About what we expected
Nobody ruins national TV games like our Chicago Bears
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A couple of weeks ago NBC and the NFL discussed the possibility of flexing out of the Bears and Chargers. The Bears were 1-5 and had just lost Justin Fields to injury and the Chargers were 2-4. In the end, NBC couldn’t find an unprotected game to steal from Fox or CBS, so they stuck with it and…
Ugh.
They went all in on two things. Tyson Bagent, plucky D-II Cinderella story, and Justin Herbert’s perpetually turgid left middle finger.
Let’s just say one went better than the other.
Herbert completed all 12 passes he threw in the first quarter, for 120 yards and two touchdowns. He eventually would complete his first 15 passes, and the Chargers were up 17-0 before NBC could queue up the inevitable map of West Virginia to show where Bagent’s alma mater, Shepherd University actually is.
The game was like just about every Bears prime time game of our lifetime. A non-competitive shit show.
It was bad from the get go when Bagent threw deep to Darnell Mooney who made a nice diving catch and wasn’t touched, so he started running for the end zone, and just before Derwin James could sling him out of bounds and into the first row, the refs decided, incorrectly, that Mooney was actually down back where he caught the ball. This is the same stadium where two years ago the Bears twice didn’t bother to touch Rams’ receivers who had made diving catches, and in one of those instances, Van Jefferson got up and ran for a touchdown. Ahh, memories.
