- Governor Murphy has essentially ruled out the idea of the Giants or Jets having fans in their building this year. The Packers will max out Lambeau Field at 12,000 seats this fall (if any). The new building in Los Angeles, which cost as much as constructing a small city, isn’t going to have fans in the house for this 2020 season. None of this is surprising but it seems the league is following the European soccer model of playing out this season in empty buildings. And it’s going to be weird.
- Who is tied with Patrick Mahomes as the second-highest rated playoff QB of the last decade? Hint: he’s on the Bears. Bill Barnwell also made an argument for Nick Foles to sneak into the MVP conversation, but you’d have to survive one of his interminable 60,000-word columns to find it. (Seriously, does anybody need to write this many words about the NFL? It’s a sport. It’s not an epidemiological study of Covid-19.)
- There are not going to be any preseason games this year. And every beat writer in the league is currently penning their “What No Preseason Games Means to X” column. Here’s what it means: (1) A bunch of bottom-of-the-roster guys are gonna get screwed. (2) “Camp battles” are going to be essentially nonsense, as Jaylon Johnson can’t really prove anything against Mitch Trubisky, can he? (3) The first month of the season is going to be extremely sloppy, which is why I advocated the league front-loading the schedule with non-conference games and not counting those games as anything other than tie-breakers this season.
- Did you know William “Refrigerator” Perry once jumped into the competitive eating world?
- “It’s over and it was good.” Mike Ditka reflects on the closing of the great Ditka’s restaurant in this piece from the Sun-Times.
This bear is the the spirit animal of @olin_kreutz. https://t.co/K7ow1MPet8
— DaBearsBlog (@dabearsblog) July 21, 2020
