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Chicago Bears: Week 2 vs. Cincinnati Bengals is deceivingly crucialRyan Heckmanon September 18, 2021 at 12:00 pm

Chicago Bears (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)

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Chicago Bears (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

All week long, we have continued to hear about the Chicago Bears‘ quarterback situation. It’s as if that’s the only thing people want to talk about — and justifiably so.

But, the reality is, the Bears have a game to prepare for. If Matt Nagy is going to continue to ride with Andy Dalton, then so be it. The Bears have to figure out a way to win on Sunday, regardless of who’s under center.

Speaking of Dalton, he and the Bears face his former team in Week 2 as they open Soldier Field against the 1-0 Cincinnati Bengals. Cincinnati is coming off a dramatic Week 1 win over the Minnesota Vikings; a win which took overtime to decide.

The Bears, meanwhile, are 0-1 after a rough showing in prime time against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night.

It may be early in the season, but the Chicago Bears face a crucial game in Week 2.

Typically, if an NFL team starts the season 0-2, it is doomed. Only 30 teams since 1990 have begun the season 0-2 and made the playoffs — so, for easy explanation, an average of only one team every year has done so.

The Bears weren’t even looked at as a playoff team by many going into the season. If they were to drop this game against the Bengals, it would essentially cement what the national consensus was regarding this Bears team.

There could be a lot riding on this game, whether we realize it or not. There’s been a whole lot of whispering going on regarding internal displeasure with how Nagy has handled certain situations, and we could be closer to a major move within the organization than some believe.

We’re going to dive a little deeper into this game, starting with why not to take the Bengals lightly.

Next: Burrow’s Bengals are different

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Chicago Bears: Week 2 vs. Cincinnati Bengals is deceivingly crucialRyan Heckmanon September 18, 2021 at 12:00 pm Read More »

Blackhawks’ Kirby Dach, healthy at last, hopes intensive summer training leads to explosive seasonBen Popeon September 18, 2021 at 11:30 am

Britney Millar has encountered many hockey players dedicated to their craft. As a power skating instructor in Edmonton, Alberta, her programs attract exactly that type of person.

But after six years of working with Kirby Dach, she has realized his work ethic stands on a plane of its own.

“He comes to the rink [and] he’s always the most goofy, happy guy,” Millar said. “But the minute that we’re getting down to the actual drills, he’s always dialed in, paying attention. And then when he’s doing his reps, he’s always focused and attuned to what he’s trying to do and accomplish. That’s the biggest thing I’ve noticed about him.”

Dach and Millar reunited this summer as part of an intensive offseason of training for the 20-year-old Blackhawks center, who looks poised to fully break out in his third year in the NHL.

Coming off a largely lost season — Dach missed the first three months and last week of 2021 recovering from his disastrous wrist injury at the World Junior Championships, finishing with 10 points in just 18 NHL games — it was clear this offseason would be a crucial one for his career progression.

As it comes to a close and Dach readies for training camp, he’s pleased with how it went.

“I took some time off, let my wrist heal and did some physio,” Dach said. “I felt like I was at a good enough position to start skating and training again, and push my body to get back to a place where I felt happy in my conditioning and how I felt and how I moved.”

Kirby Dach scored 10 points in just 18 games in his injury-abridged 2021 season.AP Photos

Refreshing his skating

Many factors have contributed to Dach’s ascension from talented teenager to No. 3 overall pick to blossoming star over the past half-decade, but his skating work with Millar is one of the most influential.

Dach’s dad connected the two in 2015, shortly after Millar started her own company, and her first task was to utilize Dach’s natural athleticism to allow his skating to catch up with his body.

“As a kid, I was always tall and lanky, and then I hit a couple big growth spurts, so it took a while for my body to accept the way I wanted to skate without looking all funky,” Dach said, chuckling. “She’s been really good for me, helping me elongate my stride and get maximum power out of everything.”

“A lot of players tend to move with their feet, because that’s the normal movement pattern when you’re off the ice,” Millar said. “But [I had to] get his body in tune with the fact that, on the ice, your skating power comes from your hips, then your knees and your ankles.”

Their work together has evolved in the time since. In 2018-19, his draft year, Dach and Millar worked together three days per week for three months to improve his first-step explosiveness — because scouts considered it a weakness in his game at the time.

And this summer, after not being able to collaborate last year due to COVID-19, they worked together two days per week to help Dach shake off the rust created by playing only sparingly over the past year and a half.

“I asked him at the beginning, ‘Well, what do you want to work on this summer specifically?'” Millar said. “And he just said, ‘Overall, I want to get better.'”

“It was [about] refreshing everything, because from my perspective, he had just lost some of those specific efficiencies in his stride. We worked a lot on edges, because I also found he’d lost that awareness of his edge control. And then we worked on acceleration, as usual. And a lot of upper body rotation — his upper thoracic spine, we worked on connecting that with his body.”

Wrist fully healed

Dach follows a summer timeline that focuses heavily on skating early on, then gradually transitions to skills work — like shooting and puckhandling — and small-group practice settings later on, Millar said.

He followed that pattern again this summer, returning to Chicago in late August for more of the latter. He also continued his off-ice training with Ian Mack, the renowned private trainer who has helped him simultaneously gain strength and mobility over the past two years.

But Dach’s repaired wrist presented a third issue to deal with this summer. He didn’t reach a 100% comfort level with it until the beginning of August.

“It was a pretty steady process the whole way, just trusting my body, listening to it and knowing when it felt ready and when to push it, and when to back off if it was getting aggravated and started to get a little sore,” he said.

The entire eight-month recovery process proved to be a lesson in patience. He admits it “sucks getting hurt all the time” — that part will never change — but he has nonetheless learned how to better handle it mentally.

“It’s not like I’m the only guy that gets hurt in the world,” he said. “You can’t get too high on yourself and push things and just say it’s fine and get back and then hurt yourself more. [But you also can’t] not play your best; then you’re hurting the team. It’s a happy medium, and you just have to be able to find that balance of pushing yourself to the right extent.”

Come Thursday, when the Hawks begin camp at Fifth Third Arena, Dach will not have to actively think about that balance anymore. For the first time in three years, he’ll be healthy and able to participate in an NHL camp.

There will still be some challenges to overcome this season, such as with shooting, an area where he has somewhat struggled in his first two seasons — and an issue compounded last season by his lack of confidence in his wrist strength.

But Dach’s training this offseason has him feeling very confident now about the year ahead.

“I just want myself to take another step [this season],” he said. “I want to go out there and prove my worth and be able to play at the top level every night.”

Blackhawks’ Kirby Dach, healthy at last, hopes intensive summer training leads to explosive seasonBen Popeon September 18, 2021 at 11:30 am Read More »

2 killed, 17 wounded — including 15-year-old boy — in shootings Friday in ChicagoSun-Times Wireon September 18, 2021 at 11:34 am

At least two people were killed and 17 others — including a 15-year-old boy — wounded in citywide gun violence Friday.

A man was fatally shot while walking in Logan Square on the Northwest Side Friday morning.

The man, believed to be in his 20s or 30s, was attacked just after 4 a.m. in the 2600 block of North Milwaukee Avenue, police said.

He was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he died from multiple gunshot wounds, police said. His name hasn’t been released yet.

About a couple hours later, a man was shot and killed in Gresham on the South Side.

Officers found a man with a gunshot wound to his head around 6:30 a.m. in the 7800 block of South Bishop Avenue, Chicago police said.

He was taken to Holy Cross Hospital and pronounced dead. His name and age haven’t been released.

A police spokesperson was unable to provide additional details.

At least 25 other people have been killed in the Auburn Gresham community area so far this year, according to Sun-Times data. It’s the 9th most violent neighborhood of the 15 areas the city singled out last year for additional anti-violence resources and programs.

In nonfatal attacks, a 15-year-old boy was shot and critically wounded while riding in a car in Irving Park on the Northwest Side.

The teen was shot in the right leg by someone on the sidewalk about 12:45 a.m. in the 4200 block of West Irving Park, police said.

He was dropped off at Swedish Covenant Hospital and was listed in critical condition, police said.

Less than two hours later, three men were found shot on the Near North Side.

The three were found by police about 2:20 a.m. in the 1200 block of North Clark Street, Chicago police said.

A 23-year-old was shot in his abdomen and a 26-year-old in the left arm and right leg, police said. Another man, age unknown, was shot in the right leg, police said.

All three were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition, police said.

Two men were wounded in a drive-by shooting in West Pullman on the Far South Side.

They were sitting in a vehicle about 5:45 p.m. on the first block of West 125th Street when a maroon Jeep drove by and someone from inside fired shots, police said.

The men, 27 and 50, were shot in the leg and were taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition, police said.

A man was shot and wounded while riding on Lake Shore Drive in Lincoln Park.

The man, 20, was a passenger in a car when someone in a dark-colored sedan opened fire in the 2400 block of North Lake Shore Drive about 12:30 a.m., police said.

He was hit in the left arm and taken to Illinois Masonic in fair condition, police said.

At least 10 others were wounded in citywide shootings Friday.

At least two people were killed and 16 others — including a 16-year-old boy — were wounded by gun violence in Chicago Thursday.

2 killed, 17 wounded — including 15-year-old boy — in shootings Friday in ChicagoSun-Times Wireon September 18, 2021 at 11:34 am Read More »

At least 5 killed over span of 4 hours in citywide fatal shootingsMohammad Samraon September 18, 2021 at 9:38 am

At least five people were killed over the span of four hours Saturday morning in citywide shootings.

The five killed between midnight and 4 a.m. has already made Saturday Chicago’s deadliest day in shootings since Sept. 10, according to Chicago Sun-Times data.

Two people were shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Lawndale on the West Side.

Two men, 29 and 34, were struck by someone in a passing red vehicle about 12:15 a.m. in the 1900 block of South Saint Louis Avenue, Chicago police said.

The 29-year-old was struck in the eye and hand and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died, police said. The 34-year-old was struck once in his head and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

A man was found fatally shot in West Pullman on the Far South Side.

Police found the 31-year-old on the ground unresponsive with gunshot wounds to his torso and buttocks about 12:50 a.m. in the 200 block of East 121st Place.

He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he later died, police said.

A man was fatally shot during an argument in East Garfield Park on the West Side.

The 21-year-old was arguing with a woman about 2:40 a.m. when a man approached and opened fire in the 3100 block of West Arthington Street, striking him in the chest, arm and hip, police said.

He was taken to Mt. Sinai, where he later died, police said.

A man was fatally shot in a drive-by on the Near North Side.

The 33-year-old was standing next to his vehicle about 3:50 a.m. in the 800 block of North Orleans Street when someone inside a blue SUV opened fire, police said.

He was struck once in the chest, and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he died, police said.

No names have been released yet, and no one from any of the attacks was in custody.

At least 5 killed over span of 4 hours in citywide fatal shootingsMohammad Samraon September 18, 2021 at 9:38 am Read More »

‘It shouldn’t happen, and won’t happen again’Mark Potashon September 18, 2021 at 10:00 am

If it makes you feel any better, Bears safety Tashaun Gipson couldn’t believe it either when he and Eddie Jackson failed to touch Rams wide receiver Van Jefferson down at the 15-yard line Sunday night — allowing Jefferson to get back up and prance into the end zone for a touchdown.

What happened?

“I can’t tell you, honestly,” Gipson said. “It was one of those plays where in my 10-year career, I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of. If you play that play between me and Eddie, 10 times out of 10, one of us would tag him down — too much football IQ between the two of us to let a play like that happen.

“Obviously, that’s tough — something as simple as touching a guy down. They teach you that in little league. It’s just a play that can’t happen, shouldn’t happen and won’t happen again as long as I’m employed by the National Football League.”

We’ll see about that. Gipson, Jackson, coordinator Sean Desai and the Bears’ defense face an early moment of truth against the Bengals this Sunday after a mystifying performance against the Rams.

In which direction are they headed?

The heat already is on Desai to snap his defense back into form. The Bears hired him to replace Chuck Pagano with continuity in mind. Desai knows this defense. He learned under Vic Fangio. He knows these players.

And yet, right off the bat, the Bears looked like a team that had hired an outside coordinator who had overhauled Fangio’s defense and was introducing new terminology, new techniques and new philosophies. Not only that, but Desai’s own guys — the safeties he had coached for two seasons under Pagano — were the main culprits.

It doesn’t get much more Bears than that — except maybe for the alternating quarterbacks inside the 5/false start/timeout/tipped-pass-that-gets-intercepted thing. But that’s another story for another day.

Gipson, who leads the Bears in candor by a mile, did his best to grasp for answers.

“Week 1 in the NFL, [there’s] always that kind of jitters,” Gipson said. “We could say a lot of things. There was a lot of uncharacteristic football around the league. We’re human. It’s no excuse, but obviously getting on the same page with each other — missing that time during training camp . . . no finger-pointing obviously.

“When you give up plays like that on the back end, it’s a collective situation that we take ownership of. We’ve just got to do better. It wasn’t anything [the Rams] did. It wasn’t [that] their players were better than us and making contested catches. You can live with that.

“The blown coverages, we just didn’t give ourselves a chance, and that’s the most disappointing part about it. Those guys get paid just like we do. But a high school player could have run scot-free open and caught passes like that. I take ownership in the things that happened Sunday and vow to never let that happen again.”

This game against Cincinnati is an early test of Desai’s paternal, professorial approach. To him, improvement is about relationships, not the old-school element of fear.

“It’s an individual approach to each guy because everybody doesn’t respond to the same way of coaching and teaching,” he said. “I’ve learned through my education background [he has a doctorate in educational administration]. So you’ve got to be able to reach these guys where they’re at and make sure they’re responding. And that’s what we’re going to do.

“I think we’ve got good relationships on the defense — from the coaches to the players and the players to the players — and that’s what we’re going to bank on to continue to develop guys.”

‘It shouldn’t happen, and won’t happen again’Mark Potashon September 18, 2021 at 10:00 am Read More »

Snap decisions: What Justin Fields’ plays mean for the Bears’ futurePatrick Finleyon September 18, 2021 at 9:00 am

The Bears’ decision to use rookie quarterback Justin Fields for select plays in Week 1 intrigued the NFL — including one of the league’s most recent Hall of Fame coaches.

“I think it’s the ideal situation, to be quite honest with you,” former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, an analyst for CBS’ ”The NFL Today,” told the Chicago Sun-Times. “When you have a young quarterback, not to throw him in there and throw everything at him. He’s sitting behind a veteran quarterback in Andy Dalton. He sees how he prepares every week. And, more importantly, he sees the speed of the game that you can’t simulate in the preseason.”

When Ben Roethlisberger made his first start in Week 3 and carried Cowher’s 2004 Steelers to 13 consecutive regular-season victories, playing a rookie was considered novel. It has since become standard.

Between 2011 — when the collective-bargaining agreement established the modern rookie wage scale — and 2020, 12 of the 32 rookie quarterbacks taken in Round 1 started in Week 1, and 21 started within the first four weeks of their rookie year.

Fields is pointed that way, even if coach Matt Nagy won’t say so.

“Experience is the greatest thing you can have,” Cowher said. “The more they can continue to give him, the more comfortable he’ll be.

“We all know that, at some point, this will be his team.”

As the Bears prepare to play Fields for a few more snaps Sunday against the Bengals, the Sun-Times talked to former coaches, coordinators and players about the benefits and pitfalls and what to expect:

‘When the time was right, he could take over’

See if this sounds familiar: The Bears draft a quarterback in the first round, decide he’s not ready to start and instead play him a little each game.

The year was 1999. The rookie was Cade McNown, whom the Bears had taken 12th overall — one spot after Fields.

”We thought that Cade could learn,” Gary Crowton, the Bears’ offensive coordinator at the time, told the Sun-Times this week. “And when the time was right, he could take over.”

The Bears gave him the second or third drive of each game. The idea imploded in Week 5, when Shane Matthews pulled his right hamstring against the Vikings.

McNown was outplayed by veteran Jim Miller, went 1-8 the next season and never started again.

“We never had full access to the plan because of injuries,” Crowton said.

McNown’s pro career was disastrous. Much was his own doing. Thinking he was showing leadership, McNown once infamously yelled at running back Edgar Bennett, a 30-year-old former Super Bowl champion, after he mistakenly threw a flat route at the wrong depth in practice. He was trying to take charge but instead lost the respect of his teammates.

Having a mature quarterbacks room is critical to using two passers in the same game, said Matt Hasselbeck, the former quarterback who co-hosts ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown.” He knows from experience — he started all 16 games for the 2011 Titans, though rookie Jake Locker appeared in five of them.

The Titans cut the rookie’s playbook down to about 40% of the original. Maybe a third of that, Hasselbeck said, were plays the staff considered ideal for Locker.

“I think it’s a pretty good idea,” he said. “It’s not threatening to the team — we’re all bringing our skill set to the table to try to go 1-0 this week.”

At the time, though, it was annoying.

“It wasn’t my preference,” he said. “My entire career, I was used to getting every single rep of every single practice. But I understood. . . . I valued my role as the person who was there to help.”

The Bears won’t have that problem. Dalton, Fields and Nick Foles, he said, are good teammates.

“Other teams,” he said, “don’t have the luxury the Bears have.”

Bears quarterback Justin Fields heads out of bounds for a first down during a preseason football game against the Buffalo Bills in August. Nam Y. Huh/AP

‘A different time’

There never has been more pressure to get rookie quarterbacks ready. Teams that save by paying them rookie scale use that money on different positions.

Three of the five drafted in the first round this year started in Week 1. The 49ers couldn’t do that with Trey Lance — starter Jimmy Garoppolo is 23-8 as the starter — so they used Lance for four plays. While Fields ran for a three-yard touchdown, Lance threw a five-yard touchdown pass in Week 1.

“We’re in a different time,” NFL Network analyst Michael Irvin, a Hall of Fame wide receiver, said. “If you can get a quarterback and get him on the field and get him playing well while he’s in that first contract, there’s a lot of things you can do in other areas. . . .

“You gotta get him on the field and try to get him ready.”

The Saints have used Taysom Hill as a run-first quarterback. But few other NFL teams have tried to play two quarterbacks, much less to develop a rookie. The last time one regularly played its rookie quarterback in special situations was three years ago, when Lamar Jackson came off the Ravens’ bench for eight games. He was then tabbed the starter, won six of seven games to make the playoffs and was named MVP a year later.

The parallels stop there, Hasselbeck said. The Ravens used him as a decoy, which didn’t help his development.

No one has done it since — until this year.

“There are only so many quarterbacks that are good enough to win,” Bears offensive coordinator Bill Lazor said. “Probably not 32. So if you really have two on your team that can do that, you’re fortunate.”

Or it’s the other way around.

“There’s always two scenarios,” Crowton said. “You have two guys who you think are pretty good, and you’re not quite sure how they’re gonna react to the game. Or you have nobody — and you hope that somebody steps up.”

Seeing ghosts

Five-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Steve Smith, now an NFL Network analyst, likes the idea of putting a rookie quarterback on a tangible small snap count. It’s “something you can coach up and improve,” he said.

It’s a low-stakes bet, too.

“If you’re playing the entire game and you play bad, and you go play another entire game and you play bad, it really has a bad, negative effect on your confidence,” said Joe Thomas, the 10-time Pro Bowl offensive tackle-turned-NFL Network analyst. “At the quarterback position, all of a sudden, you do the Sam Darnold. You start seeing ghosts. It can really destroy a career.”

In October 2019, Darnold — then the Jets’ second-year quarterback — was captured on “Monday Night Football” saying that he was “seeing ghosts.” At the time, the Jets’ second-year quarterback was trailing the Patriots 24-0 and was on his way to his 12th loss in 16 career starts.

Darnold was the youngest Week 1 rookie quarterback in modern history. A year and a half later, he was openly rattled on national TV. It was a franchise’s worst nightmare.

That won’t happen with quarterbacks on a limited snap count.

“If you give a guy a little taste — he’s getting five plays, he’s getting 10 plays — [and] if he screws up, you can easily on Monday morning go in there and say, ‘You played bad, but we won the game,’ ” Thomas said. “Or, ‘You didn’t do a great job, but we can make these corrections and get you to play better.’

“You don’t destroy his confidence in five to 10 plays if he doesn’t do a good job.”

In his 11-year career with the Browns, Thomas watched his team start four failed quarterbacks as rookies: Colt McCoy, Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel and DeShone Kizer. Thomas developed a unified theory about young quarterbacks.

“I think if you have a quarterback that can use his legs — whether he’s more a running quarterback or a quarterback that can escape or extend plays — those guys can play right away,” he said. “They don’t have to understand everything about a defense or everything about an offense to be efficient and to help your team succeed and win.”

Fields can certainly extend plays.

Traditional drop-back passers, he said, have more to learn.

“If they’re not fully ready, if they’re getting confused by defenses consistently,” Thomas said, “all you’re gonna do is you’re gonna ruin them.”

NFL: Not For Long

Smith doesn’t think the Bears or 49ers will keep using their rookie quarterback sparingly. Running back committees don’t work either, he said — eventually, teams stick with the one that’s in rhythm.

“With the quarterback, the cadence is different, the mechanics are different, the reads are different,” he said. “You can’t keep making your offensive line, wide receivers, running back in the flow of the game go up and down.”

That’s the risk of playing Fields even a handful of downs: compromising his rhythm — and that of Dalton. Fields gives opposing teams something to prepare for, though, giving them less time to worry about other things.

“It gives that extra look and that extra dimension,” Thomas said. “‘It’s easy for us, but it’s hard for them.'”

Those plays, he said, don’t adversely affect offensive rhythm. Timing is disrupted when teams “just want a spark” and bring in a backup with similar skills.

“The quarterbacks, the receivers, they lose their rhythm that they’re trying to get,” Thomas said. “They lose any ability to try to get on the same page. It just makes for a herky-jerky offense.”

Fields’ skill set, though, is different than Dalton’s, Hasselbeck said. And he’s the future of the franchise — whether that future is now or a few weeks away.

Until then, though, he’ll get his handful of snaps.

“The good thing about this situation is he’s running legitimate quarterback plays that are already in their offense,” Hasselbeck said. “They didn’t just think this up this week.”

Snap decisions: What Justin Fields’ plays mean for the Bears’ futurePatrick Finleyon September 18, 2021 at 9:00 am Read More »

At least 4 killed over span of 3 hours in citywide fatal shootingsMohammad Samraon September 18, 2021 at 9:38 am