CHICAGO _ It has become an obligatory annual question for George McCaskey, with the Bears chairman asked to detail his mother's emotions regarding the state of the Bears. Virginia McCaskey turns 97 on Sunday. And while George McCaskey didn't go so far this year as to paint his mom as "pissed off" with the team's struggles, he readily acknowledged that the citywide disappointment hit close to home.
With all the anticipation and hype that led up to the Bears' 100th season, the team's 8-8 fizzle-out was entirely unsatisfying.
"The hope was there. The Bears were back," George McCaskey said Tuesday morning. "And then to take a step back was especially disappointing. And she feels it, like all Bears fans do."
Ah, yes. That all-too-familiar feeling of deflation.
"Every year we talk about the goal being to win the Super Bowl," McCaskey said. "And in some years you feel you are better positioned to do that than others. We certainly thought that was the case in 2019. So the 8-8 record was especially disappointing in that light."
The playoffs will again go on without the Bears _ for the 11th time in 13 seasons. And as if that sting weren't sharp enough, the emptiness surrounding the 2019 season will be amplified by another bit of "What might have been" lament.
This year's postseason includes nine starting quarterbacks the Bears once had a chance to draft but didn't. Yep. Seventy-five% of the starting quarterback in this year's Super Bowl bracket could have begun their careers with the Bears if the organization had wanted them badly enough.
On that topic, here's a painful history lesson (in chronological order) of the draft-weekend decisions that took the Bears in a different direction.
