Ohhhh this is so, so good. This is amazing. This is the best.
Justin Fields, the Chicago Bears’ messiah, made his starting debut yesterday. He completed six passes in twenty attempts. The Bears failed to score a touchdown.
Of course, it’s Matt Nagy’s fault. Everything’s Matt Nagy’s fault. And I do recognize that this kind of performance stems in large part from Nagy. I’m not disputing the hate he’s receiving. But it’s so hard not to love the immediate pivot out of Bears fans from “Justin Fields will save us” to “Matt Nagy won’t let Justin Fields save us” (plus, the volume of the wailing that accompanies it is just…man, it’s fun).
This is a beautiful dichotomy, because it leaves Fields with house money. Next week, when the ball’s snapped to him, the guy could look at it confusedly, shrug, toss it over his shoulder, and pogo stick off the field, and Bears fans would blast Matt Nagy for calling the pogo-stick-off-the-field play.
It’s only been one game, but one can imagine this continuing, and one can imagine the Bears moving on from Nagy, and one can imagine Bears fans, lemmings that they are, wandering around aimlessly until they bump into a new scapegoat next year. Who will that be? There’s no way to know. That’s the beauty of this. It could be Fields. It could be Ryan Pace, if he’s still around. It could be Lori Lightfoot, if she’s still around (I don’t know the election schedules up there). It could be Mondelez CEO Dirk Van de Put, if he’s still…well, actually he’d probably have to switch jobs to find himself drawing the ire here.
The point is that we don’t know where the herd will go. And that’s a beautiful thing. Because wherever it goes, it will go simplistically, with over-the-top certainty. The rollercoaster will be ridden. And what a lovely path it will take.
God bless the Chicago Bears.
