Examining VP hopeful Walz in football terms, with extra points for any Bears insight
Hello, Tim Walz, and welcome to Chicago and the Democratic National Convention!
Let’s get to the important stuff: football.
You’re the old high school whistle-tooter who astoundingly gave up coaching to become governor of Minnesota and now the Democratic Party’s candidate for vice president of the whole United States.
Great playbook there.
But let’s note that Minnesota is also the state that elected former pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura governor in 1998. Supposedly, “The Body’’ watched movies most of his term. No matter, because we’ll all remember his inspiring battle cry from “Predator,” the Arnold Schwarzenegger jungle movie in which, after being zapped by a space alien, Ventura snarls, “I ain’t got time to bleed.”
Anyway, Tim, you were the defensive coordinator for Mankato West High School when it won the Minnesota 4A state championship 25 years ago. Here’s what Lance Resner, a linebacker on that Scarlets team, told the New York Times about how you fired guys up: “Tim came in with a different swagger. We were pretty dog [crap] for a long time.”
So what would you do to stop Caleb Williams and the Bears, a team full of expectations but also coming off a pretty dog-poop past?
Got a scheme, coach? Your old players said Mankato West didn’t pass the ball much. And your defense likely never saw a quarterback with Williams’ cannon arm and elusiveness.
But if you could game-plan past Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly and our own big lineman, JB Pritzker, to win Kamala Harris’ running-mate nod, perhaps you can figure out Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron’s stacked offensive scheme.
