This isn’t an analysis. I won’t give you the spiel about the offensive line or the coaching or the McCaskeys. I’m not here to reason with the Bears’ heaping dumpster fire of a season. I don’t care to provide solutions or ideas anymore. It is a waste of rationality on an organization that is supremely incompetent. This is a resignation. The severance package for my departure will be a bank of sore memories.

Like millions, I have tied my well-being and pride to a sports team that is entirely beyond my control. If you’re like me, you’re familiar with that routine Sunday afternoon gut punch of incredible despair, usually subsisting all the way until lunch time the next day. These mighty mood swings of vicarious living may be somewhat pathetic, but they’re real. Studies have shown that a fan’s testosterone levels surge when their team wins- sometimes as much as the players on the field. Of course, the inverse applies as well, and that that part is you, all lethargic and sappy after each Bears embarrassment. Your manhood is zapped.

If you’re like me, you justify this all as a part of a camaraderie, like you’re some kind of winter soldier. It is true that every team must endure hills and valleys, and so, a hill must be inevitable, right? Many are young and naive like me, but even old, haggard men, who could count their age on their fingers the last time the Bears won the Super Bowl, won’t give up dreaming.

I’m going to tell you something right now: you are wasting your time. No matter what mirage of hope may keep you chugging along, no matter what illusion of parity the league may offer, some organizations are so utterly helpless and incompetent, from top to bottom, that they will squander each and every opportunity in spectacular fashion. The Bears, locking arms with the Jets and the Browns, are one of them. We are currently in the midst of just one horrific episode in a long withstanding series of Bears failure. What more will it take? There will be no gratification for your pride and perceived perseverance. 

I started writing this in the aftermath of the humiliating, offensive coordinator-terminating Week 10 loss to the Patriots. The following Sunday, I felt a twinge of frustration as the Bears trudged up the field in the fourth quarter, seemingly in spite of themselves, closing out their first win against the Packers in five years. What a revitalization that would be. I was going to have to either reframe this piece or can it entirely. 

The offense jimmied their way up to the 36-yard-line, iced the clock with three seconds remaining, and positioned Cairos Santos for a practically guaranteed field goal to take the lead. The ball snapped, our offensive line toppled, a Karl Brooks in yellow and green launched up, swatted the ball, and just like that the Packers sealed their 15th straight win over the Bears.

I laughed, because, for once, I had taken myself out of it. I think you’d have to be some kind of masochist to invest yourself in this clown show. I’m done dedicating three hours a week to being a loser.