McCaskey Sh*tshow Gets More Embarrassing Each Season
Pretty blunt headline, huh? In full disclosure, I chose the less caustic of the two I was considering.
The Bears organization is a hopeless and helpless laughingstock that runs contrary to the models of any competent ownership group in any sport. Believe it or not, the McCaskeys make Jerry Reinsdorf look good. The story starts with ownership and distills down to its broken signal caller, just as it does every franchise quarterback cycle, whether it be Jay Cutler, Mitchell Trubisky, Justin Fields, or Caleb Williams.
Chicago can’t develop a quarterback no matter who is in charge. Perhaps the answer is to just hand the football off 40-50 times a game to D’Andre Swift and hope he gets them into the end zone three times. Yeah, that might work. As Kyle Brandt of NFL Network said yesterday, we’ve cruised through denial and anger and landed squarely on acceptance.
The Bears
Denial.
Anger.
And now – acceptance. pic.twitter.com/ZhglRvFOkv— Kyle Brandt (@KyleBrandt) November 11, 2024
If you are wondering who to blame for the mess on Chicago’s lakefront, why not start with George Halas? The NFL’s founding father didn’t want to sell the team before he died because he chose instead to minimize the tax break on his estate. Yes, it was always about money, even on the patriarch’s deathbed. In 1985, Halas set up a separate partnership for the entirety of his 13 grandchildren. And though Halas’ 101-year-old daughter Virginia McCaskey has controlling interest, don’t expect the family to sell the team anytime soon. A plan exists to keep the beloved franchise in the family once Ms. McCaskey passes away.
The NFL bylaws state that a single lineal family must control 30% of each franchise. Virginia does because of the family’s voting trust. However, when she dies, the trust expires and the Bears ownership “will be thinly spread over more than a dozen Halas heirs, without a single person or descendant anywhere close to that 30% threshold.” That’s quoted directly from the Sportico article linked above.
The article also states the McCaskeys have a trust in place to remain family-owned after Virginia McCaskey dies, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The plan would require re-consolidating control of at least 30% of the team, which is now worth $6.4 billion, into a single wing of the McCaskey family. That allows the McCaskeys to meet the league’s minimum requirement for franchise ownership.
In other words, the Bears are not going to be sold any time soon, if ever.
This was supposed to be the year the Bears climbed into near contention, with estimates of a nine-win season as the mean projection. That’s not going to happen despite a 4-2 start. Chicago has lost three straight since and the team has quit on its coach. The strength of schedule for their remaining eight games is .700. It’s quite possible, if not nearly probable, that the Bears will end the season with 11 straight losses and a 4-13 record. How bad is that? I’ll get that in a moment, but ESPN’s David Kaplan summed things up quite succinctly.
Bears HC Matt Eberflus was doing a radio interview with ESPN Chicago when his phone kept cutting out.
“Coach, your cellphone is as bad as the offense right now.” — @thekapman.
😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/iC0KHo6fvo
— Arye Pulli (@AryePulli) November 11, 2024
Eberflus owns the team record for longest losing streak at 14 games. He will own the second-longest streak at 11 if the Bears fail to win another contest this season. Worse, the Bears are officially in the running for the top pick in next year’s draft. No team has landed the top pick in three straight seasons. That will be the legacy Eberflus carries with him on his way out if Chicago continues to get beat.
In typical organizational fashion, Chicago triaged multiple wounds by applying its smallest bandage to its largest laceration. Earlier today, the team announced it fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron. He’ll be replaced by passing coordinator Thomas Brown. Waldron lasted nine games after replacing Luke Getsy, who guided Chicago’s rudderless offense for the two years prior. Getsy, who took a job with the Raiders this year, was fired after six games with Las Vegas. Brown worked for the Panthers last season, guiding the NFL’s worst offense to 265.3 yards per game. He also broke last year’s top draft pick, quarterback Bryant Young.
And this is going to work out how?
“After evaluating our entire operation, I decided that it is in the best interest of our team to move in a different direction with the leadership of our offense. This decision was well thought out, one that was conducted deliberately and respectfully,” head coach Matt Eberflus said in a statement. “I would like to thank Shane for his efforts and wish him the best moving forward.
“Thomas is a bright offensive mind who has experience calling plays with a collaborative mindset. I look forward to his leadership over our offensive coaching staff and his plan for our players.”
It’s okay if you think this is a bad decision by Eberflus. After all, he’s now failed with three coordinators in 2+ seasons, and he made this decision “after evaluation [of the] entire operation.” Brown has three games of previous experience calling plays, and will rely “on a collaborative mindset.” Three. It’s enough to make anybody go into a Kaplan-like rage.
The Bears were very proud of their process that led them to Shane Waldron this offseason. Of nine OC candidates they interviewed over a 2 week period, Waldron was the only candidate the Bears interviewed twice.
Eberflus said that Waldron stood out as a candidate "because of his…
— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) November 12, 2024
The correct move would have been to fire Eberflus, and possibly GM Ryan Poles and team president Kevin Warren. Poles has done some good things, but what grade would you give him if you excluded the Panthers trade that netted D.J. Moore and several draft picks? Nobody knows what Warren does, but it might be a couple of decades before the team gets a new stadium the way he handles that project.
That said, firing all three would put George McCaskey back in the driving seat, alongside buddies Bill Polian and Ernie Accorsi. That triumvirate is responsible for Eberflus, Matt Nagy, John Fox, and Marc Trestman, who have combined to go 71-108 (.397) in 10+ seasons. Nagy was responsible for 34 of those wins and looks like a Hall of Famer compared to his three peers. Eberflus is 14-29 (.335) and in grave danger of falling to 14-37 (.275). That would be the second-worst mark in team history, barely besting Abe Gibron (11-30-1, .268).
McCaskey, who fired Lovie Smith in 2011 after a 10-6 season, is the common denominator. The Bears don’t have a quarterback problem as much as they have a McCaskey problem. By the looks of things, neither will be fixed any time soon. The Cubs, who won their first championship in 108 years when they beat Cleveland in 2016, were cursed by a billy goat. The Bears haven’t won a championship since 1985-86. They remain cursed by Halas himself and the accountant who authored his trust.
