Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Notes on the Indianapolis Colts

• The Colts are allowing 237 yards per game on the ground through two weeks, and ironically have found themselves in two very close ballgames. If the Bears are going to find their rushing legs in the early part of this season, it is going to happen Sunday.
• The Indy media is on the assault, and thankfully some of that criticism is being levied at their GM, Chris Ballard. Ballard has been playing the sports media for a decade, leaking more than any other personnel man in the league, and receiving unwarranted kudos for mediocrity as a result. Said a friend (in the league) to me, “I like just about everybody, but I don’t trust Ballard.”
• Colts took injury hits to their defense, as well, including DeForest Buckner.
• It is not a stat to which many point but opposing passer rating does tell a story and Colts’ opponents through two weeks are pitching to 120.7 rating. Only three teams are worse: the league’s worst team (Carolina), the league’s worst defense (Washington), and a team Kyler Murray just publicly embarrassed (Los Angeles).

Lumet II: Early TV Aesthetics and 12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet is not a cinematic stylist; there is no signature, visual aesthetic attributable to his work. His camera is a collaborator in service of the story. This is one of the reasons he has not received proper consideration.

But to understand Lumet’s technique, per se, one must understand where he began as a director: live television. Throughout the early 50s, Lumet directed hundreds of live specials for shows like Playhouse 90 and Kraft Television Theater. These had minimal sets (often one), small budgets and tight production schedules. Lumet learned the craft of filmmaking – camera movement, lighting, handling actors – in what amounted to a cinematic bootcamp.

How does one show this? Lumet does it brilliantly in his must-read book, Making Movies:

12 Angry Men, Boris Kaufman, photographer. It never occurred to me that shooting an entire picture in one room was a problem. In fact, I felt I could turn it into an advantage. One of the most important dramatic elements for me was the sense of entrapment those men must have felt in that room. Immediately, a “lens plot” occurred to me. As the picture unfolded, I wanted the room to seem smaller and smaller. That means that I would slowly shift to longer lenses as the picture continued. Starting with the normal range (28mm to 40mm), we progressed to 50mm, 75mm, and 100mm lenses. (p. 81)

When you watch 12 Angry Men, pay close attention to what we in the sports world might call “the thirteen man” – the camera. (The film is available to stream everywhere but it’s free on Roku Channel and with your MGM+ and Criterion subscriptions.)

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TRENDING: #Bears guard (#64) Nate Davis is COMPLETELY LOST ON THE FOOTBALL
FIELD

(via @CNOtheCEO)
pic.twitter.com/6eXTMw5yOf

— MLFootball (@_MLFootball) September 16, 2024

The Bears’ offense is a work-in-progress, and I’ve been trying to encourage folks to not expect this unit to be fully formed until round Thanksgiving. Training camp and the preseason are no longer functionally effective. (Just look at a lot of the offenses around the league.) It takes teams time, and the Bears come into this season with new players across the eleven. But there are certainly some concerning trends through two games, most notably their inability to run the ball. The run game was supposed to be a given for the 2024 Chicago Bears and it has been anything but. Is this a serious concern or are Tennessee and Houston two of the better defenses? We’ll find out in Indianapolis next weekend.

More Bears Thoughts.

• Eberflus and Waldron have to seriously consider sending Nate Davis to the bench. Rarely does a guard look so noticeably lost down-for-down. (See Tweet above.)
• It is hard to evaluate the league statistically at this juncture because the horror show that is the Carolina Panthers is skewing everything, but the Bears profile as a defense that is going to be right around a top five unit. Holding the Texans under twenty points at home is a sizable achievement.
• Bears have allowed three second-half points.
• Where are the wide receivers? That unit needs to be a team strength, and it has been a liability early. One would expect this to change quickly.
• In no scenario should Gerald Everett be more involved in the passing attack than Cole Kmet.

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

Not Nitpicking Caleb.

Evaluating a rookie quarterback after his first game is much like evaluating a limerick after the first line: nonsensical. (“What do I care if this guy is from NANTUCKET?!?!?!”)

Caleb Williams is going to have bad games. More bad games, I should say. He’s also going to have good games. And by the end of the season, one would hope the player in Green Bay come January bears little resemblance to the player at Soldier Field last weekend.

We must see progress, incremental yet noticeable progress. But I’m not going to be using this space to dissect every quarter, every drive, every snap of his rookie season. At the bye, with a six-game sample size, we’ll chart his progress. Then around Thanksgiving, we’ll chart it again. At the end of the season, he’ll have a body of work to analyze and a list of distinct issues to address this offseason. That’s how it works with rookies, despite the now cottage industry of former backup quarterbacks trying to earn their living analyzing every throw on social media. Rookies, man. They’re up. They’re down. They make special plays. They make dumb plays.

What do we hope for? That there are more ups than downs. That the special outweighs the dumb. That by the end of this campaign the organization is confident this is the guy. It’s not an exciting approach but it’s only prudent way to approach rookies playing this position.

Lumet I: The Group Theater

Relevant Books:

• The Fervent Years by Harold Clurman
• Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940 by Wendy Smith
• Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets
• The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler

Summary:

• From the East Hampton Star, in a piece about the 2015 documentary By Sidney Lumet: “Lumet mentions that he was often criticized for not having a thematic line in his work and for doing many different kinds of movies. “It’s nonsense,” he said. “There is always a bedrock concern: Is it fair?”
• Lumet was the son of Baruch Lumet, a popular actor in the New York City Yiddish Theater, and Sidney was an incredibly successful young actor on Broadway. But it’s his connection with the Group Theater that provides the foundations of his ideological preoccupations as a filmmaker.
• The Group Theater was founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg as a response to what they saw as an exceedingly commercial and unserious theater scene in and around the crash of the stock market in 1929. Their intention was to do work that mattered, and they would reflect on their stages the struggles of those aimlessly wandering on the NYC streets outside. This intentionality, this political purpose, defines the career of Lumet as he consistently grapples with the social peril of the moment, constantly challenging institutional authority.
• The Group gave theatrical life to the work of Clifford Odets, and the early stage plays of William Saroyan. Their company members would forge a cinematic political legacy that included the works of Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront), Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae), and John Garfield’s anti-McCarthy film productions under the Enterprise label (Force of Evil, The Breaking Point). The political legacy of American cinema is born on the stages of The Group.
• The Group’s most famous moment comes in the closing lines of Waiting for Lefty. When the play’s maligned cab drivers stepped to the front of the stage to yell “Strike!” they were greeted with an audience in solidarity. It has been widely reported that each performance of Lefty included an audience joining those pro-worker cheers, so much that those passing by the Longacre worried there was a riot taking place inside.
• Stanislavsky’s “method” acting approach was brought to New York by the founding members of this company after visits to meet the master in Russia; thus, their reach expands to the greatest American actors of the 20th Century: Pacino, DeNiro, Newman, Brando, etc. (We’ll discuss Lumet’s issues with the method in the auteur section later.)
• The Group failed for many reasons, but the essential one was financial. These were the days before the non-profit theater model. Companies either sold tickets or perished. The Group didn’t sell enough tickets, but their legacy remains. (Turns out people wanted, in the years of the Depression, to be distracted by the stage, not reminded of the tears at the fabric of American society.)

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Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?

I.

Always.

Like.

THE.

Chicago.

Bears.

An 18-Week Sidney Lumet Syllabus

This season, I’m trying something different. Instead of using this space to randomly comment on culture, there will be a recurring theme: the work of Sidney Lumet. Lumet is one of America’s most prolific cinematic artists, and yet is dramatically underrepresented by the critical and academic communities. My long-term mission is to remedy that injustice, and I’ll be using this space to work through concepts, notes, etc.

There’s a poetry to this decision, as well. Lumet was born in 1924, making this his centennial. As my book on Lumet is still years from reaching the desk of a publisher, I’m thrilled to celebrate his 100th birthday right here on this little old blog Noah and I started two decades ago.

Below you’ll find the syllabus. Why am I publishing this? Because if you’re interested in taking a “class” on Lumet, this is your opportunity. There are fourteen films listed and each of them is rentable on one platform or another for a few bucks. If you want a thorough appreciation of a great filmmaker, and also to understand what we do in the Cinema Studies world, I welcome you to watch the films each week and follow along. And any questions you might have along the way, simply email me: jeff@dabearsblog.com.

Week 2: Lumet and The Group Theater

Week 3: Early Television Aesthetics and 12 Angry Men

Week 4: Stage Adaptations

Week 5: The Pawnbroker and Post-War Memory

Week 6: Fail Safe and the Cold War

Week 7: The Sean Connery Collaborations, or Lumet Abroad

Week 8: Serpico, Prince of the City, and the Police

Week 9: Dog Day Afternoon

Week 10: Network and Auteur Theory

Week 11: New York City in The Wiz

Week 12: The Verdict

Week 13: Garbo Talks in the Middle of Ronald Reagan

Week 14: Sins of the Father: Daniel, Running on Empty, and Family Business

Week 15: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Post-9/11 New York

Week 16: The Legacy of Lumet’s Seminal Book, Making Movies

Week 17: Final Thoughts and Bibliography

Three Thoughts on the Titans

• Tennessee had arguably the strangest offseason is the NFL. They fired their well-respected coach and looked poised to enter a rebuilding period. They did not. Instead, they were one of the most active teams in free agency, bringing in a collection of expensive veterans and role players. After all of those moves, the Titans still find themselves, according to DraftKings Sportsbook, with the longest odds to win the NFC South at 10-1. (For comparison, the Colts are the third favorite at about 3.5-1.)

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Labor Day weekend.

Accepted end of summer.

But dawn of football.

Ready be hurt,

and squander my emotions,

I choose to believe.

Division eludes,

but the victories do not.

Eleven of them.

Join Robert and I for our Twitter Spaces Season Preview.

Saturday August 31st.

1 PM ET.

We’re taking your questions!

There is a selflessness to being a sports fan.

For a few hours each week, I allow my emotional existence to be impacted by a collection of individuals with whom I have zero personal connection. They don’t know me. They don’t care about me. To paraphrase a great Jerry Seinfeld bit, the only thing linking us is the laundry the fellas wear.

But emotions are only involved when there are expectations, and it’s been five years since I’ve had any expectations when it comes to the Chicago Bears. After sitting in the building and watching Cody Parkey shank away the 2018 season, Noah and I drowned our grief at the Lou Malnati’s bar. There was immense sadness, but that sadness was accompanied by hope. 2018 was a site to build upon, and 2019 would be the erection of a championship tower. I predicted the 2019 Bears to go to the Super Bowl, but Mitch Trubisky had other plans. (Those plans, it would turn out, were that he would play the quarterback position badly.)

Ryan Poles made two moves over this last week, trading for a pair of defensive linemen in Darrell Taylor and Chris Williams. To the outside observer, these would be considered minor moves, depth moves, backend of the roster stuff. But they struck me, symbolically, as the moves of a GM who thinks his roster is close to competing for a title. And I happen to think he’s right. The 2024 Bears have a terrific defense and the best collection of “skill” players in organization history. This is a team that should win double-digit games and be in the tournament come January. And one has to look no further than last year’s NFC playoffs to understand that every team in the tournament has a prime opportunity to play on the final Sunday.

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I took a twenty-year sabbatical from the world of fantasy football, returning in 2022 and stunning the fantasy world with a third place finish that season in the Thomas H. Bowden league. (The league is named after one of our original members who passed on 9/11.)

In 2023, my expectation rose, and my draft haul of Tyreek Hill, Davonte Adams, Deebo Samuel and Michael Pittman suggested those expectations would be met. But this is a keeper league. And I kept Justin Fields. I also took an earlyish-round shot on a tight end I thought was going to have a monster year: Darren Waller. I finished in third place once again, but most of that was luck.

Other than listening to The Fantasy Footballers podcast – a delightful show I make part of my daily NFL season routine – I do zero research before the draft. But I’m still asked to discuss the Bears on fantasy podcasts around the country. This year, the Bears are fantasy relevant, and those requests have tripled. (My acceptance rate has not.) Here are some thoughts I have shared.

D’Andre Swift is being under drafted.

Most platforms have Swift being taken as the RB22-25, behind the likes of Rhamondre Stevenson, Najee Harris and Aaron Jones. But there are three reasons I’m targeting Swift.

(1) The Bears did. This was a player the franchise identified and acquired extremely early in free agency and for good reason. He is going to be a focal point of this offense.

(2) Preseason usage. One screen. 50 yards. No snaps since. If the Bears are planning to platoon Swift and Herbert evenly, they sure aren’t suggesting that with their summer snaps.

(3) Receiving game. Shane Waldron’s two backs in Seattle last year – Walker and Charbonnet – caught 62 balls for 468 yards. And neither of those backs presents the threat in the passing game that Swift does.

Another Back I Love: Isiah Pacheco. It has been a long time since Andy Reid has fielded a proper three-down back and I think Pacheco is destined for that kind of season.

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