Chicago Sports

Luke Getsy’s offense has a low completion percentage

Balls hitting a wide receiver’s gloves and staying there for the duration of a play has been a rarity for freshman offensive coordinator Luke Getsy’s offense this season. According to Next Gen Stats, Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields’ completion percentage is the worst in the NFL for any player with at least 38 attempted passes this season. His completion percentage is just 50.7 heading into Week 5 against the Minnesota Vikings.

One would think that percentage would be a cause for alarm for the Bears’ offense. And Getsy thinks it could be different. According to Adam Hoge of CHGO Sports, Getsy was asked about Fields’ low percentage in a press conference. Getsy faulted Fields’ decision-making for the passing percentage being…too high:

“He should have less than 50% because he should have thrown the about 6 or 8 of them away instead of taking some sacks,” Hoge quotes Luke Getsy as saying.

Lower, seriously?

Is the Chicago Bears coaching staff going with nihilism?

Sure, Fields could throw some passes away or look for pass-downs. Those are obvious flaws in the second-year quarterbacks’ game, and it was something he was supposed to be working on from last season. But what Luke Getsy is admitting in that statement is one of a few things.

One, his route design sucks so bad an athletic quarterback can’t buy enough time for them to get open. Two, the talent at wide receiver, which Poles thought was kosher enough for Fields’ development, can’t get open or finish a catch. Three, the offensive line sucks so bad Fields can’t get enough time, even with his athleticism, to wait for a wide receiver to get open in his offense.

All of those things seem to be on the coaches and administration. It’s ridiculous that an offensive coordinator thinks his passing scheme should be under 50 percent in the NFL. Why can’t his play design and play calling allow for a passing game to be in the middle 60s, where many of the best quarterbacks throw?

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CINCINNATI – Cubs manager David Ross’ final post-game media availability of the 2022 season carried a bitter-sweet tone.

“It’d be nice to be popping champagne at some point; that’s where we’re trying to get to,” Ross said after the Cubs’ 15-2 win against the Reds on Wednesday. “But these guys are true fighters. I told them that after the game. They’ve fought a lot of adversity, a lot of change, a lot of up and down, a lot of guys making their debuts, going through what it’s like to get through 162.”

Despite being sellers at the trade deadline for the second straight year, the Cubs finished better than they started. They still finished the season with a 74-88 record.

With that in mind, it’s time to reflect on the Cubs’ season by handing out the Sun-Times’ end-of-year awards.

Most Valuable Player: Ian Happ

Ian Happ and Willson Contreras were the clear finalists. Contreras ran away with the honor at the midseason mark, but Happ gained the slight edge this time for his consistency throughout the year.

In his first All-Star season, Happ finished the year in the Top 2 in most statistical categories among qualified Cubs players, including WAR (3.5), batting average (.271), on-base percentage (.342), wRC+ (120) and wOBA (120), according to FanGraphs. He also played more games than anyone (158) by a 23-game margin.

“He’s just getting such a well-rounded game,” Ross said, after calling Happp one of the best left fielders in the game. “And you’ve seen a growth of a young man that’s gone through a lot of adversity and tried to please a lot of different people, tried to maximize what everybody else wanted. I think he’s learned time, ‘this is when I’m going to be the best version of me.’ And it’s been a really good version.”

Pitcher of the Year: Marcus Stroman

Right-hander Marcus Stroman was limited by two stints on the injured list – first for COVID-19 and then shoulder inflammation that he attributed to rushing back from the illness. But since returning, he’s given the rotation a huge boost.

A mechanical tweak (refining his balance-point posture) and a game-plan adjustment (going back to relying on his sinker) have contributed to a 2.56 ERA in the final three months of the season.

“I thought I did a really good job of bouncing back from a rough start,” Stroman said. “A lot of people can cash it in, mentally, physically, emotionally, and I had [over] a 6.00 ERA after the first few starts. It’s just a product of all the work that goes into it.”

Reliever of the Year: Brandon Hughes

Rookie lefty Brandon Hughes began the season in Double-A, and by mid-May he was in the major leagues.

After the Cubs traded away their back-end relievers at the deadline, Hughes stepped into a closer-like role. He finished the season with the best ERA (3.12) of any reliever who finished the season with the Cubs.

Most Improved Player: Christopher Morel

Utility player Christopher Morel also started the year in Double-A, after hitting .220 at that level in 2021.

“The one thing he did was put himself on the map really early with his performance,” Ross said, “and it’s hard to take them out of the lineup when they do that.”

Morel has shown some inexperience in the field, while also playing multiple positions. But he’s balanced those moments with eye-popping highlights. He’s cooled off at the plate, batting .194 in the second half. But he also went on a 22-game on-base streak to start his career, a franchise record.

Rookie of the Year: Seiya Suzuki

Right fielder Seiya Suzuki came to Major League Baseball carrying the high expectations that earned him a five-year, $85 million contract this spring. Right away, he made his mark, winning Rookie of the Month honors for April.

He hit an adjustment period after that, prolonged by a finger injury. But he finished strong, posting a respectable .770 OPS for the year.

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Bears defensive coordinator Alan Williams likened the job of trying to manage Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson and running back Dalvin Cook to having “a full plate.”

“Not to diminish the other guys on the team, but those are two dynamic players,” Williams said. “That’s really what creates the problem: They can beat you in two ways. So you have to pick and choose … where you put guys and what you focus on.”

Imagine if he doesn’t have his best cornerback.

Jaylon Johnson missed practice again Thursday, adding doubt to the likelihood of him being available to tangle with Jefferson on Sunday. He has been out since hurting his quad muscle in practice Sept. 22.

That leaves the Bears with unproven rookie Kyler Gordon and Kindle Vildor as their best options.

Undrafted rookie Jaylon Jones also played 25 snaps last week against the Giants. He was back at practice after missing Wednesday because of an illness.

The disparity between Johnson and the rest of the Bears’ cornerbacks was clear in the first two games when he didn’t have a single pass thrown to the player he was covering.

According to Pro Football Reference, quarterbacks have completed 20 of 29 passes for 305 yards and a touchdown when throwing Gordon’s way, and they’ve gone 12 of 18 for 158 yards and a touchdown against Vildor.

It was like that last season, too, when Johnson was the only Bears cornerback to hold quarterbacks under 69% completions when they threw at him.

Jefferson, meanwhile, is arguably the toughest wide receiver to cover in the NFL and has 28 catches for 393 yards and two touchdowns.

The Vikings also have nine-year veteran Adam Thielen, who had 726 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, and productive No. 3 receiver K.J. Osborn. The only Bears receiver with more yardage than Osborn (118) is Darnell Mooney (121).

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Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser and Mark Potash wonder what Luke Getsy is seeing that we don’t, how Justin Fields can improve and who wins the Bears-Vikings game.

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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The return of running back David Montgomery for the Bears won’t fix all their offensive troubles, but he’ll help. And the Bears could use it.

Montgomery is still uncertain for the game at the Vikings on Sunday, but practiced Thursday for the first time since hurting his ankle in Week 3. He was limited, but there wouldn’t be much point in him participating even partially unless he was legitimately hoping to play.

Khalil Herbert has been fine carrying the load while Montgomery is out, but the Bears ideally would use them in tandem. Montgomery is a better pass blocker and more of a power back than Herbert.

Montgomery opened the season with just 26 yards against the 49ers, then barreled through the Packers for 122 on 15 carries. That was his eighth 100-yard rushing game in four seasons with the Bears.

He got hurt early in the game against the Texans when defensive tackle Michael Dwumfour rolled into his right leg.

In two games without Montgomery (counting the Texans game), Herbert put up 234 yards rushing at six per carry and scored two touchdowns. The Bears have also used rookie Trestan Ebner, a sixth-round pick, and he ran 13 times for 43 yards over the last two games.

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Even with the homer heroics of sluggers like Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols, Major League Baseball wasn’t able to coax fans to ballparks at pre-pandemic levels this season, though attendance did jump substantially from the COVID-19-affected campaign in 2021.

The White Sox, who were primed for a deep postseason run entering 2022, were one of the few teams to draw more fans than pre-pandemic levels.

The 30 MLB teams drew nearly 64.6 million fans for the regular season that ended Wednesday, which is up from the 45.3 million who attended games in 2021, according to baseball-reference.com. This year’s numbers are still down from the 68.5 million who attended games in 2019, which was the last season that wasn’t affected by the pandemic.

The 111-win Los Angeles Dodgers led baseball with 3.86 million fans flocking to Dodger Stadium for an average of 47,672 per game. The Oakland Athletics — who lost 102 games, play in an aging stadium and are the constant subject of relocation rumors — finished last, drawing just 787,902 fans for an average of less than 10,000 per game.

The Cubs were ninth overall, drawing 2,616,780 to Wrigley Field (down from 3,094,865, fourth overall, in 2019). The White Sox were 19th with 2,009,359 (up from 1,649,775, 24th overall, in 2019).

The St. Louis Cardinals finished second, drawing 3.32 million fans. They were followed by the Yankees (3.14 million), defending World Series champion Braves (3.13 million) and Padres (2.99 million).

The Toronto Blue Jays saw the biggest jump in attendance, rising from 805,901 fans to about 2.65 million. They were followed by the Cardinals, Yankees, Mariners, Dodgers, and Mets, which all drew more than a million fans more than in 2021.

The Rangers and Reds were the only teams to draw fewer fans than in 2021.

Only the Rangers started the 2021 season at full capacity and all 30 teams weren’t at 100% until July. No fans were allowed to attend regular season games in 2020.

MLB attendance had been declining slowly for years — even before the pandemic — after hitting its high mark of 79.4 million in 2007. This year’s 64.6 million fans is the fewest in a non-COVID-19 season since the sport expanded to 30 teams in 1998.

The lost attendance has been balanced in some ways by higher viewership on the sport’s MLB.TV streaming service. Viewers watched 11.5 billion minutes of content in 2022, which was a record high and up nearly 10% from 2021.

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It’s not proving to be a quick fix.

Bulls coach Billy Donovan saw the defensive breakdowns way too often last season, and with basically the same cast of characters returning for the 2022-23 campaign, it reared its ugly head once again in Tuesday’s preseason opener.

Just a bad night at the office? Maybe, if there weren’t so many dismal nights last season.

That has to change, and it starts with an attitude on that end of the floor.

If there was one bothersome takeaway for Donovan in the 129-125 loss to New Orleans at the United Center, it was the lack of competitiveness, especially at the point of attack on screens.

“Our competitive spirit needs to be a lot better than it was in my opinion,” Donovan said, after getting a look of the performance on film. “That was the part for me where you walk away from that and you’re disappointed because that’s not who we’ve been in training camp, that’s not the team I’ve seen out there every day for the first six days of training camp.

“I’m not saying our guys have this mentality, but there could be a point of, ‘Hey, it’s preseason, let me ease my way into this, kind of get a rhythm … ‘ We can’t have that. You’ve got to establish an identity or one is going to be established for you.”

Few know that better than Donovan, who saw two very different identities with his squad last year.

In the first half of the season, the Bulls were relatively healthy and the identity was a defense that caused havoc in the opposing team’s backcourt. In the second half they did a complete 180, and it was a team that was simply in havoc both defensively and offensively on too many nights.

That’s why the Bulls finished 22nd in defensive rating, 16th in points allowed (112 per game), and 26th in opponents’ field goal percentage.

No biggie?

Not when the two best defensive teams in the league last season just so happened to be the last two teams standing when Golden State beat Boston in the Finals. And not when the top end of the Eastern Conference are loaded with teams that thrive on locking offenses down.

But there’s another layer to the Bulls’ defense, and that’s equally concerning.

Donovan’s crew is best offensively when they are pushing the action and in transition. The easiest way to do that is with steals or causing the opposition to miss shots. Made shots means inbounding the basketball, and allowing opposing defenses time to set up.

New Orleans scored 40 points in that opening quarter and shot 70% from the field. That’s not going to get it done.

It didn’t last season, and it won’t now.

And while Lonzo Ball – unquestionably the best defender in that starting unit – was back in Chicago after undergoing left knee surgery last week, he was still weeks away from even getting an evaluation, forget playing anytime soon.

So what does that mean short-term? Veterans like Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic have to take some more pride on the defensive end.

Like last season, the Pelicans exploited the Bulls’ pick-and-roll defense, which means it starts there.

“We’re going to have to help each other a little bit more than we did,” Donovan said. “I didn’t think there was any presence on the ball, I didn’t think there was any presence at the rim … there’s just some things that competitively we’ve just got to be better at.”

NOTE: Guard Coby White was a full participant in the Thursday practice, after an MRI on his knee came back clean. He was expected to play in the preseason game against Denver on Friday.

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The tragic tale of the 2022 White Sox actually began last October when the Houston Astros exposed them in the ALDS, breezing through a 3-1 postseason victory and leaving no doubt where the Sox stood in baseball’s hierarchy of teams.

The Sox admitted they were outclassed and said they would chalk up the failure to experience after watching a superior team demonstrate how the game is played at the highest level.

Weeks later, manager Tony La Russa sat watching Sox prospects in the Arizona Fall League. He was talking about 2022, and with a gleam in his eye promised the Sox, who had won 93 games and the AL Central title, would be better.

They were not. In fact, they were worse, and before the most disappointing Sox season in recent history was over, La Russa’s managerial career was also done due to health problems. He had guided them to a 63-65 record.

Injuries were a big part of it. Garrett Crochet had Tommy John surgery, Lance Lynn suffered a knee injury in spring training and Yoan Moncada strained an oblique muscle on the last day, setting the tone.

Luis Robert, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, Michael Kopech and Liam Hendriks missed significant time on the IL.

But the Sox led the majors in errors, plodded on the bases with station-to-station speed and ran into too many outs. They chased bad pitches, watched their walk rate plummet from fourth in the majors last season to last this year and hit 149 home runs after hitting 190 in 2021.

The injury rash put the training staff and front office on edge. There was puzzling reluctance to put players on the injured list, and La Russa permitted players to cruise at three-quarter speed on routine plays. It was a bad look, especially in stark contrast to the hustling, young Cleveland Guardians, who surprised everyone by finishing 11 games ahead of the Sox.

When La Russa stepped aside on Aug. 30, the team played with vigor under bench coach Miguel Cairo, winning nine of the next 12 games and cutting Cleveland’s lead to 1 1/2 games with a 10-2 win at Oakland, a day after scoring five runs in the ninth to beat the A’s 5-3.

But the Sox would get no closer, retreating to mediocrity. The next day, La Russa, in Oakland for Dave Stewart’s jersey retirement ceremony, walked through the visitors clubhouse, looking refreshed as he shook hands with players after 12 days off the job. La Russa watched from a suite as the Sox lost 10-3 that Sunday, falling to 72-69 and 2 1/2 games behind the Indians, who were on their way to a torrid 24-6 finish.

In the end, the rebuild that had begun with the admission from general manager Rick Hahn that the Sox were “mired in mediocrity” produced the most mediocre season possible, an 81-81 record in the third season of a contention window.

As statistics guru @JayCuda noted, the Sox were remarkably mediocre from start to finish in 2022. They were 5-5 in their last 10 games, 15-15 in the last 30, 25-25 in the last 50, 30-30 in the last 60, 35-35 in the last 70, 60-60 in the last 120, 75-75 in the last 150 and 80-80 in last 160.

You get the picture.

That will happen with under-performing, mediocre player performances. Here were the Sox’ top performers, according to Baseball Reference wins above replacement:

Dylan Cease 6.4, Jose Abreu 4.2, Johnny Cueto 3.5, Michael Kopech 2.2, Luis Robert 2.1, Elvis Andrus 1.7, Jimenez and Hendriks 1.7, Reynaldo Lopez 1.5, Josh Harrison 1.4, Anderson 1.3, Seby Zavala 1.0, Moncada 1.0.

Catcher Yasmani Grandal, entering the fourth year of a Sox record $73 million contract, was at minus-1.5 after struggling defensively and batting .202 with five homers in 99 games.

At his end of year press conference Monday, Hahn said he won’t “throw money at the problem” of a flawed Sox roster overloaded with first baseman and designated hitters in the outfield.

Anything would seem to be on the table, including trades of All-Stars Anderson and Hendriks.

As always, the Sox might not be fun to watch. But they’ll be worth watching this offseason.

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The Second City is expanding to a third city, announcing a plan to open a New York theater to supplement its long-running locations in Chicago and Toronto.

The Chicago-based comedy company said Thursday that the new space will be located in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The 11,900-square-foot complex is expected to have a mainstage theater, seven classrooms for teaching improv and other theatrical skills, and a full-service restaurant and bar.

While The Second City has sent troupes to New York before to put on shows in borrowed theaters, this will be the first time the company operates its own dedicated space there. It is set to open next summer.

“New York City is a renowned hub for talent and culture, and we could not be more thrilled to bring The Second City’s unique brand of improv-based entertainment and education to the city as we continue to foster the next generation of comedy,” said The Second City’s new CEO, Ed Wells, in a statement. “We launch at a time of tremendous momentum for the brand, expanding our footprint in Toronto, Canada and garnering critical acclaim for our latest shows. We look forward to serving the New York City market across all of our services and bringing smiles, laughter and the full Second City experience to the Big Apple.”

The announcement is the most ambitious move yet by The Second City’s current owner, New York-based private equity firm ZMC, which acquired the 63-year-old company in 2021. Wells had cited “geographical expansion” as one of his goals when he was hired last month.

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