This is a satisfying end to the NFL season. Best of all, there isn't a team from Los Angeles in serious contention for a title. I mean, watching the Lakers and the Dodgers clinch within sixteen days of each other was a bit much.
Yeah, the Rams are in the playoffs. But despite a fine defense, no one expects them to do much—if any—damage.
Far more heartening are the returns of the Cleveland Browns and the Buffalo Bills to the post-season.
As a Cub fan, I can relate mightily with Clevelanders and their sports-based suffering. And both editions of the Browns have contributed more than their fair share to that suffering.
Who can forget the 1987 and 1988 AFC Championship games? Or the heroic 1981 effort in the Divisional round against the then-Oakland Raiders, played in four-degree temperatures with wind chills of twenty-below?
Or the ignomy of Red Right 88?
Do I dare remind all concerned the Browns lost these three games by a total of ten points? Perhaps not.
The Browns declined not long after those consecutive championship games and a very messy relocation to Baltimore followed after the 1995 season.
The expansion Browns have suffered (there's that word again) a difficult childhood. With just two random winning seasons in their first twenty-one, weary Clevelanders have again had their faith tested.
And just as the forlorn franchise has finally bundled a functional front office, strong coaching and the on-field talent to win, they get smacked by COVID-19. It's not hard to imagine the city's sports fans beseeching an uncaring God, arms extended and palms turned up in supplication, with “What did we ever do?”
It takes a heartless soul, indeed, to root against them.
Which brings me to the Buffalo Bills.
I never had any feelings for them one way or another until they made it to four consecutive Super Bowls in the early-nineties—and lost all four.
I was old-enough to appreciate the special kind of grit it took to return to the stage where they'd repeatedly lost. And when I learned via an ESPN documentary the city had turned out and cheered kicker Scott Norwood (he of the 'wide right' infamy), I recognized Buffalo and its fans as people with very big hearts.
Like their soulmates in Cleveland, Bills fans have suffered ever since. Rebuilds have come and gone with the only common denominator being they failed to bear fruit. (The Bills haven't won a playoff game in a quarter-century.)
But a winning combination of front office executives, coaches and players has finally been assembled, and the Bills are surging and represent a serious threat to virtually every other team in the AFC.
In fact, given the just-good-enough play of the defending-champion Kansas City Chiefs over the second half of the season, I would only be mildly surprised to see them defeated by Buffalo at some point.
The good news for fans of my hometown Chicago Bears is that tomorrow afternoon's game versus the New Orleans Saints will be the final game of the season.
This awkward assemblage of talent sputtered and lurched through another season, routinely failing to realize expectations heightened by their performance in 2018. It should be clear to all concerned by now that season was an aberration, not a trend.
In its wake, warmed-over kudos to GM Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy.
Pace for mostly having done a pretty solid job on draft day. The primary exception being the selection of Mitchell Trubisky with the second-pick in the 2017 draft—after surrendering draft picks to move up a spot and paying a king's ransom to sign a career back-up QB.
In a league dominated by quarterback play, Pace whiffed spectacularly on the biggest pick of his career. Kindly ignore that two young quarterbacks by the name of Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson were also on the board.
Historically, it's a given that the Bears screw-up at quarterback. It's practically congenital. But choosing Trubisky over Mahomes and Watson was a fatal error. One magnified both by a promising defense and the thin talent surrounding him on 'O'.
Nagy was hired from the Chiefs as an offense-oriented whiz-kid. One able to create dynamic squads capable of lighting up the scoreboard in an era where offense clearly dominates.
Granted, he hasn't been given much to work with. But I am struck by the fact the Bears' offense was on life-support until Nagy handed play-calling duties off to offensive coordinator Bill Lazor.
While that brief resurgence was against the 98-pound weaklings of the NFL, it was something.
You have to ask yourself: if Nagy failed at what was reputedly his strength, what about the areas that weren't?
To his credit, he kept the team focused and upbeat. But that only goes so far. And with the Bears obvious strength (defense) seemingly in a premature decline, this is a franchise with many, many questions to answer.
I distinctly remember as the twentieth anniversary of the Bears' 1963 championship was approaching, the intensity of the widespread irritation at how the Bears had failed to mount even a single credible threat in the ensuing years.
With the twentieth anniversary of their 1985 championship now fifteen-years old, you have to wonder what the future holds.
It may only be a matter of time before empty seats at Soldier Field aren't the byproduct of a pandemic.
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