Year 20 like no other
Broadcasting road games from a kitchen. Cobwebs in the seats. Play-by-play veteran Joniak has had to adapt this season.
Let’s face it. Jeff Joniak and Tom Thayer were as bummed as any Bears fans last Sunday afternoon when quarterback Mitch Trubisky made that unthinkable decision and that reckless throwinto the end zone in the final minute of the first half.
First-and-10 from the Jaguars 13-yard line. Thirty-five seconds left. Let the call fromWBBM-AM780 set the stage.
Joniak: “Cole Kmet out to the numbers left. Mooney comes to the right side of Mitchell Trubisky. Montgomery to his left, double-stacked receivers to the right. Snap, back, Trubisky looking to throwleft. Trubisky going to roll left. Trubisky moving around in the pocket. Weaving. Rooolllling. Eyes down field. Throws into the end zooonne… The pass is intercepted. In the end zone.”
Thayer: “Oh, Mitch.”
Gulp.
Immediately, the disappointment felt smothering.
Joniak: “And that is costly. Takes points off the board. And Mitchell Trubisky will want this one back.”
Thayer: “Listen, we can’t be interviewing Mitch and asking him about the plays he wants back. Because the responsibility of Mitchell Trubisky is not to throw that ball in the first place. You saw the amount of dark jerseys that were in the end zone.”
Joniak: “It boils down to almost a Hail Mary-like throw. From inside the red zone. Right? That’s too many defenders.”
And yet just two plays and a minute later, Trubisky’s turnover was wiped away by a Roquan Smith interception of Mike Glennon. And then a gimme 10-yard completion to Cole Kmet. And then a 40-yard Cairo Santos field goal.
The Bears led 13-10 at halftime, caught their breath and then came out after the intermission with arguably their most dominating quarter all season. They outgained the Jaguars 166-8. With Trubisky leading the charge, they scored 21 points and began another touchdown drive before the quarter ended.
For Joniak, that third-quarter eruption provided amuch-needed 44-minute adrenaline rush in a runaway 41-17 victory. He remainedrightontopof the action for every play. Only hewasn’t.
Instead of calling the game from the visitor’s radio booth at TIAA Bank Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla., Joniak and Thayer were where they’ve been for the last seven Bears road games: on the ninth floor ofTwo Prudential Plaza in downtown Chicago, 1,062 miles from the game. In a culinary studio book-ended by a stainless steel refrigerator and a stove. Positioned beneath an exhaust hood in front of a food-prep counter and staring at a collection of six monitors with different feeds of the game.
Welcome to the show during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adapt and make the best of things.
“This,” Joniak says, “has been different. And in someways, it has been difficult.”
On Sunday, Joniak will be in person at Soldier Field for Bears versus Packers, calling the final regular-season game of his 20th year as the Bears’ radio play-by-play announcer. A milestone year has been so much different than any before it. Uncomfortable. Unnatural. Unreal. But hey, football has been played. And Joniak has been able to call it. Every snap.
Even if his surroundings have frequently been abnormal. “Better than I expected,” Joniak says. “Do I want to continue to do this in the future? Absolutely not. I need to be where the action is.”
On Sunday, he will be. Bears-Packers? Under the Soldier Field lights in Week 17? With the Bears getting another swing at their rival? With a ticket to the playoffs there for them if they win? Inject this all directly into Joniak’s veins. “Tremendous,” he says. “Just absolutely tremendous.”
No wonder the 58-year-old voice of the Bears was both euphoric and exhausted toward the end of the win over the Jaguars. No wonder he was — as always — so wired and ecstatic and full of anticipation as he steered the broadcast across the finish line.
“A41-17 rip job of the Jacksonville Jaguars! Congratulations all around for Matt Nagy and his staff and his players. The game was tied at 10. TheBears wentup41-10. NickFoles will take a knee. And that’ll do it. … Hugs all around. TheBears are back over .500 at 8-7. It sets up a Week 17 matchup against their hated rivals fromacross the border, the Green Bay Packers, for a chance to get into theNFC playoffs as the seventh seed.”
You knowthe rest.
“Fade. To. Black.” (Froma culinary studio, of course.)
On the first weekend of the season, Joniak, Thayer and engineer Paul Zerang drove separately, 5½ hours to Dearborn, Mich. They crashed at a Courtyard by Marriott, then teamed up the following afternoon to call a thrilling 27-24 Bears victory against the Lions in the oddest football environment any of them ever had been in.
Attendance: 0.
The hum of the Ford FieldHVACsystem became difficult to ignore.
Thayer felt a tinge of nostalgia, thinking back to his USFL playing days when the crowds were often sparce. “But,” Thayer
says, “in terms of theNFL? Ina stadiumthat size? In connection with the newness of it all where we hadn’t had even played any preseason games? It was a totally new experience.”
Thatwas the only road game theWBBM crew attended this season. The other seven featured remote broadcasts from that popup kitchen on the ninth floor of Prudential.
In the interest of safety and continued health, major changes became necessary. Air travel was strongly discouraged. A new game-dayworkspacewas prepped.
Joniak’s original “think big” proposal to be wherever the Bears were included a mobile home and a hired driver and a pitch for him, Thayer and Zerang to take a series of Griswold-like trips.
To Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C. To Los Angeles andNashville, Tenn. To Green Bay, Minneapolis and Jacksonville. “Wewere ready to go,” Joniak says. Alas, the pitch was rejected. Instead, Joniak and Thayer had to settle for a much more domesticated road-game existence.
The experience of calling games off TV monitors has been challenging. Joniak and Thayer each has his own big screen with a raw feed from whichever network is airing the game. Between them is an “All-22” view the NFL provides.
They’re doing their best to make it all work. Still, it has been different.
Joniak frequently feels more hesitant in quickly distinguishing between players. Sometimes 3s on jerseys look like 8s. And vice versa. Joniak also knows he can’t always determine what to focus on.
“When you’re at the game, you have control,” he says. “You’re there. Now? Somebody else is moving the camera around. And I knowwe’re missing things.… You’re also missing all of the nuance.”
Sometimes the game clocks on the TV feed and the All-22 feed don’t match up, creating “trust issues” for Joniak.
Unlike in normal times, Joniak and Thayer don’t have their spotter beside them to help identify the tackler on each play.
Statistician Doug Colletti, meanwhile, whoprovides valuable assistance determining the gains of plays or the distance of field-goal attempts while also feeding Joniak note cards and sticky notes with important nuggets and contextual notes, has beenworking remotely aswell.
Colletti’s messages now arrive through a computer, sent from his home in Mount Prospect.
Says Joniak: “Those notes now come to me anywhere between 5 and 10, maybe 15 seconds after Doug hits ‘send.’ Well, when there’s 40 seconds between plays, you do the math. It does mess up your rhythm.”
Broadcasting remotely also has reduced the connection to the game, to the environment, the stage, the peripherals. Ina normal year, Joniak can monitor what’s happening on the sideline, howthe vibe in the stadium is affecting things. “Your eyes drift all over,” he says. “You’re setting the scene. You’re
feeling the crowd.”
On Sept. 27, for the first time in his life, Joniak called play-by-play for a game he wasn’t attending.
Ho-hum, right? That was the day Trubiskywas benched inAtlanta forNickFoles. Then Foles led a ridiculous fourth-quarter comeback, providing his third touchdown pass in 4½ minutes by beating an all-out Falcons blitz, throwing to the “L” in the east end zone at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and connecting for 28 yards to Anthony Miller to win the game with 1 minute, 53 seconds remaining.
At full throttle, Joniak punctuated the play with a raspy voice.
“Montgomery to his right. Slot to the left, three receivers. Tight end left side as well. Here’s the snap. Good rush. They throw as he’s hit. Into the end zone! Touchdown! Middle of the end zone! A beautifully thrown ball! To AnthonyMiller! And the Bears have the lead!”
Cool moment. No doubt.
Still, it would have been so much cooler in person.
That was another early reminder for Joniak on how much he was going to miss the mobs in 2020.
“I’m often scanning the crowd. I’m listening to the crowd,” he says. “I often use the crowd to make the moment the moment.”
Still, Joniak won’t go so far as to call this season a nightmare.
With this year’s dynamics, Joniak has accepted that he’s naturally a little more detached from everything. Even during the week, he’s not in the locker room at Halas Hall to shoot the bull with players, to take the temperature of the team, to collect a few extra nuggets for the game-day broadcast.
On game days, even when he’s at Soldier Field for the broadcast, he’s not allowed on the field where, so often, casual conversations produce new insight or a fresh angle or important context to add to the broadcast.
For now, there’s a recognition that everything is bumpier. Uncharacteristic mistakes are inevitable.
Remember the ugly interception Foles threw in the end zone against the Rams in the third quarter of Week 7? Joniak and Thayer didn’t see it quite right on their monitors and thought Troy Hill simply batted the pass away, not noticing Taylor Rapp had picked it off.
But hey, the guys aren’t not alone. Their broadcasting brethren all across the league — heck, across all sports — have made similar mistakes and have been making similar adjustments all year.
So Joniak reminds himself this is only temporary, that in 2021 hopefully, he’ll be reunited with the full game- day experience.
For now? “We’re pulling it off,” Joniak says. “But it’s not the best. Nothing can replace being there. … Especially in highly energized moments with a lot on the line.”
Homegames have been more normal but far fromnormal. Joniak, Thayer and Zerang have their setup in the radio booth above the Bears sideline. Still, all that quiet inside Soldier Field just feels so uncomfortable. Those tens of thousands of navy blue seats folded upward and unoccupied? It’s just plain wrong. Apocalyptic almost.
There’s a stillness in the air that doesn’t belong anywhere near football.
In October, Joniak agreed to do a pregame guest spot on the NFL Network before the Bears hosted theBuccaneersona Thursday night. As he took his iPad to find a location at Soldier Field with appropriate lighting for the interview, he noticed something particularly eerie.
“This isnojoke: Every seathadcobwebs,” Joniak says. “That is weird. There are cobwebs across every single section of Soldier Field. Nature has taken over.”
Joniak struggles, in fact, when he takes his headset off. It’s an almost instant depression.
“That quiet,” Joniak says, “I hate it. I hate that people can’t enjoy the experience this year.”
The elevated passion, the dramatic tension, the enthusiastic hugs between strangers help make game day game day.
“I thrive off that juice,” Joniak says. “I do. The bigger the game, the bigger the moment, that end-of-game drama in what I call the ‘nail-nibblers,’ I love that intensity.… And I thrive on that environment.”
Joniak’s first season as the WBBM play-by-play man was interrupted inWeek 2 by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. His 20th season has come amid the nation’s COVID-19 crisis.
Between those sobering bookends, he says, the adrenaline rush hasbeenincomparable.
“A lot of fun. A lot of disappointment. And a constant search to be great,” Joniak says. “That will never end.”
So now comes what could be the final game of his 20th season. We all know the matchup and the stakes and the anticipation that has been spreading across Chicago. “Absolutely can’twait,” Joniak says. The last time the Bears clinched a playoff berthwas in December 2018. With, fittingly enough, a win over the Packers at Soldier Field. Joniak’s unbridled excitement that afternoon was captured by a GoPro set up inside the broadcast booth.
Fists pumping. Arms waving. The volume increasing.
“It has been an anguishing absence from the playoffs. Seven years, 11 months, 27 days. They go last to first and they win the NFC North. 2018 division champions!”
It’s possible a similar playoff-clinching moment might unfold Sunday evening after sunset, albeit inside a stadium with 62,372 fewer fans than therewere two years ago.
It’s also entirely possible the Bears and their fans will have their hearts ripped out once again by Aaron Rodgers and left to stomach a truly dizzying 8-8 season.
As an unapologetic homer, Joniak’s wishes are obvious. He wants playoff football. Even if it means the Bears are certain to go on the road and that there would be another broadcast or two from that kitchen counter downtown.
“There is nothing like playoff football,” Joniak says. “And Tom and I, unfortunately, have not had the luxury of calling a lot of playoff games.”
Since Joniak’s 2001 debut season, the Bears have played only eight postseason games— andwon only three.
“It’s the biggest moments that we all hope to be a part of,” he says.
Sunday qualifies — a big game with pivotal moments waiting to be documented.
The excitement is difficult to contain. This is the perfect final exam for these Bears to take. This is what Joniak lives for. In what has been an unusual season, only one more broadcast is promised.
“Let’s go,” Joniak says.