You Don't Know The Party Will End When You're At It
Reveling in this Bears season and it being ok to ignore the context.
I know I usually start Mondays off with something on the Hawks. But who the fuck wants to start their holiday week that way at the moment? Exactly.
Do you ever think about the best parties you attended in high school? Maybe college? There's one New Years one that sticks out to me, when I was 16. There was nothing truly remarkable about it, if you were to analyze it afterward. It's not like I made out with the it-girl that night in some Hollywood twist for the junior troll that I was, or was introduced to some new drugs (that was earlier in the year), or anything else that would stick out. It was just one of those nights that seemingly lasted forever, even though it was only a few hours, and you kind of can't believe how much fun you're having and how happy you are right at that moment. Everyone's in a great mood, everyone's having a blast, and it just build on top of itself.
Nothing about what came next mattered. Nothing about the fallacies of that moment ever entered my mind. I didn't really care that there were too many tequila shots, which would very much matter the next morning. It didn't matter that most of the people I spent most of the night around, I would lose touch with over the coming years and they would play barely any role in my adult life (though more of them do than most people hold from high school, for which I'm grateful). I'm sure somewhere, deep down at the time, I knew all these things. But they didn't matter right then and there.
That's what this Bears season has now become, and the analysis around it. Somewhere, deep down among all Bears fans, we're all aware of the caveats. The last-place schedule, which has been riddled with backup QBs and some bounces that the Bears just never got in the past. The Packers losing their QB and then doing everything the Bears used to do against them to fumble (literally) away a game they had in control. I've seen plenty of games against Green Bay that the Bears are the better team for 50-55 minutes and then puke up in the end. They were always illustrations of the brilliance of Rodgers and the assuredness of the Packers, so I was told. Plays and moments that would be hard to repeat for the Bears in following seasons to achieve the same record.
Have we been those people on the outside, scoffing at some other team's good fortune? Of course, that's how this goes. It's jealousy, If it's not you getting all the fun, then you have to find reasons why they shouldn't be getting them either. It's the party you're locked out of. We did it to Washington last season, and not everyone has a particularly annoying Commanders fan in their life like I do. It's just what you do.
But that's asking us to apply future contexts to the here and now. Every analyst trying to look at this cold is asking us to feel how we might feel about this season in 2027 or 2028 now. That's not how it works. We'll get to that when we get to that. And we don't know what that context will be, not exactly. It could be anything.
How many ties in your life have the Bears caused you to leap off the couch in joy? To hug a stranger at a bar? Or on the street (I saw it)? It's football, it's only once a week, so it has less chances to do that than the other teams we love, but still. Robbie Gould's field goal to beat Seattle? Berrian's catch against against the Saints? Favre's head hitting the turf? Throw in a couple Mike Brown moments, Hester punt returns, and that might be the entire list for 40 years.
And we're supposed to attach weights to Caleb Williams threading that pass through the wind 55 yards in the air right onto the #2 on D.J. Moore's chest?
If we don't lose ourselves in the moment in sports every so often, what's the fucking point? If everything has to be context and projection and the bigger picture, then it's just something you could print on a sheet. That's not why we're here. This is the only arena where we can, safely, take leave of logic and perspective and just lose ourselves in pure emotion. Watch any fan video of the winning touchdown from the stands. you'll see.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSgyh8PDt8B/
Sure, those outside can scoff at the reaction to a regular season OT win against a team that essentially gave the Bears the game. But when you've eaten the amount of shit we Bears have, for as long as we've eaten shit, are we really expected to wait around for other, bigger moments that might never come to celebrate correctly? That the rest of the world deems worthy? Are we really supposed to tut-tut Williams's completion percentage while he makes throws and plays to win games that literally no Bears QB before him could? We're just supposed to ignore those with our arms crossed and say, "But what about that crossing route in the 2nd quarter he missed?" There's time for all that. It's not in the moment.
Yeah, the party will end soon. What made it great won't be around forever, or even long. The factors that have made it so great will probably never be replicated. There will be different parties to come, maybe bigger ones, maybe better ones. But none of that is guaranteed. And we can worry about that later. There's still beer in the cooler. The music is still going. No one's left. There's still people you haven't talked to. There's still stories to tell. Everything else can wait, we're here now.