These are notes from a column written Oct. 4. Going into Week 5. Notes that saw this day coming. Notes that became evidence.
• Damn! Is Keenan Allen that important? DJ Moore facial expressions aside . . . asking a rookie QB in his third NFL game to throw 52 times is clinically insane!
• After Week 2, Andrew Hawkins gave offensive coordinator Shane Waldron a D on ‘‘First Take’s’’ QB Rookie Report Card (even as Mike Greenberg tried to protect Caleb Williams by blaming Ryan Poles and Co. — including coaching, calling Matt Eberflus a “lame-duck” coach — for not building the O-line in the offseason).
• Not long afterward, Waldron was getting clowned on ‘‘The Pat McAfee Show’’ without even being named. The week that was, the week that shouldn’t have been.
• The balanced attack of the running game and passing game improved. Spreading the wealth to make sure more of the players on this new, still undefined offense got touches did increase in the Colts game, but . . .
• Waldron’s speed-option call on fourth-and-goal right before the end of the half (Game 3) that resulted in a 12-yard loss and loss of possession is at the root of everything that has gone and is wrong with the Bears.
• Miscommunication is real. But where is it coming from? Multiple places? If so, which is the primary?
• Williams sailing passes (that magical touch that he displayed so often at USC — gone) and not connecting with any consistency with any of his receivers.
• Look, the power of this one game against the Rams won’t change much from what has been established over the first three weeks. But a loss against the Panthers exacerbates everything, and the beginning of the beginning of the end will begin.
• Now that Waldron has hopefully discovered (knows!) that for Game 4 and beyond it’s smarter (better?) to make Cole Kmet Williams’ (Travis) Kelce than Rome Odunze his (Justin) Jefferson . . .
• Best comment heard: “I think the Bears hire their offensive coordinators on Indeed.”
Now the noise has arrived, and it’s warranted and legit. What’s worse is the noise is just the half of it. The screams from all corners of sport’s flat earth shape a story of self-inflicted suffering that is associated with every part of the Bears’ recent legacy.
A public panic. An opulence of criticism toward a team and regime that in many ways feels like an obituary would be kinder. It has been soul-destroying at best. The recurring clip of Patriots linebacker Anfernee Jennings helping Williams up and patting him on the top of his helmet like a pet or a child he pitied became the crystallizing moment of this underpowering and habitually disputatious season. The sum of every manifested part.
And Waldron’s guillotine is supposed to do what? The Jets were 2-3 when they chopped the head of their snake — coach Robert Saleh. They are 1-4 since.
It’s deeper than one coach, deeper than one player, deeper than one play. It becomes simplistic and easy to pinpoint (blame, much?) Tyrique Stevenson and the Fail Mary for being the Steve Bartman in the Bears’ recent free fall. But truth being truth: If it took that little for everything to collapse and for the Bears to sink to this level, this fast, then the foundation of everything leading up to that singular last-second moment was fragile and ready to implode to begin with. As they function amid their dysfunction — and because of it.
The regression of Williams. The ineptitude of the play and play-calling on offense. The continued deterioration of an offensive line that was reprehensibly suspect to begin the season and was at one point last week down to all reserve players because of injuries to the starters and has had 15 in-game changes this season. The team’s total lack of focus and urgency. The Russian roulette of non-head coaches the last 1½ seasons. Now come rumblings from the locker room that some veteran players want Williams replaced at QB1.
Screams are loud as hell, ain’t they? Making the timing of the “breaking news” revisit of the old Michael Reese Hospital location for the new stadium so perfect, it almost felt staged.
The mindless whisper underneath, unambiguous: Are the next six weeks going to be any different than the last three? Our immediate future, just that basic.
It’s the disparity between making excuses and searching for answers. Knowing it’s never too late to scream when failure displaces reason. Leaving the Bears, right now, in a clusterflux even George Halas Sr. might have walked away from.
Wait . . . shhh . . . quiet. Belief is trying to say something. Still breathing. It’s called the audacity of hope for a reason. Meaning their problems might be dark, dire, drastic, dismal and depressing, but at least they ain’t the Cowboys.