Shawn Mackey (00:24.366)
Okay, here we go. Recording, I believe, season two, episode six right now. Posted episode five  was just me venting a little bit and then doing some play by play. I kind of told you that during this season, I'm going to do it for football, but I was doing baseball at this point. Very limited. I just pulled up the game on the Cubs website, had all the stats for that game in particular. You you could see the cartoon guys hitting so you could see the pitches and I could make the calls and all that good stuff. But, wow. Here we go. So it's been a minute since we talked about the Cubs.

That play by play was during the Cubs game, but everybody keeps saying this team's built for October. I don't even know what the hell that means. If you, got to get through, you know, April through September before you can be built for October. I know the Cubs have a really good lineup, some big time struggles. Daniel Palencia blows another save, goes on the 15 day disabled list. I don't know if this guy's a legit closer anyway.

First year in the role. Maybe he turns out to be one of those guys who leads the leagues 10 years from now or leads the league 10 years from now in saves. I don't know. Right now it's not really working. Now we got to see who's going to be closing out ball games for the next two and a half weeks or so. Kyle Tucker hasn't played since September 2nd, not on the disabled list, just trying to rest up that hand. Again, I talked about, I think him.

You know, not going on the injured list back when he first found out about the hand arrest up back in June, I think has hurt this team. Now we don't know if Kyle Tucker's going to want to stick around in Chicago after this year. I know that his value has dropped tremendously. I think they were projecting him out to possibly be a five or 600 million kind of guy. Now they're down to 400 million. He's still a great ballplayer, but again, decisions you make as a player.

can hurt your team and then when management knows about these things and then let the player control. that's where we're at and sitting there with Kyle Tucker. So Cubs lose two out of three to the Nationals. That's when Palencia gets hurt blowing that save, giving up those four runs. Cubs lose the first game to Atlanta, Shota now nine and eight. And I know, and at one point Matthew Boyd was, you know, he's 12 and eight now, I think great campaign.

But I think at one point this dude was something like 10 and two or 10 and three. I don't know. But showed has given up a lot of long balls lately. Leagues kind of figuring this guy out. So we got to see if he can make some adjustments for the postseason. If the Cubs even make it. So just wanted to get in a little bit of that Cubs news to start this episode. We are now into the Tuesday, Friday, Sunday drops for these episodes.

We've got the NFL coverage coming up here to start with that terrible, terrible Bears game last night. Sunday's episode that I posted, didn't really do any college, know, week two, we all knew the top 25 was going to change drastically after week one. I'm pretty sure it's flip flopped again. So I think today's the day we'll see the new top 25 come out.

see how it changed or fared from week two to going into week three for the NCAA college football action. So I want to get into this Bears game yesterday. I mean, I know it's game one under Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson's doing the right things. takes responsibility in the presser. He's a different breed as far as the last couple of two coaches, the two Mats.

prior to him always making excuses. Ben Johnson's not making the excuses. And I hope he sticks by what he says that he's not gonna be patient. Because right now what I'm seeing with our quarterback is not looking good. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I did not want the Bears to draft Caleb Williams.

We saw these issues with Justin Fields. I didn't want them. When they drafted Justin Fields and I had learned that the Bears had traded up to get that, what was it, number 11, I kept telling my wife, we were somewhere, and I'm like, God, I hope they don't take Justin Fields. I hope they don't take Justin Fields. I hope they don't take Justin Fields. That me was personal because he's out of Ohio State and I can't, I don't like Ohio State. And honestly,

Somebody should look this up, but who is the last Ohio State quarterback to succeed in the NFL?

I gave you some time. I don't think you can name anybody. Really. There's not been any, I think the last Ohio State quarterback that succeeded in the NFL succeeded as a punter and that was Tom Tupa. But I don't recall any Ohio State quarterbacks starting many games for multiple seasons in the NFL. And I'm gonna go back and look at that. Cause if I'm wrong,

I wanna own up to that. But I know I looked this up a couple of years ago. So that's why I didn't want them to take Justin Fields. The whole Caleb Williams thing was, yeah, he was bright and flashy at college at USC. But I didn't see anything in college that made me say this guy's gonna be a great pro. And you know, we don't see that a lot ever, hardly anyway.

You watch a lot of college football, you see quarterbacks half the time. You know, there's some standouts, of course. There's the top four or five guys every year that the analysts are like, yeah, this guy's going to get drafted. He's going to go pro. He's going to be a great Sunday quarterback. You know, then you get the guys like the Tom Brady's pretty decent kid at Michigan. Doesn't get drafted very high, sits on the bench, comes in and gets his opportunity. And next thing you know, he's going to go down in history as one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, at least in my time. Maybe by the time I'm long dead and gone, somebody else will have unseated Tom Brady as that top quarterback. But with the Bears yesterday, I'm telling you what, it looked, it looked almost a mere image of what we saw to end last season. The Bears, they could not stop the run. Minnesota seemed to run at will on this team. 

They couldn't get their run game going. I mean, the Bears rushed for I think it was something like 119 yards. But Caleb Williams had 58 of that. And I said all that time when Justin Fields was leading the Bears in rushing yards every game, your quarterback cannot be the guy who leads the team in rushing yards. That is a recipe for disaster. That means you don't have a run game. That means your quarterback is scrambling his ass off.

which then also means that your old line's not getting the job done. And holy shit, had so much aspirate, I had so much hopes after bringing in these three new guys, Drew Dalman and John Thuney and Jonah Jackson to solidify that offensive line in the middle. Yes, Caleb only gets sacked two times for 12 yards. So that aspect's a little bit better, but they couldn't run the ball. DeAndre Swift ends up with 17 carries for 53 yards.

That for me is on my list as one of the goods or the bright spot of that game. But we want to look at the good, the bad and the ugly and the fucking horrendous with what happened on this team. I don't have a lot of other than Caleb Williams looked good in the first half completed his first 10 passes. But here's the deal. A lot of those were those easy check down throws that he just kept completing. Right. And then at some point, Brian Flores starts going to a cover to

and he starts bringing DBs up on those check down receivers. And all of a sudden that puts, I think, in a little bit of a panic mode because he's like, fuck, my check downs are gone. So now he has to go down field. And that's where we see some of the bad and the ugly that Caleb Williams couldn't even hit wide open receivers. I mean, know Troy, Troy Aikman was talking about it. He's like, you're a number one draft pick. You're supposed to be the generational quarterback.

that this team was hoping for and you gotta make those throws. Those are the throws you have to make. When you've got guys wide open, you can't be overthrowing them. You can't under throw them. You you gotta make those throws and he didn't.

So the second half, Caleb Williams, I mean, he goes under my good for the first half, completing 10 of 10, you know, leading that first scoring drive. And everybody was so ecstatic that first scoring drive. We're like, we finally drive down the field on the first possession on our opening possession. We score, we put that to bed. All the troubles in the past years we had with it. Bears were looking good in that first half. But then you have a botched fourth down.

You're on the 24, you're on their 24 yard line, Minnesota's 24 yard line. It's fourth and two. He misses a wide open wide receiver. Should have kicked the ball. You know, at that point. Kick the ball. Yes, Cairo Santos missed a 50 yarder a little bit later in the game, but I think he maybe makes that field go. Maybe he makes if he makes the one and that was terrible. That kick. I don't it looked like.

I don't even know what it looked like, but he almost missed the first one he made. you've got kicking issues. And again, those kicking issues will lead me into some of the ugly toward the end of this episode because of what happened at the end of the game. now Sean Wright, the pick six, 74 yards for the touchdown dude played it perfectly. Here's a kid who was on Minnesota's practice squad. Didn't play a lick at all last year comes in. He's starting for the bears.

Probably because Kyler Gordon's out. But he's got that pick six. His bears go up 17 to.

Was it six at that point? I think because the Minnesota got that late field goal after giving up a 20 yard completion to get them into field goal range and their kicker hits a 59 yard field goal. So think at half it was like 10 to six. And so early in the second half, maybe it goes up to 17 six. Everything's looking good at that point. And then the defense just freaking implodes. They couldn't get off the field.

too many three in outs. Some of the bad was a lot of those Caleb Williams overthrows and under throws, right? The no run game other than Caleb Williams. The two tight end set, everything that they said Ben Johnson loved, like he loved to these, know, covered these two tight end sets. We are two tight ends, Colk Komet and Colston Loveland.

They combined for three receptions for 43 yards and commit had one reception and picked up 31 of those yards. So Colston Loveland, two receptions for 12 yards. Was he targeted more? Were those some of the overthrows? Didn't really see that being that many. So I don't know what's going on with the two tight end set, right? The second half bears defense.

Tiki-Tak penalty on Tyreek Stevenson, but again, I'm not a big Stevenson fan after what he pulled last year. You know, that ball was way overthrown, looked like the receiver slipped and that's why there was contact. And then they call that, and then the two penalties on Deo Obendango, Odango, my God, I'm sorry.

One hands to the face looked like he had his hand in the dude's chest and at the very last minute it maybe grazed his chin. You know, and they call him for that penalty. So that was terrible. And then what was the other penalty they called on him?

That I thought was a terrible, terrible, the roughing the passer. mean, that ball, he was right there. He was in McCarthy's face making contact with him as the ball was being released. So that's he did the moment type thing. I didn't see his helmet, touch his helmet, looked like they were side to side and he pushed them in the chest.

I'd like to go check out video on that again, see if I can slow it down and see if there was helmet to helmet contact. I didn't think those two calls were warranted on Odangbo. Now Odangbo was a guy early on that people were having questions about, but he had a fricking great game. He was all over the field. Really loved what Noah Sewell did coming in playing for TJ Edwards with him being out. And that's the other part. The Bears had three players with soft tissue issues like hamstrings.

Edwards and Gordon and Jaylen Johnson out three starters on defense out. And I know I've, I've, I've seen a few, post game analysis going on and you got guys like Patrick Manali and Owen crude saying like, that's a testament to the coat, strength and conditioning team with those soft tissue issues. It's like they weren't prepared during the off season to be healthy at the beginning of the season.

Now let's get to the real ugly shit that went down in that game yesterday. 12 penalties for 127 yards, four or five false start penalties. Is that discipline on the offensive line or does Caleb Williams maybe having a problem with keeping his cadence the same so that his guys know his rhythm? Cause that's a big deal.

If you're playing, I played offensive line for many years and I know anytime one quarterback left the game and another quarterback came in, you usually get those false start penalties because you're trying to adapt to a brand new cadence. It's not the same. Each quarterback has his own way. The inflections in their voice, the things that they they they do and carry out and how they they go about that that pre snap cadence. So I've seen that before. So now we got to see, is that a Caleb Williams issue or is that an offensive line issue?

The poor clock management at the end of the game look your kicker already misses a 50-yard field goal badly Cairo Santos has been around the Bears for six years everybody knows this guy does not have a deep deep deep deep leg He gets the job in in camp because he hits that 57 yarder in the first preseason game Jonathan Kim gets cut. He's got a deeper leg Cairo Santos could not get the ball out of the back of the end zone that that Kevin

O'Connell is he sees that and he sees his guy field that ball deep into the end zone and There's only two minutes two seconds left to go in the game This cat runs that ball out of the end zone almost all the way up to the 30 yard line And that just goes way past the two-minute warning you're talking about 15 seconds or more that come off the clock at that point The Bears do get the three and out but they end up getting the ball back with only nine seconds left to go in the game nothing to work with. And I think at this point, what's the difference if you kick the ball, if you kick the ball out of the end zone.

And I'm not sure what these new changes, it, I think it comes out to the 30 now, but if you kick the ball out of bounds, the clock doesn't start and you only give up five extra yards. So the ball comes out to the 35, right? And then you get the three and out, you've got a lot more time on the clock with your one timeout.

I don't know. we see poor and I don't and this is not a Ben Johnson's in his first game as a head coach. He wasn't a guy as an offensive coordinator that had to really worry about clock management and things of that nature. So that's kind of a little screw up. I have more faith Ben Johnson getting the job done for the Bears than I do Caleb Williams. And it's crazy to see when you scroll on the Facebook groups, know, the Bears pages that I like to follow.

And again, we're seeing fans making excuses for Caleb Williams, just like they did for Justin Fields. And I think actually Justin Fields first game with the Jets, I think his stat number, well, they're very similar, Fields and Caleb Williams.

I didn't like Justin Fields. I didn't think he was going to be a mainstay at quarterback, but he also wasn't a first round pick. He was. I'm sorry. He was the 11th pick in the first round. Caleb Williams was the number one pick. And you've got fans in these Facebook pages and groups saying, it's give him time. It's only year two. And it doesn't matter. He's had a full year under his belt. Yes. He set some bears passing franchise records or whatever.

one for rookie quarterback or for quarterbacks in general, but the bar was set pretty low for him to do that. Hell, think if Bajent would have played all season last year, he probably would have set those same records. So now you're in year two. Yes, you've had maybe three or four offensive coordinators and different offensive schemes you have to run, but you're a number one pick. You are expected to pick that up and handle that. You are expected to fix the problems you had last year going into year two.

And how is it that a lot of these Bear fans are making excuses for Caleb Williams and you witnessed a rookie quarterback. Yes, he's in his second year, but he sat out all last year because of that knee injury. And now you have JJ McCarthy on the Vikings as a rookie quarterback. Game one overcomes the pick six he throws, settles himself down and leads the Vikings to like 21 points unanswered in one quarter alone.

So there's that you have a guy taken in the same draft class as Caleb Williams taking a lot taking a lot later playing a lot better. I've seen Bo Nicks play better than Caleb Williams. Hell, I've seen Drake may play better than Caleb Williams. I've it seems to me like every quarterback taken in that draft after Caleb Williams with the exception of a couple is doing so much better. The Bears could have drafted so much better, but Ryan Poles

wanted that number one overall pick. He had his mindset on Caleb Williams. I think there were some things that were overlooked and I've said this before and yet you gave him an extension, but I don't think Ryan Poles really knows what the fuck is going on.

And that's another thing. If you go to the 670 score on YouTube and watch their post game analysis with Chuck Swirsky and he had on Patrick Manley and Olin Krutz. And I think one of those two guys, I believe it was Olin Krutz said the same thing. It's like at some point you got to stop looking at the players and start looking at yourself because you brought those players in.

Now at the beginning of the preseason, there was talk about the Bears entertaining, bringing in a couple of other running backs. And I was thinking, you know what, you got Roshan Johnson, you got Deandre Swift. With this better offensive line, I think we'd see a better running game. That's not the case. Is that the old line? Is that Deandre Swift? Deandre Swift couldn't really break anything, couldn't get anything going. He had 3.1 yards to carry for 53 yards, 17 carries.

I'm more of a guy you need a running back that when he gets to about the 17 or 18 carry mark for the game this dude should be pushing the 100 yard mark at that point. You know a good running game is going to get those average those four four point one four point five yards a carry. The Bears just didn't get that done yesterday with Deandre Swift and Kyle Menangai in there. Roshan Johnson was out again or not again but

He was another one that was out for that game. then again, Brian Flores just making that adjustment. He's a defensive quarter minute coordinator. He sees that Caleb Williams has taken the easy check down passes. So what does he do? He goes to that cover to brings the DBs up on the line at those check down guys. And right there, he knows that's going to mentally screw up cable Williams. It forces Caleb Williams to throw the ball downfield. And then we see all the overthrows and under throws and

You know what? In game one, if you've got defensive coordinators able to figure out your tendencies and then they can just make one little change and disrupt your entire offense, you've really got some problems. So I'm still excited about the Ben Johnson. I hope he's true to his word. And in my opinion,

With what we saw Caleb Williams do last year and the struggles he had, I say with the Detroit game.

You as a coach, Ben Johnson, who came in, we all thinking you're our savior at this point.

If Caleb in the first quarter against Detroit runs your scripted plays and hits a lot of those check downs and doesn't, you know, try to go down field because he's afraid of throwing interceptions. If he has a good first quarter, that's great. But then as soon as you see Detroit make those adjustments and him start to struggle in the second quarter, I think you have to sit his ass down because I don't think Ben Johnson.

in your first year as head coach, you want to ride that bus all the way till the end of the season. Because if we continue to see Caleb Williams struggle the way he's struggling and you continue to ride that bus until the end of the season, you are going to probably go down in history as another bus coach, another guy who is a pretty decent or a good offensive coordinator who takes over as a head coach and who can't get the job done. I'm not panicking yet.

Don't take that this way. I never really dug the whole Caleb Williams pick. He was a bright spot last year on a team that was bad and the bar was set low. But don't forget, last year, the Bears started the season something like 4-2. And then they go on a 10 game losing streak.

Yeah, lot of that was Matt Eberflus, but how much of that was the guy running the offense? Right. So there's some there's a whole lot of things here that are going to have to change differently and change fast if Ben Johnson wants to be the guy that he wants to be as a head coach in the NFL. I don't know what's going to happen here. We just have to wait and see until next week.

When they play Detroit, Detroit didn't look all that good against Green Bay, game one. So a lot of people are saying, well, Detroit's not that good offensively. So they're excited for Ben Johnson and we all are, I still am. Like I said, I have more faith in Ben Johnson than I do in Caleb Williams right now.

Because I think, and I don't want to say this and I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but I think Ben Johnson is not running the offense. He wants to be able to run because he sees what he has in the guy that's supposed to run that offense. I feel his hands are tied. Ryan Pohl's picked this kid number one overall. Had a lot of opportunities to stack draft picks.

Hell, he could have traded that number one pick.

and picked a different quarterback who would probably be having or doing better. I just don't know if the mental toughness is there for Caleb Williams. I hope I'm wrong. I hope my analysis turns out to be absolutely incorrect. But.

It's funny, a lot of what I saw yesterday is a lot of what all the paid analysts and the talk show hosts and the writers are saying today. Not that I'm some kind of genius or guru. It's just the fact that I played and watched the game for over four years in my life. Well, I didn't play for over 40 years. I only played for about 30. See, I started when I was eight, 22. I started when I was eight and I officially retired from the semi-pro game.

when I was 30 years old. So I played for 22 years. I coached for five more seasons after that at the high school level, at the junior high level. I did a little coaching at the semi-pro level that last year that I was playing in which I started out coaching that team and ended up getting pulled out of the coaching ranks to start at left tackle before I suffered an injury to my elbow. wow, I was arm wrestling half liquored up in a bar.

That ultimately ended the career because after the shoulder surgery and then the D surgery That elbow it just was like yeah Actually the elbow happened first then I had the shoulder surgery and the knee surgery and the doctor said I could play again But the wife said I was 30 years old at the time finishing up my degree to become a teacher Life in the future at that point was more important than me continuing to play the game

So there's that, right? I don't know what's gonna happen with this season. We're gonna have to just wait and see how it plays out. I hope the hell it gets turned around quick because I'll tell you what, in the first half of that game yesterday, all was quiet on the home front here. Second half, my wife starts helping the daughter do some homework and at that point, all of a sudden, I'm fucking yelling at the TV. I'm swearing and cussing up and down.

Same old shit we saw last year. Nothing's fucking changed other than the head coach and all the new coaching staff. So I really hope it's not something that's going to lead me this season to be just kind of always cussing the TV and throwing shit and not wanting to watch the fucking Bears. Because that's that's the team I love. That's the team I root for. So I don't know what's going to happen. We're just going to have to wait and see.

So that was the good, the bad and ugly that I saw from yesterday's game one, Monday night, Bears versus Packers. J.J. McCarthy leads, not the Packers, shit, Bears versus the Vikings. J.J. McCarthy leads the Vikings to a comeback victory in his first ever NFL game. And after the pick six, McCarthy looked like a poised pro.

ready to lead that team for the near future. Where on the other hand, our number one guy looked like the complete opposite in that second half especially. Just looked like a deer in headlights. How the hell do you, you're scrambling, you're saying to yourself, I gotta get rid of this ball, but then you end up stepping out of bounds before you get rid of the ball and that goes down as a sack. That's one of the sacks that he takes.

And then Caleb Williams gets the intentional grounding pass because he's trying to scramble. He stumbles as he's going down. He starts to throw the ball. Yes, he was outside the pocket, but he couldn't muster enough on the ball to get it back to the line of scrimmage. And he takes the intentional grounding. And then you're scrambling.

and you step out of bounds before you get that ball to the pylon. They ruled it a touchdown, but immediately, instantly after reviewing the play, you're out of bounds. You still get the touchdown, dart to, was it Rome Odunze? So you still get that touchdown there, but you took a little bit of extra time off the clock because you had to run that next play. So that again kind of goes to...

Poor mismanagement. And then the funny thing is if you go on Facebook, there's a lot of fans are saying like, the lines were crooked and the bears in, which it could be, I don't know, but doesn't matter. It don't matter if that line goes all the way downfield. If it's in here and you step here, you're in bounds. If it's out that way and you step here, you're out of bounds. It's the white line. You can't step on the white line no matter how crooked the fuck thing is. You know, even if a diagonal four yards into the field and it came out this way.

Well, anything in that point would be out of bounds. It's it's fucked up the conspiracy theories and everything. that's all the time I got for this episode. The first episode that's gonna drop on Tuesdays. And I know I said these were gonna be shorter, 15 minutes, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday or Sunday. if I, this one's a pretty good one here. And if they continue to be this long, I may just have to wrap.

everything for the week into a weekend episode because again, we have a host that hosts the podcast and you only get three hours a month. So if I want to cover and that and that's why I was thinking 15 minutes, that's 45 minutes a week, 45 times four, that's three hours. That would get me everything I wanted to do in an episode, but I can't have one episode be 35 minutes and then another be 15 and another be

40 minutes because then it's going to go over my math that I devised so I could get in some good episodes. So I know I promised you Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. So we're just going to have to see how that plays out. Maybe the way my clock runs on the whole three hours thing by this point in the month that maybe

You know, it'll work itself out to where I'll get in those three episodes and then the time will roll over for the next month and then I'll still be able to get in the same three episodes. You just got to see how that all works out.

for uploading the episodes to the Spotify and the Apple. All right, folks, that's it. I'm out. That was the Bears recap. Got in a little Cubs news right there. So we'll see you on Friday after we discuss some of the news that takes place. We'll talk about the NCAA new top 25 on Friday. We'll talk about the Thursday night game on Friday. And then

We'll have a whole slew of NCAA action for you on Sunday. We'll throw some Major League Baseball news in there just because we're getting down to crunch time and it's going to be the playoffs here soon for the World Series. So we'll see how that's going to go. Peace. I'm out.