Chief and Eddie Were About To Fist Fight Over D'Andre Swift On Yesterday's Episode Of "The Stretch"

My god, Chief was SEETHING at Eddie for looking up those stats!!!! Jesus Christ what an outburst!!! 

This was a lot of fun for me, personally. Typically it's me who's at one of those two bananahead's necks, so to be on the outside looking in for once was a nice breath of fresh air.

But goddamn...that was EASILY the most heated I've seen Chief get at anyone not named me (or a former co-host of ours) in a LONG, long time. 

Here's the thing though: they're both wrong. We'll get to the "why" in a moment. 

First, let's talk about their arguments. Is Eddie correct that, in a vacuum, Nate Davis was a worse Poles' signing than D'Andre Swift? Yes, yes he is. Nate Davis was a 6'3", 300+ pound sack of SHIT that was cosplaying as a right guard for a year and a half in Chicago before getting the boot. 

Oh, and he's not on a team right now, either. He's sitting his fat, useless ass on the couch counting his $25,000,000.00 

Like, he's literally Huell from Breaking Bad: 

I ain't mad at him for that, though. Hating him for getting paid to do absolutely fucking nothing is textbook hating the player instead of hating the game. Still though…fuck him. 

But like… D'Andre Swift stinks too. He's just not the bellcow a meathead like me wants to see as RB1. He's soft. Doesn't break tackles. Goes down the second contact is made. Just not my type of football player, in spite of his near 1000 rush yards and 1400 or so AP yards. 

And I know, I know, I know… he DID put up those 1400 or so AP yards last year and is far from an actual bad player like Davis was. If Swift is the 4th or 5th best option on your offense, your offense is probably pretty fucking good, at least on paper. And that's what Swift is for the Bears right now. But still….get me someone who can get you 5 yards out of nothing. That's not Swift, not at all. 

It's just that they are paying him more to do less than they would have paid Monty should they have opted to extend him instead of letting him walk two years ago. In that light, I understand Chief's point. There are 1.5 glaring holes on the offense right now: LT (which, to me, is only 1/2 of a hole) and RB1. If the Bears inked Monty to the exact same deal Detroit did two years ago, the Bears are working with more cap space and literally only one question mark on offense, Braxton Jones, who is…fine. 

If that's the rationale Chief wants to use though, D'Andre Swift wasn't the worst Poles' signing like he tried to argue. In that light, it'd be Tremaine Edmunds for similar reasons.

- Tremaine Edmunds contract: 4 years, $72MM, $18MM AAV, $50MM guaranteed

- Roquon Smith contract: 5 years, $100MM, $20MM AAV, $60MM guaranteed 

That is a NEGLIGIBLE difference and they're only a year a part (almost exactly) in age, to boot. Roquon is one of the best linebackers in football - maybe THE best LB in football. Tremaine Edmunds was very ehhhhhh last year. You flip those two out for each other and the Bears have dudes at every level of the defense with multiple more dudes on the other side of the ball. That team INSTANTLY looks scarier. 

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Ya live, ya learn though. Poles has done a fine job putting the Bears in a place to succeed moving forward. Hopefully. I think. 

Chief loves to operate in a space where ALL facts are laid on the table, and obviously for good reason, so I look forward to his very public admission of being incorrect about the worst Poles signing, because whoever it is, it is NOT D'Andre Swift. He's just one of the worst signings of the Poles era thus far. 

Tune into The Stretch here: