A foul case of Collinsworth fatigue set in late Sunday throughout the fourth quarter of the Chicago Bears’ 30-13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
A weekend of listening to NBC “Sunday Night Football” analyst Cris Collinsworth and his soundalike son, Jac, will try this. Both are competent announcers however are finest utilized in restricted doses. Jac’s ascension to play-by-play man for Notre Dame house video games on NBC makes a Collinsworth household weekend inevitable for a few of us, and an excessive amount of Collinsworth is seldom an excellent factor.
It was nearly a provided that Cris Collinsworth would spend most of Sunday evening speaking about quarterback Tyson Bagent, the one Bears participant remotely price discussing. This was a canine recreation on the “SNF” schedule, a type of unlucky occurrences that occurs every time some TV government thinks the Bears have turned a nook.
You would suppose they’ve discovered their lesson by now. According to Tribune reporter Dan Wiederer, the Bears have misplaced seven straight Sunday evening video games by a mean rating of 31-15. This just isn’t a Ryan Poles drawback however a McCaskey factor.
To hammer house the canine matchup, NBC even used a double field within the fourth quarter with an precise pet food business on one half of the display screen and Bears coach Matt Eberflus strolling up and down the sideline attempting to fireside up his gamers on the opposite half.
It was nearly as if NBC had a humorousness concerning the Bears’ plight, although the community actually hoped you wouldn’t discover it displaying the identical advert throughout each business break about an absent-minded dad forgetting to lock his automotive.
I wasn’t amongst these offended by the “needle in a haystack” narrative surrounding Bagent, the undrafted rookie from Division II Shepherd who was now on the large stage of “Sunday Night Football.” It’s a narrative we’re all aware of in Chicago, however not everybody watching all over the world follows a workforce that just lately ended a 14-game shedding streak.
And I anxiously awaited the meme-worthy graphic displaying the variety of Bears beginning quarterbacks over the past such-and-such years versus the opponent’s a lot smaller variety of quarterbacks over the identical time interval.
It’s precisely what you get if you put a workforce just like the Bears in a prime-time slot they don’t deserve. This is a workforce made for rubberneckers solely.
No matter the community caught with them, the overall thought for dealing with a nasty Bears workforce is to stay to the identical fundamental theme — their elusive seek for a quarterback — after which speculate that the present one might lastly be the reply.
When the “SNF” schedule got here out, this recreation was imagined to be all about Justin Fields and his possibilities of being The One. But as a consequence of circumstances past NBC’s management, its first Sunday evening Bears recreation landed after Bagent gained his first begin following Fields’ proper thumb harm.
It would’ve been foolish to not spotlight Bagent’s story, the one attention-grabbing factor a few 2-5 Bears workforce going through a 2-4 Chargers workforce. The drawback was that after the primary play, the Bears seemed so inept the community wasn’t capable of pivot in time to a brand new narrative.
So Collinsworth stored speaking about Bagent’s promise as a substitute of the chance the Bears may very well be terrible sufficient to make one other teaching change inevitable.
At one level Mike Tirico and Collinsworth introduced up the Bears’ seek for a brand new stadium, and the digital camera shortly reduce to President/CEO Kevin Warren. We have been reminded of the good job Warren did getting the Minnesota Vikings’ new stadium constructed.
Since everybody loves the Vikings stadium, certainly which means a brand new Bears stadium can be simply as acclaimed. Apparently.
Collinsworth appeared nearly giddy over the prospect of a bidding conflict between native communities, although he didn’t particularly point out scenic Country Club Hills, the newest suburb with a grand plan to host the Bears.
It was nearly as if the Bears handed the NBC announcers some additional speaking factors, figuring out the sport would shortly get out of hand. But there was no point out of the earlier $690 million renovation of Soldier Field, the Crash-Landing Spaceship by the Lake design that has been extensively mocked in Chicago as an architectural blunder.
They additionally didn’t present the “reimagined” domed Soldier Field, the “Hail Mary” play from former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, or the renderings of the proposed Arlington Park plan, which includes a domed stadium that resembles something from a bar of cleaning soap to a lid to a deodorant stick. Of course, the Bears advised us on the time of its launch in September 2022 that it was “just a placeholder and not an actual design.” Rest assured there’s loads of time to provide you with one thing extra ridiculous-looking.
Perhaps the spotlight of NBC’s telecast was Eberflus throwing the purple problem flag after the Bears scored a meaningless landing late within the recreation. “The Bears almost negating their own touchdown with a challenge flag is the perfect metaphor for this season,” one fan wrote on social media.
Eberflus naturally meant to throw the flag earlier than the play. But response time has by no means been a power of his, as evidenced by the Chase Claypool saga. Fortunately there was no video overview of the landing, so Eberflus escaped viral embarrassment.
The Bears’ subsequent prime-time recreation is Nov. 9 at house towards the Carolina Panthers, a “Thursday Night Football” recreation on Prime Video that little doubt will focus on the potential for the Bears getting the Nos. 1 and a couple of picks within the 2024 draft. Al Michaels already feels a chilly approaching.
Their solely different remaining evening recreation is scheduled for Nov. 27 at Minnesota, a “Monday Night Football” affair. Hopefully ESPN already has discovered a flex recreation to alleviate America of prime-time, post-Thanksgiving-weekend Beardom.
For the sake of Bears followers, it’s the one compassionate factor to do.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com