Two people were killed, and six others were wounded in shootings Oct. 18, 2021, in Chicago. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

A person was arrested after a Chicago police officer was shot in Lincoln Park.

Two people were killed, and six others were wounded in a shootings Monday in Chicago, including a 37-year-old man who was fatally shot in West Garfield Park on the West Side.

About 9:50 p.m., he was found unresponsive, lying outside in the 4700 block of West Monroe Street, with gunshot wounds to his head, chest and shoulder, Chicago police said. The man was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His name has not yet been released.

Hours prior, a 22-year-old man was shot to death in Roseland on the Far South Side. The man was near the sidewalk about 6:25 p.m. in the first block of West 113th Place when someone opened fire, police said. He was shot in the back and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. His name hasn’t been released.

In non-fatal shootings, a person was arrested after a Chicago police officer was shot Monday in Lincoln Park on the North Side. The shooting happened about 3:30 p.m. after an altercation broke out inside an Ulta Beauty store in the 1000 block of West North Avenue, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said. Someone inside the store was behaving “erratically” and officers who were patrolling the area nearby were called, Brown said. There was a struggle that continued into the parking lot, where the person fired three shots toward the officer, striking him once in the face. The officer was transported to Illinois Masonic Medical Center with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, and the gunman was taken into custody. The shooter was inside the store with another person, but that person is not in custody. No officers returned fire.

Five others were wounded in shootings across Chicago.

Last weekend, four people were killed, and eleven others were wounded in shootings across Chicago.

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Moon Alert

There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Aries.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

This is a strong day for you because the moon is in your sign dancing nicely with both Venus and Jupiter. This makes you friendly, cooperative and supportive of group situations. You’ll be persuasive if you have to persuade others to see things your way.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

You might prefer some privacy because it will feel right. You will welcome an opportunity to catch your breath and pull your act together. Nevertheless, relations with others are solid. In fact, as the day wears on, relations with authority figures will get better and better.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

This is a popular day for you, which is why you will enjoy the company of congenial people. You will also enjoy time with old friends and people with whom you have already established strong emotional ties. It’s a great day for any kind of group activity. Enjoy!

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

You look great to bosses, parents, teachers, VIPs and the police. They will see you in a positive light. Furthermore, if you have to convince them of anything that is important to you, you’ll be persuasive! Good day to ask for permission or approval.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

Today you have a strong urge for escapism. Perhaps you want to “get away from all this,” or perhaps you want to explore something new and exciting? Either way, do whatever you can to learn something new, talk to people from other backgrounds and, if possible, travel!

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

This is an excellent day for important financial discussions or negotiations about shared property, inheritances and insurance issues because you will come out smelling like a rose. You might even receive a gift today or a favor from someone. Bonus!

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

This is a great day to schmooze with others; however, because the moon today is in a sign that is opposite your sign, you will have to cooperate and be ready to go along to get along. This is easy for you to do because you are a people pleaser. You like to keep everyone happy.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Your health feels good today. You have a strong feeling of well-being. In particular, you have the energy to work and get along with coworkers and working groups. Work-related travel might also be in the picture. It’s a solid day!

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

This is a wonderful day to schmooze and enjoy the company of others, especially children. You will also enjoy sports events and any kind of group activity where people are physical, enthusiastic and committed to a cause. (Just the kind of thing you like.)

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Family discussions will go well today. In fact, you might want to stock the fridge because a meeting or a family gathering might take place at home. Likewise, this is a good day to explore real estate negotiations or tackle redecorating projects.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

You’re keen to communicate to others today. Fortunately, they want to hear what you have to say because you will be charming and convincing! You will also attract others to you because you are charismatic and magnetic. (Yes, this does sound impressive, doesn’t it?)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

This is a good money day for you! Explore financial negotiations with others. You might want to ask for a raise or look for a better paying job. Relations with authority figures will be smooth and people will be inclined to endorse your suggestions.

If Your Birthday Is Today

Novelist John le Carre (1931-2020) shares your birthday. You can be direct and assertive as well as charming. You have an excellent memory and a wonderful eye for detail. You are open-minded and imaginative. When you want to be, you are persuasive! This is a year of learning and teaching for you. Time spent alone will be important for you to discover new things about yourself and the world around you.

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Sky guards Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley celebrate after winning the WNBA title Sunday at Wintrust Arena. | Paul Beaty/AP

Vandersloot and Quigley have been with the organization through the departures of Sylvia Fowles in 2015 and Elena Delle Donne in 2017.

A month before the Sky won their first WNBA championship in the franchise’s 16th season, Courtney Vandersloot reflected on her time with the organization.

Drafted by the Sky in 2011, Vandersloot thought about how special it would be to win a title. She wouldn’t let herself get caught up in it because at that point the Sky were hovering around .500 and hadn’t yet clinched a playoff berth.

Also, Vandersloot isn’t one to talk about things that haven’t happened yet. But she did divulge one thought.

“I’ve always been motivated to win a championship with the organization that drafted me,” Vandersloot said in September.

On Sunday, Vandersloot flitted around Wintrust Arena, walking over piles of blue and gold confetti, donning a hat that read “WNBA CHAMPIONS,” with eyes still puffy from the postgame tears.

For some, this was a championship season. But for Vandersloot and others, it was a championship 11-plus seasons in the making.

Vandersloot and wife Allie Quigley shared most of the journey. Quigley signed with the Sky in 2013 after coach Pokey Chatman scouted her in Europe. Vandersloot is the longest-tenured Sky player, and Quigley is tied with Tamera Young for second.

Vandersloot and Quigley have been with the organization through the departures of Sylvia Fowles in 2015 and Elena Delle Donne in 2017. They played in front of measly crowds at a dark, deserted Allstate Arena and through coaching hires and fires.

The duo even made it close to the mountaintop in 2014, only to be dismissed by Diana Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury in a crushing three-game Finals sweep.

Seven seasons later, they met again and returned the favor.

“We did it,” Quigley yelled in a sea of celebration, her wife standing nearby.

Everyone was watching the matchup between Taurasi and Kahleah Copper, who was named the WNBA finals MVP, but the one that was more intriguing was between Taurasi and Quigley.

The pair go way back. Before they met in the 2014 finals, they were teammates in Phoenix in 2008 and 2009. The Mercury were one of the four teams Quigley played for before landing with the Sky.

Off the court, Taurasi acknowledged Quigley’s prowess. But on the court in the finals, she pushed, jabbed and even tripped her opponent at one point in the first half Sunday.

Quigley never lost her cool, and in the fourth quarter, she hit three three-pointers in a row, igniting a late run. Fittingly, Vandersloot had the final four points of the game. Candace Parker grabbed the last rebound.

Taurasi and her teammates declined to participate in media availability after the game. The Sky walked into the media room reeking of champagne, goggles pressed to their foreheads.

When coach/general manager James Wade took the job in 2019, he met with Vandersloot first. The only way he’d take the job, he said, was if he knew she and Quigley were going to stick around.

“When given the job, [Courtney and I] met in a cafe, and I said, ‘We’re going to get a championship,’ ” Wade said. “I didn’t know how we were going to do it. I was just trying to get her to believe.”

Wade made the entire organization and Chicago believe that the Sky could be champions. Now they are.

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Allie Quigley (left) and wife Courtney Vandersloot pose after Quigley won the three-point contest at the 2021 WNBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. | Getty Images

The simple fact of being pro athletes married to each other, with all the societal, political and work issues it can bring up, is an elephant in the room that will sit there silently until it drifts away with understanding and, finally, irrelevance.

The Sky had just won their first WNBA title Sunday afternoon, the confetti was flying at Wintrust Arena and the TV interviewer was giddy with excitement.

“Give me that married couple!” ESPN’s Holly Rowe hollered cheerily into her microphone. ”Where is my married couple?”

She was speaking, of course, of the Sky’s dynamic backcourt duo of Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot. They were married in Seattle almost two years ago and own a house in Deerfield, with two dogs and a pool. Teammates come over to grill and chill; Vandersloot maintains the yard, life is quiet, normal.

In so many ways, they are old-fashioned American suburbanites, married, working hard, trying to avoid stress, succeeding at their jobs, taking advantage of all the freedoms and opportunities this country professes to believe in.

But the simple fact of being pro athletes married to each other, with all the societal, political and work issues it can bring up, is an elephant in the room that will sit there silently until it drifts away with understanding and, finally, irrelevance.

Rowe looked to Quigley.

“You’re getting passes from your wife! And it’s such a beautiful thing,” she shouted.

So true. Quigley scored 26 points in the Sky’s 80-74 victory in Game 4, and Vandersloot had 15 assists. Often they worked in sync, with the elusive Vandersloot setting up Quigley and other teammates for threes by penetrating and drawing two or more defenders for just an instant. Her basketball IQ is genius level.

Deadeye shooter Quigley led the Sky in scoring in the Finals, averaging 18 points. Vandersloot had the most assists in WNBA history for the postseason (102) and the Finals (50). She is the first person to have double-digit assists in four consecutive Finals games. She was directly involved in 46.4% of the Sky’s scoring in the Finals.

Why she — or possibly Quigley — wasn’t named Finals MVP is a mystery to this observer.

No matter. In fractured America, where personal choice and freedom in relationships and lifestyles are nominally saluted, there is also the sentiment that such freedom should be abridged by fundamentalism and hard-wired, old-school morality: ”Freedom, yes. But we don’t mean that.”

It’s a fact that the starting guard combo on the best women’s basketball team in the USA is gay, out and married. A generation or so ago, this would have been scandalous, if not impossible. It very likely would have been unthinkable.

Now? If you draw the line on progressive sexual and gender norms, then you can’t, for instance, be a fan of the WNBA.

The league is full of lesbian players, many of them superstars.

The Mercury’s Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi, who is perhaps the greatest statistical player in women’s history, are gay and married to women. Griner was briefly married to fellow player Glory Johnson and now is wed to Cherelle Watson.

Taurasi is married to former teammate and current Mercury director of player personnel Penny Taylor. Taylor gave birth to the couple’s second child, a girl, just as the Finals were starting. They already have a 3-year-old son, Leo Taurasi-Taylor.

The Mercury’s DeWanna Bonner was married to former teammate Candice Dupree. They had twin daughters. And then there is the TV game analyst who handled this series, the great and still-active Sue Bird, who is engaged to soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Between them, they have won seven Olympic gold medals.

So this is the new world. A generation ago, a politician could not get elected supporting gay marriage. Now it’s pretty much demanded of a candidate.

And yet, the evolving issue of sexual and gender freedom is loaded with booby traps. For instance, edgy comedian Dave Chappelle, a Black man who has been able to hilariously skewer just about everything and everybody, may have met his match when he went after the transgender community in his recent Netflix special, ”The Closer.” Protests have arisen from LGBTQ activists and the media watchdog group GLAAD.

People comment on gender and sexual preferences at their own peril. It was very good that Rowe, who is living with cancer and is a single mother with an adult son, asked about the wedded Sky duo. She has the credentials to ask what, quite frankly, a random male sportswriter maybe could not.

The equation is simple, really: You love the Sky, you love the players. You love change.

After all, it’s the dancers who make the lovely dance.

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot along with city commissioners give an update on COVID-19 vaccination reporting for city workers, including Chicago police officers on Monday. | Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Out of 12,770 CPD employees, 4,543 had failed to report their vaccine status by the midnight Friday deadline. On Monday, employees who have defied the mandate were being called in by their supervisors and given one last chance to report their vaccine status on the city’s portal.

More than 35% of Chicago Police Department employees and 28% of the workforce in the Chicago Fire Department could face disciplinary action after defying Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s mandate to report their vaccination status.

The Chicago Police Department registered the lowest compliance rate of all city departments, with 64.4% providing their vaccination status to the city; the fire department was second-lowest, at 72%.

Of the 12,770 CPD employees, 4,543 failed to report their vaccine status by the midnight Friday deadline. The overwhelming majority are sworn officers, but the list includes a small percentage of civilians.

Of those who did follow orders, 6,894 reported being fully vaccinated, while 1,333 reported are not fully vaccinated — meaning either that they are not vaccinated at all or have received only the first shot of the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer vaccines.

The numbers were better, but not great either in the Chicago Fire Department. The overall compliance rate in CFD was 72.1%.

Of 4,907 firefighters, paramedics and a handful of civilian employees, 1,369 defied the mayor’s mandate to report their vaccine status on the city’s data portal.

Among those who did follow the reporting mandate, 2,974 reported being fully vaccinated while 564 were either not vaccinated at all or were not fully vaccinated.

Starting Monday, employees defying the mandate were being called in by their supervisors and given one last chance to report their vaccine status.

If they don’t, they will be sent home and placed on non-disciplinary, no-pay status in hopes they will change their minds after a few days without pay.

And if they still don’t change their minds?

“A department member — civilian or sworn — who disobeys a direct order by a supervisor to comply with the city of Chicago’s vaccination policy issued Oct. 8, 2021 will become the subject of a disciplinary investigation that could result in a penalty up to and including separation from the Chicago Police Department,” said an order from Tina Skahill, deputy director in the office of CPD Supt. David Brown.

“Furthermore, sworn members who retire while under a disciplinary investigation may be denied retirement credentials,” an order to the troops states.

During a late-afternoon news conference, Lightfoot said “a very small number” of officers are being stripped of their powers after getting one last chance to comply with the mandate to report their vaccine status.

The mayor reiterated she has “contingency plans that have been in place for quite some time” in case hundreds of police officers refuse the final offer and are placed on no-pay status. That plan already includes having canceled police days off.

But, she said, “The number of folks who are actually — after being given the opportunities and even a direct order — saying ‘no’ is very small. Very small. So, I’m not seeing — at least for this day — that there’s gonna be any disruption in our ability to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Lightfoot acknowledged the need to “keep plugging away at this” but remains confident police officers will come around, particularly once they are, as she put it, “disabused of the misinformation” they’ve received from their union. Those who are not vaccinated must submit to twice-weekly testing “on their time on their dime,” she said.

“I think our young men and women in the Police Department are smarter than maybe they’ve been given credit for. They’re not gonna risk their careers by being insubordinate and having in their [personnel files] the fact that they defied a direct order of their supervisors,” the mayor said.

Mitch Dudek/Sun-Times
FOP President John Catanzara carries pizzas in to union members at Chicago Police Department headquarters on Monday who were still waiting for their turn to talk to the human resources department to address the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

A batch of about 50 police officers were the first group to make their way into the human resources office at police headquarters on Monday, where they were given their last opportunity to offer up their vaccine status.

As of about 6 p.m., only 32 of the 50 officers had been processed, and of those officers, about half chose not to comply, according to John Catanzara, president of Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents rank-and-file CPD officers.

Those officers refusing to comply were stripped of their police powers and handed over their police stars, hats and IDs and were put on no-pay status, Catanzara said.

“Do you have any idea of how pissed off every officer is that’s being forced to make this decision about their family’s financial well-being and their own personal mental (well-being)? I mean we’ve got officers who literally have had breakdowns already because of this decision they had to make,” Catanzara said Monday evening outside CPD headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave.

He cut short chatting with reporters to carry more than a dozen pizzas from nearby Freddies in to union members who were still waiting for their turn to talk to the human resources department.

Another group of officers was scheduled to make the same trip to human resources on Tuesday. As many as approximately 4,500 officers who hadn’t reported their vaccination status as of midnight Friday still needed to go through the process.

Catanzara’s message to them: “Hold the line. Follow your hearts. Do what you need to do.”

Catanzara said the police force could be down thousands of officers by the time the process plays out.

The FOP has argued the vaccine mandate is a subject of mandatory collective bargaining and accused the mayor of ignoring the police contract. The union has sued, seeking to force arbitration on the issue.

The mayor countered it is the FOP that played “rope-a-dope” with the city — by stalling negotiations on the vaccine mandate.

“We get what the game is,” Lightfoot said. “I don’t view this as Lightfoot against the FOP. … What this is is Lightfoot and all of these city commissioners saying, ‘We’re gonna stand up for public health and public safety and we’re gonna make sure that our workforce is as fully vaccinated as we possibly can be.”

Lightfoot was asked about the impact on already rock-bottom police morale.

“What I have concerns about is seeing more officers die needlessly of COVID-19. … We had four officers who passed away in 2020. Every single one of them from COVID-19. Every single one passed away before the vaccine was widely available,” she said.

At an online forum Monday, Ald. Chris Taliaferro, chairman of the City Council’s public safety committee and a former CPD officer, supported the mandate.

“If I’m going to ride in a car with any given officer … why not have some confidence to know that the officer that I’m working in this car with is vaccinated, or that the officer that is going to walk in someone’s house to handle a 911 call is vaccinated?” he said.

“We need those assurances, as we are dying and day in and day out, as a result of this virus.”

Most city departments reported compliance rates above 90%. The City Council was a somewhat surprising exception at 84.4%. Of 360 total Council employees, 56 did not report their vaccine status. Of that total, 289 Council employees reported being fully vaccinated; 15 were not.

Full compliance was reported by at least 12 departments: the mayor’s office; the Office of Inspector General; the Departments of Housing; Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Administrative Hearings; Human Resources; Procurement Services; the Mayors of People with Disabilities; the Commission on Human Relations; the Chicago Police Board; the Chicago Board of Ethics; and the License Appeals Commission.

The overall compliance rate for the city’s 31,483 employee workforce is just over 79.4%. That’s 25,015 responses.

Those responses to the city also would mean at least 54% of CPD personnel are vaccinated. That percentage could still climb if CPD employees refusing to report their vaccine status had a change of heart. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) said it would be wrong to assume those officers aren’t vaccinated.

“A number of the officers that I’ve talked to, who did not want to go on to the data portal to disclose their vaccination status — they were all vaccinated. They weren’t trying to avoid it because they weren’t vaccinated. They just didn’t like the way this was approached,” Hopkins said at that same online forum Monday.

“They felt that this was yet one more condescending, insulting message that was delivered to them by someone who they do not respect or admire.”

The 64.2% compliance rate for CPD falls well short of Catanzara’s warning that Chicago could be forced to get by with a police force of “50% or less.”

Catanzara has urged his members not to report their vaccination status to the city and, instead, file forms exempting them from the vaccine, listing one of three potential reasons the union has insisted upon: religious, medical or conscientious objector.

Last week, the high-stakes standoff landed in court, with a judge doing what the mayor could not — temporarily silencing Catanzara.

Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan granted the city’s request for an injunction but only to the extent that Catanzara be precluded — at least until the next hearing, now set for Oct. 25 — from making any further YouTube videos or otherwise using social media platforms to encourage his members to defy the city’s mandate to report their vaccination status.

Catanzara soon took to the union’s YouTube channel to say the courts were trying to muzzle him. But he said he would comply and urged his members to “do what’s in their hearts and minds.”

At the end of the 50-second clip, the union boss took a jab at the city leaders for how it has implemented its policy. Then he raised a campaign sign that said “John Catanzara for mayor 2023.”

“Enough is enough,” he said before abruptly ending the video.

The mayor has accused the fiery FOP president of “trying to foment an illegal work stoppage or strike” that endangers Chicago. Catanzara has flatly denied it.

“This union never called for a strike or a job action. We told our officers to continue to go to work. It was the city that was threatening to lock out our officers for not complying with an improper directive,” Catanzara said Friday in a video posted to the union’s Facebook page.

Catanzara has maintained that City Hall acknowledged from the outset the vaccine mandate was a “subject of mandatory bargaining. … That is not in dispute, yet they have not done that.”

“So any sergeant, lieutenant, captain or above who gives you an order to go in that portal is not valid. You are able to refuse that order. They cannot order you to violate your collective bargaining rights. … They can take us to court all they want. We already are filing paperwork to dismiss that silly motion.”

Lightfoot stood her ground.

She noted that state law and the police contract prohibit Chicago police officers from striking and accused Catanzara of defying both in an attempt to “induce an insurrection.”

“It is an illegal strike. He is encouraging officers to be insubordinate, not to follow directives, and he is predicting a 50% drop-off in police forces,” the mayor said.

“This notion that individual officers get to be insubordinate as they pick and choose? We’re not having that. And if that’s the police department they want to be in, they should walk to another police department because that is not gonna happen in the city of Chicago.”

The FOP provided its members with a form to download in the event they are called in and ordered to report their vaccine status.

It states, “I have been given an invalid direct order…. to enter my personal and private information” in the city’s data portal in direct violation of “my collective bargaining rights under the contract” between the city and the FOP.

“The matter is subject to mandatory bargaining which has not concluded and, as such, compliance would diminish my rights involuntarily and permanently. I was instructed, if I did not comply with this invalid order, that I would be charged with insubordination and placed into a no-pay status…and possibly terminated,” the form states.

“Complying with this invalid order and the violation of my bargaining, constitutional and civil rights has further caused me severe anxiety by challenging both my religious and moral beliefs. I am, in fact, complying with this because I am being forced to do so under complete duress and threats of termination.”

Officers were advised to have the supervisor giving the direct order sign the form, to keep it for themselves and send a copy to the FOP.

Contributing: Frank Main, Sneha Dey

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Nagy went 8-8 in 2019 and ’20 and is 3-3 to start ’21. | AP Photos

The Bears’ offense has plunged below where it was the last two seasons and ranks near the bottom of the NFL in most categories. Nagy knows it needs to be fixed, but it’s not clear he has the answers in his fourth season.

We’re doing this again.

All the promise and expectation of the offseason has evaporated for the Bears’ offense, and the team sits 30th in scoring at 16.3 points per game. Six weeks into the season, they’re one of four teams that still haven’t reached 100 points.

It’s their worst start, scoring-wise, under coach Matt Nagy. And considering how dismal the offense has been, that’s saying something.

Nagy is still searching for “the whys,” after he imagined something so much better during the summer. He believed he had a wealth of skill players, a trustworthy quarterback in veteran Andy Dalton and enough of an offensive line to make it all work.

Instead, he’s once again wasting a top-10 defense after losing 24-14 to the Packers and now hoping to keep up with the defending champion Buccaneers. Here’s a sampling of Nagy’s thoughts on the offense from Monday:

— “Scoring, for sure, is an emphasis.”

— “We’re not scoring enough.”

— “You need to score more — we understand that.”

The answers were mostly along those lines — vague and unsatisfying. There’s always a lot of talking about the problem during the week, but this is the third consecutive season of everyone seeing on Sundays that he doesn’t have the solution.

Nagy has mentioned a few times lately that it’s still early in the season, but it’s not that early anymore. From 1990 through ’20, teams that started 3-4 missed the playoffs 82% of the time, so this is usually deep enough into the schedule to tell whether the Bears are good.

It’s also not that early for Nagy, who has coached 56 games (counting playoffs) and failed to score more than 20 points in nearly half of them.

If it seemed during the last two seasons like it couldn’t possibly get any worse, that was naive. The Bears are last in yards per game, second-worst in passer rating and fifth-worst on third-down conversions. They and the Jaguars are the only teams that have yet to score 25 points in a game.

The one positive is that they’ve gotten traction in a power-running offense since coordinator Bill Lazor took over as play caller, though even that feels tenuous.

There have been concerns all along about the Bears’ offensive line, and Nagy has never been inclined to lean on the ground game. He set the franchise record for fewest rushes in a game in 2019, but it’s funny how the threat of being fired makes people more open-minded. The Bears also might struggle to keep that up as opponents decode their rushing attack or if they’re forced to try throwing their way back into a game.

“We all feel good about the identity, but now what else do we need to do to compliment that, and how are we going to get to that point?” he said. “We’re working through all that. And now we’ve got a big challenge ahead of us in Tampa Bay.”

The Bucs, by the way, allow the fewest yards rushing per game (54.8) and second-fewest per carry (3.4) in the NFL. They have controlled possession for an average of nearly 37 minutes over their last three games. In their recent wins over the Dolphins and Eagles, they were up 14 at halftime.

Nagy thinks the Bears’ answer to those issues is more explosive pass plays, which should be possible off play action. They’re last in the NFL with nine passes of 20 yards or more, and five of those came in the game against the lowly Lions. In half their games, the Bears haven’t gotten one.

“We are not getting as many as we probably want,” Nagy said.

Correct, again. But it’s long past time to do something about that, and as he said when he revealed that Lazor would be calling plays, everything still runs through him.

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