Hope can be a dangerous thing. Without it, you're willing to accept and understand when your team struggles. Soaked to the gills with it while waiting for their first-ever franchise quarterback, a desperately hopeful Bears fanbase has soured into hopefully desperate almost overnight. And they should be upset. Enraged would be fine. Apoplectic, even.
How could you not be angry watching what this coaching staff's doing to Caleb Williams and seeing how badly the Bears are struggling despite what was universally hailed as "the greatest landing spot for a No. 1 overall quarterback in NFL history?" After being smeared 19-3 by the lowly Patriots, the Bears fell to 4-5 on the season.
The playoffs are fading from the rearview, but the record would be fine if there was something positive coming out of Chicago on the offensive end of things. There isn't. The Bears went 1 of 14 on third down Sunday while managing an anemic 142 yards and a pathetic 2.4 yards per play.
Chicago finished with three drives that didn't result in a punt, and two of those ended in turnovers on downs. The offense mustered a single drive over 25 yards -- good for a whopping total of 55 yards -- and that netted their only points of the game, a 33-yard Cairo Santos field goal.
Williams, the ballyhooed first overall pick, finished 16 of 30 for 120 yards, a not-so-good 6.9 completion-over-expectation percentage and this utterly depressing Next Gen Stats passing chart.
Williams attempted a SINGLE PASS more than 15 yards down the field. What are we doing here?
The Bears fans who stuck around for the second half continued to cascade boos down on the team when the offense touched the ball after a full-throated display of displeasure rang out for much of the first half. Suffice to say, the fans aren't thrilled with the coaching staff right now, as Bill from the Northwest Side so eloquently ranted on 670 the Score Sunday following the game.
This whole thing is a mess. In a year with rookie wide receivers exploding with production all over the place, Rome Odunze feels like he should be on a "If Found Please Call" posters all over Chicago. The trade for Keenan Allen simply isn't working out. D.J. Moore is a team captain and it feels like he's constantly sulking at this point.
Williams' numbers nine starts into the season are utterly depressing. Just how bad are they? Well, they look a lot like the guy taken first overall the year before. You know, Bryce Young, who got benched two games into his second season.
Williams' numbers are slightly better or slightly worse depending on what you value (volume versus efficiency) and I think you can make a pretty easy case that he doesn't look quite as overmatched as Young did last year. But then again, the numbers are the numbers and the Bears just scored three points against a very bad Patriots team at home in what amounted to a must-win -- or at the very least a can't-lose -- game.
Making matters much, much worse was the play of Drake Maye against Chicago. The No. 3 overall pick didn't put up Mahomesian numbers. He went 15 of 25 for 184 yards, a touchdown, a pick and a few rushes. But he made plays when he needed to, looked like someone who will thrive when he actually has weapons around him and, generally speaking, he was just better than Caleb.
Mix in Jayden Daniels' play this season and Bears fans are understandably frustrated. Matt Eberflus entered the Week 7 bye with his team at 4-2 and feeling like an NFC playoff threat. They've lost three straight games and haven't scored more than 15 points against the Commanders, Cardinals and Patriots.
Eberflus admitted "everything" was going to be evaluated after Sunday's debacle, including the status of offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. But he better make sure it's not lip service, because if the current status quo for the Bears continues with the coaching staff just hoping the offense magically fixes itself, everyone is going to get fired.
Hope can be unhealthy. And it's certainly not a plan.
Speaking of hope ...
Germany got an unexpectedly decent game between the Giants and Panthers, with Carolina emerging victorious in overtime, thanks to a back-breaking fumble by Giants rookie running back Tyrone Tracy Jr. It's really tough because Tracy was awesome all game, as he has been since taking over the lead back role from Devin Singletary following the veteran's injury a few weeks ago.
And while we shouldn't read too much into a single, one-week matchup between two terrible teams, it did feel like a pair of bottom dwellers moving in opposite paths at the quarterback position.
Bryce Young was ... good? Or at least serviceable. He was smiling! And making first-down pointing gestures after picking up a new set of downs on a really solid scramble. The bar is super low here, so I don't want to get carried away, but the Panthers offense looked competent for the first time in a long time.
Sunday's 20-17 win represents the first time Carolina has a "winning streak" (in this case more than one game) since 2022. It was Young's first start this season without throwing a pick and his first win away from Bank of America Stadium. I'm not trying to fluff up the, ahem, HOPE level for Panthers fans here with Young. But after the most disastrous start to his career possible, Young maybe/kinda/sorta could be turning a corner here.
That he's doing it with minimal help is an even better sign. running back Chuba Hubbard looked awesome again after inking a new deal, wide receiver Xavier Legette had some nice moments, wideout Jalen Coker maybe can play and tight end Ja'Tavian Sanders caught a touchdown and nearly made it two ... but those guys aren't exactly the 2007 Patriots skill-position crew. Three of those dudes are rookies. Stacking a few good games and maybe winning some down the stretch would go a long way for this Carolina team and its young quarterback.
Giants' ongoing Daniel Jones dilemma
The Giants have to officially be done with Daniel Jones. I don't know if that means playing Drew Lock, but that should absolutely be an option if there's an injury clause/concern with the moronic deal they handed Jones two years ago and how it affects their ability to cut him.
Jones now has 58 consecutive starts without throwing for three touchdowns, the fifth most since the merger in 1970. This is the fourth time in five years Jones has started the Giants' first 10 games and hasn't managed to produce 10 passing touchdowns. The Giants are 3-14 in Jones' last 17 starts and are averaging less than 14 points per game over that span. It's over.
I don't, however, think this is a case where ownership needs to panic and start firing people. Head coach Brian Daboll dialed up a perhaps-too-cute flea-flicker call on a third-and-1 in this game that resulted in Jones being sacked. But there were multiple wide receivers open down the field and he just didn't pull the trigger. Daboll spent the next several minutes, including through a commercial break, pacing the sidelines and literally shaking his head the entire time.
Jones keeps throwing medicine balls that are going to get Malik Nabers killed. The superstar wide receiver was ineffective for most of the game due to Jones' inaccuracy and left to be evaluated for a concussion during the second half after Jones hung him out to dry on a poorly thrown ball that forced him to extend vertically before taking a big shot. Jones' ball placement was brutal in this game.
In other words, Daboll and GM Joe Schoen deserve a chance to bring their own quarterback in. Letting Saquon Barkley walk is surely grinding the gears of ownership, but going all in on Jones, the former No. 6 overall pick, felt like something ownership was keen on.
The only good news for Giants fans is the, sigh, hope of the unknown, that Jones can sink them lower and lower until they're in the mix for Cam Ward with the first overall pick.
Huge race for first overall pick
There's going to be some serious competition for the first overall pick. We haven't seen the NFL this bad in quite some time. There are 11 teams with three wins or fewer after 10 weeks of football being played. Eighteen teams are at .500 or worse right now. Eight different teams have losing streaks of three or longer as we sit right now. The football teams, they are bad.
Hopefully the guys who run Tankathon aren't planning on sleeping much over the next few months, because they're going to be busy charting the race to the bottom.
Among the contenders are the current owner of the No. 1 overall pick, the Jacksonville Jaguars, who fell 12-7 to the Vikings on Sunday at home in their first game without Trevor Lawrence this season. It's likely not the last, with Lawrence a candidate to miss some serious time with a right shoulder injury that is threatening his status going forward.
In his place was Mac Jones, who threw a game-ending interception that, frankly, was worth asking Doug Pederson about. But Pederson's under such pressure right now with the way Jacksonville's playing that he's refusing to explain to reporters what happened on the play, and his only excuse for not doing so is incredibly condescending.
Shoutout to ESPN's Ben Solak for immediately firing up the video machine and doing exactly what Pederson doesn't think anyone in the media can do.
I think Pederson's response is more about where he stands with this team. Lawrence's absence isn't going to be a justifiable excuse for him keeping his job. In fact, one could argue it's the lack of offense that's led to Trevor getting hurt the last two years. And if the Jaguars finish with the No. 1 overall pick for the third time in the last five years, well, there's no excuse good enough to justify it.
Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke -- and I will keep beating this drum -- deserves some scrutiny, too. Plenty of it. He's buying the groceries. Jacksonville's had to reboot several different times over the last decade-plus, with just a few spikes of hope and potential (the 2017 AFC title game run, Lawrence's sophomore season when they won the division and beat the Chargers in the playoffs stand out).
Jaguars fans are probably used to hope being a bad word. They deserve better. This team needs a full-blown reboot after 2024. Lawrence is still good enough to turn into a franchise quarterback and he'd be great bait to lure a Ben Johnson-type coach into Jacksonville to really turn things around.
And now ... the Cowboys
I hate to keep doing this week after week after week, but Jerry Jones dug his own grave on this one. Sunday's 34-6 loss to the Eagles was never remotely close and never remotely competitive. Backup quarterback Kenny Pickett played almost the whole fourth quarter for Philadelphia, that's how bad things got for Dallas.
Dallas is now the first team in NFL history to trail by 20+ points in five consecutive home games, including the playoffs. The Cowboys were down by 32 to the Packers in last year's wild-card game, trailed by 25 to the Saints in Week 2, 22 to the Ravens in Week 3, 38 (lol) to the Lions in Week 6 and 28 to the Eagles yesterday in Week 10.
To top things off, superstar wide receiver CeeDee Lamb completely whiffed on a would-be touchdown pass from Cooper Rush and after the game blamed the sun on it, saying "I couldn't see" when he turned to make the catch.
It's not some dumb excuse, either. Lamb literally couldn't see because Jerry had the monument to his grandeur built in such a way that on Sunday afternoon, the giant ball of gas we see rise to the east every morning fires piles of blinding rays into AT&T Stadium.
The resulting memes were predictably hilarious.
Letting the sun dictate how your team plays for allegedly aesthetic reasons is an incredible level of hubris, only matched by Jerry's disgust at Lamb's suggestion that the team should start putting up curtains to block the sun and allow the football players to do their job.
Asked about the sun, Jerry was quite frustrated.
"By the way, we know where the sun is going to be when we decide to flip the coin or not," Jones said after the game. "We do know where the damn sun is going to be in our own stadium."
And on curtains, he was NOT PLEASED.
"Well let's tear the damn stadium down and build another one? Are you kidding me?" a frustrated Jones responded. "Everybody has got the same thing. Every team that comes in here has the same issues. "I'm saying, the world knows where the sun is. You get to know that almost a year in advance. Someone asked me about the sun. What about the sun? Where's the moon?"
Now, as some have pointed out, the WWE came into town and put up curtains to block out the sun.
It might not be pretty, but it's practical. And the Cowboys right now should worry a little bit less about being pretty, and a little bit more about doing the things they need to do in order to win football games. That includes blocking out the sun, blocking for the quarterback and even dates back to the offseason, when they decided this roster was fine with the current run game plus Ezekiel Elliott (who had a terrible fumble early in this one) and the state of the defense with Dan Quinn's departure.
I'll at least say this for the Cowboys: They're hopeless. For many fans that's got to be depressing. But the frustration sure is fun to watch.