Blazers coach Chauncey Billups has cleared the NBA’s health and safety protocols.Read More
Sources: Billups clears protocols, will coach Mon.on January 2, 2022 at 10:21 pm Read More »
Bears defensive end Robert Quinn broke former Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent’s franchise single-season sack record Sunday in Chicago’s win over the Giants.Read More
Quinn: ‘Honor’ to break Dent’s Bears sack recordon January 3, 2022 at 12:59 am Read More »
Bears fans at Soldier Field are criticized for not knowing to be quiet when the offense has a big third down to convert. But they are locked into everything that happens on defense — conditioned by years of excellence.
So the anticipation of Robert Quinn breaking Richard Dent’s single-season sack record was palpable Sunday in the Bears’ home finale against the Giants. The crowd cheered knowingly when Quinn had Giants quarterback Mike Glennon in his grasp in the first quarter — like cheering a home run that hasn’t yet left the park — only to have Glennon escape by dumping the ball to running back Devontae Booker at the last second.
“I thought the refs were going to blow the play dead and they didn’t,” Quinn said. “He made a nice play. That’s football for you. Sometimes it’s just football.”
And the fans roared even more when Quinn appeared to sack Glennon on a fourth-and-nine play in the fourth quarter — only to have that nullified by a holding penalty on linebacker Alec Ogletree. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
“Nah,” Quinn said. “You just keep going. It’s football. It’s towards the end of the game and you’re just trying to finish it out strong and guys are having fun, and I guess I caught fire at the right time.”
Indeed he did. Just when it looked like it wasn’t Quinn’s day, the veteran linebacker made history. On the following play, Quinn beat a chip by tight end Evan Engram and flew past left tackle Andrew Thomas to strip the ball from Glennon for his 18th sack of the season — breaking Dent’s record of 17.5 sacks in 1984.
Quinn was typically subdued about breaking the record of a revered Bears Hall of Fame player. And truth be told, Quinn has had more sacks in a season — 19 with the Rams in 2013, his third season in the NFL.
“It’s an honor,” Quinn said. “Like you said, a Hall of Famer in Richard Dent — I guess to take the record [from him] it’s an honor. But … I’ve just got to make sure I keep building my resume the right way. I don’t know. At the end of the day I just keep doing my job.”
With 8:08 left in the game and the Bears coasting to a 29-3 victory, coach Matt Nagy called time out to give his teammates — and the crowd — a chance to toast Quinn for the accomplishment. It’s not Quinn’s style, but he appreciated the gesture.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on — why did we stop?” Quinn said. “For them to do that — I don’t know — I guess it just shows a little respect. It’s an honor for them to even do that.”
It meant something to Nagy. “It just pays respect from all of us — coaches and players — to him, how much we appreciate [him],” Nagy said. “What’s cool and what’s important for these young players to see somebody at his age practice the way he practices.
“And what a great person to look up to and see [that] if you practice like this, this is what can happen — especially coming off of last year [when Quinn had two sacks]. Resilient. He’s been through a lot in his life and to get to this point right now — he’d be the last person to tell you that he wants any attention. But he deserves it.”
Quinn said Dent called him Saturday to chat about the record, and mentioned that when he had those 17.5 sacks in 1984, he only started 10 games. “So he let me know what company I was in,” Quinn said.
Dent was as supportive as he could be. “Does anybody want their records broken?” Quinn said with a laugh. “I think he was excited but not really, you know?”
Regardless, “It’s just an honor to break the [record]. A blessing,” Quinn said. “The powers have blessed me greatly. So thank you [god] and thank you to everyone that supported me.”
Robert Quinn ‘blessed’ to break Bears’ sack record Read More »
A round of applause, please, for the thousands of Bears fans who decided not to show up for Sunday’s game at Soldier Field. The reason for their non-attendance could have been winter-related, but more likely it was Bears-related, anger-related and I-can’t-take-any-more-of-this-related. They spoke with their absence: Why support something that doesn’t deserve support?
As for the fans who did make an appearance, maybe they were nostalgic for Mike Glennon’s four starts for the Bears in 2017.
He and the Giants showed up for the apparent purpose of making the home team feel better about itself. The result was a 29-3 Bears’ victory and a game that had the nutritional value of a Pop Tart. There was some meaning to it, though. Its conclusion meant that this nightmare of a season has only one game left.
Coach Matt Nagy would like you to know that his team has fought and cared to the very end, which probably means something somewhere, but not in the standings. The Bears are 6-10, the Giants are 4-12 and thank goodness Sunday is over.
The only way for fans to let Bears ownership know of their displeasure is with empty seats. Sunday’s paid attendance was 59,594 (capacity is 61,500), but the team doesn’t announce no-shows. Make no mistake, though: The McCaskeys surely saw all the gaps and winced.
Unfortunately, the question isn’t whether the family will fire Nagy — Sunday likely was his last game at Soldier Field as Bears head coach. No, the question is whom the McCaskeys will misidentify this time as head coaching material.
While you fans bum out over the historical basis for that truth, remember that the man responsible for hiring Nagy very well could be back for more stellar decision-making in 2022. It’s the same man who brought quarterbacks Glennon and Mitch Trubisky to Chicago in 2017. That’s general manager Ryan Pace. Happy New Year, everybody!
Glennon didn’t complete a pass until the final play of the first quarter Sunday, the Giants’ offensive line being a threat to his life and to his limbs. He completed 4 of 11 passes for 24 yards. He threw two interceptions, lost two fumbles and had a passer rating of 5.3, which sounds more like a bad feels-like temperature.
On the first play from scrimmage, Bears defensive lineman Trevis Gipson violently stripped Glennon of the ball. Teammate Bilal Nichols recovered, ran the ball 12 yards to the New York 2-yard line and the game was over. You think that’s overstatement? Listen, the Giants are so bad that the first whiff of failure was going to do them in. That whiff came 18 seconds into the game.
That’s not how Nagy saw Sunday. He saw the victory as his players caring until it hurt.
“These guys, they deserve to be credited for their ability to fight through some tough times and care,” he said. “To come out and play with this effort like they have been doing, this isn’t something that’s just kicked on the last couple weeks; they’ve been playing with this effort all year.”
Allow me to belabor the bejabbers out of this point: The standings reflect wins, losses and ties. Effort and attitude are not factored into winning percentage.
Lest you think the Bears’ offense suddenly found itself Sunday, just know that Andy Dalton (another Pace signing) had a passer rating of 63.1, which only looks good when compared to Glennon’s. Know that the majority of the Bears’ 29 points were set up by the Bears’ defense. Know that Robert Quinn set the franchise’s single-season record with a sack Sunday. It gave him 18, half a sack more than Richard Dent had in 1984. And know that the Giants allowed a kickoff to stop at their own 2-yard line in the second quarter because returner Pharoh Cooper thought the ball was going into the end zone for a touchback. Um, wrong. That mistake eventually led to a Bears safety.
“It was a big win for us,” Dalton said.
From the perspective of a team that had lost eight of nine games during one stretch this season, maybe it was a big win. But that’s as damning as anything.
Even CBS knew what it had on its hands. Throughout the game, the announcers chose to sell the viewing audience on the historical bonds between the two teams. The quality of the football would have been an impossible sell. So how about those 1985 Bears? Did you know they beat the Giants in the playoffs that season?
This season will be put out of your misery next week in Minnesota. It can’t come soon enough. Change is on the way but so is uncertainty, with a distinct chance of dread in the forecast. A new coaching staff likely will need to be hired, rookie quarterback Justin Fields probably will have to learn a new system and Pace possibly could be back.
Likely, probably and possibly are not your friends, Bears fans.
By their absence, Bears fans show dissatisfaction with ownership’s sorry course Read More »
Three takeaways from Sunday’s 29-3 Bears win against the Giants:
Bears outside linebacker Trevis Gipson had the best game of his career, recording two strip sacks for the first multi-sack game of his career.
After Gipson hit Giants quarterback Mike Glennon on the game’s first play, defensive tackle Bilal Nichols recovered the ball and returned it 12 yards on the Giants’ 2. The Bears scored on the next play.
“My eyes got big at the opportunity,” he said, “and I had to take advantage of it.”
In the third quarter, Gipson’s sack led to a Khyiris Tonga fumble recovery.
“We want to be about turnovers and getting the ball back to our offense as fast as possible,” he said.
Gipson, who was a healthy scratch in Week 2, has 6 1/2 sacks and four forced fumbles this season.
Bears receiver Allen Robinson returned from the reserve/COVID-19 list this week and said he’d lost 10 pounds and lung stamina. Bears coach Matt Nagy said the Bears monitored him Sunday, particularly early in the game. He sat out some plays he wouldn’t ordinarily miss.
He finished with four catches for 35 yards.
Defensive lineman Akiem Hicks had two tackles in his first game back from the reserve list.
Receiver Darnell Mooney was removed from the game by the league’s concussion spotter but returned after he answered questions properly in the medical tent. When they asked what quarter it was, he replied with the quarter, how long was left in it and where the ball was.
He was allowed back in the game, and finished with seven catches for 69 yards.
Takeaways from Bears’ win against Giants Read More »
CHICAGO — Bears defensive end Robert Quinn set a franchise single-season sack record Sunday with his 18th takedown after he tackled New York Giants quarterback Mike Glennon in the fourth quarter of Chicago’s 29-3 win.
“It’s an honor,” the soft-spoken Quinn said after the game. “At the end of the day, I’m just doing my job.”
Quinn, 31, got close several times in the game before eventually beating left tackle Andrew Thomas for the strip sack (though the ball was recovered by the Giants). The sequence came about midway through the fourth.
“People [my teammates] didn’t let me forget about it all day,” Quinn said. “I just tried to brush it off and play football.”
1 Related
Quinn broke former Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent’s mark of 17.5 sacks set in 1984. He began the season with 5.5 sacks in his first seven games played and then went on a tear, recording at least one sack in his past eight games, including Sunday.
His best day came in late November when he recorded 3.5 sacks against the Baltimore Ravens.
Quinn spoke to Dent on Saturday, and the two joked about Dent earning his 17.5 sacks in a 16-game season. The NFL added another game this season but Quinn was able to break the record in the Bears’ 16th game — not needing No. 17 next week.
“If it took 17 games, he would have called me and made sure I knew what the heck was going on,” Quinn said with a smile. “It was quite funny. He said he had 17.5 and only started 10 games. He let me know the company I was in.”
With the Bears comfortably in front of the Giants on Sunday, coach Matt Nagy called a timeout after the sack to let fans and players acknowledge the moment.
“It just pays respect from all of us, as coaches and players to him, how much we appreciate him,” Nagy said. “It’s important for young players on this team to see somebody at his age practice the way he practices.”
Quinn was a first-round pick of the then-St. Louis Rams in 2011. He recorded 19 sacks for them in the 2013 season. He signed a five-year, $70 million deal with the Bears before the 2020 season. He had just two sacks in his first season with the Bears but turned it around in 2021.
“I had that one good jump and I knew I had the corner,” Quinn said of his record-breaking sack against the Giants. “The quarterback was still there, and I was able to make history.”
Quinn: ‘Honor’ to break Dent’s Bears sack recordon January 2, 2022 at 11:50 pm Read More »
The rankings are usually a little easier to do after the holidays than most weeks. I start with a clean slate. No one cares where anyone was ranked before all these games were played. What matters is what happened in all the tournaments.
So it was a bit shocking that the top five remains the same after all of last week’s action. I don’t ever remember that happening after holidays. It shows how solid that group is right now. It appears that the top six teams may be a notch above everyone else in the area.
Holiday tournament winners got huge jumps in the rankings, obviously. Burlington Central joins for the first time this season after winning in Plano. The Rockets beat Yorkville Christian and well-regarded Peoria Notre Dame.
Homewood-Flossmoor and Hyde Park, two teams that were unranked last week, won at Hinsdale Central and the Big Dipper. Both teams have been in and out of the Super 25. They are back now. Hyde Park knocked off the Vikings the first week of the season so they wind up a spot higher.
Mount Carmel won at Pekin and Larkin won at Jacobs. I know that the Caravan hasn’t played one of the area’s elite teams this season. And they just squeaked by De La Salle and Morgan Park. But I’ve seen them play a number of times though and are confident in them. DeAndre Craig is a star and the supporting cast around him is exactly what you want in a high school basketball team. They are a really unselfish, hard-working group too.
With record and last week’s ranking
York champs
Proviso West winners
Won title at Pontiac
Cruised at Wheeling
Lost to Simeon
Lost to Kenwood
Won Pekin title
Champs at Jacobs
Won the Big Dipper
Won Hinsdale Central title
Lost to Simeon in OT
Nice run in Bloomington
Lost to Hyde Park
Lost to WW South
Proved a lot at York
Three big wins at York
Gave Young a scare
Second at Hinsdale Central
Split in Minnesota
Second at York
Lost to Lyons
Champs at Plano
Didn’t play at York
Mixed results at York
Finished second in Centralia
Michael O’Brien’s Super 25 high school basketball rankings for Jan. 2, 2022 Read More »
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2022’s First Lesson: Set an Alarm Read More »
Superstar point guard Luka Doncic is among three Dallas Mavericks who have cleared the NBA’s health and safety protocols and will play Sunday against the Thunder in in Oklahoma City.
Shooting guard Tim Hardaway Jr. and power forward Maxi Kleber have also cleared the protocols after missing several games because of COVID-19. They also are available Sunday.
None of the three players were listed on the team’s injury report released on Saturday.
Doncic has not played since aggravating his previously sprained left ankle in a Dec. 10 loss to the Indiana Pacers. He sat out the next five games because of ankle soreness and was expected to return Dec. 23 against the Milwaukee Bucks but tested positive for COVID-19, causing Doncic to miss five more games.
Hardaway and Kleber, two of the Mavs’ top reserves, have each missed the Mavs’ past six games.
The Mavs managed to go 5-5 during Doncic’s extended absence despite a COVID-19 outbreak that resulted in a total of 10 Dallas players entering the league’s protocols, including two players on 10-day hardship deals. Jalen Brunson, filling in for Doncic as the starting point guard, averaged 21.0 points and 7.4 assists per game during the stretch.
Luka among three Mavericks to clear protocolson January 2, 2022 at 10:21 pm Read More »
CHICAGO — Bears defensive end Robert Quinn set a franchise single-season sack record Sunday with his 18th takedown after he tackled New York Giants quarterback Mike Glennon in the fourth quarter of Chicago’s 29-3 win.
“It’s an honor,” the soft-spoken Quinn said after the game. “At the end of the day, I’m just doing my job.”
Quinn, 31, got close several times in the game before eventually beating left tackle Andrew Thomas for the strip sack (though the ball was recovered by the Giants). The sequence came about midway through the fourth.
“People [my teammates] didn’t let me forget about it all day,” Quinn said. “I just tried to brush it off and play football.”
1 Related
Quinn broke former Super Bowl MVP Richard Dent’s mark of 17.5 sacks set in 1984. He began the season with 5.5 sacks in his first seven games played and then went on a tear, recording at least one sack in his past eight games, including Sunday.
His best day came in late November when he recorded 3.5 sacks against the Baltimore Ravens.
Quinn spoke to Dent on Saturday, and the two joked about Dent earning his 17.5 sacks in a 16-game season. The NFL added another game this season but Quinn was able to break the record in the Bears’ 16th game — not needing No. 17 next week.
“If it took 17 games, he would have called me and made sure I knew what the heck was going on,” Quinn said with a smile. “It was quite funny. He said he had 17.5 and only started 10 games. He let me know the company I was in.”
With the Bears comfortably in front of the Giants on Sunday, coach Matt Nagy called a timeout after the sack to let fans and players acknowledge the moment.
“It just pays respect from all of us, as coaches and players to him, how much we appreciate him,” Nagy said. “It’s important for young players on this team to see somebody at his age practice the way he practices.”
Quinn was a first-round pick of the then-St. Louis Rams in 2011. He recorded 19 sacks for them in the 2013 season. He signed a five-year, $70 million deal with the Bears before the 2020 season. He had just two sacks in his first season with the Bears but turned it around in 2021.
“I had that one good jump and I knew I had the corner,” Quinn said of his record-breaking sack against the Giants. “The quarterback was still there, and I was able to make history.”
Quinn: ‘Honor’ to break Dent’s Bears sack recordon January 2, 2022 at 10:47 pm Read More »
