Le Journal

This season was a huge step forward for the Bears.Also, this will never again be considered good enough.Of all the ways coach Ben Johnson changed Halas Hall, raising the Bears’ standard for success has been the most impactful. While the team made a big jump from 5-12 last season to 11-6, an NFC North title and a spot in the divisional round of the playoffs, Johnson took the job a year ago eying much more than that.Normally, that type of season would warrant a parade for the Bears, and while Johnson and general manager Ryan Poles did take a well-earned victory lap at their season-ending news conference Wednesday, the emphasis was on what they’ll do next.“We have to dig a little bit deeper,” Johnson said. “We have to work a little bit harder. We have to give a little bit more if we want to take this thing over the top.“It's no different than if you're trying to lose weight. If you're trying to lose 50 pounds, the first 30 is the easiest. The last 20, that's the hard part. So we did a nice job this year, but it's not enough. We have to do more.”That’s the way serious teams are run. They don’t settle for merely making the playoffs. In fact, they fire coaches and general managers if they make it only this far too many times in a row. The real work just started.A crucial part of that is setting aside how great this turnaround felt and making a clear-eyed assessment of the roster.Their defense played its best game Sunday in the loss to the Rams, but ranked 29th in the regular season. The offense had four games, including Sunday, in which it failed to score 20 points. Four players started at left tackle. The Bears dropped the fifth-most passes (29) during the regular season.The Bears had a lower point differential (plus-26) than multiple teams that missed the playoffs. They went 2-4 in the North and narrowly avoided going 0-6. They rallied from a deficit in the final two minutes to win seven times, which showed grit, but also that they weren’t miles ahead of some unimpressive opponents that pushed them to the brink.They were good, Poles reiterated his goal has always been to build “a championship-caliber team,” not a one-year, feel-good story.“I am proud of the progress that we've made, [but] we can't be complacent,” he said. “We have to keep pushing forward. [Johnson and I] both come from organizations that have stacked success back-to-back years, and we know the challenge.“We're all excited for that challenge: building this team back up, making the tweaks, continuing to tighten the screws on the process and the people that we need to ... exceed [this season] and win championships around here.”He added that while he liked the resolve his players showed, “I’d rather not be the Cardiac Bears.”He and Johnson want dominance. That’s what the Chiefs, Eagles, Rams and Buccaneers showed in their recent championship seasons. They didn’t sneak. They bulldozed.That’s the standard for the Bears going forward, especially now that Poles is going into Year 5 of rebuilding from the rubble predecessor Ryan Pace left him.Poles thinks about Pace more than he lets on, and in a 2024 Sun-Times interview he described the Bears’ approach before his arrival as choosing to “kick the can down the road and build off of a house of cards.” Pace thought the Bears — albeit without a quarterback — were on the cusp of a championship chase and went all-in in a way that eventually scrambled their salary cap and decimated their draft capital. And cost him his job.That type of outcome was in his mind Wednesday when he was asked how to upgrade the Bears from good to great.“You see it across the league all the time: You panic and you do crazy things that everybody else wants you to do and it leads to some situations that you can't get out of,” Poles said. “We want to stay flexible. We want to stay open-minded. We want to stay committed to building this team the right way, because that's the best way to sustain success.”That signals he’s less likely to take a big swing, on…

Cuando los agentes federales llegaron a Minneapolis, las residentes de Chicago Emily Hilleren y Lauren Vega continuaron haciendo lo que habían estado haciendo durante meses: conseguir cuantos silbatos pudieran encontrar.Armaron un paquete de cuidado que contenía 5,000 silbatos, publicaciones con instrucciones ilustradas sobre cómo usar los silbatos para advertir a los vecinos sobre la presencia del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE), 10,000 tarjetas sobre sus derechos y $9,000 en donaciones para organizaciones comunitarias en Minneapolis.“Cargamos mi auto compacto”, dijo Hilleren, residente del vecindario de Albany Park, mientras se preparaba para organizar una fiesta de silbatos en Minneapolis después de que las dos hicieran el largo viaje de horas el viernes por la noche. La Voz Chicago WhatsAppEncuentra más noticias en nuestro canal de WhatsApp. Síguenos. A medida que miles de agentes federales llegaban a Minnesota en elúltimo capítulo de la campaña de deportación del presidente DonaldTrump, los habitantes de Chicago, una vez más, se están uniéndose a las ciudades que enfrentan la misma lucha que pelearon el añopasado.'Sentido de camaradería'Chicago comenzó por aprender de Los Ángeles, donde empezaron las primeras oleadas de operativos migratorios de la administración de Trump, dijo Teresa Magaña, cofundadora de Pilsen Arts & Community House. La ciudad respondió cuando el comandante de la Patrulla Fronteriza, Gregory Bovino, envió agentes a Carolina del Norte, enviando rápidamente cualquier cosa que hiciera ruido para continuar con el sistema de alerta.Magaña diseñó la publicación que instruye a las personas sobre cómo usar silbatos para alertar sobre la presencia de ICE. Las publicaciones han sido copiadas a nivel nacional.“Las personas no deberían ser tímidas ni dudar en comunicarse. La gente está más que dispuesta a ir más allá con los recursos y la información”, destacó Magaña. “Hay un sentido inmediato de camaradería. Nos conocemos aunque no nos conozcamos”.Destacó que crear un modelo para el sistema de silbatos ayudó a replicar el trabajo en otras ciudades.“Lo poderoso es que, como seguimos el mismo modelo, se ha vuelto más consistente”, señaló Magaña. Teresa Magaña, cofundadora de la Casa de Artes y Comunidad de Pilsen, frente a la instalación de Pilsen el pasado octubre.Talia Sprague/Para el Sun-Times Hilleren comenzó a hacer pedidos en línea de silbatos a principios del otoño. Pronto, estaba organizando fiestas como parte de la “Whistlemania” en la comunidad, especialmente en Nighthawk, un café y bar.‘Podían elaborar miles’Muchos vaciaron las tiendas de silbatos, mientras que otros optaron por una opción más confiable y económica: hacerlos ellos mismos.Vega comenzó a imprimir los silbatos con su impresora 3D y pudo llevar 200 silbatos hechos en casa a la primera fiesta a la que asistió.La noticia se difundió a través de las redes sociales y pronto Hilleren y Vega se conectaron con otros que habían estado haciendo lo mismo.“Tenía una impresora pequeña, así que podía elaborar algunos cientos, pero ellas podían elaborar miles”, dijo Vega. Dos tipos diferentes de silbatos son impresos en 3D por diferentes personas con las que Hilleren y Vega han trabajado en los últimos meses para crear y enviar silbatos a ciudades que los necesitan.Proporcionada Entre ellos estaba Dan Sinker, escritor de Evanston, quien dijo que ha estado involucrado en la impresión 3D desde sus inicios.Sinker también recurrió primero a vendedores en línea para los primeros cientos de silbatos que distribuyó.Pero cuando se enteró sobre el trabajo de Hilleren y Vega, compró una impresora que podía elaborar 800 silbatos de un solo rollo de filamento, que vende por aproximadamente $12, el precio de unos 50 silbatos en mercados en línea.“En cinco días produje más silbatos de los que pude encontrar y comprar durante el otoño, y a un precio significativamente más bajo”, dijo Sinker.‘Sin otra opción’Con una capacidad aumentada y una…

Bears general manager Ryan Poles was asked Wednesday about both starting safeties, Kevin Byard and Jaquan Brisker, being unrestricted free agents after both said they hoped to return, but commented specifically only on Byard. "We’re going to take a step back and evaluate that and put that puzzle together," Poles said. "I have a lot of faith in our process that we’ll do that. Kevin’s a special player. I have no problem saying that’s a player that we would like to have back. But, again, when you add the other safeties into that mix and all the other decisions we have across the roster, with cap restraints and things like that, it’ll be a challenge. But that’s part of what we do."Bears backup safeties Jonathan Owens and Jaylon Jones both are unrestricted free agents as well.Byard, 32, had a two-year, $15 million contract with the Bears, and that price undoubtedly is going up after leading the NFL with seven interceptions and earning his third All-Pro selection.

Bears quarterback Caleb Williams’ interception in overtime against the Rams put wide receiver DJ Moore under fire for not doing more to prevent it. Not only did it cost the Bears a chance to win on a field goal, but the Rams turned around and did exactly that to knock them out. Moore didn’t speak to reporters after the game or at locker cleanout Monday, and Williams called it “a miscommunication” as he wanted Moore to change his route while Moore stayed the course. Coach Ben Johnson claimed he had “not studied the tape a whole lot” because he was focused on players’ exit interviews. “Just off the cuff... if there was any sort of miscommunication, that's my problem,” he said. “That's no one else's but mine. I have to do a better job coaching that up.” Moore finished with career lows in catches (50) and yards (682) and scored seven total touchdowns. Johnson called him “a huge contributor,” and Poles credited him for playing through groin, knee and other injuries.“His toughness rubbed off on our team,” he said. “Guys, if they were dinged up, they almost had to go because DJ was going. He was able to fight through a lot. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”

Despite their sturdy provenance in the earth's mantle, great sapphires are a fragile commodity. Here, Sri Lanka's newest spectacular find, the "Star of Pure Land."