A lot has happened to Allen Robinson over the past five seasons. He was one of the NFL’s best in 2019 and 2020 for the Chicago Bears. Then, he seemed to fall off a cliff in 2021. That prompted the Bears to let him walk two years ago. Since then, he landed with the Rams and Steelers but somehow played even worse. It is hard to understand how the former Pro Bowler regressed so much in such a short time. Perhaps he still isn’t over the trauma he experienced during that extended run in Chicago.
There is no question the wide receiver had a front-row seat for the demolition of what was a good team. In fact, Robinson expressed to Tyler Dunne of Go Long that he still has painful memories of what happened to the 2018 team. He feels it was more than good enough to win a championship. Sadly, the Double Doink disaster against Philadelphia, combined with a growing rift between head coach Matt Nagy and quarterback Mitch Trubisky, led to its implosion. He still has regrets about not doing more to prevent it.
The lasting memory of Jan. 6, 2019 isn’t a sight… it’s a sound. It’s the double-doink of Cody Parkey’s 43-yard field goal attempt ricocheting off the left upright and crossbar. Game over…
…“That,” Robinson laments, “was a Super Bowl-caliber team.”…
…“If I went to Nagy and was like, ‘This can be figured out and things are straight and improving,’” Robinson says, “I think it’s a totally different outcome. He needed to hear the confidence from somebody that he also believed in. And me and Nagy had a great relationship. If I have told him that? Everything could have been different.
“I think we started to get off that train. When I say ‘we,’ I mean the entire organization, I think we got off that train too quickly.”
Allen Robinson held out hope things would turn around.
Unfortunately, the Bears didn’t have the necessary leadership for that. Nagy proved far too immature and inexperienced to handle the lows of a catastrophic playoff loss. He let others get in his ear about Trubisky being the problem, leading to multiple benchings and wild swings at quarterback trying to fix something that hadn’t really been broken. Combine that with Ryan Pace’s mismanagement of team resources and it shouldn’t be a surprise things fell apart as fast as they did.
The simple answer is everybody panicked after that loss to Philadelphia. Fingers began being pointed, locker room morale started dipping, and once that starts, it’s almost impossible to stop. Allen Robinson would’ve known that had he arrived one year later than he did. He was with the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars when they reached the AFC championship. They, too, collapsed the next season and were never the same. By then, Robinson was gone. What is the saying?
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The only way for evil to triumph is if good men do nothing. Robinson seems to have realized this over the past few years.
The issue was that the Bears stuck with Parkey throughout the year and into the postseason after many doinks off the crossbar. The guy could hit a crossbar better than he could kick it in the middle of them. It was very similar to this year on the Packers. I kept texting my Packers “friends:” That kicker is going to cost you a big game! And sure enough, just like the Bears years earlier, he cost them a much deeper run in the playoffs. If you have a guy who has missed 5+ times in pressure moments, it’s time to… Read more »
Should have worked harder the next year, you were getting $18m on the tag and you sulked, loafed, dropped passes, quit blocking and did not earn your money. Looks like it was that way with the Rams,and Steelers, both were done with your hudge ego in one season. Hopefully you get cut by the Giants.
Let’s not forget, he kicked the ball through the first time, when the time out was called. I thought he had a 75% chance he’d make it. The second time, I thought it was a 50% chance. Unfortunately, the plays called leading up to the kick were weak and counterproductive. On such a salient kick, you want to be inside the 40yd line for physical, climate, and psychological reasons.
From my view at home, that kick was good.
Yes, a Superbowl team in an unexpected and a non-conventional way. If they beat the Eagles, they would have been even better the following game.