Vante

Here to Bear Down.

[StartKyleOrton @startkyIeorton]

Look last year's anonymously sourced article about Caleb called him a gay, dyslexic Johnny Manziel. This year's anonymously sourced article says he's a top 10 QB. That's good progress

[Chicago Bears @ChicagoBears]

School's out for summer 😎

[Vante @VanteNFL]

The #Bears are always going to hunt explosives. Don’t let the need for completion % to improve to make you think Ben wants this to be a dink and dunk offense. He wants the simple stuff to be free money, AND he wants the explosives and scramble drill to be more consistent.

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Ooof

[Dan Labbe @dan_labbe]

Mike Hall bats down Shedeur Sanders pass. Hall held his arm up and Shedeur threw right into it. #browns

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Translation… it’s a narrative that everyone bought into that isn’t actually valid.

[Rylan Stiles @Rylan_Stiles]

Sam Presti on SGA bucking what NBA fans say they hate: He plays both ends of the floor, never complains and moans “he has three technical fouls, none for complaining he got one for waving a towel in support of a teammate” said he “plays every night so you can’t get him on that” and the next one is he has brought the mid range back to an art form so he isn’t a guy that is just launching 3s. Then the other one is these guys are totally inaccessible, well the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Based on those narratives, he would be doing them right. So if we are just talking about trying to draw fouls, well every other great player tries to draw fouls. And only 2.5% of those fouls were challenged. 4 of them were overturned.

[Rylan Stiles @Rylan_Stiles]

Sam Presti on SGA bucking what NBA fans say they hate: He plays both ends of the floor, never complains and moans “he has three technical fouls, none for complaining he got one for waving a towel in support of a teammate” said he “plays every night so you can’t get him on that” and the next one is he has brought the mid range back to an art form so he isn’t a guy that is just launching 3s. Then the other one is these guys are totally inaccessible, well the guy signs 400 autographs before every game. Based on those narratives, he would be doing them right. So if we are just talking about trying to draw fouls, well every other great player tries to draw fouls. And only 2.5% of those fouls were challenged. 4 of them were overturned.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.

They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.

Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.

They lost them for two reasons.

The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.

In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.

Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.

That fight dragged on for years.

The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.

Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.

So now it's all gone.

The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.

Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.

Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.

But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.

Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.

And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.

Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.

Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."

There it is. "Billionaire-owned."

That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.

Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.

Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."

When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.

They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.

Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.

But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."

Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.

Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.

Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Interesting how fast things turn when you get to the top. The same ref complaints people are giving up for the spurs sound a lot like the narrative painted for OKC..
weird.

[Jacob Infante @jacobinfante24]

In 10 games last year, #Bears DE Austin Booker had 4.5 sacks. That's more sacks per game than:

• Jared Verse
• Odafe Oweh
• Gregory Rousseau
• Jaelan Phillips
• Abdul Carter

I'm not saying he's better than all those guys. But he's a lot better than many give him credit for

[Vante @VanteNFL]

#NFL has shifted from “build through the draft, plug holes in free agency” to add “do a healthy amount of significant trades to contend”.

The Khalil Mack trade was in rare air when it happened. Now approximately 20% of the top 100 guys have been traded in the last 18 months.

[Vante @VanteNFL]

@CourtneyRCronin Madden curse doesn’t apply to QBs

[Vante @VanteNFL]

I thought nobody called him that and he gave that name to himself?!
😂

Keep hating Caleb .

[Madden NFL 27 @EAMaddenNFL]

🥶 The Iceman arrives.

Your #Madden27 Deluxe Edition cover is here.

Full reveal Thursday, 6/4 at 8 PM ET
🔗: https://t.co/REHXoqeZIf

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Wow! I thought OKC was the unbearable only ones to do this!
Proof narrative pushing works.

[Underdog NBA @UnderdogNBA]

Stephon Castle on suggestions that the Spurs are not floppers and if they are leaving gamesmanship on the table:

"I don't really know to answer that, because I sell calls too, I can't lie."

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Done for a while??
How crazy would it be if the #Bears did it and this is the reason for their lack of aggression on the defensive line? 😂

[Vante @VanteNFL]

Chet is unplayable.

This is “are you gambling on the team” level

[Jon Ledyard @LedyardNFLDraft]

Chet somehow not getting enough criticism for this series. Absolutely brutal

[Matt Harmon @MattHarmon_BYB]

Really good information here and this is a point I've been hitting a lot for the last year, and even more the last few months now that we have proof of concept. The 2025 Bears offense was really different than the Lions' offenses under Ben Johnson, and that extends to how the pass-catchers were deployed.

And of course that's true! The players are really quite different!