When the roster is stacked and roles are defined and pretty much everyone is pretty much good, it's human nature to focus on unknowns such as remaining positional battles or roster spots deeper down the depth chart, at least until the inevitable injuries add their usual amount of randomness.
And if the initial press availability with Bears general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy on Sunday was any indication, we're in for weeks of what might be one of the dumbest and most useless obsessions in recent memory, the ongoing placekicker saga that still can't be satirized out of existence no matter how we try.
The first nine questions and 11 of the first 14 posed to the Bears' leadership tandem were about the battle to replace the exiled Cody Parkey, with Eddy Pineiro and Elliott Fry the current two contestants.
Eleven.
Eleven questions about a position that has nothing to do with anything other than whether the ball went through the uprights or not. Not a thing that happens in a practice or in a practice game is going to be predictive of success or failure, and it's quite possible the actual kicker arrives right before the opening game after final cuts are made around the league.
This is insane. We have to not do this.
But seeing that we seem to be, let's try this challenge: The following are the actual questions posed by the beat reporters Sunday afternoon, with five sprinkled in that I made up. Identify the fake ones. (Answers are at the bottom.)
1. Which kicker is the leader entering training camp?
2. Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that you'd consider bringing Cody Parkey back, if he's available and you think he's objectively better than anything you have?
3. We haven’t talked to you since Jamie Kohl was added as the kicking consultant. What do you like about his part in the process and what can he add in the final decision?
4. Could you have afforded a two-year, $10.5-million guaranteed deal? (Robbie Gould’s contract with the 49ers)
5. Will you make it absolutely mandatory that your kicker practice regularly at Soldier Field?
6. You had opportunities to go get a veteran kicker if you wanted. What was your view of spending draft capital or money for a more established kicker? And how limited were you financially given what you owe Parkey?
7. Have you thought how this might unfold in a preseason game? Are we going to see situations in which you might kick on third down or something so you can be sure to get a field-goal attempt in?
8. Will the new kicking coach be allowed the autonomy to re-think the entire process of teaching the skill, how to do the actual kicking at practice and/or in games and if so how radically? Is there a better way to do it than the Bears have been?
9. Are you scouring the waiver wire for a particular guy you’re looking for at kicker?
10. Do you have a sense of how Jamie (Kohl has helped these guys since his arrival?
11. Would it be on the table to potentially trade a future draft pick or a player to acquire your future kicker?
12. Don't many metrics suggest that coaches are better off going for it more on fourth down? Might it just be better to never kick field goals and always keep alive the chance at the touchdown?
13. How do you keep tabs on kickers elsewhere in the league in this next stretch and what are the specifics that go into that?
14. How would you handicap the kicker competition as you guys exit spring and gathered information until now?
15. As you came out of spring, what did you like about Eddy? What did you like about Elliott?
16. Has there been consideration of bringing in a sports psychologist just for the kicker, some kind of specialist to make sure nothing more gets into anybody's head?
Fake questions: 2,5,8,12,16