O'Donnell: Garoppolo in Halloween lights sure to haunt Bears fans
IT WILL BE QUITE a Halloween treat for the hierarchy of the Bears Thursday night.
The last team that George McCaskey and Ryan Pace want to see showcased to a fan base disillusioned and downright frothing will indeed be center stage.
That'll happen when Jimmy Garoppolo and the unbeaten San Francisco 49ers will be given every opportunity this side of Tombstone to beach slap hapless host Arizona (Fox, NFL Network, Amazon Prime Video, 7:20 p.m.).
The 49ers (7-0) are everything the 2019 Bears were supposed to be - crisp, confident, cohesive, successful and dancing under one of the NFL's most grand harvest moons.
At the center of it all is the charismatic Garoppolo, the Arlington Heights Adonis who is quarterbacking the little cable cars well beyond halfway to the stars this season.
And the question will forever fester:
With a little more imagination and a little more intuitiveness by Pace, could Garoppolo have become a Bear back in 2017?
It was two years ago Thursday morning when the 27-year-old Rolling Meadows High grad (Class of '10) hopped a 5 a.m. flight out of Boston's Logan Airport to SFO to report to coach Kyle Shanahan.
The 49ers were 0-8 at the time.
Eleven hours earlier, with a trade deadline closing in and Garoppolo noncommittal about continuing an open-ended apprenticeship behind Tom Brady, Bill Belichick stunned league flight trackers when he called SF GM John Lynch with a Norton-get-the-bag offer:
Garoppolo for a second-round draft pick.
As soon as Lynch was revived, he and Shanahan said, "Yes!"
There were myriad reasons for Belichick's heat-directed largesse, some obvious, some nuanced, some still unknown.
Informed New England analysts insist it was Belichick's intent when he drafted Garoppolo No. 62 out of Eastern Illinois in 2014 (Belichick's highest QB pick ever) for a few seasons of grooming and then coronation as Brady's successor.
The monkeys in the works became Brady's remarkable longevity and his close relationship with orchid-eyed Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
By the spring of 2017, with Garoppolo's four-year rookie contract set to expire at season's end, the Browns were in pointed pursuit and it is believed so were Pace and the Bears.
All suitors were rebuffed because Belichick still hoped to re-sign his talented dart thrower.
That led Pace to structure the now acutely questioned package of four draft picks to the 49ers to flip up one spot and take Mitch Trubisky at SF's original No. 2.
Six months later, San Francisco had Garoppolo and the beginning of the mother lode from the Pace pack.
Crouching tiger in all was agent Don Yee, who represents Garoppolo, Brady and New Orleans coach Sean Payton.
It was Payton - like Garoppolo and Pace, an EIU alum - who recommended Yee to Jimmy G. and his parents Tony and Denise Garoppolo.
Aware of Brady's intentions and their likely disconnect with Belichick's plans, Yee rejected NE offers to Garoppolo that reportedly peaked at four years and $72 million beginning with the 2018 season.
Yee also emphasized that Garoppolo's acceptance of an apprenticeship was coming to an end.
Kraft reportedly made it clear to Belichick that Brady would not be displaced as the Patriots' lead quarterback until the window of change was evident to all three principals.
So, rather than allow Garoppolo to drift into free agency, Belichick hand-delivered him to the 49ers.
After QBing San Francisco to a 5-0 finish in 2017, Garoppolo signed a mammoth $137.5 million contract that extends through the 2022 season.
He has rebounded quite nicely after a season-ending knee injury early in September 2018 and is now a lifetime 15-1 in NFL games that he has started and finished.
And on Halloween evening, chagrined Bears fans can watch the homegrown San Francisco treat that got away.
STREET-BEATIN': Great match inside the SF-Arizona game as rookie edge sensation Nick Bosa gets to chase QB Kyler Murray, the player the Cardinals chose No. 1 ahead of Bosa atop the 2019 draft. (Over/under on sacks by the mean-streaking Bosa should be a straight 3 with pushes to the house.) … Yes, Fox got a Game 7 of the Nationals-Astros. But the World Series was not much of a TV champ with the first four games among the 10 least-watched of all time. (Still, free agent Anthony Rendon would look marvelous in either Chicago uniform next season.) … Energized Eddie Olczyk has a dandy daily double Saturday. He'll analyze races for network coverage of the Breeders' Cup (NBCSN, 2:30 p.m.), tape his Classic selections (NBC, 7 p.m.) and then battle from Santa Anita to the Staples Center to call the Blackhawks-Kings game alongside Pat Foley (NBCSCH, 9:30 p.m.) … Now all that Lovie Smith and the Renewed Illini (4-4) have to do to get into a participation bowl is beat vaporized Rutgers and Northwestern in Champaign. Brandon Peters and lads are 21-point faves over the Scarlet Knights Saturday (BTN, 2:30 p.m.; Kevin Kugler, Matt Millen). … Amid the Alien Corn: Someone must know sump'n because the NIU-Central Michigan game moved from a pick to Thomas Hammock and the Huskies -1½ (CBSSN, 11 a.m.; John Sadak, Randy Cross). … CBS has hired Davis Love III for golf analysis beginning with the Farmers Insurance Open in January. Gone are Gary McCord and Peter Kostis. … Jim Riebandt, the Bears' public-address announcer since 1982, will retire at season's end. He began as backup to Chet Coppock in 1979 when Coppock was still making a swift commute from Indy's WISH-TV to handle the labor of love. … "Inside Game" - all about disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy - goes into general cinema release this weekend. (Spoiler unearthed: He gets caught.) … And multi-splaying funnyman Bruce Wolf, on the latest hash mark twist in the Bears' "As The Kickers Turn," tweeted: "Is Piñeiro's undercutting of (Matt) Nagy worse that what (Cody) Parkey did? Couldn't Eddy just have gone on the 'Today' show?"
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.