Watching Super Bowl LIV Through Eyes of Bears Fans
There has to be a rooting interest for Bears fans if they can't pull for their own team in the Super Bowl, or can't root against the Green Bay Packers.
There are obvious attractions on both sides of the ball, but unless you're a real sadist Bears fan you're rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs to win this Super Bowl.
The 49ers have Robbie Gould kicking and Raheem Mostert running the ball. Both were Bears and then weren't, and you can sit around beating yourself up over it or beating up Ryan Pace in effigy over it. And throw in the fact they might have had a chance at Jimmy Garoppolo, although this is a stretch.
Is it really a reason to have rooting interest in a team just because they took players who weren't really part of the Bears' future plans and found a use for them?
Well in Garoppolo's case it would actually be easy to see a reason to be a 49ers fan for a day if you were a Bears fan from his home town of Rolling Meadows. That's probably the only legitimate reason for a Bears fan to think 49ers on Sunday.
That's not enough.
You can always find players from certain areas like this. San Francisco running back Tevin Coleman is from Oak Forest and safety Jimmy Ward went to NIU. The Chiefs have two players with similar Illinois ties in Nick Allegretti, who played at Illinois and is from Frankfort, and Ben Niemann, who is from Sycamore.
The chief reason to be a Chiefs fan on Sunday for Bears fans is Kansas City has become everything the Bears want to be.
Bears coach Matt Nagy comes from the Andy Reid coaching tree. It's better to say you were from the coaching tree of a Super Bowl champion than from the tree of a guy who couldn't win the big game.
Nagy has patterned the Bears on offense after the Chiefs, although he lacks the quarterback he coached for a season with Kansas City, the one Reid has now, and doesn't have the wide receiver speed or the offensive line or the tight ends. Aside from those technicalities, they're similar.
The Chiefs have the Dave Toub connection, as well. The former Bears special teams coordinator is Kansas City's coordinator and for too long has been a guy who should have been a head coach in the NFL. He did an outstanding job in Chicago during the Devin Hester and Robbie Gould era of special teams.
There are a few other coaching connections with the Chiefs. Quarterbacks coach Mike Kafka was Northwestern's quarterback and a good friend and former colleague of Nagy's.
Toub's assistant, Rod Wilson, was a Bears reserve linebacker on the 2006 Super Bowl team. The poor guy didn't get to play special teams that day because he suffered a hamstring injury in Miami during practice for the game.
There is a player connection, too, beyond the fact Patrick Mahomes could have been wearing navy and burnt orange instead of passing for the Chiefs if not for GM Ryan Pace's infatuation with Mitchell Trubisky.
Cornerback Kyle Fuller's little brother Kendall is a cornerback for the Chiefs. He had a thumb injury earlier this season and went out of the lineup five weeks and sort of lost his starting job that way but has been playing anyway in defensive alignments using more than four DBs. He actually started the two playoff wins so far.
The best reason to be a Chiefs fan is just to watch and appreciate Mahomes, and know the Bears don't have to face him for another four years unless they get in the Super Bowl against him.
Twitter: BearDigest@BearsOnMaven
