The Bears blew a 21 point 3rd quarter lead against Denver, then elected not to kick a short field goal to take the lead late in the 4th quarter, trying and failing on a 4th and 1 play. (Sounds familiar.) So Denver marched down the field and hit the FG to take the lead and the Bears, as usual, fell short on the comeback attempt.
So if the NFL season ended today (a mercy killing as far as the Bears are concerned), the Bears would have both the #1 and #2 picks in the NFL draft, since they hold the Panthers’ first round pick. Ahh, they’d find a way to screw that up, too.
I saw a graphic on Facebook that had the logos of every team in the four (maybe five? It might have included MLS) major professional sports leagues with a big hand-drawn circle around every logo except one, with the caption, “Trams that have won at least one game since Elon Musk bought Twitter.”
The Cubs pulled off possibly their biggest collapse in team history, going from around a 90% chance of making the playoffs a few weeks ago to getting eliminated on September 30th.
And I see some sportswriters are suggesting they fire their manager, when it’s the front office that failed to give them bullpen support. And it will be the front office that lets Bellinger go in free agency, too.
They brought up Pete Crow-Armstrong, one of their top prospects, and he went 0-14 at the plate with3 walks and made several baserunning mistakes.
Not sure about calling it their biggest collapse. Some of us remember 1969. 8 games ahead in 1st place in September, then a total meltdown that month, allowing the Mets to have their miracle run.
Yes, the Cubs were caught by the red-hot Mets, who, according to Wikipedia:
Trailing the Chicago Cubs for much of the season, the Mets found themselves in third place, 10 games back, on August 14 but they won 14 of their last 17 games during August, and 24 of their 32 games during September and October, to surge past the Cubs, finishing 100–62, eight games ahead of the Cubs.
The Mets won 77.5% of their games over that time span. By contrast, the Cubs were 18-27 over their last 45 games or 40%. This season, after the sweep of the Giants, the Cubs went 6-15, or 28.6%, from September 7th to October 1st. Ugly!
I mis-counted, it was 7-14 or 33.3% over their last 21 games.
It may not have been as epic as 1969, but this time it was all on the backs of the Cubs, as the Marlins were a much more pedestrian 12-10 (plus the unfinished game in which they were leading) over the same time period.
And the Cubs collapse in 1969 knocked them out of the final 4; whereas their late season collapse this year, only knocked them out of the final 12 ( and a likely poor seed at that) So I think the Cubs 1969 takes the cake and will be hard to surpass ( well maybe the 1978 Red Sox, or the 1964 Phillies)