Jim Dabrowski

Sunset from our balcony

On vacation on the big island of Hawaii.

Pretty

Today Dena and I went for a hike in the San Tan Regional Park. It was a nice easy hike. About 4 miles but it was all pretty flat. The sun was out and it was kinda warm but we brought water. 

Things are starting to bloom here in the desert. This is an Ocotillo cactus. 

The creosote have some pretty yellow flowers with little white puff-balls on them. 

I forget what this is called. Some sort of spiky thing. 

And finally, watch out for rattlesnakes. A biker who just passed us saw it on the path up ahead and came back to warn us. That was very nice of them. By the time we got there, it moved under the bush. I kept my distance, the phone has a pretty good zoom on it. :) 

That’s it. Had a good day so far. Catch you next time. 

JIm

Here we are heading into the start of the 2021 football season and somewhat uncharacteristically, I’m not all that optimistic for my Bears and not really excited to watch them this season. Oh sure, I’ll watch every game I can, but overall I’m pretty “meh” about the whole thing.

Like I wrote last time, the Bears have consistently said they will play Justin Fields when he’s “ready” but none of us outside the organization knew what their definition of “ready” was. I think now we know. They think Fields needs to sit as the backup for some amount of regular season games before he can really be a starter. As a result, I don’t have much optimism for success this season—I think it’s going to be roughly the same as the last two.

I think this much is clear: neither Nagy nor Pace are going to be fired after the 2021 season regardless of how it turns out. They have a new quarterback and the organization trusts them to develop and play him when he’s ready. One thing I thought right after they drafted Fields and heard echoed in the Blogosphere and Twitterverse was that, for the Bears, 2021 doesn’t matter. They aren’t playing for anything in 2021, they’re aiming for 2022 and beyond. They have this year to develop Fields, get some new guys on the team, shed some old guys, etc. I lost sight of that during training camp and pre-season with the excitement building around Fields but I think we see now, they aren’t playing for 2021. They’ll never admit that, but that doesn’t make it untrue. 2021 is a bridge year. They aren’t going to tank, but they aren’t exactly going to be in the mix for any sort of playoff appearance. They’re going to be a middle-of-the-road team, with some hope for the future. Like the last two years, they’re going to stumble their way to roughly a 8-9 season but show promise for the future.

The Offense

The offense this year will be OK. The offensive line play will be OK to poor overall leading to a stumbling, inconsistent offense. Behind them, too often Montgomery will continue to have to evade defenders in the backfield and as we saw in previous seasons, when that happens, the run game isn’t effective. Andy Dalton will continue to be what he has been – a middle of the pack quarterback who will make some plays, but who you can’t rely on to win games for you. The result, an offense that’s better than the bottom of the barrel they’ve been the last couple of years, but not much better. They’ll continue to fail to score very many points and will have to rely on their defense to keep them in games.

The Defense

The defense this year will be OK to good. I think their line play will be top-notch but their secondary, especially the corners, will be picked on all season because they just aren’t all that good. As a result, the Bears will be fine stopping the run game, but the good opposing quarterbacks will be able to pick them apart in the quick passing game. There’s not much else to say here. This defense will fine, but not good enough to keep them in games when the offense is incapable of consistently scoring more than 20 points.

All this leads them to another mediocre year. I’m sure by the end of the season we’ll see Justin Fields play and that will get us all excited about 2022 and the potential it brings. “Just wait til next year!” will continue to be our perennial cheer. I’ll still watch and root for them, but honestly, there isn’t much to look forward to this season. But just wait til next year!

JIm

Sunset in Holbrook.

Staying at the Wigwam Motel. But not in one of these unfortunately. 🙁

A cool double rainbow in Holbrook, AZ.

Something I’ve wondered about for a while. Nagy always seemed like a coach who wanted to run “his” offense but lacked the personnel (Trubisky & Co.) to do so. As a result, he got frustrated and gave up at times. Now that Trubisky is on another team, will that coordinator be able to get more out of him than Nagy was? Not sure we’ll ever find out since it’s doubtful Trubisky plays much this season, but he sure looks good against the Bears in preseason game 2 so far.

On the eve of pre-season game 2 and I’m so tired of this. I listen to several Bears podcasts, read many Bears blogs, follow lots of Bears fans on Twitter and I hear non-ending speculation about when Justin Fields will start. Some people point to Nagy saying that Dalton is their starter so therefore Fields won’t get to start week 1. Others hang on Nagy saying they’ll follow the plan they used for Mahomes in Kansas City and therefore they won’t start Fields until the end of this season if at all. All of them then use this to complain about Nagy’s decision as to when he’ll start Fields. The one thing the Bears coaching staff have consistently said is they will start Fields when he’s “ready” but the problem is, no one knows what Nagy’s definition of “ready” is.

Allow me to digress with an analogy. When learning to fly an airplane, you spend some time studying the manuals and learning about the process of flying. You spend some time in simulators so you can get a feel for what it will be like in an actual airplane. Eventually though you’ve done all you can and you just have to get into a plane and fly it. It doesn’t mean you know everything about how to fly a plane. It doesn’t mean you won’t make any mistakes while flying. It doesn’t mean there won’t be a point a which the instructor has to take control of the plane to stop you from crashing. It just means, you’ve learned all you can on the ground and are “ready” to go fly.

I believe Nagy when he says he’ll start Fields whenever he and the coaching staff determine he’s ready to start. They won’t wait for the right soft spot in the schedule. They won’t play Dalton just because they said at some point he’s the starting quarterback. They won’t keep Fields on the bench just because they kept Mahomes on the bench for most of his rookie season. They will start Fields when he’s ready whether that’s week 1, week 18 or somewhere in between. It doesn’t mean Fields will be perfect once he’s out there it just means he’s done all he can in training camp and in meeting rooms and now he has to get out there and play. I personally think it will be much closer to week 1 than to week 18 and I think it’s not unlikely he’ll be the starter in week 1. I will be in LA for the week 1 opener and sure hope I get to see the Justin Fields’ debut as a Chicago Bear and that he plays for them for many years to come.

JIm

I learned jekyll has an admin plugin that lets me create and maintain my site via a web-based GUI. This is my first post using that plugin. Nice.

It’s unconscionable that the richest country in the world is unwilling to provide healthcare to its citizens. We would rather see them beg in the streets or go bankrupt than help them. It’s sad.