(670 The Score) We know who the Bears' starters are at every position but placekicker. We know who almost all of the backups are as well, and we're left to quibbling about who sticks on the end of the roster when they decide how many are carried at each position.
This feels weird, the whole "being good" thing.
No rookie holdout, no quarterback duel, no close attention to the waiver wire, the active consideration of other teams' castoffs as possibilities to bolster their ranks, not anymore. Now it's almost a certainty to be the other way around: There are players in Bourbonnais who aren't good enough to be Bears but are legitimate NFL contributors.
Better drafting and development and the expenditure of gobs of money have conspired to bring us here, to the blessing and curse of across-the-board quality. They're all out there running around and entertaining the revitalized throngs, and there's almost nothing at stake except for those on the fringes. The exhibition games will give us only a vague picture too, manned by expendable fodder instead of those with value who could be lost due to injury.
Coach Matt Nagy is also relatively transparent, and his straight answers to straight questions mean we spend less time interpreting his words or searching for meaning that's not right in front of us. He and general manager Ryan Pace are believable when they describe their collaborative working relationship, which strips the personnel decisions of the common undertones of which guy might belong to whom. You get the sense that Nagy will have the team he wants, even as Pace is nominally responsible for constructing it.
Sure, there are all the new position coaches and defensive coordinator, but even change of that scope isn't really observable in real time, and there's no story until something of consequence occurs that's clearly related to a new person in a new job. One doesn't trek to Olivet Nazarene to watch somebody assistant coach, is the point.
If the Bears were the subject of HBO's Hard Knocks, the poor producers would be pulling their hair out. No audience wants a five-week show about kickers, particularly when even the winner of the current competition could be unceremoniously supplanted thereafter by an unexpectedly available leg. The jobs are otherwise locked down, there doesn't seem to be any simmering conflict in the office and the preseason will have the marketable stars primarily in street clothes, snacking on the sidelines.
Such is life as a contender, a summer of mostly quiet and content. We're not exactly used to this around here.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
