(670 The Score) So many things are over, thankfully: a miserable 10-game losing streak, the endless string of failures against the Packers and best of all the 2024 Chicago Bears season.
We made it, folks. And so did Caleb Williams, with all of us a little worse for wear.
Virginia Halas McCaskey got her sweetest possible birthday gift Sunday on the day she turned 102, a last-second 51-yard Cairo Santos field goal that gave her Bears a 24-22 victory against the Packers at Lambeau Field. This was the plan for taking the NFC North and never giving it back, and it proves everything is on the right track.
She can now tell George to tell Kevin Warren to tell Ryan Poles to keep everybody and stay the course, now that the vision has been realized. This interim staff deserves to be solidified, rewarded for steering the Bears out of the valley of the shadow of death and back on a path to sustained competitiveness. It just took a little time to get figured out and has now earned full investment.
I'm kidding. They're all fired.
Well perhaps not Poles, who received a backhanded vote of confidence from Warren at the same time he was emasculating him in front of the cameras in early December, declaring the general manager the "point man" for this coaching search without defining what that means.
If it in any way precludes the Bears from hiring a candidate who wants more of a say in personnel decisions, then they’re doing it wrong.
That's always a reasonable presumption when it comes to the Bears, of course, and no less so now despite the celebrated addition of Warren, who was hired to help insulate the football operation from McCaskey weirdness but has been increasingly exposed as a convenient escapee from the Big Ten before they could read the fine print on the television rights deals he pushed through. Even if Warren got George McCaskey to buy his gilded sales pitch, he now has deliver on his lofty rhetoric about the desirability of this job opening.
So start with the rumors and the names, the reports of reports of reports of shadow staffs being assembled and social media flight tracking of private jets. As Black Monday arrives, the NFL's shadowy cabal of superagents and consultants now welcomes their own lucrative regular season of massive commissions and fees to guide all the feckless, gullible billionaires to candidates of their choosing, conflicts of interest be damned.
Sure, we'll hear about their collaborative process of consensus-building as we always do, even as we'll struggle to determine which job title is actually responsible for what decision and how anyone will eventually be held accountable.
The Bears embarrassed themselves this season, regardless of a final game result that was the equivalent of holing out a wedge from 62 yards away for a nine on a par-four.
They claimed it was time to win, and they just kept losing. Their precious hiring processes resulted in an incompetent offensive coordinator and the unjustifiable retention of an overmatched head coach, both of whom had to be jettisoned. They wasted a season of the most important draft pick in their history.
The Bears are hitting the reset button yet again, unsure right now of what the design looks like on either side of the ball and still trying to determine who exactly will do what to get them wherever.
Somewhere other than this would be nice.
Williams remains a beacon of hope despite his developmental struggles amid such chaos and duress. He started every game, posted one of the best seasons at the position in this franchise's meager history and handled a quarterback's forward-facing responsibilities with calm, professionalism and authenticity.
I really wish I could reassure him that this will get better.
Dan Bernstein is the co-host of the Bernstein & Harris Show on middays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on 670 The Score. You can follow him on X @Dan_Bernstein.