What Lovely Weather
#. February 1, 2022
#-1. Lake Forest, Illinois, USA
#-2. Halas Hall
#-3. Chicago Bears Front Office
The Chicago Bears' rebuild — botched from the very moment they drafted Mitchell Trubisky — was still, unmistakably, a work in progress.
They'd had every chance to tear the roster down and restock it with genuinely good players, yet former general manager Ryan Pace and his cronies had somehow managed to make the damaging choice every single time.
George McCaskey had watched a man wreck his team simply because his mother was fond of him. He meant to set the clock straight starting now — but in the wake of everything Ryan Pace had touched, not so much as a blade of grass was growing.
Which was exactly why these men had to—
"We move Khalil Mack."
The team had to finish dead last next season. George McCaskey, mid-conversation with newly appointed GM Ryan Poles, nodded as he said it.
"What kind of return can we get for him?"
"We'll have to open talks and find out."
"Fair enough."
The Chicago Bears didn't own a first-round pick this year. Ryan Pace had torched it the season before.
He'd brought in a bridge quarterback for ten million dollars — and then, precisely two months later, drafted a rookie quarterback by the name of Justin Fields.
The real problem was what it cost. Fields was never supposed to fall out of the top twenty, yet to grab him at eleventh overall, Pace had shipped the Giants last year's first and fourth, plus this year's first on top of it.
And had Fields actually shown anything last season worth that price tag? No, he had not — which was exactly why Bears fans spent the entire season calling for Ryan Pace's head.
He was a good man. As a general manager, he was a flat-out failure.
"We're done needing good men."
"Understood."
"This team needs a competent GM. Even if the rest of the league calls him a son of a bitch, I want someone who can make the Bears a powerhouse again."
"That's why you brought me in."
"I'm counting on it."
Within the world of the draft and trades, the NFL becomes a town overrun by swindlers and backstabbers. Everyone is out to deceive everyone else, shamelessly inflating the value of their own assets or telling bald-faced lies just to drag their counterpart into the mud.
Ryan Pace had fallen for those lies far too easily — and worse, he'd never even kept a smart man around to catch them for him.
A kind, incompetent leader. That was George McCaskey's conclusion.
We don't need another one of those.
After Ryan Poles left the owner's office, George McCaskey sipped his coffee and reviewed the Bears' future blueprint once more.
Barring any surprises from the Omicron variant, the league office would announce a rule change at the NFL GM meetings in March — a trade regulation covering draft picks, already being called the Dwayne Moi Stone Rule. Chicago was banking on the nine guaranteed picks it stood to secure through it.
Plus a sweetener or two.
There was no need to drag this out. A single pick — first overall in the 2023 Draft — would finish the rebuild on the spot.
Secure the right players with the guaranteed draft capital running from 2023 through 2025, backfill them with suitable veterans, and a new team takes shape. Had the Bears not drafted Justin Fields last year, the calculus would've been different — but for now, this was the right path.
Except for one small thing.
Click.
"Uncle!"
"Haah... Joanne. Do you ever knock anymore?"
Exactly one person existed who opposed George McCaskey's plan with burning passion.
His niece — slated to be hired as the Bears' salary cap manager the moment she graduated from Stanford next year — Joanne McCaskey agreed with tanking but had violently rejected the idea of trading the first overall pick.
Her argument boiled down to this:
A quarterback like Dwayne Moi Stone—
"I already told you! He's a once-in-thirty-years talent!"
"Haah... if that's the bar, then Mahomes already filled that quota."
"Of course Mahomes counts too! But this man is beyond that! I'm saying this as someone who's been obsessed with football since I was four — if you ship out a first-round pick for him, you will genuinely be making a mistake."
"...You do realize I've been watching football longer than you've been alive?"
"Uncle!"
"Hoo."
Letting out a long sigh, George McCaskey rose from his seat and gestured for his niece to sit. Then he pulled a chocolate milk from the fridge — the one thing reliably capable of calming her down — and set it in front of her.
Joanne McCaskey picked up the bottle without a word and cracked the cap. Across from her, the president of the Chicago Bears laid out the cold, practical reasons Justin Fields couldn't simply be cast aside.
First:
"We signed him to a deal worth eighteen-point-five million total last year."
"More Ryan Pace masterstroke material, I see."
"Please, spare me... haah. Anyway. If we cut Justin loose next year, we're throwing nine and a half million dollars straight into the wind. I trust I don't need to explain the salary cap implications to you?"
"Of course not."
Clunk.
Joanne McCaskey set down the drained bottle of chocolate milk. Her expression had softened considerably — but her position hadn't budged an inch.
"He's worth it."
"Joanne."
"I mean it, Uncle! There is not a shred of personal feeling in this! At the office, anyway."
George McCaskey knew perfectly well that his niece harbored a certain... interest in Dwayne Moi Stone as a man.
For an uncle who adored the girl to a nearly pathological degree, that was the single most compelling reason not to draft Dwayne Moi Stone — but talking Joanne out of one of her stubborn fits at this magnitude was an uphill battle.
The silver lining was that, at worst, she'd be the only one suffering for it. He'd even been toying with the idea that instead of putting her straight to work after graduation, he'd ship her off on a tour of Europe.
However—
"Oh, one more thing."
"Now what?"
"I graduate and come straight here. So don't even think about sweet-talking me with some cruise around the Mediterranean. Understood?"
"How on earth did you know about that?!"
"Because I'm me. Anyway — think it over."
Click.
Even among the McCaskeys, Joanne was exceptionally sharp — a capable, audacious twenty-something blessed with both beauty and brains.
Crowned Miss Stanford as a freshman, she drew swarms of admirers among the male student body, but the man she actually dated was a somewhat older, well-known entrepreneur from L.A. He was accomplished and every bit the gentleman, but Joanne had no intention of ever walking down an aisle with him, so she ended things at the appropriate moment.
She knew her own worth.
And so—
"You're giving me a headache."
George McCaskey had persuaded his niece to join the Bears because the vast majority of her passing remarks over the years had turned out to be right.
The signature example was the 2017 Draft that produced Mitchell Trubisky — back then, she'd argued they should trade down, take Patrick Mahomes, and pocket extra assets on top.
Nobody took the high schooler seriously at the time. But George McCaskey remembered.
"Hoo."
The commonsensically correct decision — or the decision that would come draped in condemnation.
To be fair, for a talent on the level of Dwayne Moi Stone, even Bears fans would sign off on parting with Justin Fields. But they would point fingers and mutter moron at the man who'd thrown away the quarterback they'd lost last year's capital for.
That condemnation didn't frighten him.
It was simply hard to admit you'd been wrong.
The future of the Chicago Bears — a rebuild now fully mapped out — appeared, for the moment, to hinge on a certain quarterback in Georgia.
#. February 2, 2022
#-1. Allen Park, Michigan, USA
#-2. Detroit Lions Front Office
In the exact opposite sense from Chicago, the Detroit Lions were just as desperate for the quarterback from Georgia.
They were also the team that had opposed the league office's proposed rule change most furiously — because two years of groundwork were about to go up in smoke.
The Lions had surrendered five first-round picks and five second-round picks, and still stood in a position to keep stockpiling rookies.
In other words, they could keep injecting a steady stream of talent into the roster without weakening the team one bit — and the rule change had just yanked them back onto level footing with everyone else.
But the Lions remained confident. Plan B existed.
"I like this kid."
"He'll be great, no question."
"Yeah. And he's a local boy."
"The Michigan fans will love him."
"He'll hold down the fort alongside Moi."
"...."
Following Jacksonville — which had "earned" the No. 1 pick again even after adding Trevor Lawrence — the Detroit Lions sat at thirty-first.
What stung so badly was that the presumptive first overall pick in the coming draft was a local boy, born in Michigan and raised through Michigan high schools.
As for his ability, it spoke for itself. Last season he set Michigan's single-season sack record with fourteen, and if not for the four-man frenzy of quarterback prodigies hogging the spotlight, he'd have been a legitimate Heisman finalist.
Aidan Hutchinson.
Michigan's defensive end.
But word was the Jacksonville Jaguars had already circled Hutchinson's name — so Detroit had also lined up its alternatives in advance.
Travon Walker (DE).
Jordan Davis (DT).
If they missed out on Aidan Hutchinson, those were the names Detroit would call — the two pillars of this year's Georgia defense.
The March combine could certainly shuffle the board, but absent some disqualifying red flag, one of the three would be joining the team. No question.
"So what do we still need?"
"Just about everything."
"I know. I'm asking what Moi needs. That kid deserves a real weapon. Some quarterbacks swing a cannon like an axe — this one actually knows how to load the shell and fire it properly."
"What about Dotson?"
"Penn State? Nah. He's not the fit."
The meeting currently underway between Detroit's GM and his scouting group was being conducted entirely on the premise that Dwayne Moi Stone would be a Lion.
It made for a fascinating tableau — one that would have broken their quarterback Jared Goff's heart to witness.
But this was the future Detroit was painting. And they were confident it would become reality.
"We need a tight end too."
"There's nobody eye-catching this year. A few guys worth scratching at in the later rounds, but I don't want to waste the capital. Whew—"
Brad Holmes exhaled a long breath and pressed both hands to the crown of his head.
"This year and next are everything to us."
"...."
"...."
"This franchise's fate is riding on it. We probably won't be bad enough to finish last again next year — so this winter, I want to bring in drool-worthy talents we can flip as trade chips. We'll use them as trade bait, keep the guys we draft for the team. These kids. And Moi will gift the Lions the legacy of glory. Close your eyes — you can see it, can't you?"
The Detroit Lions were a team of tragedy. Short on skill, short on ability — all of it.
They'd sniffed the playoffs now and then, but a franchise founded in 1930 had managed just seventeen postseason appearances. Four championships, sure — every one of them before the Super Bowl era, and since then they hadn't so much as set foot on a stage for a title.
Since the Super Bowl era began, their playoff win count stood at exactly one. People call the Cleveland Browns the Factory of Sadness, but the truth is this place runs it better. They weren't even popular — which only meant fewer eyes on the misery.
Which made the longing all the more desperate.
Behind Brad Holmes's closed eyelids, the image rendered in perfect clarity: Dwayne Moi Stone, the man who'd turned the Lions into a nationally beloved team, hoisting the Lombardi.
"We've already turned this team around for the better."
"...."
"It started with bringing in Dan Campbell. In barely a year, he ran every last bad thing out of this building. We were a losing team, but we fought hard, and even on the days we lost, we believed tomorrow was ours. That's team identity. The right team identity. This year we paint it with color, and the final piece — Dwayne Moi Stone — we slot into place. Damn it. If we can get him next year, I'd give up one of my own eyes. He's a man worth that much."
Brad Holmes's sincerity — growing more desperate, more infectious with every passing day — was becoming the present tense of the Detroit Lions.
And not far from here,
a certain man was feeling exactly the same way.
#. February 3, 2022
#-1. Maui, Hawaii, USA
#-2. Paia
#-3. The Stone Family Home
Experiencing the WWE Royal Rumble had been one of the most electrifying things I'd lived through in this life.
Football excepted, obviously.
Anyway. Having closed out that happy stretch of travels, I'd said goodbye to Wade Buck three days ago and flown home to Hawaii, where I was now doing precisely nothing.
Truly, absolutely nothing. I'd wake before dawn, run the beach for an hour, rinse off quickly, then take the Tesla Model S Elon Musk had gifted me to a gym nearby. Two hours of lifting later I'd be home around eight in the morning, and that was when I ate breakfast alone.
"Mmm. As expected."
One thing that had surprised me on this trip back to Hawaii: my maternal grandmother was here.
She was so unpredictable and so hard to reach that finding her in my house wasn't strange in itself — but still, you'd think she could've given her own grandson a heads-up. I hadn't bought a gift for her.
So yesterday, we went shopping downtown together to fix that.
Right now I was eating Korean side dishes, stew, and bulgogi that my grandmother had made with her own hands — and honestly, in pure flavor, it edged out even my paternal grandmother's cooking.
I'm sorry, Grandma! You know I love you, right?
Feeling guilty for no good reason, I pressed my palms together toward the direction of Oahu and demolished the mountain of rice I'd piled up.
"Whew. That hit the spot."
Shhhh—
By the calendar, Georgia's spring semester was underway right now — but I'd opted for summer term instead. I'd managed my credits so well across my first three semesters that even skipping spring and cramming everything into summer left me ahead of just about everyone else.
Actually graduating from college would have to wait until my NFL career was over, of course. Either way, I wasn't taking spring classes.
Instead, I'd spend February with my family in Hawaii, then from March train for two weeks at a national academy called Jenkins Elite. That meant I'd be shuttling between campus and Atlanta until spring drills kicked off on March 22nd.
Clatter.
Clatter.
Dishes done, I dried my wet hands haphazardly on my clothes and decided to head over to Mom's restaurant to see Kala.
"...Man, what lovely weather."
It was currently 72 degrees in Hawaii.
The sky stretched overhead, clear and cloudless.
#. February 5, 2022
#-1. Athens, Georgia, USA
#-2. University of Georgia
#-3. Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall
#-4. Head Coach's Office
"It's quiet in here."
"Haha. It is."
"He was a guy with real influence."
"That, and the ones who left? Every last one of them was a leader on this team."
The joy of back-to-back national championships had already faded into yesterday's news, and now Georgia found itself worrying over the crater left by the mass exodus.
No fewer than fifteen players had declared for the NFL Draft, and two rotation-level starters had chosen to transfer through the portal. Jermaine Burton in particular — already in the doghouse for his halfhearted attitude — stunned the campus by choosing Alabama.
Right now every eyeball in the sport was glued to the Super Bowl, so talk of college football had gone all but silent. But once the draft wrapped, the worried voices would multiply.
And yet, this was precisely when a good coach earned his keep.
Luckily, Georgia was stacked with excellent ones. The guys who'd played as backups last year had the talent to be coached up to roughly the level of that historically great front seven.
The offense wasn't a real concern. Broderick Jones could anchor the left tackle spot Jamaree Salyer vacated, and the JML trio of Jordan Addison, AD Mitchell, and Ladd McConkey remained the best receiving corps in the nation.
Best of all, there was Dwayne Moi Stone.
The only mild worry was the gap at running back — something they planned to drill hard starting with spring sessions.
"Next year's the bigger problem, though."
"Haha. No argument there."
The reason Kirby Smart could afford to be this relaxed was that he knew the truly brutal stretch didn't arrive until after next season.
He'd at least managed to land a four-star quarterback in Gunner Stockton, but as of now the staff was scanning the portal for next year's transfers.
Worrying ahead of time solved nothing, though — so Kirby Smart chose to live in the present.
Georgia was unquestionably weaker than last year. But the rest of the SEC had lost plenty of its edge too.
Since the COVID-19 era, the talent that had once pooled in the SEC was dispersing across other conferences, and rival programs hadn't restocked nearly as well as they'd hoped.
Travis Hunter, for one, had snubbed the FBS entirely for the FCS, and quarterback prize Drew Allar had turned down SEC scholarship offers to head to Penn State.
A new current, carved out by the pandemic age.
But Georgia kept dreaming of the summit.
With their extraordinary quarterback at their side.