Vibes and Juice, The Bears Are Pointless, and Arsenal's Pop Gun Attack

I'm still on tilt from Sunday afternoon, so this one could get a little blue.

Sector 1901 - Vibes and Juice

For anyone new--though I guess I've only been doing this for three days, so everyone's new--this is the section where we'll discuss the Westside Hockey Club.

Wanted to start the week by discussing an idea suggested by The Athletic's Mark Lazerus. For a quick sum-up, Lazarus doesn't say the Hawks need to make the playoffs or anything ridiculous to hold onto the fanbase, but they do need to be competitive or the team might just become irrelevant within the Chicago landscape.

It's an interesting thought, and it's probably why Kyle Davidson and the rest of the front office have spent so much time and energy preparing the ground so that every single fan knows that this rebuild is going to take a dog's age. That effort is partly to keep fans interested, as well as possibly moving the goal posts consistently on what success looks like and if it might arrive before the next named comet. It's something of a "Krusty Is Coming!" exercise for all involved.

And what does irrelevancy look like? The days of being able to fire off a cannon through the 300 Level during a game and not hit a soul are gone forever. The Hawks would find it impossible to get back to that. Remember what it took to get to that level, and if you can't remember what it was, all you need to do is look to the Southside. It takes a universally loathed owner who is known to be the handbrake on everything that goes on, who is also known to actively despise his own fanbase and everything they like.

We can probably safely say that Danny Wirtz, even though we don't know a lot of what he is, is not that. He certainly makes enough of an effort to look like he's tuned into the fanbase and always listening that--worst case scenario--he probably has picked up some stuff simply through osmosis.

So the Dollar Bill days are, thankfully, buried forever. Secondly, we know from even last year that there is a core of the fandom that will never leave, and this core will guarantee that the Hawks draw at least, what? 12,000 per game? 14,000? Maybe more? It's somewhere in that ballpark.

There are just too many kids who grew up with three Cups. They're entrenched, and so is the generation that somehow made it through the Dollar Bill desert alive and felt the reward for doing so. Those are two bonds that are as close to unbreakable as possible.

And whatever you or I think about the transparency the Hawks flog like Cheech Marin in front of The Titty Twister, it does create an understanding amongst the fanbase. And it's not a fanbase that has ever thought about the Hawks all that hard. It's one that has a noticeable faction still bitching about launching Patrick Kane and his one hip. For the most part, the fanbase is perfectly willing to swallow what the front office is telling them: "If they say five years, it's five years."

(Not you, dear reader. Your hockey thoughts pool runs deep and rich. And handsomely).

And look at how hard a team has to work in this town to be irrelevant. The Bulls have been an abortion for a decade now, but you wouldn't say that people have given up on them. There's still ink spilled on them, they still get discussed on the airwaves. Guess who led the league in average attendance last year?

This is Chicago, where an owner has to go well out of their way to turn a fanbase off. It's actually kind of shocking that two out of our five have managed it in this generation, honestly.

Sons of Lemuel - The Bears Are Pointless

This is definitely what we'll be calling any section of Bears discussion. Not up for debate.

I could probably do 1,200 words on The Beloved and the rage that's boiling within me after yesterday's what-have-ya. There is an argument to be made that it was the worst loss under Eberflus. None of the losses in 2022 counted for anything, or at least that's what we were told. Every boneheaded decision and gaffe last year that cost them a game at least came to a team with some sort of functioning unit on the other side.

The Indianapolis Colts can't do anything well, and Matt Eberflus and his charges contrived to find a way to still piss down their own leg. The Colts were a defense that had given up three miles rushing in its first two games. Their quarterback is the epitome of not being able to hit a bull in the ass with a banjo. And the Bears lost to them.

At this point, the question of whether or not Eberflus can be the coach that takes the Bears to the top tier of the NFL is more than answered. He isn't. Nowhere close. Maybe he's a good defensive coordinator, but good defensive coordinators find a way to beat good QBs--something Eberflus has yet to do with the Bears (depending on what your mileage is on Jared Goff in the cold).

So the only question, or at least it would be the only question for an organization that could find its own dick without a finding-your-dick-for-dummies book, is whether Eberflus can be a competent developmental coach. Can he be the A-to-B guy who sets up the next guy (we can only pray the next guy knows what he's doing) with a platform to go forward? What evidence is there that he can be even that? It's certainly not his beard and haircut, and all the discussion of that should have immediately told us that were all stupid and doomed to misery. How does football discussion in a town like this even get to the coach's appearance?

The Bears may well be hampering themselves for whatever Phase 2 might have looked like under Ryan Poles by keeping Eberflus around to further bork the key to it all. Flus is basically the football version of Denis Savard. He's loved by players who haven't known anything else or anything better, affable enough to keep just enough of the media at bay, and utterly overmatched by most of his peers. The Hawks got serious in a hurry when they discovered what a muppet their coach was.

But it's my fault for believing, because I was the one who said that anyone hired by the McCaskeys, or hired by someone hired by the McCaskeys, is a moron until proven otherwise. Still waiting.

The Kickmen - Arsenal Have Gone a Little Flat

We'll stick the soccer writing here on occasion.

We would have given long odds that the first Man City-Arsenal match would turn out to be the most bonkers occasion of the nascent Premier League season (non-Everton division). Fights, red cards, goals, saves, and a general tetchiness that can make the sport really pop.

At the end of the day, a draw at Eastlands for the Gunners is a great result, though they'll rue just how late they coughed up all three points. An underlying aspect could be worrying, though. It would seem Mikel Arteta's desperate search for control of every match has cost him a whole lot of verve.

Yes, Arsenal have played two halves this season with 10 men, thanks to some dumbass red cards from Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard (and both were valid, despite what your local bullhorn Arsenal-supporting friend says. And I know you have one). So that will skew the metrics over a small five-game sample.

Still, Arsenal through five games have only created 5.6 xG. That wouldn't be made up by playing their full slate with all 11 players. That mark ranks 16th in the league. Now, it could be that Arsenal just keep scoring on every corner kick they have, and they'll win the league that way. It would be very old school Arsenal to do so. They also won't be missing Martin Ødergaard forever, or have Rice suspended all that often.

And Arsenal have wildly outscored their xG the previous two seasons. (So have Man City, but they employ Erling Haaland, and that's kind of his thing all on his own.) Five games isn't a trend yet, but it's something worth watching. David Raya has kept their xGA from being their GA, as Arsenal have surrendered just half the goals the shots they've given up would suggest. Again, these things could all continue for a whole season, and it wouldn't be the first time. But it's not the most well-buttressed structure for a title challenge.

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