I don’t know if you believe in signs, cosmic happenings, the will of the Force, or whatever, but I do. And seeing Medina Spirit win the Kentucky Derby has me on high alert about good things happening around myself (and others). So let’s keep the good vibes going, shall we?
• The Athletic (Kevin Fishbain, Adam Jahns), 670 The Score (Chris Emma), Sun-Times (Patrick Finley, Jason Lieser, Mark Potash), and Chicago Tribune (Brad Biggs) present an overarching look at what the Bears did this weekend. For additional context, depth, perspective, detail, or just because you want to read more about a Draft class that makes you feel good, I’d encourage you to read it all.
We spent a bulk of the offseason making a baseball analogy when discussing the Chicago Bears’ pursuit of an upgrade at quarterback. Strike one came in the trade market. Then, strike two whizzed past GM Ryan Pace at the outset of free agency. Things weren’t looking too good facing a two-strike count. But the thing about baseball is that it takes three strikes to punch a batter out. And with that in mind, the Bears entered Draft Weekend prepared to take one more mighty swing.
Connecting on a trade-up to get Justin Fields is a home run from a morale perspective. So while time will tell what the end result of the play will be, simply putting bat on ball and putting int in play gives the Bears a fighter’s chance at making something good happen.
For most of the NFL, tonight is Draft Weekend, Day 1, in which the first round will kick off at 7 p.m. local time, and finish up somewhere around midnight or so. For a handful of teams, the draft begins Friday night in Round 2. For one team, though, the draft begins later into the evening on Friday, in Round 3. That one straggler of a team is none other than your Houston Texans.
Thanks to the Laremy Tunsil trade back in 2019, the Texans are without a first and second round pick in this draft, the second time in four years that has happened. In the 2018 draft, the Texans had traded away their second round pick to dump Brock Osweiler on Cleveland, and traded their first round pick, also to Cleveland, to move up and take Deshaun Watson.
My alma mater, Southern Illinois University, put up a double nickel in what might as well have been a play-in game for the FCS playoffs. The Cubs scored 13 runs on Saturday, which I wasn’t certain was even legal based on how they refused to score in their previous games. And I missed it all because I was helping my pops install a water heater. Day 2 of instillation is at my doorstep. But first, today’s Bears Notes.
UPDATE: SIU is playoff bound. Here’s hoping it ends better for SIU than it did for the last football team I was cheering for in the playoffs…
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