What is and isn’t real about Bears as they head into their bye? | Take The North, Ep. 387

What is and isn’t real about Bears as they head into their bye? | Take The North, Ep. 387

Hello. What’s going on? Hope everybody is doing well as we welcome you in to the Take the North podcast along with Dan Weider of The Athletic. I am Mark Brody of Chicago Sports Radio 670. The score. Dan, what is going on my friend? It’s the bye-week. It is. It’s baseball playoff time. It’s all colliding in a a really fun fashion here. Uh Bears had a little practice on Tuesday at His Hall. They’ve wiped the Wednesday practice from their schedule. I’m sensing that maybe lifelong Cubs fan Ben Johnson might have tickets to game two at a wild card. Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Do you think maybe he’d be up in the booth during the seventh inning at some point in time? Maybe maybe throw out a first watch it. I don’t know if he’ll watch it or what. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know I will be there on on Wednesday at the Cubs potentially clinching a playoff series. Oh my goodness. And for people who are like, “What? What? The Cubs won as we record this on a Tuesday. The Cubs have already beaten the San Diego Padres’s 3 to one in their best of three playoff series for the right to go to the National League Division series. Seiya Suzuki and Carson Kelly with back-to-back homers. Matthew Boyd a strong four and a third. And the bullpen, wow, the bullpen was the absolute star. They get 14 outs. Palencia, Pomerance, Kitridge, Keller. Oh, Dan, it was good. That’s awesome. You’re going to the game on Wednesday. I’ll be there, too. Don’t forget the defensive mastery of Dansby Swanson early in that game, keeping that that game within a run for the Cubs until they could catch up. And then the situational, this is stuff that football coaches talk about all the time. Situational execution. You get that insurance run there in the eighth with a little sacrifice bunch. You get the runners moved along with a wild pitch and then Nicoer doing Nicoer things, understanding what the situation calls for, putting the ball in the air and getting that all important insurance run. Oh my god. So nice. Yes. And you should Dan, by the way, if you have time, stop out at Gallagher Way tomorrow before the Cubs game. If you guys are getting there early because the Raheem Harris and Grody show on the score 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. will be broadcasting live. And that goes to anybody who is because we know there’s a lot of crossovers listening right here. If you’re a Bears fan, you might be a Cubs fan. That’s very possible. Come on out to Gallagher Way. Stop by, say, “Hey, watch the show if you feel like it.” But I talked to so many cool Cubs by I and Bears fans at at Wrigleyfield on on Tuesday. A lot of Bears fans. A lot of people excited about the Cubs, but then there’s a then there’s a quick Bears, just so we know. Everybody knows we’re on the level still. What’s really important is the Bears. I mean, look, like this is a fun time and we’ve we’ve only had so many years where even one team is relevant, much less both. And so I I you you have to feel good about what the Bears did in the 14 days after the Detroit loss, right? To get themselves back to two and two to be able to to claw their way back into a position where they enter the by-week with with confidence, with momentum, with a chance to reset as we’ve talked about for several weeks with a little bit of wind at their back and with a little bit more uh clarity than tension, right? And so it gives Johnson and his staff a chance to really attack these next six, seven days to put together a plan and then go into Washington week the following week with with a sense that you can you can really start to write your own relevance for this season. And so it’s a big deal what they’ve done with these last two wins, winning these games in very different fashions, obviously with a blowout against the Cowboys and then coming right down to the final play on Sunday in Las Vegas. Getting those things done, Grody, it’s it’s very important in the belief building process. But then you and I also sat here on this very podcast a year ago when the Bears took a threegame winning streak into their by-week with a game against Washington coming out of the buy and you’re like, “Oh, everything feels great.” So, just make sure to to to temper your enthusiasm while I guess kind of filtering out what’s real and what’s not as you go through the process. And that’s what we’re here I I think to help you to do. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. As Dan said, the Bears will be at Washington Monday, October 13th, home against New Orleans. And then you got that those at Baltimore at Cincinnati. So just to give you the next four games out of the gate. And yeah, as we do kind of look at what’s real and what’s not or what’s what’s real good or what’s real bad about the Bears, yeah, they are two and two. I would say just in the general B the first two losses were real bad. You blew you blew a nice lead in the first game. You let a rookie quarterback beat you ultimately and losing to a divisional opponent in the first game 27 to 24. I don’t have to say anything more than 52 to 21 in that Bears second loss of the season. The Dallas game was delightful, a 31 to4 win where Caleb Williams had arguably his best game as a Bear with the 298 yards and four touchdowns. And then that brings me to the the Bears win over Vegas 25 to 24. And I haven’t processed this game any differently than I than I did when the game was first played. Yeah, I’m I’m into all the the the talk about it being a gritty win and you got to win games like this and it’s tough to win on the road and the Bears needed that to get to two and two. Do it however you got to do it. But there was a lot of bad things that went on in that game. And some of it was, as Dan just alluded to, it was real, as in the Bears allowing 240 rushing yards in the game. The Bears offense again having struggling in the first half and not taking advantage of what the defense was doing and it was just giving you the ball over and over in good field position. To me, those are real problems. inconsistent offense and certainly bad defense when it comes to to stopping the run. Grody, when this podcast started, David Hall and I used to do a little segment called Flip the Score and it was essentially uh the day after a game, we would take the result and we would change the result from either a win to a loss or a loss to a win. And then we would have that discussion because, you know, the discussion is very different based on the result, right? And this game was perfect for it because the Bears were onepoint winners and they’re a fingernail away from being two-point losers. Right? If Josh Blackwell doesn’t get around the edge of that field goal block fast enough to get his right hand on the football, we’re here talking much more seriously and much more intently about all the offensive problems that were in that game. You mentioned several of them. Losing football when your defense continually gets you the football in premium field position and you you don’t do anything with it. There was an eight play minus one yard scoring drive for the Bears on Sunday, right? Like you can’t make that up. Eight plays minus one yards. You settle for a field goal after Kevin Ber gives you the ball at the 24. And that was just representative of an entire day. You had seven more offensive penalties, four of them of the pre- snap variety. You had your starting quarterback have his lowest quarterback rating of the season. You had trouble containing Max Crosby. More on this in a bit. You had to change up your offensive line in midame because you weren’t satisfied with the results you were getting. The running game can’t get going. You even dipped into the trick play bag that Ben Johnson brings to every game and you had two trick plays that could have been game changers and they screw up the recreation of the stumble bum and it leads to an incompletion. And then they run a actually what was a pretty nifty fake flea flicker the week after running a real flea flicker for the touchdown. And DeAndre Swift goes to give a stiff arm, gets his right pinky caught in Germaine Pratt’s face mask, and all of a sudden a seven-yard gain turns into, you know, an 18 yard net loss after the penalty, and you’re just sitting there looking at like, wow, this is uh this is a rough day for the Bears offense. And so those are the things, Gertie, I think Ben Johnson will put the microscope on. It just comes with a little bit better um feeling as you as you allow your players to to clean up those mistakes without feeling the weight of of a loss and a one and three start. What’s real bad? What’s real good? I’ll give you a real good so far through the the four games. And I think this is real. That’d be Roma Dunay. 20 catches so far this year, Dan. 296 yards, five TDs, and uh not to underestimate this last stat, the fact that he’s averaging about 15 yards per catch. 14.8 to be exact. Is that something that’s real, Dan? Is that going to keep on rocketing up for Roma? It’s as real as real gets right now. He’s been in the end zone in each of the first four games for the Bears. You can see the chemistry with Caleb Williams really really clicking at this point and it’s super encouraging to see because those two guys are going to be playing together presumably for a very long time. You get the touchdown the other day in at the start of the third quarter after an offensive first half that had everybody a little bit on edge. There was some agitation from the head coach. Nobody’s feeling really good about the results. And then Caleb in the the the face of pressure with a a six-man rush coming, knows what he’s seeing, knows where the football needs to go, and delivering an absolute rocket strike, anticipation throw down the seam to to Roman Dunay for the touchdown that put the Bears ahead. And it was such it’s a moment, right? It’s a moment within a game when things are going poorly. You know, uh they talked about it earlier in the year that like really in that that game against Minnesota, they were waiting for someone to make a play, right? They needed to close the game and it was like, “Oh, who’s going to make the play?” And no one made it. That was a play that was made and it’s it’s one of those jolts that a team needs in that moment to get themselves going again. Caleb Dome a big deal in Rome. The first four games of the year obviously very very encouraging with with where he’s been and with where he’s coming from with the offseason of development that he devoted himself to. Plenty of ups and downs for Caleb Williams and we’ll talk about him, you know, a lot obviously going forward. But I think something that is man in terms of like is it real or not? And I guess this is the biggest one. Is it real that there should be confidence when the ball is in Caleb Williams’s hand in crunch time? Did we see enough last year leading into this year? Obviously engineered an 11 play 69yd drive to win the game with DeAndre Swift scoring the touchdown for two yards and put the Bears up. They blocked the kick. That’s a victory. But it it feels like it’s pretty safe to say that that is trending towards that’s real. That’s Caleb Williams. No, it is real. And and I’m going to run the numbers on this next week because we ran the Justin Fields numbers over his three seasons as a starter in situations where he had the ball in his hands in the last eight minutes with a chance to either lead a game tying or go ahead drive and how many times he failed. I think there were only three successful drives in Justin’s entire run here. Caleb between last year and this year is starting to put together a track record that then marries up with the track record he had in college, which marries up with the track record he had in high school. And so this is a guy who’s done this at every phase of his football life. And that belief that he brings is something he speaks right and and and teammates around him see it. They feel it in the huddle. They feel the command, the composure, the confidence in that moment. And and it just puts you in a situation where no matter how a game has gone again, as we talked about the other night, it maybe two hours and 45 minutes of of ugliness and then you have the ball with a chance to go do something with it and everyone goes, “Okay, we’re good. we just got to lock in for this drive, complete this drive, and finish the job. And Caleb gives that to people. Uh, you know, you and I talked Monday, Grody, on on uh 670, the score about that whole uh radioactive learn to win discussion that was taking place in our city a couple years ago when people couldn’t decide whether uh Justin Fields was a good quarterback or or or whether he was just, you know, struggling because he wasn’t surrounded with enough around him. The nexus of that entire argument is, do you have a QB1 on your roster and in your huddle that can go seize games when there are games to be seized? Caleb has that ability. It’s one of his superpowers. His arm talent, one of his superpowers. This game on the line clutch gene that he has is the secret sauce in the NFL. You know how many of these games come down to the final couple minutes in a close game. when you have a quarterback that can not only instill belief in the huddle, but then back it up with results, it just becomes a a a wave that just keeps building, you know, and so I think that was a huge huge moment again on Sunday on the road uh for them to get that done. And and Caleb talked about it again on Tuesday at House Hall in the bye-week that just he just he feels his heart rate slow down in those moments. And damn, that’s a cool thing to have happen because I know for me in my athletic career, those moments made my made my heart race and and my mind go crazy and I could never calm it. So to have a guy in your quarterback position do that is huge. Dan, every locker room and clubhouse, especially in baseball, which I I covered intimately for a while too, they all have mental skills coaches these days for that very thing to to take everybody’s out here breathing these days, Dan, taking deep breaths. You see it all the time. And so when you have somebody like that, if that is true, and I assume it is, that Caleb Williams’s heart rate slows down, it’s it’s relatively rare, man, it is very rare for any athlete to have that ability to to truly slow. Everybody says everything moves fast and then it slows down, but to have it really slow down and to be have presence of mind is rare. Just the word you said there, presence, right? Like it’s presence of mind. It’s just general presence. that’s being locked in on that very very specific moment within that very very specific drive within that very specific situation to go get it. I’m going to give Caleb credit Sunday also for another thing that we talked about a lot during the offseason and we were interested to see how the maturation process would go. But this coaching staff talked to him very directly about body language and and in the heat of games that are a little bit you know chaotic and crazy like that one in Vegas was on Sunday. Can you kind of um emanate a sense of calm for everybody around? And we didn’t get any shots on the bench of Caleb kind of feeling agitated or feeling nervy or or looking exhausted or or you know and he talked about it after the game in the post game that it’s been a conscious effort to make sure that that he does those things. And so when we’re using this season as sort of a you know inroads to assessing the the maturation of Caleb Williams, we’re going to check those things every once in a while. What what does it look like now? has it been consistent? That’s a big deal, I think, for a young quarterback to have have heard that coaching point, to have addressed it very intentionally and then to to to display it in a game that that ends up being a game that’s very very important to the Bears psyche going forward. Yeah. Body language on the sideline, body language on the field when something doesn’t go right like the the 29 yard completion to to Cole KT and then later on that drive, Cole Kit drops a ball that that was placed perfectly. Even the drop by DeAndre Swift would may have had a little bit too much heat on it. I still think Swift should have caught that ball. I’m talking about the very first drive of the game, the third three where he zips it into him and you’re not seeing Caleb, you know, throw his arms up or slow. Got to get back in that huddle. Even if it’s not him making the mistake, got to get back in that huddle, which he’s gotten better at, too. Getting up to the line, making sure you have time on the play clock two to the play. We got you. We got you. The play The play clock is play. It’s okay. It’s a podcast. We got a play. Let’s go with it. Let’s just go with it. That’s my Bob and Meer of the day. Errors are Bob and Meyers. Sometimes you just got to extend the play when you have a mistake and you just keep get you get yourself out of it. Keep it going. I will say this, Dad. The the other the other uh real bad thing is the running game for the Bears. We talked about stopping the run game, but we’ll get to the offensive line here in a second just in general. But DeAndre Swift so far, your number one running back, 56 carries, 187 yards, 3.3 yards per carry. Ben Johnson before the Vegas game said that he thinks they’re close to getting this running game right. It doesn’t look close to me right now. It’s combination of a lot of things. It’s it’s it’s things that are happening up front. It’s a a combination of what they’re actually trying to become as a running game with all these different sort of uh looks and concepts and variations married together. I think that’s why this by-week reset is important because it’ll allow them to look at that. And DeAndre hasn’t put up the numbers that you’d expect on Sunday in Las Vegas. And I was happy to hear Ben echo this thought on Monday during his post uh day after win review of the game that that that that Swift wasn’t the major problem of the running game difficulties on Sunday. And you go back through some of the video and that there was a stat floating around Twitter uh maybe two weeks ago about the yards after contact from DeAndre Swift. And my counterpoint was kind of like there’s a big difference between yards after contact when you’ve gained four yards and you got a full head of steam and yards after contact when you take the hand off and there’s a guy holding on to your ankle which happened several times on Sunday. The last snap that Braxton Jones played. I don’t know where the communication breakdown was, but the right defensive end Malcolm Coun just came in untouched into the back field where DeAndre Swift took the football and it’s third and 19. you’re you’re really just trying to get a little bit of yardage back and instead it’s a two- yard loss because nobody blocks the right defensive end. And if you’re DeAndre Swift, you’re sitting there looking at like, well, wait a second, like I didn’t have a chance on that play, you know? And so there were a number of those things that happened. DeAndre’s got to find his uh kind of rhythm in this specific game uh running game and and with the tracks that they’re they’re setting him on. Um, but I think Ben is uh very very aggravated at the all-encompassing malfunctioning of the running game right now and is really going to use this by week to to try to get that figured out as best they can. Yeah. And so let’s let’s head into the offensive line based on that. And crazy things happened. It that was really kind of monumental what we saw in the Vegas game with Darnell Wright being out and the assumption is that he will get healthy and he will return to right tackle. But just for now, for our purposes, you then had uh Theo Benedict or Azie Trapillo playing the majority of the game at right tackle and Theo Benedet who started at right tackle moved over to left tackle. We’ve had a few days to kind of digest what happened. Dan, what are you feeling right now about the Bears offensive line? It’s not only digesting what happened, it’s trying to figure out what this looks like when they get back on the field for a game in two weeks. And so it’s really, really difficult to know what you’re going to do. Theo Benedict, my understanding, has played almost exclusively on the right side at the University of British Columbia, right? He’s just made his first NFL start the other day. And so, you would be asking a guy that, you know, obviously he’s got some swing tackle ability, but to take on a role that’s not necessarily his wheelhouse. Ozie Chillo, you know, they tried it at the left side and it didn’t work and they moved to the right. Does he stay in starting for at least a week when they come back to give Darnell Wright more time to kind of get better with the elbow injury he suffered against the Cowboys? There’s a lot of things flying around here and you’re talking about starting week one with Braxton Jones and Darnell right and now as we sit here today on September 30th you’re like okay do they go to Washington with Theo Benon on the left and and Azie Chapillo on the right I think Ben even on Monday was like it’s too early for me to to make any proclamations I want to look at the last four games see what I see be honest with myself on what’s there and then try to figure this out but Grody this is a a story as old as the Bears it’s it’s offensive line reshuffleling in the middle of the season and trying to figure out what makes the most sense for your team overall. Yeah. No, it is wild. Like we still don’t know like is is that it for Braxton Jones? Like they they’ve just decided because they I mean Ben Johnson has been completely honest in his tone about Braxton Jones. He has yet to including when he announced him as a starter to really blow about this guy or really say anything overly over the top, which is fine. I’m not criticizing him. I I prefer the honesty. It’s just telling, right? It’s very telling that this coaching staff came in with a plan and their plan was not they were not desirous of having Braxton Jones be their starting left tackle. Well, and and listen, like Dan Rashard, the offensive line coach, is one of the truthtelling coaches in that building. And when you talk to him every second week when we get a chance to visit with those guys at Hell Hall, he was very clear that in the the first couple games of the season that you watched uh Braxton Jones play and the first half video is very different than the second half video. They see some fatigue creeping in. they see some sloppiness creeping in and you can’t figure out how to how to get first half Braxton Jones to the second half, you know, and so that’s part of the issue that they’ve been fighting in the month of September. Now they’ve got to try to reset a vision overall. Ben was very clear as you said when they open the season and he named Braxton Jones a starting left tackle. It was basically with huge, it wasn’t even like fine print. was like boldlettered 36 point that said I reserve the right to change my mind, you know, like so so here we are at that stage where he may have the opportunity to do that and it’ll be fascinating to see uh when they get back to practice next week how they line up. Yeah. And I think look I I feel safe in saying that Braxton Jones is probably the better product still for right now, but I think they look at the future as not being Braxton Jones and the future might be Theo Benedict. future certainly has to be at some point in time Azie Trapillo if you do draft a guy in the second round. So, it was it was nice to see Azie out there just because I thought it was going to be a real struggle to get that guy on the field and it’ll be fascinating fascinating to see what the Bears do when they play against Washington. Ben was asked a little bit about the offensive line on Monday in his, you know, day after win press conference and and we’ve got a little bit of sound in that that’ll kind of tie a bow on everything we’ve been talking about. Here’s Ben Johnson from Monday as he kind of walked in to his bye-week trying to figure out this offensive line. I think we need to look at all four games so far as a whole and uh we’ll get a good feel here over the next few days where we’re at schematically. What are we doing well? What aren’t we doing well? Um you know and and I think we’ll we’ll we’ll really have a good grasp of what we need to do going forward. So um I it’s too early for me to tell you that Jason, be honest with you. I I feel like we got to go through this process and and just figure out what’s best for us and our team um going forward here. I I do uh I’ve got a lot of faith in the guys in that room. We got we got some talented individuals and and I really believe in the coaching staff in that room as well that uh that we’re only scratching the surface of what we’re capable of. So there you have it, Gertie. a little bit of a thumbnail uh from the head coach on where he sees the offensive line right now and and and how urgent it’s going to be for them coming into the month of October to get that figured out. He kept it nice and ambiguous and a big will see. So that will definitely create some drama leading up to the the Washington game. Another interesting thing to watch, like you and I have a chance to literally watch and see the relationship between Caleb Williams and Ben Johnson evolve, whether it is watching Ben Johnson yell at Caleb Williams in practice and training camp and the practice that we get to see and, you know, sit in the starters and talking about the real talk conversations that they h have had from the beginning. And look, we’ve heard this before. Um, you know, when Matt Naggie came in, the most important relationship in the world is my relationship with Mitch Trabiscy. And know we we’d hear about that and we would ask about that. Then the same thing obviously with Matt Eberloose and Justin Fields and whomever else was coaching him, Luke Getsy. It’s really important to have that dialogue and all that kind of stuff. So, we’ve heard this stuff before, but this Dan, I don’t know how you feel, but there is something about it that feels a little bit more organic, as in it seems like there’s a decent amount of tough love that goes into this relationship as opposed to his predecessors where it was all just it felt like pretty easygoing love, I suppos. And they’re trying to build a relationship that’s deep and that’s I think going to be really interesting. We talked about it from the day we reported to training camp that that kind of watching the synergy of B and Caleb was going to be really important to to where this team could go. We’re going to play a sound bite here in a moment that’s from Friday. It’s from two days before the Raiders game where Ben Johnson discussed his kind of evolving relationship with Williams. But Brody, I think to set it up, you realize that so much of coaching is button pushing, right? It’s knowing when to get on a guy’s ass. It’s knowing when to to, you know, give him a arm around the shoulder and say, “You got this. You’re good.” and knowing when, like they did on Sunday with the game on the line, say, “Hey, you were made for this. Go do it.” You know, and then Caleb responds with a game-winning drive. And so this relationship between Ben and Caleb that includes conflict, you know, just inevitably and naturally, includes some of that getting to know you process of figuring out how we want to run our offense. It just includes a lot of dynamics that the two of these guys are still getting used to. And when Ben was asked on Friday just kind of about his overview of of navigating that and surfing that, this was an extended answer that I think our audience will enjoy and that you and I can talk about on the back end. I think that’s uh I think that’s coaching in general. Um we’re not we’re not called to be here to to be friends or be cheerleaders. We’re here to uh push, to challenge, to support. Um, you know, there’s a number of things that the best coaches in my lives have have really imprinted on me and and I picked up uh whether I was a player or as a fellow coach has taken it from from other guys. And so, um, I I really think that’s important. And it’s not what the player wants to hear all the time. Sometimes it’s it’s what he needs to hear for for us as a team to succeed, but also for him as an individual to get a little bit better. And you can’t shy away from that, I think, at at this level. um the best coaches I’ve been around and I think it’s it’s an art. They’re the demanding ones that there’s a way to there’s a vision for how a play needs to go or there’s a vision for how a fundamental needs to be executed and uh you really you don’t waver from that belief and and you make sure we’re getting it right. And so, um, you know, I I try the best I can to emulate some of those good ones I’ve been around in my past. And, uh, and I think that’s probably where I’ve seen some downfalls of of certain coaches is they have been afraid of conflict. And, um, telling a player how he sees it. Um, I learned over the last few years that, you know, when when there’s silence, there’s usually negativity fills that void and, uh, breathes some resentment. either way in in a relationship. And so, um, if you feel a certain type of way, it doesn’t matter if you’re the player, you’re the coach, you need to bring that out and and make sure we’re all on the same page. We all have the same goal at the end of the day. And, uh, you know, I’ve seen some relationships go sideways because just the communication aspect wasn’t wasn’t right. And, um, Caleb and I have a great relationship right now. I I can’t ask for anything better. I think he’s he’s wired the right way. Um, I think he’s getting better every single day he comes into the building. He’s putting in the prep time that’s necessary for us as an offense to put points up on the board and uh I think we’re going to continue to see him head the right direction. That I love that, Dan. That was that was great. Um, I I love the fact some of the things that he said. I mean, I I do think Caleb Williams, believe whatever you want to believe from what happened last year. I think it’s pretty clear he needed some tough coaching. And he said, I understood the spirit in which Ben Johnson said it, that he’s wired the right way. Actually, I think Caleb needed to be rewired into some he’s wired the right way in terms of being a ballsy quarterback who goes out there and gets it and understands all that stuff. But I do think that Ben Johnson had to lay down the law and say for once in your life and this is not Caleb Williams’ fault. Look, you’re not not everybody’s gonna kiss your ass every 10 seconds that you’re out here and we’re going to rewire you a little bit, but we want you to continue to be the right guy. And I always said it, Dan, like last year I questioned a little bit like does does because we always hit Caleb over the head with that question of do do you want hard coaching? Oh yeah, I want tough coaching. Did be careful what you wish for. Did you really want hard coaching? And I think maybe it was difficult for him at first and now he’s starting to get it. And intent is is is at the center of all this, right? Like as a player in that relationship, you have to understand the coach’s intent. And if there’s intent is to make you one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL with a drive to go win championships, you can respond to that, you know, and it has to be communicated in a way where you feel that intent very clearly. I’ve had some discussions with with Kevin Bard about Tyreek Stevenson’s growth. We’ll get into more of that next week when we get into Tyreek Stevenson week leading into the commanders game. But one of the things that he said is Tyreek needs to know first that you genuinely care about him. And if you do, he can take every bit of criticism you throw at him. If he senses that you don’t, he gets a little bit defensive. And so this it’s relationship building 101, right? And so there’s this whole process going on between Ben and Caleb that’s fascinating. You hear so many things within that sound bite we just played from from Ben talking about we’re not here to be your friend or your cheerleader. We’re here to push, to challenge, to support. Right? you kind of pump your fist. If you’re sitting in the front row of a meeting, you’re like, “Damn right, right.” Like, “Let’s go. Let’s go push, challenge, and support each other in a way that brings out results.” I also like that he described the um process of being demanding on the NFL level as an art because I think he’s right about that. And I think that’s why you see some head coaches fail and some succeed because that art is difficult to perform sometimes. And Ben seems to have a knack for it. It’s one of the things that the Bears highlighted when they hired him, that emotional intelligence of knowing kind of when to push and when to pull back and and kind of how to how to navigate that. Um, look, like it’s genuinely encouraging that they went through the month of September that they did with four very different football games that ended with four results that happened in very different fashion. and they emerge at the by-week feeling very good about their relationship together because I think this is a a point in the season that they can get some extra work done with the extra time and having a strong relationship to sort of advance that is going to be paramount to where the Bears go the rest of the year 100% and it would I would say for that on the right track is the relationship with Caleb and Ben and the play calling and what Caleb is doing need to see much much more between both of them but right now everything seems to be in a pretty good place. A couple other notes before we get out of here. It would it would appear that things are trending in the right direction for TJ Edwards and Kyler Gordon to potentially return at Washington and that Monday night or when the Bears next get together. I don’t have a feeling yet, Dan, about Darnell Wright or Grady Jared. I saw that Jonah Jackson popped up with some sort of injury as well. So, that’s stuff that we’ll get a better beat on. But man, it’ll be nice to see hopefully to see especially, you know, both those guys, Edwards and Kyler Gordon. I don’t know which one is more important, but they’re both huge. Hey, Spidey, you’re back, huh? All right, good to see you, Spidey. Uh, so yeah, Kyler Gordon should be trending in the right direction. I think Coulson Lovelin is on that list of guys that are are making their way back quickly, which would be nice. You know, uh, how much the defense could use its playmakers. Being without Kyler and TJ and Jaylen for the first month of the season, I think they’ve had to kind of rework things on the fly, uh, getting those guys back. We’ll give Dennis Allen a little bit more to work with. Yep. Yep. Get into that turnover party. Bears forced another four of those. Your guy Kevin Bard having like had an allp pro game like laying wood showing speed. Missed a tackle. Missed the tackle, but everybody missed tackles on Ashton Genty. Dan, anything else before we get out of here? I mean, the bell’s about to ring for everybody with the bye-week. The Bears have had their final practice before the buy. So, yeah, I got I got two last things for you. I want to give us a homework assignment. We’ll come back with this sometime in the next week because it’s the buy. You know, annually we give out the Jeff Dickerson good guy award to the uh the the person inside house hall that is uh most helpful and and uh gracious I guess in helping the media do their job. We’re going to put together the north. It can be a coach also. So that’s why because there might be a surprise addition to uh before we play another game, I would like take the north to to deliver it Jeff Dickerson good guy award watch list for the early October. Oh, I love that. Next couple weeks and we’ll talk through some of that just to have fun and highlight some of the guys that have been really really good inside that locker room for the last four or five months. Uh I will also tell you this little bit of a surprise on uh Dan Wever’s return flight from Las Vegas. It was a one-stop through Sky Harbor International in Phoenix. Oh yeah. I get back there a really early wakeup call. I get on a plane. We fly to Phoenix. I have a nice little breakfast at L Grand in the terminal there. I get on my plane. And I get back to 22A and who do I see come stampeding down the row but newly married take the north producer Adam Stzinski on his way back from Maui or no the big island I’m sorry in Hawaii. There he is. Studs. Hey, what’s up? Yeah, that was uh you know I’m sorry I didn’t see you when I first got on the plane. Uh you know a little frazzled getting that carry-on baggage stowed up above. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah. got to be got to be the the polite husband and and lift the uh wife’s bag up for her and uh make sure she gets seated and the whole cuz we weren’t on the same row on that flight which was whatever I guess. Uh yeah, that was so so and then I I mean I like immediately passed out when I said because I don’t know if you guys know ever been to Hawaii it when you fly back you leave at like 10 at night. So we left at 10 at night Hawaii time. We got into Arizona at I don’t know 7 o’clock Arizona time and then you know it was a three-hour layover before that flight to Chicago. And so I mean I slept the whole flight from Hawaii to Arizona and then I slept most of the layover and then I’m just like I just got to get on this plane so I can fall asleep again. And then so I basically im I sat down, put my phone in in flight mode and then passed out. And then I wake up, turn my phone back on to, you know, regular mode and I immediately see a text from Dan Weiderer like, “Hi, Adam 222A.” And I like I’m like coming out of my like fog. I’m like, “What is I’m like, “What is he talking about?” And I’m like, “Is he on the plane?” Like and I look it was like three rows back. Like it was really close. He was actually in the row right behind my wife. So I could have kicked his wife’s chair repeatedly if I wanted. Oh, that’s hilarious. I didn’t realize the some of the the details of that story. I figured he just saw each other. Must have been like symbolic. Well, it’s back to work. I got weed. I’m on my laptop in 22A typing some things up and I just heard the voice of Adam coming down the road and I’m like Studs is on the damn plane and you can’t like four rows behind yell. Hey, Adam. Adam. So, I’m just like I’ll just hit him up with a text and we’ll we’ll figure this all out when we land in Chicago. Well, that was funny. What are they coming coming from two different parts of the world? Right. And you end up in the same flight. Yeah, that that is amazing. Was it good though, studs? Are you all you’re married up now? You’re all honeymooned up. Um you’re back. Are are are you good? You’re going to be good for a while. You’re good. No major events coming up anytime soon. I uh you know, I hope not. Uh okay. So, we know what comes next. Yeah. Jeez. Uh yeah, I think there go was a really good trip. It was really uh really relaxing. Uh, I do want to say just one one quick story from the trip. So, as Dan mentioned, we’re on the big island and there’s this we’re on the west side of the island is stay in this town called Kona and about like 15 miles north there’s this state park that one of our Uber drivers told us about. And fun like oddly fun fact here, the best recommendations we got about where to go were from Uber drivers. They were all super nice and like so uh anyway, so I was like, “Oh, that state park sounds kind of cool.” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah.” And they it’s good snorkeling there, too. And I was like, “Well, we’re going snorkeling tomorrow, so perfect.” So, we go up there and I punch this thing in on the GPS and it says 30 minutes. I’m like, “It’s 15 minutes away.” And it’s one big road and then another road. And I’m like, “It can’t possibly take 30 minutes.” And so we get up 15 miles up to our road where we got to turn on to go to this state park which is a beach. And about a hundred yards into the that the road that we turned on, I I immediately figured out why it takes 30 minutes to get here because it’s not really a road. The road there’s no more pave. There’s no more pavement. And so it’s all this road has not been taken care of clearly for years. And it’s just botched. The whole road was a pothole really. It was just one one giant pothole. And so I had to maneuver. We’re staying with my uh who was my best the my friend who was my best man. His mom lives in Hawaii now. So we’re staying at her place. We’re using their car and their car is like a 2021 Chevy minivan. And I’m like, I don’t know if I can get this thing down this road without busting up the bumpers. And I managed to get it down. Uh, which was actually like my wife was very impressed because I I mean you have to just maneuver to like the best quote unquote best parts of the road and try not to be bottoming out constantly. So it was a trip, man. And so it was I mean I grew up you guys know I grew up in the middle of nowhere basically and this is the worst road I’ve ever driven on. This is Oh, that’s amazing. Yeah. So yeah, Adam and I grew up south of Springfield. So just just to North of Springfield. Oh, north of Springfield. Oh, my bad. My bad. just when I thought I’d do central Illinois. That’s fine. Those those southsiders down there, you know, we don’t No. So, yeah, it was a great trip though. And that’s that was probably my that and the volcano were our two adventures, I would say. Wow. Impressive stuff. Impressive. You didn’t get all lava up. You didn’t get lavaed or anything like that by the volcano. No, we we missed the volcano erupting by two days, I think. Oh, okay. So, and even when it erupts, it’s like it’s not like it’s like it’s you can actually still go up there and watch it when it’s erupting. You’re like the watch point is far enough back that and it’s high enough up that you’re fine. Okay. Um it’s not like Mount St. Helens when it erupts. Like it’s just like starts spewing lava basically. So, but it was really cool. I mean, if you ever go to the Big Island in Hawaii, the the going to the volcano, which is actually a national park, is really cool. So, awesome. Well, we’re glad to have you back, man. We’re glad that you are back and refreshing. And this guy is running Cubs games, man. Adam Stazinski, he’s getting his games on the air. He’s making it all sound good. So, we’re all doing our Weer will be at the Cubs game. I’ll be out at Gallagher Way Wednesday and Thursday if necessary doing the Raheem Harris and Grody show. So, come out and say, “Hey, uh Dan, anything else? Is that it? Are we good?” Giving you guys both a footnote. The Bears are back in Las Vegas in 2027. Take the North Road trip. Start planting the seeds now with the people that matter. Take the North Road trip 2027 back in Las Vegas. It’s time. It is time to take this show on the road for Dan Weider of the Athletic for the freshly returned Adam Sinski, executive producer of the Take the North podcast and running those Cubs playoff games. I am Mark Roodie saying thank you so much for listening to and watching the Take the North podcast. Great talk. See you out there.

The Bears are heading into their bye week at 2-2, and it gives Dan Wiederer and Mark Grote a chance to have an honest assessment of the team. What do we think we know is real about this team, good or bad? How has the relationship between head coach Ben Johnson and quarterback Caleb Williams been developing? And what the hell is going on with the left tackle spot? The guys discuss it all and share a random travel encounter that Wiederer had while returning from Las Vegas.

#CalebWilliams #BenJohnson #Bears #NFL

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