Bears at Bills Preseason Game Open Thread
8:56 PM ET. Full disclosure: I am deeply regretting the commitment I made to review these episodes. I don’t even want to watch them. But I do love a Liev Schreiber voiceover. For me, he stands with Peter Coyote as our finest documentary voiceover artists. (Coyote does many of the epic Ken Burns films.)
8:59 PM ET. How many of these Game of Thrones series need to exist? I watched a few episodes of this latest one and it’s just people arguing in old timey conference rooms about tactics. Boring as boring can be.
9:03 PM ET. Blues Brothers music…already. This is going to be a tough watch.
9:05 PM ET. Liev sounds a bit weathered. The depth of his vocal is missing. Not happy about this.
9:06 PM ET. I guess Cole Kmet is not a draw for White Sox fans. What was the attendance that day? 11?
9:06 PM ET. Eberflus: “Winning doesn’t make you a winner.” I disagree, Matt. I believe that’s the only requirement.
9:08 PM ET. They are MILKING the first ten minutes of this episode. They can’t have much.
9:12 PM ET. Caleb couldn’t sing. “You don’t have to be able to carry a tune, to carry a team,” Liev says. This show is written by children.
9:16 PM ET. Very excited about the Harris/Walz ticket. Walz seems a genuinely good dude who’ll connect with the union/rural voter that Dems have lost to the Trump types over the last eight years.
9:17 PM ET. If they knew Saban was going to be there this week (episode) they should have made the entire thing about him. Let him host the episode. He’s a compelling figure.
Devin Hester was the only active player interview I ever enjoyed. He was charismatic, honest, funny, and he was not pleased to see Josh Cribbs stealing some of his limelight while he was sidelines with an injury. Hester was also the most electric athlete of my lifetime. Data wrote a terrific piece, Quantifying Devin Hester, in 2017. Robert even reflected on Hester in his early days as editor here. We’ve written a lot about Hester around here, but attention must continue being paid.
The NFL ridiculously prohibits their YouTube highlights from being embedded on non-affiliated websites, even sites that have been promoting their product for two decades. So, in order to watch the videos below you need to click the links and go over to the YT site. But these are my three favorite Hester performances/moments.
Kick returners have won games in the NFL, but this is the only game I can remember where a kick returner singlehandedly won an NFL game. The Broncos outplayed the Bears on BOTH sides of the ball for four quarters, but Hester’s two returns (a kickoff and a punt) were the difference.
Video: Monday Night Meltdown! (Bears vs. Cardinals 2006, Week 6) (youtube.com)
The wildest night I spent at Josie Woods, and the most inconceivable football game I’ve ever witnessed.
Video: [HD] Devin Hester Opening Kickoff Return | Superbowl XLI | Extended Version (youtube.com)
It is the sporting event I choose to forget, but one can’t deny it had the most thrilling opening moments in Chicago Bears history. With that kick return touchdown, Hester solidified his historical status with the organization. I remember, in a somewhat drunken haze, screaming, “This is our year! This is our year!” It was not.
Fan and media access to NFL training camps is a double-edged sword. On one side, access is fun. Fans seems to genuinely enjoy going to camp practices and reporting what they see on their social feeds. Media members know how voracious the fan hunger is for new NFL content and gets tons of mileage out of their analysis of 7-on-7s and late-practice red zone sessions. And if you have video?!?! Click click click click click click click click click.
But one must always remember that we are in an era, despite this unprecedented access, of intense franchise secrecy. The access is measured, controlled. Teams are not going to show a single supporter or reporter anything that could potentially put them at a competitive disadvantage when they start keeping score in September. And that is what makes the prospect of the Chicago Bears appearing on HBO’s now ubiquitous Hard Knocks series this summer a complicated endeavor.
Hard Knocks Schedule
Hard Knocks is reality television, and not since the days when Herm Edwards and Rex Ryan were involved has it been particularly good reality television (if such a thing exists). Reality television thrives on big personalities and fabricated drama. The ripped, Australian deckhand and the one-arm chef both like the busty second stew! But only one can make out with her in the hot tub! Which one will it be? (For those of you unfamiliar with Below Deck, those sentences will be gibberish.)
Our Uber driver from DFW to the Hotel ZaZa was named Alan, and he punctuated almost every sentence with a drawn out, eloquently drawled, “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhs.”
My uncle and I asked him what kind of weather we should expect in our two days in Dallas, and he was ready with his answer. “Boys, it’s going to be about 97, but don’t worry, it’s going to feel like a hundred seven. But, hey, that’s Dallas.” Then, a beat. “Yeahhhhhhhhhhhs.”
Strange though it may sound, it had been a dream of mine to see Dealey Plaza since I first saw Oliver Stone’s JFK in the fall of 1992 at ten years old. The film had remained a favorite of mine for thirty years but this fall, taking a course called Visual Historiographies, I reconnected with it, now academically. (If you’re interested in my thoughts on the film’s historical relevance, you can read my piece, Ask the Question_The Historiographic Project of JFK.) It turns out my uncle had also found himself down an “Oswald didn’t act alone” rabbit hole, and the trip materialized over some late-night Guinness on Memorial Day weekend.
It did not disappoint.
Before moving on to some broader thoughts, a few striking observations from the scene of the crime.
I’m off to Dallas,
to answer a big question…
wha is the best bar?
The Friday column returns (in earnest) next week.
Some people call them hot dogs.
We call them cheezborger breaks. #NationalHotDogDay pic.twitter.com/44PMjpORm0— Billy Goat Tavern (@Cheezborger) July 17, 2019
D'andre Swift
•Just got paid RB1 money
•Elite pass catching ability
•Positive touchdown regression
•Top 10 in Fantasy points per touch in 3 of last 4 seasons pic.twitter.com/1d3WdhFRmy— Nick Guglielmo (@NextLvl_Fantasy) June 30, 2024
