Polling Place: Belief in George McCaskey and the Bears this offseason is … not very strong

Is a self-proclaimed “fan” qualified to lead a team without a general manager or coach into its football future?

SHARE Polling Place: Belief in George McCaskey and the Bears this offseason is … not very strong
Tampa Bay Buccaneers v Chicago Bears

Bears chairman George McCaskey at Soldier Field.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Bears chairman George McCaskey is, in his own words, “just a fan, not a football evaluator.”

Fans are qualified to do many things — heave copious sausages onto a sizzling grill, don blue-and-orange face paint, shout drunken profanity from the stands — but leading a team without a general manager or coach into its football future? That might not be one of them.

In this week’s ‘‘Polling Place,’’ your home for Sun-Times sports polls on Twitter, we asked how confident you are in McCaskey and the Bears to get this critical offseason right.

“Is this a trick question?” @JeffreyCanalia asked.

“I’m not even confident George McCaskey can find Halas Hall without using his GPS,” @RonaldVoigt4 quipped.

But seriously, folks.

We also asked about last year’s Super Bowl teams, the Buccaneers and Chiefs: Will they be this year’s Super Bowl teams, too? And — with the playoffs starting Saturday — we asked for your wild-card upset picks. There’s got to be at least one of those getting ready to happen, right?

On to the polls:

Poll No. 1: How confident are you in George McCaskey and the Bears to hire the right people this offseason?

Upshot: It’s tempting to look at this and think, hey, at least the Bears have nowhere to go but up from Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy. It’s not true, though; they could do even worse. And — if these results are any indication — there’s a pretty good chance they’ll blow this thing. To some beleaguered fans, the bad news is practically inevitable. As @JBIRD1268 put it, “It’s like shopping for a used car that doesn’t run.”

Poll No. 2: Will the Buccaneers and/or Chiefs make it back to the Super Bowl?

Upshot: A majority sees at last one of these teams — neither of which has a first-round bye — getting back to the big game. The defending-champion Bucs host the Eagles on Sunday afternoon. The Chiefs host retirement-bound Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers on Sunday night. Any chance Monday morning rolls around and both the Bucs and the Chiefs are walking around with dazed looks in their eyes and wondering how the heck they already managed to get eliminated?

Poll No. 3: Pick a wild-card upset (yes, you have to pick one):

Upshot: The Steelers and Eagles are the biggest underdogs on the board. As for the other four games, well, how ’bout them Cowboys? Are they about to face-plant? Will Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford fail in his attempt to finally win a playoff game? Will Bills fans smash every table in Western New York if Bill Belichick’s Patriots win? Wait, why are respondents so confident in the Bengals?

The Latest
Both Andre Drummond (left ankle) and Ayo Dosunmu (right quadricep) were sidelined at the end of the regular season and heading into the play-in game. By game time against Atlanta, however, both were cleared, giving coach Billy Donovan some much needed depth.
Chicago police and community organizations gathered at Richard J. Daley Academy to provide information about available services to people affected by violent crimes.
Sox go 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position, score 4 runs, but pull out doubleheader split
The proposed legislation is the latest and most significant backlash to a declaration in December by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education that it would no longer prioritize selective schools and would refocus resources to neighborhood schools that have faced years of cuts and underfunding.
The apartment where Lynn Sweet’s father once lived was demolished to make way for the expressway. President Joe Biden has launched a new program to reconnect communities split by expressways such as the Eisenhower.