I wonder if this too is the Trump effect to some degree?

Yesterday in sportsball, the Chicago Bears’s coaching staff pulled off what was objectively the worst bit of clock management in NFL history, or at least as far back as there are statistics available to evaluate the terribleness of such decisions.

What the Bears managed to do was to use up the final 32 seconds of the clock while in range for a tying field goal attempt with a time out remaining when the clock expired. It turns out this situation had come up a little more than 1,500 times over the past 30 years in NFL games (team down between one and three points, in FG range, 30 seconds left, with a time out), and the previous total number of games in which the clock had expired with the team still having their time out had been zero. So clap your hands and say yeah.

Chicago Bears head coach Matt Eberflus is facing withering criticism after the team’s 23-20 loss to the Detroit Lions on Thursday, and he’s left to explain his actions at the end of the game.

Eberflus decided not to call a timeout in the final 30 seconds of the game, even as his offense scrambled to get in position for what would ultimately be the final play of the game, but he defended that decision in his postgame press conference.

“I like what we did there,” he said.

Eberflus did concede the play “didn’t work out the way we wanted it to,” but went on to explain that the Bears had planned to run a passing play over the middle of the field, and then to call a timeout to secure the ball in field goal position.

Instead, the team scrambled to get set up after Caleb Williams was sacked with 36 seconds remaining, and by the time his pass to Rome Odunze bounced off the Ford Field turf, the game was over and the Bears had lost their sixth straight contest.

The coach said that he wanted the players and coaches to “do a better job together” in the future after the astonishing sequence, which dropped the Bears to 4-8 on the season and Eberflus to 5-19 in his coaching career in one-score games.

“I like what we did there.” This by itself should get Eberflus fired.

I have no idea if this particular instance of flat out refusing to accept any responsibility for a world historical clusterfuck is a product of the diffuse effects of Trumpist culture, but be that as it may this kind of thing is symptomatic of the example being set for everyone by Jesus Christ’s favorite president.