Bear Down Baffa

The Bears are just a week into PFTD mode (Playing For The Draft), and we’re already hitting our stride.  Down 3 with 0:08 left, Connor “Party On Wayne, Party On” Barth went wider right than any kicker before him, securing our 3rd straight loss.  If it had come before our season was put down for the year, this loss would’ve been devastating.  But since we already punched out, it was actually quite tolerable.  We played good enough to maintain interest, but badly enough to enhance our draft position, and Trubisky steered clear of Kevin Spacey.  All things considered, that’s as good as a W to me!

Place-holder Patrick “Why Does He Even Wear The
Special Shoe?” O’Donnell knows before he even looks

The Low Down
With the draft just 5 months away, Connor “Why Do I Even Wear The Special Shoe?” Barth’s window for learning a new trade is quickly shrinking.  He’s now 11 for 16 on FGs this year, which is just 69%.  69%!!  That’s so low, it’s even HIS career worst.  I imagine what it must feel like to be him right now, but every time I try, I wind up punching myself in the face before I can complete the thought.  But hey, this is a team game.  It doesn’t fall on just one bonehead.

Truby’s Fumble-6 didn’t really help matters much, either

Which brings me to Robbie Gould.  Blaming a former player may seem egregious, but this is Gould we’re talking about.  He wanted the big bucks (4 yrs, $16M), but when he got them, he couldn’t match expectations.  So we had to replace him with someone much cheaper, and just as bad (enter Connor “Thounth Like I’m Lithping, Doethn’t It?” Barth).  BTW, Gould is 94% since his drastic decline in salary, so there’s no denying he put us in this predicament in the first place.

Watch closely – the ball goes SO far right, it’s hard to find

But then again, Connor “I Think I’m Gonna” Barth is pretty f-ing terrible.  This poor bastard doesn’t know whether he should change his shoe or get a Kim Jong-Un haircut.  At 69%, there are only 4 NFL kickers with worse numbers – and it’s a sordid list:

1. AZ’s Phil Dawson, who’s the league’s 2nd oldest player at 42 (68%);
2. CLE’s rookie 7th-rounder Zane Gonzalez (67%);
3. TB vet Nick Folk, who went 0 for 3 on Oct. 5, was benched/placed on IR, and is set to be released once he’s healthy (55%);
4. LAC’s undrafted Korean rookie Younghoe “You Couldn’t Make That Name Up” Koo, who was just 3 of 6 before being waived (50%).

Barth’s actual Wikipedia page on Sunday night
(the trolls were really letting him have it!)

Outlook
Minni (8-2) won, which means the Bears (3-7) are 5 back with 6 to play.  So if anyone is still holding out hope for a winner, you need to stop it right now and get with the program.  The rest of us have already picked up a full head of PFTD steam because there’s plenty of good news.  Such as:  not only did we protect our draft spot, but we catapulted up the draft board as many as 6 places with help from other teams!

This fan, when told that Barth’s FG% matches his jersey number

Last week, we were tied with 5 teams for the #5 draft spot, meaning we’d pick between #5 and #10.  But 4 of those teams won (TB, CIN, HOU, LAC), so along with DEN (who lost), we move into a tie for the #4 slot with INDY (bye), where we’d draft between #4 and #6.  NYG (2-8) also won, so we gained a game on them, too.  And though it’s a stretch that we’ll catch SF (1-9) or CLE (0-10), we do play both of them, so there’s a slim chance we could still climb up further.

This is how our staff deals with these losses, folks –
filling charts with numbers that make us feel better

Bye, Bye Barth!
About an hour before this post was published, the Bears announced they released Barth Face.  But since we’d already written all these jokes at his expense, we decided to run with it.  Our new kicker is Cairo “89% Over The Last 2 Years Sounds Good Enough To Me!” Santos, who’s making even LESS than Barth (just $240k to Barth’s $1M).  There’s now even more of a reason for PFTD – to pick up a new kicker!

And he can take that @#$% shoe with him, too!

Quotes of Note (all of which address Barth Bag)
Fox announcer Thom Brennaman:  “Not even close.  Holy Moses…that never had a chance.” ~ Wait, is there an UNholy Moses?

Coaches and players alike were confounded – not by the
missed FG, but by Gould being 94% since we let him go!

Comcast’s Alex Brown:  “Snap is good, hold is good, and you just…it wasn’t close.  That’s the part, it wasn’t even close.  We can find anybody on the street that can miss a kick.” ~ Damn, sounds like we found that evil Moses!

Passer-by, to Drunkie McVodka: “Hey bro, is that vodka?”
McVodka: “FIRST DOWN!!  (Hiccup!)  It’s cool, my uncle’s a cop.”

Barth:  “I signed up for this…that’s just the way it is.  It’s a team game.  Everyone makes mistakes.  Of course I want that one back, but at the end of the day, it happened.  You move on.  I’ll take it.  Whatever.  It’s on me.” ~ Gould must’ve faxed him a list of sports clichés, and suggested using one each time he felt like punching himself in the face.  I didn’t think it was possible, but that apology was actually worse than Spacey’s.

After the game, Bear players had to run back onto the field to
put out the flames, as Barth had been set afire by irate fans

Barth:  “You make some, you miss some.” ~ True, but you really seem to have honed in on the “miss some” part, Barthy!

Even this referee, known as “Old Man River,”
waves off Old Man Fox’s old man questions

Barth (*Note Closed Captioning for this part read, “Indiscernible”):  “I’ve never had a doubt I was gonna not, ya know, I was going to kick, 100% positive I was gonna make it.  Like I said, you miss some, you make some, you miss some.” ~ See what I mean, he said “miss some” twice!

Even a few Lion players joined Bear players in
protesting Coach Fox’s continued employment

Comcast’s J.J. Stankevitz:  “Last week he was 3 for 3 on FGs in difficult conditions.  You thought he’d turned a corner.” ~ Uhm, no I didn’t.  Man, I hate when analysts try to tell me what I’m thinking.  And so do you!

See?  It isn’t just me!  Although, if I were gonna draw attention to it,
I might’ve spent a little more time on the sign – like, at least make it
NOT look like a homeless guy just flipped his cardboard sign around.

BEAR DOWN?

#PFTD(PlayingForTheDraft)
#WiderRightThanAnyKickerBeforeHim
#WorseApologyThanSpaceys
#PartyOnWaynePartyOnBarth
#SomeonePleasePutOutTheFlamesOnBarth

© 2017

This entry was posted on Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 8:47 pm and is filed under d) 2017 Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.