This has been a long time coming for the Bears amid their seven-game losing streak: They were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention Sunday.
The team that sent them spiraling knocked them out. The Commanders finished off the Bears with their 20-19 win over the Saints. The Bears still had an unrealistic-but-technically-possible path to a playoff berth after their 38-13 loss to the 49ers last week.
They are 4-9 and have four games remaining. The best they can finish is 8-9, and in that case they would still be unable to catch any of the current wild-card teams, and the Lions lead the NFC North at 12-1.
The Bears’ place in the standings is much more significant as it pertains to the NFL Draft. At 4-9, they went into Sunday holding the No. 9 pick and still had a shot at the No. 1 spot. There were two 2-11 teams (the Raiders and Giants) and six that were 3-10.
They have the hardest remaining schedule and almost certainly will be an underdogs in all four remaining games: Monday at the Vikings, home against the Lions and Seahawks, then at the Packers.
The Bears will face the NFL’s most aggressive blitzing defense without their starting left tackle. Braxton Jones was ruled out of Monday night’s game on Sunday with a concussion.
Jones reported symptoms to the team for the first time on Sunday morning. They soon ruled him out for the Vikings game.
The Bears have two options: to move guard Matt Pryor outside or to play rookie Kiran Amegadjie at the position. He was the team’s third-round pick and has fought injuries for most of the season. He had quad surgery last year while at Harvard.
Jones isn’t the first Bears player to report concussion symptoms after the incident. Safety Jaquan Brisker reported his hours before the Bears boarded a flight to London in October. He was later placed on injured reserve and hasn’t appeared in a game since.
The Bears kick off against the Vikings at 7 p.m. Monday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Mayor Brandon Johnson is now offering to eliminate a revised $68.5 million property tax increase and cut 10 jobs from the mayor’s office in hopes of ending Chicago’s marathon budget stalemate.
With just over two weeks to go before the Dec. 31 deadline that would trigger an unprecedented government shutdown, the Johnson administration spent Sunday briefing small groups of alderpersons on his latest offer.
It calls for:
• The twice-revised $68.5 million property tax increase to be eliminated altogether.
• $40 million in short-term borrowing, possibly using tax anticipation notes.
• $10 million in “cost recovery” by charging organizers of “ticketed events” for police and traffic services. Over the years, the city has attempted to recover costs from professional sports teams but failed miserably.
• $5 million in unspecified energy savings.
• $8 million in public safety cuts, presumably by eliminating police vacancies.
• $1 million in savings by eliminated 10 jobs from his own office budget. The mayor’s office budget has ballooned under Johnson and his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot.
• $2.8 million in savings by putting the city’s bloated bureaucracy on a diet by eliminating middle-management jobs in city departments, including deputy commissioners and their assistants.
The mayor still appears to be resisting any layoffs or furlough days.
Johnson’s original proposal of a $300 million tax hike was unanimously rejected by the City Council. The mayor’s subsequent offers to cut the increase in half — to $150 million — then settle for $68.5 million also fell at least seven votes short of the 26 required for passage.
It’s not at all clear whether the embattled mayor’s latest offer will be enough to get his $17.3 billion budget over the finish line.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), Johnson’s hand-picked Public Safety Committee Chair, characterized the proposal as “tinkering at the margins.”
Hopkins said he doesn’t trust the sources of revenue Johnson hopes to lose to replace the $68.5 million property tax lev.
He was particularly troubled by the proposed, $40 million borrowing to balance a budget already precariously balanced with one-time revenues, including savings generated by a massive refinancing.
“And any kind of short-term borrowing that they think they can do, we’re talking about well more than 20% carrying charge. We’ll be downgraded for that,” Hopkins said, referring to the all-important bond rating that determines city borrowing costs.
“Tax anticipation notes to balance a budget in a one-, or two-year payback schedule? That’s crying uncle. That’s just admitting that we are out of ideas.”
Johnson deserves credit for “doing one thing we asked him to do” by holding the line on property taxes as he promised to do during the mayoral campaign. But that “doesn’t automatically mean” he is prepared to support a budget that still includes “very little cutting,” Hopkins said.
“This is barely denting the surface” of a city budget that has at least 30 percent more full-time employees than it did pre-pandemic, he said. “We have loaded up this city with more new employees — and they’re everywhere. Many of them were funded with ARPA funds. The ARPA funds are gone. We cannot bake them into the budget going forward. It’s not sustainable.”
Southwest Side Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), one of the mayor’s most outspoken Council critics, said the mayor’s latest offer doesn’t “do enough to get the structure right” in preparation for even bigger shortfalls next year and the year after.
“We have to continue to press the envelope on right-sizing,” Quinn said.
“As a Council, we’re just scratching the surface to gain our independence. Let’s continue to push the envelope. We’re solidifying ourselves as co-equal.”
Ald. Brendan Reilly and other members of the “Common Sense Caucus” address reporters in the hallway outside the City Council chambers on Friday after the Council recessed for the day. Alderpersons are scheduled to return at 1 p.m. Monday, by which time Mayor Brandon Johnson hopes to revise his budget enough to win Council approval. Johnson called off a vote scheduled for Friday after it became clear he didn’t have the votes needed for it to pass.
Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Andre Vasquez (40th) and Maria Hadden (48th) refused to comment while awaiting their budget briefings. Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), the Council’s dean and vice mayor who also serves as Johnson’s de-facto floor leader, did not return phone calls or text messages.
Hopkins said he’s uncertain the mayor’s latest offer would get 26 votes. The Council recessed its Friday meeting and is expected to reconvene at 1 p.m. Monday.
“So many of the Progressive colleagues seem to just hang their hat on the property tax increase. They didn’t want to be on the hook for it. Now, they’re not on the hook for it,” Hopkins said.
“The mayor’s trying to cut deals [by saying], `We took away the property tax increase. Here’s your field house. Here’s whatever else you wanted.’ So he may get to close that gap” and pass a budget.
Johnson had called off a vote scheduled for Friday when, after days of frenzied lobbying, he still had only 19 rock-solid votes.
A raucous day at City Hall Friday included a packed hallway news conference by members of calling themselves the “Common Sense Caucus,” demanding more cuts.
“We’re going to tell the departments, ‘Here’s your budget from 2020, plus the cost of inflation going forward. That’s your number. Figure it out,’” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) speaks during a Chicago City Council meeting at City Hall Friday.
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said he could even be willing to consider eliminating Chicago Police Department vacancies. That funding for vacant CPD jobs often is used to cover overtime. Cutting them this year “is a fair compromise to allow us to plug this gap with the implicit understanding that we could come back and restore those [police] positions next year,” Reilly said.
The search for more votes is all but certain to require the mayor to scrap other ideas he had tried to save, such as spending $50 million to create 2,000 more summer youth jobs, or making an additional $270 million payment toward city pensions. Canceling that payment likely would hurt the city’s credit rating. But so could a protracted budget battle.
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson has estimated all it would take to get Johnson’s $17.3 billion budget over the finish line is $150 million worth of cuts.
That may sound like a lot, but, Ferguson noted, the city’s budget is 47% higher than it was pre-pandemic, not counting pension costs.
“To say there is no option in the way of … workforce reductions [and] shared sacrifice is just not playing ball with folks that are trying to come to some form of common ground.”
Thomas Brown seemed to fare well in his match-up with Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores at Soldier Field on Nov. 24 — just his second game as the Bears’ offensive coordinator after Shane Waldron was fired on Nov. 12 after nine games.
The Bears offense — with D’Andre Swift and the running game stifled — still scored 27 points and gained 398 yards against a Vikings defense that ranked fourth in the NFL in points allowed and 10th in yards allowed. The Vikings, in fact, had allowed an average of 11 points and 221.3 yards in their previous three games.
More importantly, Brown’s offense was better at the end than in the beginning. In the Bears’ first nine possessions, they scored 10 points and averaged 4.9 yards per play. In their final three possessions of regulation they scored 17 points in a furious comeback and averaged 6.2 yards per play.
It didn’t continue in overtime, as Caleb Williams took a 12-yard sack — a rookie mistake he owned — to stunt the offense’s only possession in a 30-27 loss. But the Bears’ late rally at least gave the impression that Brown learns well.
The Bears’ rematch against the Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium on Monday Night Football will be an even bigger test, and an opportunity as well.
The notion that the straight-talking Brown’s “aura” and the players’ belief in him following the firing of Matt Eberflus would invigorate the team and promote Brown’s dark-horse candidacy for the head coaching job took a massive hit against the 49ers last week. The Bears crapped out on offense and defense — out-gained 314-9 in the first half as the Bears trailed 24-0. The Bears’ only touchdowns were scored when they trailed 24-0 and 31-6. So much for the Brown bump.
Brown’s head-coaching candidacy seems like it’s on life-support at this point. But he’ll at least have an opportunity for a little redemption in the rematch against the Vikings on Monday night.
Not surprisingly, Brown doesn’t quite see it that way.
“I don’t look at it as far as how good I am at what I’m doing,” Brown said. “The whole goal is to get the team to be the best they can be. That’s always my focus. How I look is really irrelevant to me, because that’s also tied to overall team success.”
But Brown couldn’t dismiss the chess game that is inherent to any rematch, especially against a Flores defense that tries to outwit you with hard-to-predict blitzes.
“It’s a chess match between every game,” Brown said. “The second time you play an opponent you have to have different answers. We did have some success in that first game, as far as being able to move the ball at times, get the ball out and beat some of the pressures.
“He’ll make some adjustments. As far as me trying to guess what he’s gonna do, I’m not even gonna try to do that. That’s a waste of my time when it comes to thinking about that defense and what he does for them. It’s more about us preparing our guys and having answers on every play.”
That will be more difficult at U.S. Bank Stadium than it was at Soldier Field. But Brown embraces that challenge.
“It’s on the road and it’s probably going to be the loudest environment we’ve been a part of, which is awesome,” Brown said. “I love loud stadiums. I love the juice that they provide us as well. When you go on the road, you kind of focus more on yourself. It’s an us-against-the-world type of mentality. All those things kind of are included, to me, leads to a good opportunity to have success.”
The fact that Golden State reportedly acquired Brooklyn guard Dennis Schroder and a second-round pick on Saturday, sending back De’Anthony Melton and three second-round picks is something.
Especially for the Bulls.
It’s only mid-December and there’s movement between the haves and the have nots.
The well-traveled Schroder was putting together one of his better seasons in the last five years, but more importantly was an expiring contract at just over $13 million. Sound familiar? Somewhat.
Bulls guard Lonzo Ball is not having a career year by any means. Heck, the fact that he still has a career is the headline for him. But what he continues showing is that he can be a force off the bench for a championship-caliber team, and yes, with an expiring contract.
Ball is making $21.3 million this season, and while he’s not scoring like Schroder has this season, comparing the two per 36 minutes isn’t far off. Schroder plays out to be 19.8 points, 7.1 assists, 3.2 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game, while shooting just under 39% from three-point range. Ball is 13.5 points, 5.3 assists, 5.6 rebounds and 1.9 steals per game, shooting 42% from three-point range.
If teams dig a little deeper, however, yes, Ball will be acquired with major health concerns and minutes restrictions, but his impact on the court in all the little things that don’t necessarily pop up in the basic box score have been undeniable, especially when compared to Schroder.
The Bulls and Nets each entered Sunday with 15 losses (the Bulls have one more win), yet Ball is a team-leading plus-39 in plus/minus this season, with only one minus game (minus-16 against Boston) on the resume.
Schroder leaves Brooklyn minus-2 for the season.
Should the Bulls somehow feel left out in the cold right now? Far from it. Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas should be excited that the Feb. 6 trade deadline is still a long way off and the trade asset line has already started moving.
A source indicated that the goal for the team is still to continue aggressively shopping Ball, Nikola Vucevic and Zach LaVine, as well as any other name that makes sense. That was the focus going into the 2024-25 campaign and it remains the focus even with some solid moments of basketball being played.
The method behind the madness for the Bulls is they will keep their first-round pick of the loaded 2025 draft class if they can land in the bottom 10 of the lottery, otherwise it goes to the Spurs. Karnisovas’ crew entered Sunday sitting right at the 10th spot in the bottom of the league standings.
The danger is that the nine teams below them seem more willing and able to unload cargo and make sure that they can claim permanent residency in the basement. After all, prospects like Duke’s Cooper Flagg don’t come around often.
The Bulls can forget trying to out-tank the likes of Washington, New Orleans, Utah, Toronto, a Charlotte team the Bulls just beat on Friday, Portland, and now the Nets. Philadelphia has spent the first 20-plus games ravished with injuries but should get better, and Detroit is actually trying to get its young roster to start playing winning basketball, believe it or not.
If the Bulls can unload Ball and Vucevic there’s no reason why they couldn’t stay in that bottom No. 7 or 8 spots. Moving LaVine this season remains more pipedream than reality, according to a source, unless there’s a major injury or seismic shift in the current market.
For most, Schroder to the Warriors was nothing more than a report scrolling across the bottom of the TV on ESPN. For the Bulls, however, it was hope.
Thomas Brown’s candidacy for the Bears’ coaching vacancy has a bigger problem than last week’s 25-point loss to the 49ers: his lack of experience.
The Bears’ interim head coach had not called plays at the NFL level until he joined the Panthers as their offensive coordinator last year. He called plays for just eight games because head coach Frank Reich handled the duties, gave them to Brown, took them back and then was fired during the season. That instability stunted the growth of rookie Bryce Young, who only recently has begun to resemble anything close to former No. 1 overall pick.
Brown took over as the Bears’ play caller last month. By the time the season ends, he’ll have 16 career games as an NFL play caller — one game short of a full season.
It’s not often head coaches get jobs with less than a season’s worth of play-calling to their name.
It happened in Minnesota, though, and it’s worked wonders.
When the Vikings chose Kevin O’Connell as their head coach almost three years ago, he’d called plays for parts of one season — in 2019 with the Commanders, after head coach Jay Gruden was fired in October. He was the Rams’ offensive coordinator from 2020-21, but head coach Sean McVay called the plays.
O’Connell was an immediate success upon his hiring. As a first-time permanent play-caller, he guided the Vikings to a 13-4 record in 2022. His offense finished eighth in points and seventh in yards. With four different quarterbacks starting at least two games last year due to injuries, the Vikings regressed to 7-10. Their offense finished 22nd in points and 10th in yards.
This season, O’Connell helped revive the career of Sam Darnold after the Vikings’ own first-round rookie, quarterback J.J. McCarthy, was lost for the year with a preseason knee injury. The Vikings are ninth in points and 11th in yards. Darnold is sixth in the NFL in passing yards, Justin Jefferson is second in receiving and Aaron Jones is 10th in rushing.
O’Connell, 39, made the Vikings’ gamble look smart, going 31-16 in three seasons. The Bears could make the same bet on their 38-year-old interim head coach. They both come off the McVay tree, having worked together for two years with the Rams. Brown was the running backs coach when O’Connell was the coordinator. The Rams won the Super Bowl at the end of the 2021 season.
“Having a chance to watch his development and his growth, obviously going from 2020 to 2021, the Super Bowl year, his more involvement in the offense, [I’m] not surprised at all with where he is right now … ” Brown said. “The understanding of how to communicate well with players. How to command a room in his own way. But also the organization and activation of your best players.”
O’Connell, Brown said, tries to be himself.
“I think he has really strong conviction in that, which is important to me for anyone in his role …” Brown said. “The true test of a leader is to make people better and make situations better.”
O’Connell has done that in Minnesota. Brown hasn’t with the Bears, who lost 38-13 to the 49ers in his first game as the interim coach. He’ll need to get more out of his players to make the Bears seriously consider him for the full-time job.
It would be risky, even if rookie quarterback Caleb Williams finishes the season strong under Brown’s tutelage. But O’Connell’s success can at least provide the Bears the road map.
“Knowing the type of leader and human being that Thomas is, you are going to start to see the principles of Thomas come out in their team,” O’Connell told reporters this week. “They are going to be tough, they are going to be prepared, they are going to turn it loose and play fast and physical.”
Somehow, despite all the Bears’ self-sabotage, rookie quarterback Caleb Williams has progressed throughout the season and is headed the right way going into 2025. He appears not to be broken physically or mentally, and even as he recently lamented the team’s seven-game losing streak and 4-9 record, he did it with an upbeat tone.
He might actually be Bears-proof.
The organization has stress-tested that idea at every turn, squandering a season that could’ve been so much better as the No. 1 overall pick joined a talented roster. General manager Ryan Poles erred in entrusting Williams to coach Matt Eberflus and offensive coordinator Shane Waldron — both fired in-season — and sending Williams out to play behind a faulty offensive line.
At every turn, Williams has opted to “keep going, keep pushing,” and is putting together the best season by a Bears rookie quarterback. He has averaged 211.2 yards per game and has an 87.8 passer rating — both higher than any predecessor Justin Fields in any season — and has thrown 16 touchdown passes with just five interceptions heading into the Bears’ game Monday at the Vikings.
He is unlikely to catch Commanders standout Jayden Daniels for Offensive Rookie of the Year, but Williams bounced back from a slow start to remind everyone why he was drafted first. While there is warranted skepticism about whether the Bears can put the right pieces around him, the talent is indisputably there.
That’s the real reason the Bears’ head-coaching vacancy will be the most coveted in the NFL, even as the team must overcome its own reputation. The dysfunction of Halas Hall is going to be a major concern as elite coaching candidates use the interviews to learn as much about them as they’re learning about prospective hires.
Williams could help them sell the opportunity by finishing with a flourish. In his last four games, he completed 65.7% of his passes, averaged 240.3 yards, threw seven touchdown passes and had no interceptions for a 102.1 passer rating.
That’ll work, and if he closes with four more games along those lines, potential head coaches will probably be willing to overlook some other issues with the Bears for the chance to collaborate with an ascending player at the most pivotal position.
Williams can keep climbing irrespective of what’s going on around him. Him playing well is more important at this point than the Bears winning.
He needs to be more productive and more of a catalyst, though, than he was last week in the 38-13 loss to the 49ers. The Bears opened that game with five fruitless possessions and were down 24-0 at halftime as Williams sat at 27 yards passing.
He finished with an efficient 116.9 passer rating and 73.9 completion percentage, but just 134 yards — not to mention the game was completely out of hand by the time he finally punched back. Williams can’t control the fact that the Bears’ defense is falling apart, but he must put up more of a fight.
His previous game against the Vikings was an example of what everyone wants to see from Williams, no matter the final score.
He got the Bears out to an early lead. He deciphered defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ blitzes. He put up 340 yards passing and was dangerous as a rusher, too, with 33 yards on six carries. He played cleanly without being overly careful, throwing 20-plus yards downfield eight times and completing three passes of 30 or more yards. The offense scored 27 points, its most in a month and a half.
That’s the profile the Bears need him to fit Monday and beyond. All four remaining opponents — the Lions, Seahawks and Packers are next — are in the top half of the NFL in scoring defense and opponent passer rating. And this deep into the season, regardless of the Bears’ circumstances, Williams needs to show he’s up for that challenge.
If the same column were spat out by an machine, would you read it differently? Would you read it at all?
I’m not sure.
We are nearing a time when algorithms can tell a story. Maybe even a good story; why not, since it’s scraped from every other story ever written?
So expect even more thrilling thrillers. Steamier romances. Funnier comedies. Who’ll care they were composed in .002 seconds by a computer? The important thing is there is no author to pay.
Still. AI doesn’t replace a person, yet. Not to me anyway. I’ve had several unexpected human encounters in the anonymous electronic churn of online commerce and am grateful for them.
First, I had some post-wedding business to take care of. My mother wanted to give a gift to my younger son and his new bride, and since she no longer navigates the online world, I volunteered to do it.
On their wedding website, I selected a set of lovely coasters and was directed to someplace called Scully & Scully. I took my father’s credit card and made the purchase. Lovely embroidered pink elephant coasters. No new household is complete without them.
A day went by.
The phone rang. “Scully & Scully” calling. The person on the line pointed out the address where the gift was to be shipped — our home, since the happy couple was honeymooning in Mexico — and the address on the credit card didn’t match.
A security issue. I tried to explain — it wasn’t my card but my father’s. I was authorized to use it. That didn’t fly; the order was canceled.
The next day, I phoned Scully & Scully, thinking to remedy the situation, and ended up with Carol Tytla, in the registry department. And here is where things got strange — several phone calls were needed to finally get those coasters on their way.
And at one point, Carol and I were just talking, chatting like friends — about weddings, our lives, what sort of store Scully & Scully is. Like Neiman Marcus? I wondered. No, she said, more like Gump’s. Oh, I’ve been to Gump’s! I exclaimed. In Dallas. My sister lives there …
Suddenly, I worried Carol might get in trouble. I’d hate to get the woman fired. She said, no, things were quiet at the bridal registry department. Scully & Scully, at 59th and Madison in New York City, is an old school kind of store.
“Mr. Scully is here every day,” she said.
That seemed worth investigating.
“We take pride in the personal touch,” said owner and president Michael E. Scully, son of the founder. “That defines every aspect of our business.”
With the coasters on their way, Carol mailed a handwritten note, thanking me for my business.
Of course, you pay for that sort of thing. There is a downside to personal interaction. Humans are expensive and messy.
In another recent online transaction, I was trying to get new shoelaces for my Keen hiking boots and ended up patronizing Pisgah Range, a North Carolina shoelace concern.
I selected a pair of desert camo laces. Ten bucks —expensive, but they have brass tips and are guaranteed for life. Really — if one breaks, they promise to send a new pair.
But first you gotta get ‘em. Ten days passed, and I realized the order hadn’t shipped, and so I used the web site’s chat function to inquire about the delay.
“Is this typical?” I asked. “Any idea when they’ll arrive?”
I expected some kind of AI boilerplate. What I got was a very human plea.
“Hi Neil,” the shoelace company wrote. “Hurricane Helene hit us hard. We lost power, water, and cell service for 11 days….We had zero service. The towers were blown down. Because of that, 11 days worth of orders stacked up during the busiest season of the year. I’ve hired a second employee to help with the volume. All laces are made up to yesterday’s orders. There are just over 1000 pairs that need to be inspected, wrapped, and packed. I’m doing everything I can to catch up. Your shipping confirmation will be sent tonight and the laces will go out tomorrow.”
Now I felt like a jerk for pestering the poor man, packing shoelaces as fast as he can. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” I replied. “I of course will be patient.”
The shoelaces showed up about a week later, complete with another handwritten note and a cool Pisgah Range sticker — AI will have us beat when it knows to tuck in a little present.
Until then, we humans will have to keep doing the best we can.
A man was found fatally shot Saturday night in an alley in Little Village.
Just after 10 p.m., officers responding to a call of shots fired found the man in an alley in the 3100 block of West Cermak Road with a gunshot wound to the back, Chicago police said.
The man, whose age is unknown, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Investigators found a green SUV had struck an unoccupied parked vehicle near the victim. They believe the man may have been inside the parked vehicle before police discovered him.
There was no one in custody. Area Four Detectives are investigating.
Two people were killed and two others injured in a crash early Sunday on the Northwest Side.
The crash happened about 12:15 a.m. in the 8700 block of West Irving Park Road, according to Chicago police.
A red sedan traveling west on Irving Park Road struck a black SUV originally traveling east that may have been attempting to cross the sedan’s lane of traffic, Chicago police said.
The black SUV was occupied by three women.
One woman, 56, was transported to Resurrection Hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.
Another woman, 30, was taken to Lutheran General Hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said.
The third woman, 23, was transported to the same hospital in fair condition.
A man, 29, driving the red sedan was taken to the same hospital also in fair condition, police said.
A gray sedan was also involved in the crash and may have been struck by the black SUV, according to police.
The 22-year-old man driving that vehicle was not injured.
No citations have been issued. Area Five detectives are investigating.
