All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to season nine episode. Jiminy Crickets, season nine episode. What? Yeah. Welcome to season two, episode number nine of the Shawn Mackey show. We've got a lot to unpack today for this episode. We're gonna start with the Chicago Cubs. I kind of wanted to wait to make this episode, cause I was really kind of fuming. I was not.

very happy with what has transpired here lately. Cubs lose five in a row. That lead in the wild card kind of dwindles down. They lose four to the Reds. They lose that first game against the Mets. And by the bottom of the fourth inning, the Cubs had a six to one lead against the Mets. Michael Soroka comes in, gives up four runs. Taylor Rogers comes in, gives up another two. Soroka's not charged with any earned runs because, you know.

He gives up those runs after the air by Dansby Swanson. This is not looking good. This is only a best of three for the wild card series. Cubs trying to hold on to that home field advantage in the wild card. It was looking a little bit dicey there. I think the Padres had gotten down to like maybe only two games back.

But the Cubs come out yesterday with a 10 to three victory against the Mets. So they put up some runs, had some good hits, but this offense has to get hot. They need to get hot now. The last game against the Mets, the three against the Cardinals, they have to get hot. If they don't get hot, then this could be an instance in which the Cubs are knocked out in that first round, the wild card round of the playoffs.

It's not, I don't know what's going on. We've seen this happen before and you need those teams that get hot just before they go into the playoffs. A lot of times are those teams that go far. Now the Cubs can turn this around. Absolutely. They got the paper roster. They got the guys on the roster on paper who can turn this around. Still no Kyle Tucker. We will have to wait and see if they go deep into the playoffs. Maybe Kyle Tucker comes back and contributes to this team in the playoffs? I don't know, but I think this might be a whole nother misstep by Jed Hoyer after going out and trading and picking up Kyle Tucker.

 Now you're really, I mean, do you want to sign the guy? I'd love to sign the guy. He's still got some good talent, but now this will be the second year in a row, maybe the third year in a row where he's spent some considerable amount of time on the IL.

So we'll just have to wait and see. We need Pete Crow Armstrong to come back and get some fire in him, get hot again. That bullpen is still a big, big, big, big question mark for the Chicago Cubs. Has been all season long. You you pick up Soroka at the trade deadline, that's your big off season move. He gets hurt, goes on the IL within two innings of coming over to the Cubs. And then now we see he's given up these runs not pitching very well. So it's still a crap shoot right now for the Cubs and how the playoffs are going to go. Thank goodness it's football season. And the NCAA, that has got me. like, this is, what the hell? I, you know, this whole AP top 25 is just fricking killing me.

The way they go about this, know, it's sports writers, 62 of them, I think, and they cast their votes and then they designate who goes and who's gone where in the top 25. Ohio State's still number one. I know Texas dropped a couple of spots after beating Sam Houston.

They have a three to one record. They were number eight, I believe, before this week. And then they drop a couple of spots. Finally good to see, I mean, I don't know, USC finally overtakes Notre Dame again a week before that Notre Dame was ranked a little bit higher than them. And that win that Indiana had over Illinois, that knocks Illinois from nine to 23. And I have big issues with that.

I'm sitting there watching that game, Indiana and Illinois, and Illinois just gets smoked. They get absolutely crushed by Indiana. And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking that this is an Illinois team that maybe went into that Indiana game. I just kind of was like, yeah, we got this one, no big deal. We don't really need to take this so seriously.

And then look what happens. Oh my goodness. They get absolutely smoked by Indiana. Indiana, think at that time during that game was ranked number 19. They move up to number 11. Oh, let's see. Well, nothing really changed. I like the stat when you look at it on ESPN, which it tells you from each week, like what they were ranked last week and what they are ranked now.

but Ohio State comes in at number one, Miami, boom, they move up to number two, Penn State coming in at number three, LSU coming in at number four, Georgia at number three, Oregon, Oklahoma, Florida State, Texas A and number 10 Texas rounding out the top 10. So I still would love to know what some of these writers think about and how they rank these teams.

62 sports writers and broadcasters from across the country. They kind of cast their ranks for the top teams and then that's how they come out with.

who goes where, okay? So...

And then it changes again, we've talked about this. changed when they get ready to do the playoffs, they'll change it again and they'll use a different ranking system. So that's one that still has me absolutely confused and befuddled every single week.

But man, now I want to get to the Bears. I really don't know how to feel. Honestly, the Bears pretty much, I don't want to say dominated, but it kind of looked like it was a domination against Dallas. Dallas' defense is not there. They trade Micah Parsons. And next thing you know, you got Matt Eberflus at the helm. It's funny to kind of see all the memes come out on Facebook and social media and which...

Everybody is talking about how Matt Iberfluss is finally developing Caleb Williams. Unfortunately, he's doing it as the defensive coordinator for the Cowboys. We'll see how that pans out. He's gotta be on the hot seat, but a good first win for Ben Johnson. Caleb Williams does not take a sack. That was pretty awesome. He and Roma Odunze are leading the league.

Caleb Williams in passing, Roma Odunze in receiving. Caleb Williams gets the offensive player of the week award for that game. I'm not quite ready to jump on the Caleb Williams bandwagon. I said before, and you know this, I'm not gonna shy away from it. I didn't like that pick. The kid did have some potential. I didn't really see enough of him to make my decision and say, yeah, this was gonna be a top guy but he's making those improvements. And that's what I want to see for the rest of the season. Each game, I want to see some kind of improvement in some way, or form. He doesn't have the happy feet. He's kind of staying with the game plan. He's not improvising as much. He's reading those progressions, going downfield. Finally, good to see LB3 get into some action. 101 yards last week.

65 of those coming on the flea flicker. That flea flicker looked like it could have been dangerous. I will tell you that right now. They had the ball off, running back, flips it back to Caleb. That ball's up in the air forever. I'm watching that thinking, my God, all I can see is Dallas defender coming through, picking off that pitch back to the quarterback in midair and going the distance for a touchdown. Caleb.

Boom, gets that ball, boom, sees LB3, lets it go 65 yards. The ball traveled 62.1 yards. Longest throw of Caleb Williams career in the air. Longest throw I think in the NFL this season in the air. So that was good to see. DJ Moore has a touchdown, Rome Odunze has a touchdown. All in all, I think it was a good performance by the Bears. What we've been waiting for as fans to see that improvement.

Did Ben Johnson calling out some of his players have an effect on them?

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe these guys are just finally starting to gel a little bit. I'd like to see Darnell Wright cut down on the damn penalties. Although there were a lot fewer penalties going on this week than there had been in previous weeks. So that's a really good deal. We've got another 3:25 game coming up this Sunday, Bears versus the Raiders. Any given Sunday, right? So.

Am I worried? Yeah, I'm worried. I'm always worried when the Bears take the field. You never know which team you're going to see, but hopefully we can continue to see some improvement with Caleb Williams and then we can see the Bears pick up their second win, maybe even themselves out here on the season at two and two. Good thing about this week in football, we've got, you know, you're going to have your morning coffee and have a football game there at eight 30 AM or so central standard time. Cause we've got that game out in Dublin for the NFL.

I like what I'm seeing so far. Maybe in a week or two, a week, a week or two, I will have changed my tune. Maybe I will jump on to that Caleb Williams bandwagon. And don't get me wrong, the kid does have the talent, but we needed to see him settle down. We needed to see him make some improvements. And if he continues to make those improvements week in and week out, there's some good things that can happen here.

with Caleb Williams. We all know he's talented. My God, a 62.1 yard pass in the air. The dude's got an arm, you know? I just wanna see those good decisions. I wanna see somebody really developing the kid. And I think we're gonna see that now in the Ben Johnson era. So I'm really excited for that with the Chicago Bears.

What a crazy freaking week last week in the NFL. Seven games that came down to the last few minutes of the game. How many blocked kicks were there in the NFL? There was a ton. I know that Los Angeles Rams game, the Eagles blocked two kicks and that allowed them to come from behind and secure a 33 to 26 victory against the Rams last week I was watching when I came home to get ready to watch the Bears game. was watching the NF. The New York Jets and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and I. I watched that the Jets blocked that kick to take that lead. They kick the extra point. They take a 27 to 26 lead. In that game, but you know what the problem was?

You left Baker Mayfield with too much time on the clock and Baker for the third time this season drives his team down, puts them in a position to win and they secure the win. Now I will tell you when the Bears were having issues with Justin Fields before Baker Mayfield went to Tampa Bay, Carolina, not Carolina, the Browns gave up on this dude and that's crazy to me.

Carolina didn't really do anything with him. And I thought, first of I love dudes commercials, funny as hell, getting locked out of the stadium. I need my keys, whatever, like he's living in the stadium. he gets after it, man. He don't take no shit. He's a tough, gritty SOB. And I really liked that. And I said at some time, I'd have to go look through my posts. But I think on Facebook, I had said something like,

I would have absolutely had loved it if the Bears would have signed Baker Mayfield when we were having all those issues with Justin Fields, right? I know this week I did kind of unfollow some Facebook pages in which, know, the social media aspect to me, it's kind of, it's just, it sucks. You got, instead of people having conversations and kind of just expressing their opinions and people talking about stuff,

You got people who are talking shit about other people and you always get people who are like, yeah, you don't know ball. You know, most of the people I've found that say you don't know ball are like the stat junkies, the people who just look at shit on paper, people that who never played the game really for an extended period of time. And if I was coming at you as a guy who just maybe played a couple of years in high school, that'd be a different story. But you know what? Played high school played the semi pro ranks and you might not think that's good, but I was on some really good teams. I was on teams in the semi pro ranks that were ranked as high as number nine in the nation. Right? My first year playing semi pro football, my team went nine and our defense had five shutouts and we won the championship of our league in 1988. And, and I've been on teams that had come out and ranked. played all over the country, played in Buffalo, New York.

played in Indiana, played Pennsylvania. We'd travel. We were guys who just enjoyed and loved the game. A lot of us played college. Some of us didn't. We were good enough to play college, but maybe the circumstances got away from us and we didn't actually get to play. But we were good ballplayers. Played against some guys in the semi-pro ranks who later on went to play in the NFL. And then I coached football at the high school and the semi-pro level.

You know, I don't wanna sit here and say I know ball. I do kinda know ball. And I hate when they say that, you don't know ball. But I do know football, I know baseball. I can sit here and watch it. A lot of the things that I say on this podcast, I will say and record before the sports writers and the experts say it, right? So you've got guys who are out there, they're on ESPN, they're on 670 The Score out of Chicago. They're experts, they're getting interviewed all the time.

for whatever reason, and then you look at their background, and they're not guys that ever really played sports. They're just dudes who loved sports. I love sports. I kinda know the game of sports, right? At least football. The reason I don't talk about hockey and basketball, those are two games I would absolutely love to play, but I don't follow them as much. So I will guarantee you 100%, I don't know shit when it comes to the NBA and the NFL judging talent.

or not the NFL, NBA and the NHL. I just can't do it. But when it comes to football and baseball, I'm old school guy, you know, I'm closer to 60 now than I ever have been in my life. Really close, right? 57 years old. And a lot of it's the eye test, you know, you can put those stats together, but there's a reason why scouts still go to games in person to watch players.

Now they might have their grading system, but they do their grades based on what they see, not what some specialist or some analyst puts together and puts down on paper. You've gotta go with the eye test. You gotta see how do guys handle themselves when they're not getting the ball? How do they handle themselves when they're having a rough game and things are going? The intangibles, guys that complete plays.

guys that hustle and go after it every single play, whether they're tired or not. So that's one of the things in the NFL and with major league baseball that I'm a big believer of. Statistically, I think, especially major league baseball, you've got all these guys now talking about these launch angles and everybody wants to hit the long ball. And you rarely see guys now who can carve out a niche or make a name for themselves by just making contact and getting on base. And you know what? Those are the things that still matter. Get them on, get them over, get them in, in Major League Baseball. That's the deal. Same thing with the NFL. You might not have a quarterback who has the greatest arm. Maybe he can't chuck that ball 80 yards downfield, but who cares? Those big plays are few and far between in the NFL. I would rather have a quarterback who can sit back in the pocket, read the defense,

take what the defense has given them. Cause every defense is going to give you something. They have to. It's just, it's too unpredictable. You know, I, look back on like when we played all my kids, my buddies from the neighborhood and we didn't have coaches. We didn't have play. We drew up plays in the huddle and you could go out there and play defensively. You could react to what was happening in front of you when you saw the play develop, right? Same thing offensively. didn't, you were playing sandlot football.

You didn't say, this is their tendency. This is what they're doing here. And now you have that with all the technology guys can get on their iPads and they can be like, Hey, every time we line up in this formation, this is the look they're giving us. And then this is when we fake, they bite down on this. So next time we'll line up in this formation and we'll fake. And when that linebacker bites down, we'll have that tight end dragging and boom, we'll hit that tight end. And you pick up four or five yards and you just have a guy who could just quietly lead you down the field all the time. And I think we see that when we look at like a Jared golf. You look at that Monday night football game, Detroit against Baltimore. He didn't do anything really spectacular. He just kind of ran that offense. He took what they gave him. He kept moving them down the field and they come out victorious against the Ravens. You know, it's not.

It's not really rockin' science, rocket science, really. You have all the technology, so yes, you can see the tendencies, you can make those adjustments, and for a long time, Bears coaches from, from, John, you know, Mark Tressman, John Fox, Matt Nagy, Matt Eberfuss, it always seemed to me over the last 15 years that Bears coaches did not make adjustments during the game or at halftime.

But every time you'd watch a game and the Bears would start to do something decent and maybe kind of pull up some momentum, you could bet you could start to see opposing coaches make those adjustments on the fly during the game and certainly make those adjustments at halftime to where you would get games where the Bears might be leading at halftime and then come out in the second half and every single thing they did was shut down.

by the opposing coaches. Those are great coaches, guys that can make those adjustments and do it in game all game long. That's where great coaching comes in. we're only in week three again, much like I keep saying with the Cubs season and how the rest of the season is gonna play out, we'll see if the Cubs go deep into the playoffs.

we have to kind of wait and see what the Bears are gonna do. If I continue to see improvement from Caleb Williams and Roma Odunze and LB3, I might start to jump on that bandwagon and I might say, hey, this Bears team could be something to be reckoned with. And I know it's only game three of a new coach's era, but I don't know if I even felt this way during Matt Nagy's first season with the Bears when he...

ended up taking them to the playoffs and they lose against Philadelphia on the double doink by Cody Parker. But it was good and it was fun to watch. The Bears won the division that year, Nagy had a great year, but then everything, the wheels on that bus just started falling off very, very quickly. And I don't think Nagy or Eberflus ever called players out. I don't think they questioned the practicing of their players and what they were doing.

Ben Johnson kinda is. Defensively, the Bears had great,  Tremaine  Edmunds two picks. Kevin Byard, the third, picks off the backup quarterback. So three picks in that game. So

That was a great, great effort by the Bears defense. Not a lot of rushing yards, but in that game against the Cowboys, I'm pretty sure, I think the Bears ran, like almost every play in the third quarter was run, run, run, run, run, run, run, they ate up the clock. They basically took the entire third quarter out of Dallas's hands completely, all the way around. So Tremaine Edmunds has the two interceptions.

Noah Sewell, this guy's coming in, he's playing again. He's got six total tackles, five assists, he's all over the field. I'm really, really liking to see that. I will have to say, I gotta give some props to Tyreek Stevenson. The guy's finally back to showing us what all the hype was about last year when he was playing really well. When that game started with Dallas and the Bears went three and out,

for their first possession and then Dallas was easily driving down the field. I know I kept saying like, shit, here we go again. But then Tyreek Stevenson gets it going for the Bears. A nice strip fumble on the sidelines where he could have easily stepped out of bounds in that whole fracas, that whole melee, but he manages to get the ball, gain possession, give the ball back to the Bears and then the Bears go on.

They hold Dallas to 14 points. It's 24 to 14 at the half. They only score one more time in that game, but defensively they did a great job of shutting down Dallas offense. And I like to see that. a couple of nice past defenses too with Tyreek Stevenson. Now, I've been trying to look for stats.

And it's like, how many times does he get targeted? How many times does he give up the big play? But it's not really a stat that they can kind of easily get a hold of because there's just so many different nuances going on, know, where one guy's not really covering the same guy all the time. You know, there's crossing patterns that go from man to zone. You kind of might, depending, switch off on a guy. So you can't really get that stat down.

But I really, really, really like what the Bears did in that game. It was kind of a complete game for them. And like I said, Caleb Williams is getting better, progressing each week. think week one against Minnesota, game that the Bears should have absolutely won as well. Caleb Williams was, he had a 60 % passing percentage, 210 yards, one TD, no interceptions.

Week two, 63.3 completion percentage, 207 yards, little drop off from week one, but he has two TDs and one pick. And then week three, 67.9 completion percentage, 298 yards, four touchdowns, leads the league in passing with touchdowns at seven. Roma Odunze leads the league in receiving. So that was good to see. It's the improvement that I'd like to see. Loved.

Loved, loved. I say I loved seeing the Browns come back and beat Green Bay. That was a big deal. Nice round of applause there for the Browns coming out and beating one of our division opponents. So we got to see. We're coming up on week four in the NFL. Again, the Bears have the Raiders coming up. Like to see some more improvement from Caleb Williams during that game.

We'll have to wait and see what the outcome ends up being for that game week four. Hopefully I'm talking to you next week and the Bears are two and two. Let's see the Raiders right now, both one and two. Anything can happen. Anything can happen, right? So Pete Carroll is a tough coach to play against. So we'll see how the Bears handle this week.

at 3:25 Central Standard Time against the Las Vegas Raiders. Kind of a boiled down show this week. I tried to record it earlier in the week, had some issues, came back to it today. We got Thursday Night Football coming up here. We've got, let's see, who do we got tonight? It was Arizona and

Mmm, boy, I looked this up earlier. I was talking to somebody. It was Arizona and my goodness. I can't remember. Holy crap. Tonight's game, the schedule on Prime, which I hate. I mean, I've got Prime, but it just kind of sucks. Like you've got the Monday night game and the Sunday night game and they're all on regular TV, prime time.

and then you get this Prime Video for Thursday night football. Thank goodness we have Prime Video. But no, I'm waiting for this web page to fucking load and why it doesn't load fast enough for me. We gotta get this computer checked out. It's not, it's just not right there. Come on, Prime Video schedule. Holy crap, I got a better chance here. Let me just go to my damn ESPN app on the old phone.

That's the best way to go because this damn website now it finally comes up. Holy crap. You're killing me here, Prime Video. So tonight's game. Seahawks and the Cardinals. That's who it was. Two teams, I think both two and one. So we've got the Seahawks and the Cardinals tonight for Monday Night Football. Kyler Murray, Sam Darnold, guy takes Minnesota.

Last year, what was he like 14 and three or something like that? And they're like, yeah, we don't need you. JJ McCarthy's coming back. Now I think I originally said at some point, you know, that game against Chicago, JJ McCarthy kind of looked like a poised veteran. And then he gets hurt again. And then he doesn't have the greatest game in week two. But Sam Darnold, he's 70.3 % completion percentage right now. Four TDs and two interceptions, 663 yards. Kyler Murray, a little bit lower than that. But it's kind of great to see the stats. So remember last year after that game that the Bears played the Texans and lost and CJ Stroud was kind of like big dogging Caleb and telling him like, don't worry about it, man. You're better than this type thing. And there's that meme and Caleb was all like.

Well, since that game, Caleb has far better numbers than C.J. Stroud, and we will have to keep our eye on C.J. Stroud because remember what I said a couple episodes ago, there has not been a really successful quarterback ever in my lifetime to come out of Ohio State.

And I think the last quarterback I know from Ohio State to have a successful NFL career.

had that career as a punter, Tom Tupa. Now I just Googled successful quarterbacks from Ohio State.

And now this is where the Google kind of leads you astray. And the first thing that comes up, successful quarterbacks from Ohio State include CJ Stroud Justin Fields, Troy Smith, Dwayne Haskins, JT Barrett, and Braxton Miller.

The jury's still out on CJ Stroud. I would not say, what is their criteria? What is the criteria for saying Justin Fields is a successful quarterback out of Ohio State? He hasn't led any of the teams he's played for to any sort of Super Bowl or playoffs. Is he successful just because he's into year five or six? I'd have to look it up, I'm not sure. I don't think he even made it to year four with the Bears.

played in Pittsburgh, three good games, the beginning, Russell Wilson comes out from the injury list for Pittsburgh, takes over, right? C.J. Stroud, numbers are kind of tanking down a little bit. Dwayne Haskins, really, was he accessible? These guys were all successful at Ohio State. I will give them that. But in the NFL,

Not so much right now, not successful in the NFL. mean, the Bears, JT Barrett is now coaching for the Chicago Bears. So, you know, is he successful because he's a successful coach right now? So let's take a look at this team. And I wanna say, know, you know, JT Barrett's like the quarterback's coach for the Bears.

Gotta be, I know he is. Yes, quarterbacks coach for the Bears, JT Barrett. So these guys all had success at Ohio State, but not necessarily in the NFL so far. Troy Smith, he wins the Heisman, so that's what they're saying. He's considered one of the greatest Ohio State quarterbacks of all time, but not in the NFL. Troy Smith.

If I'm correct, I think I wanna say that Troy Smith, when he got to the NFL was converted to a wide receiver. right, so professional career. Let me take a look at this and see what we going on. Or is he still a quarterback? da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. Who's not even in the NFL right now?

Okay, so he came out in 2007. So he's beyond about ready to be retired. But in four seasons in the NFL, he starts eight games, 234 attempts, 121 completions. It's not a successful quarterback in the NFL. So let's see.

So I still kind of stand by that. I still stand by the fact that no quarterback has come out of Ohio State and has been successful in the NFL. I'm thinking of one. He's on the tip of my tongue, play for the Bears. And he might've been one of the best successful quarterbacks in the NFL. Let's see. I got my cap locks on.

QBs from Ohio State who had great NFL careers. Let's see this list. All right, so Ohio State quarterbacks with notable NFL careers include the first one, notable, not great, and I typed in great, but notable, Justin Fields.

So this is coming up with recently successful quarterbacks. The top two are Justin Fields and CJ Stroud who are playing today. Now you go other NFL quarterbacks, other notable NFL quarterbacks from Ohio State. Mike Tomczak, a backup with the Bears, a starter for a while. He stuck around the NFL for a good period of time.

Then you got to look at Dwayne Haskins, not such a good NFL career. Then let's go down to Art Schliester.

Could have been a great quarterback in the NFL out of Ohio State, but then has a gambling problem and ultimately ends up going to prison. And I think he's actually in prison now still to this date. So best OSU quarterbacks in the NFL right now, again, it's gonna tell us.

Craig Krenzel, Art Schleister, Mike Tomczak, that's it. There's really nobody. So the jury's still out on CJ Stroud. If he continues to continue to go downhill from there, we'll see how that plays out. I hope the kid bounces back. I hope the kid puts his name up there as like one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks to come out of Ohio State.

We don't really have anyone yet that can claim that title. Notable, yes. Great, no. All right, so that's it. I went a little long this week. Might need to edit some of these things out, edit it down. I don't know, you'll just have to wait and see. But that's all the time I got for episode nine on the Shawn Mackey Show. I'm gonna get to getting and I'll see you when I see you on the flip side. Peace out brothers and sisters.

Have a great day.