Imrem: Chicago Bears developing a bad situation
A Yahoo.com article this week ranked the 0-2 NFL teams' chances of making the playoffs.
The Bears are in the “DEAD ON ARRIVAL” category with this assessment: “As dysfunctional as the day is long … ”
Ouch!
As uninspiring as the Bears have been most of the past quarter century, rarely has hope been extinguished this early in a season.
It feels like a Saturday night that's still young but awfully quiet in the dance hall.
The doors are locked already. The lights are off. The band has moved on.
Yet a few lonely souls are on the dance floor, swaying to the silence, landing on each other's toes, practicing steps that resemble stumbles.
Those are the Bears out there all right, trying to learn the fundamentals of a game they have played for decades.
As halftime of the loss to the Cardinals approached the other day, I stood in the back of the press box next to a former longtime Bears player.
“This season looks like it's going to be long and ugly,” I said.
“It's all about development from here,” he said.
Hmmm, I thought, this is scary stuff, especially if you paid for a suite or a seat in Soldier Field before the season.
NFL teams don't normally surrender to development a mere two games into their 16-game schedule.
Some current 0-2 teams still are aiming for the Super Bowl. Others are shooting for the postseason at the very least.
The Bears profess to be, too, but they're closer to going 0-16 than going to the playoffs.
So development time it is, though not the type the Cubs have been navigating this season.
The difference is the Cubs are developing young phenoms like Kris Bryant and Addison Russell. The Bears are developing …
Well, who and what are the Bears developing: Shea McClellin into Brian Urlacher, Jay Cutler into a better tackler and Kyle Long into a five-position player on the offensive line?
The Bears don't have a promising collection of prospects like Kyle Schwarber and Javier Baez to coach up.
There was this one guy by the name of Kevin White, a first-round wide receiver from this year's draft.
Ah, but White was injured sometime between his last college game and first NFL game and might not play a single down this season.
The Bears have had something like five five-year developmental plans since the 1985 Super Bowl champions finally faded away in the early '90s.
Except for the serendipitous blip that was the Super Bowl runner-up 2006 season, the Bears have been developing in the wrong direction.
Now they look more like the 1-13 team of 1969 — albeit without the likes of Dick Butkus and Gayle Sayers — than the champions of 1985.
It's up to grizzled veteran head coach John Fox and fresh-faced rookie general manager Ryan Pace to pull the Bears out of their sustained failure to win anything.
The process can be painstakingly slow: draft well for several years, hit on a series of productive free agents and most of all find a quarterback for the ages.
Then, of course, develop them into a championship unit.
The problem is that great players like that aren't around every corner like Walgreens and Starbucks.
For starters, Fox is trying to instill toughness into the recently patty-cake Bears, but so far they have looked pretty much the same while staggering to that 0-2 record.
It sure does look like it'll be awhile before the band strikes back up for these developing Bears.
mimrem@dailyherald.com