign.”

As far as whether the players’ union has any restrictions about players playing in two games in one day, Donovan said that the Bulls were able to recall Terry and that was all the answer he needed.

White update

Donovan had no significant update on the status of guard Coby White, who missed his seventh consecutive game with a bruised left quad. Donovan said White is doing better, but the biggest issue remains swelling in his leg.

Donovan said the injury will set White back significantly because of the toll it has taken on his endurance. Donovan isn’t concerned about his touches and timing, but White hasn’t been able to use his legs, so the biggest hurdle will be ramping back up to the level he had reached in summer workouts and during the preseason.

”He’s doing some light jogging,” Donovan said. ”Cutting, moving, jumping, all those things, I don’t know how far we are away from that. Clearly, before he gets back on the court, the medical guys will want to see that his conditioning is where it needs to be.”

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Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams seemed to sense a chance to put the hammer down with a 14-point lead early in the fourth quarter against the Lions on Sunday.

On first-and-10 at the Lions 45, Williams sent cornerback Kyler Gordon on a blitz, and it nearly worked. But Lions quarterback Jared Goff escaped the sack and ran toward the right sideline. Gordon turned around and did what he was coached to do — hustle back to play and try to make something happen.

Gordon caught up to Goff just as Goff was being forced out of bounds by linebacker Nick Morrow and swiped at the ball as Goff was going out of bounds at the Bears’ 45-yard line. But go too much of Goff and was penalized for unnecessary roughness. Instead of a loss, it turned into a 25-yard gain to the Bears’ 30.

“I chased him down and I punched the ball from underneath with one hand and the ref is gonna call what they’re gonna call. I’m just out there hustling,” Gordon said. “It’s really on the ref — it’s their judgment call. I’m gonna feel some [other] way about it, but that’s not up to me. I’m just gonna do my job. Nothing we can do about it. That’s their job, I guess.”

It was that kind of day for the Bears’ defense in a 31-30 loss at Soldier Field. After allowing 148 yards and 10 points on the Lions’ first two drives of the game, the defense allowed just 22 yards on 13 plays on their first three drives of the second half as the Bears’ built a 24-10 lead.

But it didn’t take much to revert to form and the defense soon fell into an all-too-familiar rut — the harder they tried to make a play, the worse they got. Three plays after Gordon’s penalty, linebacker Jack Sanborn intercepted Goff at the Bears 8-yard line, but it was nullified by a penalty on cornerback Jaylon Johnson for illegal hands to the face.

The defense couldn’t stand prosperity and wilted under pressure. After Justin Fields’ 67-yard touchdown run gave the Bears a 30-24 lead with 9:11 to play, punter Trenton Gill pinned the Lions at the 9-yard line with 5:23 left. But the Lions drove 91 yards on eight plays for the winning touchdown.

The frustration has reached a breaking point for the Bears’ defense. Johnson, who had two consecutive illegal-hands-to-the-face penalties in the fourth quarter, declined to talk after the game. Safety Eddie Jackson, who has emerged as the team’s most vocal leader, couldn’t hold back his irritation at the same issues cropping up while Justin Fields and the offense score enough points to win.

“We can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot,” Jackson said. “I’m tired of keep getting up here [and] saying the same thing every week. It’s just become repetitive. I felt like we had a great week of practice — that’s the crazy part about it. I feel like we were flying around on defense. [The] offense is doing what they’ve been doing.

“We’ve just got to execute better. We gotta finish. We had a 14-point lead. We gotta go out there and do our job It works both ways. We gotta trust in our players. That’s about it.”

Jackson said he did not see Johnson’s penalty that nullified the Sanborn interceptions, “but I heard it … was a bad call.”

But that’s something the Bears have to overcome themselves.

“It sucks, but we have no control over that,” Jackson said. “Like I said, I’m tired of sounding like a broken record every week — week-in, week-out. We gotta do our job. We gotta be better on defense — it’s continued to show week-in and week-out. We gotta get this fixed. We’ve gotta get it fixed fast.”

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The emphasis throughout this Bears season is on their dream of developing into a contender, and that outweighs everything else.

They missed a chance to move forward Sunday.

Don’t brush off 31-30 loss to the Lions as inconsequential, or even a positive because of how it could help them in the draft. Losing at home to a fellow rebuilder in the Lions is indefensible, especially when the Bears were up 24-10 with the ball to begin the fourth quarter. Closing that out would’ve been meaningful beyond Sunday.

“It plays a big factor in the big picture,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “You understand where this is going here, obviously, but you want to build a big-picture thing? You’ve gotta win some games.

“You have to get that feeling and understand how to do it. When we’re able to break through this thing and figure it out and be able to execute late in the game, it’s going to be really good for us going forward.”

The most crushing part is that the kids weren’t the ones who blew it. The game fell apart in the hands of some of their most reliable players: quarterback Justin Fields, cornerback Jaylon Johnson and kicker Cairo Santos.

The Bears know they’re going to take losses, but not because of those guys.

Fields made just one mistake Sunday, but it torpedoed the game.

On his pick-6 early in the fourth quarter, he made a brutally bad decision under pressure to loft one to Kmet, and without solid footing, he sailed it well over his head to cornerback Jeff Okudah for an easy interception to tie it at 24.

That’s undoubtedly the lasting image from this defeat, but it’s probably not as alarming as it felt in real time. That’s basically a rookie mistake by a quarterback making his 20th career start. That error can be corrected.

“Just a dumb play,” Fields acknowledged, saying he wished he had just thrown it into Soldier Field’s spray-painted dirt. “I can assure you that will never happen again for the rest of my career.”

If Fields couldn’t read coverages or grasp the playbook, the deficiencies that sunk Mitch Trubisky, that’d be trouble. One disastrous decision, ugly as it was, isn’t a terrifying omen.

By the way, he erased it as only he can: With a 67-yard touchdown run three plays later. We can call it even.

That would’ve guaranteed the Bears going to overtime at worst, but Santos missed the extra point. Lining up on the right hashmark, he sent it on a wild, wobbly hook to the left to leave the Bears leading 30-24.

“It’s easy to just count one point, but there’s so many things that happened,” Santos said. “We all have opportunities to make plays and help the team win. We can’t point fingers about why we didn’t come out with 31 points at the end.”

There’s nothing scarier for this defense than clinging to a six-point lead.

Actually, there is: Seeing a diminished version of Johnson.

There is precious little upon which the Bears’ defense can depend, and Johnson has been an absolute pillar. But he clearly wasn’t right after straining an oblique muscle in practice. He took himself out of the game for part of the second quarter — unusual for someone who rarely misses a snap.

On the Lions’ game-winning drive, Johnson lagged behind wide receiver Kalif Raymond as he got beat for 20 yards and fell a couple steps behind Tom Kennedy as he got free for a 44-yarder.

It’s unclear how much the injury affected Johnson because he declined to speak to reporters.

The Bears have actually dropped 6 of 7, a fact that was easy to forget lately because Fields has been flourishing. But they can’t go all season claiming moral victories. Part of their process must include actual wins, and they especially need to show they’re capable of that against teams on their level.

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Three takeaways from the Bears’ 31-30 loss to the Lions on Sunday:

Two sacks for Sanborn

Undrafted rookie Jack Sanborn started his second-straight game at inside linebacker and recorded the Bears’ only two sacks. No other undrafted rookie has posted a multi-sack game in the league this year.

Sanborn had a team-high 12 tackles.

“He’s very instinctual, makes a lot of plays on the ball, always reads his keys,” head coach Matt Eberflus said. “He’s always on it that way. Yeah, we’re pleased with where he’s going.”

Late lead gone

The Lions rallied from a 14-point deficit to win for the first time since beating the Vikings on Oct. 31, 1993.

“You have to be able to overcome things,” Eberflus said. “I’ve seen it before through my years of coaching that you have to be able to overcome adversities. That could come in many forms …”

St. Brown battle

The Lions won the battle of the St. Browns on Sunday. Amon-Ra St. Brown, their top receiver, caught 10 passes on 11 targets for 119 yards. Bears receiver Equanimeous St. Brown, who dropped a fourth-down pass a week earlier, ran two times for nine yards but did not see a target.

The brothers have a $1,000 bet on which team finishes with a better record. Both the Bears and Lions have three wins.

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Justin Fields is demonstrating that he is a significant fantasy football riser.

The best story in the 2022 fantasy football season is Justin Fields of the Chicago Bears. Justin Fields wants to break the NFL QB record for rushing yards in a single game, which he set last time out with 178 yards. The Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions squared off Sunday in Week 10 action.

Per Michael Fabiano, “Fields is the fourth-best quarterback to have in your lineup for week 10. Only Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Jalen Hurts rank higher this week for fantasy owners”.

Besides a lousy pick-6 that was a turning point in the game, Justin Fields has also been effective with the ball. He has a 109.9 passer rating, 160 yards, and two touchdowns through the air. Justin Fields leads most fantasy football leagues by more than 40 points. He had 45 fantasy points last week and could surpass that total if the Bears get a few more possessions. Fields’ current run is unprecedented. He has more fantasy points in the last two weeks than in the previous six weeks combined.

Justin Fields had another monster day on the ground, extending his reign as one of the NFL’s most prolific fantasy football quarterbacks. The Bears rookie finished with 147 yards rushing and two touchdowns. Aside from the pick-6, he had a good day through the air, completing 12 of 20 passes for 167 yards.

Fields had an excellent performance, and the Bears have much to look forward to. Fantasy football owners have even more to be excited about, especially ifFields is in their dynasty/keeper league.

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While the expectations needed to be realistic for new wide receiver Chase Claypool as he joined the Bears in a midseason trade, their desperate need for playmakers in the passing game didn’t allow for much patience.

Claypool figures to be a big factor in the offense eventually, but had another quiet game in the Bears’ 31-30 loss to the Lions on Sunday. Justin Fields hit him for an eight-yard pass in the second quarter and didn’t throw to him again until firing incomplete with two minutes left.

“I was prepared to be more involved, but I’m not expecting too much right now because I just got here,” Claypool said. “Me having a full understanding of the playbook will help [offensive coordinator Luke Getsy], and I’m pretty close to that, so the next couple weeks won’t be a problem.

“I’m not frustrated at all. As long as we win, I’ll be fine.”

His production is intertwined with the Bears’ chances, though, so the sooner they expand his role, the sooner they might get those victories Claypool covets.

The numbers weren’t there, but he felt more comfortable in the offense than the week before, when he caught two passes for 13 yards in 26 snaps against the Dolphins. He didn’t anticipate having to do “too much cramming” leading up to the upcoming game against the Falcons.

Nonetheless, he also has to establish chemistry with Fields, and Fields warned that “it’s gonna take time” for the two of them to connect.

“I don’t think anybody expected him to come in and just start having 100-yard games,” Fields said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Darnell Mooney led the wide receivers with four catches for 57 yards, and he was the only one to catch more than one pass.

Kmet’s catches

Tight end Cole Kmet went nearly two years without catching a touchdown pass. Now he does it all the time.

Kmet was the Bears’ best weapon other than Fields on Sunday and caught four passes for 74 yards and two touchdowns. It was the second-highest yardage total of his career and his second consecutive two-touchdown game. He has 11 catches for 126 yards and five touchdowns over the last three games.

The downside for Kmet was that he took a hit to the right leg late in the game and missed some time. He appeared to be testing out his knee on the sideline, but said afterward he was “a little banged up” and the injury was “nothing serious.”

Harry, Jones benched

With the return of Byron Pringle, the Bears scratched healthy wide receivers N’Keal Harry and Velus Jones against the Lions.

It was fairly predictable that they would bench Jones, a third-round pick, for the second consecutive week, but Harry was slightly surprising. He played 80 snaps over his first two games, then dipped to just 28% against the Dolphins.

The Bears sat right guard Teven Jenkins, who was questionable with a hip injury, and started Michael Schofield in his place. Starting defensive end Al-Quadin Muhammad was out with a knee injury, as was starting cornerback Kindle Vildor because of an ankle injury.

The Bears also lost running back Khalil Herbert to a hip injury late in the game, and he did not return.

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I’d like to nominate Bears general manager Ryan Poles for NFL Executive of the Year. If he had built a decent pass-blocking offensive line, we might never have found out how good a runner Justin Fields is.

The Bears quarterback continued his string of tearing up opposing defenses, rushing for 147 yards and two touchdowns in a 31-30 loss to the Lions on Sunday. Fans will get caught up in the “loss” part of the story. They shouldn’t. What happened at Soldier Field was a win-win. Win No. 1: We were reminded, again, just how good Fields is at making angry defenders look like remedial tacklers. Win No. 2: The Bears made progress on improving their draft position for next season, which is sort of the whole idea of a rebuild.

I don’t think Poles’ failure to find pass blockers was on purpose, but, either way, good job! When coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Luke Getsy realized five weeks ago that Fields’ ability to run was his best asset and that the kid’s life was in danger because of weak blocking, it changed everything. Getsy began designing run plays for him. The result was on display again Sunday: Fields starting the game with a 28-yard rush out of the shotgun. And Fields, after throwing a pick-6 in the fourth quarter, responding on the next drive with a 67-yard touchdown run.

After rushing for 178 yards last week, the most by an NFL quarterback in a regular-season game, he averaged 11.3 yards a carry against the Lions. Oh, yeah, he also threw two touchdowns to tight end Cole Kmet.

Chicago hasn’t seen anything like this, and many of us are still trying to make sense of it. The long-term questions are whether this kind of offense can last in the NFL and whether Fields can survive the punishment. He took several big hits Sunday, including at the goal line after a brilliant scramble in the second quarter.

The short-term question is, “Isn’t this fun?”

Poles and the rest of the Bears’ brass will to have to decide if this is sustainable. It goes against the football knowledge many of us have built up. If Poles ever does find pass blockers, how much will the Bears cut down on Fields’ running? What if he’s a much better runner than passer? Can he survive? I’m enjoying the heck out of this, but is it a plan?

The good news is that Fields is 6-foot-3, 228 pounds, big for a quarterback. The bad news is that the people chasing him often are much bigger. He’s one 320-pound blob away from catastrophe.

As it stands now, the Bears’ entire offense is predicated on the idea that Fields might run, whether that’s a scramble when the blocking breaks down on a pass play or whether that’s a designed run. It’s not a dilemma for the Bears, who just want to score points. The only way to do that is with Fields either running or threatening to run.

He looked like a completely different quarterback the first five games of the season. He lacked confidence and accuracy, throwing three touchdowns and four interceptions. He’s been a much better passer since the Bears started emphasizing his running, throwing nine touchdowns and three interceptions the past five games. That’s not a coincidence. When opponents are worried about his running, receivers find themselves with more room. On Fields’ 50-yard touchdown pass to Kmet on Sunday, it looked like Lions safety Kerby Joseph forgot to pick up the tight end because he was worried the quarterback would run.

If running remains Fields’ biggest strength, does he risk becoming, gulp, Derrick Rose? Rose won an NBA Most Valuable Player award because of his ability to drive to the basket and his fearlessness in doing it. But it felt like a matter of time before he’d get hurt. And he did, with knee injuries adversely affecting his career.

“You’ve got to be smart,” Eberflus said of Fields’ decision to lower his shoulder on some runs. “I’ve used the terms wisdom and discernment as he goes through there. There were a couple times where he took a couple shots today. But he also slid and got himself out of bounds a couple times. Again, when you’re an athlete like that, he’s got to use that wisdom when he’s in that part of the field to make sure he gets down or gets out of harm’s way.”

Eberflus was especially impressed with Fields’ long TD run after the pick-6.

“What you understand about that young man is that, man, he’s a fighter, right?” he said. “So he has the ability — and you’ve seen it during the course of this year — to reset. We talked about it on the sideline. He said, ‘Man, reset.’ And then sure enough (third-and-2), boom, there he goes. That’s just him. He’s a fighter through and through.”

“Can do anything about the past,” Fields said. “That’s kind of been my mindset.”

The past? Everything’s about the future.

If I’m giving Poles a major award, I should give one to kicker Cairo Santos, whose missed extra point in the fourth quarter might have cost the Bears the game. Remember: Losses are good for a team trying to build, in part, through the draft.

The Bears fell to 3-7. And Fields looked very good again.

Win and win.

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Back in autumn 2014, Patrick Kane struggled — by his standards — early in the season. He recorded only 10 points in his first 16 games, a statistic he still remembers precisely.

So tallying 10 points in his first 13 games to start the 2022-23 season didn’t worry Kane too much. Nor did entering the weekend with zero points in his last three games. He joked Saturday morning that “hopefully that means I don’t go another three without a point.”

He promptly extinguished any possibility that quip would jinx him. Kane recorded two assists — and nearly a third point when he hit the post on a 200-foot prayer toward an empty net — in the Blackhawks’ 3-2 win over the Ducks on Saturday night.

But the 33-year-old winger is a bit more worried about — or at least analyzing more closely — his general play to start this season.

The Hawks’ possession numbers are poor across the board, and Kane has never been a possession monster even in his best seasons, but the Hawks’ scoring-chance ratio (74 chances for, 114 against) and even their goal ratio (seven for, seven against) during Kane’s five-on-five ice time certainly could be better.

“It’s not really about points or anything like that,” Kane said. “It’s about how to get the puck, get puck touches, how to get it in space so I can do my thing. … It’s just more about puck possession: Getting touches, hanging on to it. It seems like a lot of the time we’re out there, we’re chasing it, playing in the ‘D’-zone.”

What ideas does he have to fix that?

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “Sometimes I find myself too far ahead of the play. So [I could] come back a little bit more, demand it. I might have to take it up the ice a little bit more. There’s things you can do. But [I’ll] just try to demand the puck as much as possible.”

Hawks coach Luke Richardson moved Philipp Kurashev into Andreas Athanasiou’s former spot on Kane’s opposite wing — on the other side of center Max Domi — during the third period Thursday against the Kings and kept that arrangement Saturday.

Kurashev has brought success to every line he’d played on this season and offers a more well-rounded skill set than Athanasiou, especially defensively. It makes sense he could help Kane end up with the puck on his stick more often.

“They both have speed, but [Kurashev] is a bit more of a playmaker whereas Athanasiou is more of like a jet-speed guy,” Richardson said. “Kurashev is more of a puck-handler on the cycle in the ‘O’-zone, which suits the way Patrick plays.”

Added Kurashev: “Maybe there will be some differences, but you get used to it fast. Especially [since] I’ve been playing with so many different lines the last couple years, I just try to play my game.”

The switch didn’t immediately make much noticeable difference, however. Richardson hinted postgame Saturday he might scramble the line combinations again Monday at home against the Hurricanes, explaining his lineup decisions in California were partially because he “wanted to have a look at people in different positions.”

More changes wouldn’t be jarring for Kane, who has adjusted to hundreds of different linemates over the years and said he believes the onus rests more on him and Domi specifically to get themselves going.

And based on his history, Kane’s multi-point outing Saturday could be the start of a hot run. In 2014, for example, after starting with the aforementioned 10 points in 16 games, he then racked up 16 points in his next 10.

“There are some positives in there,” he said. “If I can get going and turn it on and get to my normal usual production, this team can take off.”

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