Everything about the Chicago Bears feels like they’re trending upward.
The general consensus is they finally have the quarterback on their roster that is capable of being the kind of hero to lead them to a Super Bowl championship.
They have made significant improvements to their offensive line that should help keep that quarterback upright and comfortable long enough for him to find an exciting wide receiving group.
The defense was already good, and they addressed some needs in the offseason.
If the Bears were a stock you could buy on the New York Stock Exchange, guys like Jim Cramer would be pounding the big red button on his board and having it scream “BUY, BUY, BUY!!!”
The division the Bears are in is good. The Lions are still the best until someone can prove differently, although the Bears stole away their offensive coordinator to become the latest head coach in Chicago to try to make them into a winner.
Green Bay is still solid, and the Vikings should still have enough to be trouble.
But, all that said, the Bears should be in the thick of things come September.
“So, what’s wrong,” you ask?
Well, where the Bears will ultimately play their future home games, is the problem.
Let’s review how we got where we are, even though no one can really tell you exactly where we are right now. As a matter of fact, if the Bears future stadium situation was a map at the mall, the red dot showing you where you are would be replaced by a stick figure with his arms out to his side and a confused look on his face.
The Bears started all this with the prospect of pulling the team off the lakefront and building a new, domed stadium in the suburbs.
The city of Chicago owns Soldier Field, and city leaders immediately wanted to schedule meetings to make their case to keep the Bears either at Soldier Field or at new facility nearby.
Clarity seemed to come in the winter of 2023 when the Bears bought the site of the Arlington Park Raceway in Arlington Heights, which is north of O’Hare Airport.
They unveiled plans to take the property and not only build a football stadium there, but to surround it with shops and restaurants and all kinds of year-round money-making ventures.
It made total sense to anyone with any business sense.
The biggest downfall of the Arlington Park site is how far it physically is from the downtown area. For some practical reasons and some sentimental ones, not having the Bears in the heart of the city just doesn’t seem right.
But the price of progress sometimes requires a parting of the ways between what has always been and what needs to be.
Still, here we sit. Over two years after they purchased the 326-acre property in Arlington Heights at a cost of $197.2 million, the only difference you would see to drive past the place now is that the grand stand for the race track has been torn down.
That’s it.
They haven’t put any stakes or little orange flags in the ground.
They haven’t announced any takers for the retail locations and restaurant spaces.
They haven’t done anything.
Well, I’d like to take that back. They have done something. They started negotiating with the city about keeping the team playing along the lake front.
I know, it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, either.
I mean, even if the Bears are saying “Look, we made a mistake…we’re staying downtown,” this is a massive loss for the franchise.
The Bears aren’t going to get back the $200 million dollars in land and demolition costs they have invested in Arlington Heights.
Everyone knows what their deal is, and no one would enter those negotiations with any plan to let the Bears off the hook financially. The Bears are going to eat cash on that. It’s unavoidable.
Or, they could get people with big trucks and plenty of construction hats to go around for everyone and start building their new complex!
They have already wasted two years. The best-case scenario would be for them to hold a press conference tomorrow and announce their plans to build at the race track. But even if they did that, the stadium wouldn’t be ready for events until 2027.
In the meantime, September will come and the Bears will keep running out of the tunnel at the worst stadium in the league with the worst fan seating and fan experience in the league with the worst parking situation in the league and the worst playing surface in the league.
The cloud of sub-mediocrity continues to hover over the Bears, and the short-term forecast doesn’t call for sunny skies any time soon.