The Chicago Bears make an aggressive move up the board for Trey Lance in the first round of this 2021 NFL mock draft (Photo by Sam Wasson/Getty Images)
The quarterback search so far is off to a rough start for the Chicago Bears. They swung and miss on Matthew Stafford, who went to the Los Angeles Rams. They pursued Carson Wentz but ultimately did not want to make an offer to the Philadelphia Eagles. Wentz ended up at his preferred destination the Indianapolis Colts. Where he will not get the hard coaching that he needs, and he does not have to look over his shoulder on the QB depth chart to protect his fragile ego.
As Bears fans rejoice of Carson Wentz, not in a Bears uniform, the reality is that the Colts found a possible answer at QB while on the flipside, fans are starring at the possibility of Nick Foles behind center in 2021.
With the Houston Texans being firm on not making Deshaun Watson available, Oakland Raiders playing mind games with the availability of Derek Carr, and the uncertainty with the Dallas Cowboys and Dak Prescott situation, the Bears are in a tough spot entering the new league year.
What can the Bears do? There are a few avenues left for the Bears to go as far as addressing the position. They can continue to monitor the trade market for veteran QBs. The free agency route is also available to go out and get a veteran. This option is attractive because they will not have to sacrifice draft capital. The best option that’s left is to trade up for their franchise QB.
The Bears have to be aggressive in fixing this position. Similar to how they were in 2017, but with better evaluation. They have to identify who can be the guy for the future. Whether that’s Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance, or Mac Jones. If they are able to get an established high-end veteran (Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick, or Andy Dalton) to serve as a placeholder for the eventual rookie QB, that’s even better.
Showing Chairman George McCaskey and President Ted Phillips that you can effectively solidify that position could go a long way in their job security moving beyond 2021.
Two firefighters were injured after a fire broke out Monday at a house in South Chicago.
The blaze was reported about 8 p.m. at a two-story home in the 8600 block of South Phillips Avenue, Chicago fire officials said.
A mayday alert was issued, and two firefighters were taken to area hospitals, officials said. One was in good condition and the other was in fair-to-serious condition.
All other firefighters were accounted for, officials said.
Billy Donovan missed out on the Ryan Arcidiacono experience years earlier.
The Bulls coach is making sure that’s not happening a second time.
So while going 10 or 11 deep from game-to-game isn’t always ideal for any NBA coach, Arcidiacono makes it easier for Donovan.
The guard is always ready, no matter how long the layoff from his last in-game minutes, he’s always going to bring some much-needed toughness to this roster, and he’s always going to bring energy.
Can’t lose situation as far as Donovan was concerned.
“Whether it be practice or shootarounds or whenever he’s called upon you know exactly what you’re going to get,” Donovan said of Arcidiacono on Monday. “To have a guy like that available with some of the injuries we’ve had to go through, based on putting him in at any point and time or juncture in the game, and you know exactly what you’re going to get. And I’ve got a lot of respect and admiration for him because he’s a total team guy. He’s great on the bench even when he’s not in the rotation. He’s good lifting those guys up. I think he’s been really, really valuable to our team.”
Donovan has actually known that for awhile, going back to his days as the Florida head coach. He was recruiting Arcidiacono, and thought he had landed the guard out of the Philadelphia area.
Heck, Arcidiacono even thought he was heading to the Sunshine State, until Villanova coach Jay Wright did a last-minute push, getting Arcidiacono and his parents to attended the program’s version of “Midnight Madness.”
Game, set, match, and Arcidiacono was a Wildcat.
Years later, what almost was, now is, and Donovan is glad to have the hard-nosed guard.
“I’ve always been a guy that regardless if I’m playing 20 minutes, no minutes, five minutes, 30 seconds, I’m always going to come in, bring energy, bring energy on the bench, whatever I have to do to help our team win,” Arcidiacono said. “I call myself a utility baseball player out there because [Donovan will] throw me out there and be like, ‘Alright, you’re playing off the ball with Sato and Coby in the game, with Coby just in the game,’ whatever the case is I’m like alright, I’ll go in for 10 seconds, whatever you need from me I got you, and I think that’s what the coaching staff and Billy expects out of me.”
Bill of health
Both Otto Porter Jr. (back) and Lauri Markkanen (right shoulder sprain) made some progress before the team flew to Houston on Monday, and while Donovan was holding out hope that at least one can return before the All-Star Break, he wasn’t holding his breath.
“I think as this week unfolds and we get closer to the All-Star Break, we’ll certainly have to look at OP because he hasn’t been able to do a lot of cardio stuff,” Donovan said. “I don’t know if either of those guys will be back before the All-Star Break or not. I think a lot of it is going to depend on if they do get some time under their belt and can come back, have they had enough of a period of time to get themselves ready to play? I’d imagine both of those guys have been really, really diligent about working out and trying to take care of themselves, and doing what they can to keep their conditioning up.”
U.S. Attorney John Lausch | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, said he was “hopeful” Lausch won’t have to resign by the end of the week.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., hinted Monday that the Biden White House will allow U.S. Attorney John Lausch, overseeing probes of top Democrats in Illinois, to remain on the job and not be forced to resign at the end of the week.
“I can just say that Senator (Tammy) Duckworth and I continue to present our case to the White House, that the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois should be allowed to continue until a successor is chosen. I am hopeful that that will end positively when we’ll know, I hope soon,” Durbin said.
Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, commented on the Chicago-based Lausch’s status after the conclusion of the first of two days of confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden’s attorney general nominee, the Lincolnwood-raised Merrick Garland.
Earlier this month, all U.S. Attorneys nominated by ex-President Donald Trump who were still on the job were told to resign by Feb. 28.
With the deadline looming, Lausch has not yet submitted his resignation, a signal he wants to stay on for now.
Before the order came down asking for the resignations, Durbin and Duckworth said they told Biden White House counsel Dana Remus “in direct conversations” why it was important to let Lausch, the top federal prosecutor for the Chicago-based Northern District of Illinois, stay on the job until his successor is confirmed.
The senators were blindsided by the decision to not grant an exception for Lausch.
The Democratic Biden White House appeared tone deaf to the appearance of removing a federal prosecutor who was investigating public corruption of Democrats.
U.S. attorneys are nominated by a president and must be confirmed by the Senate. Presidents have the power to fire U.S. attorneys.
By moving ahead to force Lausch out, Biden triggered an uproar in Illinois, uniting the Democratic senators, four of the five House GOP members, the Illinois Republican Party and newspaper editorial boards in protesting the move to fire Lausch while he is leading public corruption probes and prosecutions of top Democrats in the state.
Lausch’s office in 2020 implicated then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan in a long-running bribery investigation that has led to charges against ComEd and members of Madigan’s inner-circle.
Madigan has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. He was ousted as Speaker and last week quit his House seat. Under federal scrutiny, Madigan on Monday resigned as chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
In a rare bipartisan move, Trump, Durbin and Duckworth all supported Lausch. He was confirmed on a voice vote for a four-year term on Nov. 9, 2017. Searching for a successor and winning confirmation is a process that could take months.
Lausch managed a somewhat significant feat in the last three years, maintaining the support of Illinois’ Democratic senators while serving as the Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Chicago under a Republican administration that enjoyed little popularity in the city.
Earlier this month, when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the firings, she said requesting U.S. attorneys to resign at the start of a new presidency has been “commonplace among previous administrations, and we look forward to working with the Senate to swiftly fill these openings in the coming weeks. The president has also made clear he wants to restore the independence of the Department of Justice and to ensure it remains free of any undue political influence.”
No surprise in a recent WTTW announcement that Call the Midwife is viewers’ favorite show. As was clear when I wrote about it in 2017, it’s an all-time favorite of mine.
When I started rewatching Call the Midwife a few weeks ago, it was going to be one episode a day. That quickly grew to two or three as the uplifting BBC production proved to be perfect mental-health booster during the pandemic.
Qualities that I think are hard to find in a literary novel — such as hope, warmth, gladness, and change for the better — are present in spades in the television series. Call the Midwife did begin as an adaption of a book, but it was nonfiction — the memoirs of Jennifer Lee Worth, a young nurse-midwife who lived and worked with Anglican religious midwives in the impoverished East End of London in the 1950s. Heartwarming and inspiring stories such as Call theMidwife are the lifeblood of memoirs but often pooh-poohed in literary fiction circles.
Back in the 2000s, frustrated by the gloominess of much literary fiction, I began a search for upbeat novels that resulted in the website Positively Good Reads. To spread the word about the site, I sent a press release to some people in the book business. A few questioned the very notion of upbeat literature. Problems aren’t usually resolved in real life, one said.
Even a good friend chided me for wanting happy endings. It isn’t necessarily happy endings that I want, I’d explain, but I hope to finish a serious novel not wanting to jump off a bridge. Hardship and tragedy can be expected in realistic fiction, but I want the characters to learn and grow from these challenges.
If Call the Midwife had been on television then (series 1 ran in 2012), I could have pointed to it as the kind of story I’m looking for.
With its 10th season coming up on PBS this fall, and having long moved beyond the true incidents in Worth’s book, the BBC-produced drama reliably manages to balance sadness and sweetness. The residents of Poplar, as the East End neighborhood is called, have dealt with every hardship that writer Heidi Thomas could imagine over the series’ long run, including postpartum mental illness, backroom abortions, diseases, congenital disabilities, domestic abuse, generational tensions, and the ever-present extreme poverty. Finding support from one another and strength from within, Poplar residents and nurse-midwives come through the suffering. Without sugar-coating, each episode ends with my faith in humanity renewed.
Television critics praise Call the Midwife. “The cast is marvelous, the gritty, postwar set pieces are meticulously recreated, and . . . the story always has its eye on uplift and good cheer,” said the Washington Post‘s Hank Stuever. “[W]e go on, buoyed by hope and love. Not exactly an original message, but it is one that Midwife delivers convincingly,” wrote David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle.
It perplexes me then that literary critics, in contrast, are wont to accept as a given that serious fiction in book form must be dark because real life is dismal.
Whether or not you’ve already seen past seasons of Call the Midwife, I recommend taking advantage of the rebroadcast on Netflix. If you don’t have Netflix, WTTW Prime (Channel 37) is rerunning episodes at 7 p.m. Tuesdays and midnight and 9 a.m. Wednesdays. You won’t be able to start from the beginning, but each episode is self-contained, and you’ll catch on to the main characters. If you are hooked, you can tune in to season 10 on WTTW beginning in October. Good news for us fans: Call the Midwife has already been renewed for an 11th season in 2022.
A retired university publications editor and journalist, I live in the South Loop and volunteer as a Chicago Greeter. Getting the most out of retired life in the big city will be a recurrent theme of this blog, but I consider any topic fair game because the perspective will be that of a retiree.
Coach Brad Underwood’s Illinois team remains at No. 5 in the AP Top 25. | Jim Mone/AP
Gonzaga and Baylor remain atop The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll in a week of little change.
Gonzaga and Baylor remain atop The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll in a week of little change.
The top five from a week ago remained the same in the poll released Monday and no teams dropped out of the AP Top 25.
Gonzaga received 60 first-place votes from a media panel on Monday and Baylor had the other four, with the Bulldogs picking up one vote from the Bears.
Michigan, Ohio State and Illinois rounded out the top five. The Buckeyes held their spot despite losing 92-87 to the Wolverines on Sunday.
Loyola moved up a spot to No. 21.
No. 12 Houston dropped six spots after losing to Wichita State and No. 15 Virginia lost eight spots following losses to No. 11 Florida State and Duke.
No. 9 Iowa and No. 10 West Virginia moved back into the top 10.
You can’t start talking about this past weekend without talking about what will likely go down as the game of the year. It’s going to be difficult to top what went down Saturday night in Oak Park.
Notre Dame and Fenwick, a pair of highly-ranked teams, went to overtime where Louis Lesmond ended it in unbelievable fashion. With the game tied, Lesmond grabbed a defensive rebound with just a few seconds left, took two dribbles and let it fly from about 55 feet. Game over.
Behind Lesmond’s 35 points and heroic shot, Notre Dame walked out of Fenwick with a 71-68 win in overtime.
Might the 6-5 Harvard-bound senior have added his name to legitimate Player of the Year contenders?
It was always going to be difficult for any Notre Dame player to be in the conversation. The trio of Lesmond, Troy D’Amico and Anthony Sayles are too balanced, share the wealth and are very efficient in their smaller number of shot attempts.
Yes, Fenwick dropped its first game of the season in heartbreaking fashion to Notre Dame. The good news, however, is that junior David Gieser is back from injury.
The 6-2 Gieser is a floor-spacing shooter who was huge in the comeback against Notre Dame Saturday night with monster three-pointers. And it’s exactly the type of player the Friars need to surround star Bryce Hopkins with in the second half of this abbreviated season.
DePaul Prep impresses
Watching DePaul on Friday night was a reminder that coach Tom Kleinschmidt is really good at his job.
Yes, there is the building of the program into what is now a perennial power in the Catholic League. That goes without saying and stands out. But from a basketball standpoint it’s about utilizing the talent he has at his disposal each year.
There was to be some ragged play after having played just one game thus far when it squared off with St. Ignatius Friday night. But in addition to turning defense into offense — this program will always be defensive-minded first — Kleinschmidt allows both TY Johnson and Rasheed Bello to create, play more downhill and forces defenses to pick their poison in coverages.
There is less of a grind offensively.
In a normal year, this team is a legitimate Class 3A state title contender with its combination of versatile firepower and the defense it plays.
John Poulakidas bounces back
The Neuqua Valley performance against Waubonsie Valley on Friday was startling — and one to forget for the Wildcats. Neuqua fell behind its rival early, trailing 40-11 at the half, before eventually losing 70-28.
But they bounced back with a convincing win over a previously unbeaten Burlington Central team on Saturday.
The signature moment of the weekend, however, came on John Poulakidas’ third basket of the game in the win over the Rockets. The 6-5 senior surpassed 1,300 career points and became the all-time leading scorer in Neuqua Valley history.
Neuqua Valley’s John Poulakidas (32) drives down the lane as Waubonsie Valley’s Ben Schweiger (3) defends.Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times
Many would have thought the program’s greatest player, Dwayne Evans, who went on to star collegiately at Saint Louis, would have been the all-time leading scorer at Neuqua. But it was Keelan Amelianovich who Poulakidas passed. Amelianovich had an All-American career at the Division III level playing at Illinois Wesleyan.
Fortunately this shortened season didn’t derail what was going to be an obvious milestone for Poulakidas, who is headed to Yale next season.
Andrew is dangerous
Always pesky Andrew, where coach Dave Wilson has done an outstanding job keeping that program competitive, was back at being pesky again this past weekend. The Thunderbolts handed Bolingbrook its first loss of the season with a 52-45 win on the road.
Andrew, led by Jolo Amoranto, is now on top of the Southwest Suburban Red. It was 28 years since the last time Andrew won a conference title when Wilson’s Thunderbolts broke through with a league title in 2018. Now they’re on the verge again.
Amoranto, the little lefty who is averaging 20 points a game, is a fun player to watch and a nice small college basketball prospect.
Josh Harris hits 1,000
Saturday’s win over Westmont was a memorable night at Timothy Christian where senior Josh Harris, who is headed to Division III Illinois College, scored his 1,000th career point. Plus, junior Ben Vander Wal threw down an eye-popping baseline dunk. If you get a chance, check out his baseline dunk on social media.
Naperville North turns it around
A little rocky 1-3 start to the season for Naperville North turned positive very quickly this past week, beating rival Naperville Central 57-49 and handing neighboring Benet its first loss of the season, 43-30.
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