Panthers vs. Bears featured just 2 GIFs of quality football

The Panthers and Bears combined to give us the most meandering and pointless 59:30 seconds of football on Sunday in a game defined by just two GIFs which made up those fleeting few seconds. We’ll get to those in a moment, but for now let’s appreciate a game that was the physical embodiment of a moist hand being forced into a rubber glove. That’s the sound of a wet fart. That’s the imagery I’m going for here.

There was almost nothing memorable about the Bears’ 17-3 win. “The Pretty Boy Assassin,” (yes that’s Mitchell Trubisky’s new nickname), looked like the opposite of his moniker — which would make him an “Ugly Man Doctor,” I suppose. Trubisky attempted just seven passes and otherwise was fine? Nothing special, nothing horrible. Much like this game. Wait... SEVEN passes?! Like 7?! That is special.

Thankfully, there was a bright spot that stopped us from wishing we spent the afternoon watching repeats of Touched By An Angel, and it was Eddie Jackson, whose two sensational 75-yard returns were the definition of being aware of your surroundings. It kicked off with a long Panthers drive being destroyed by this option fumble:

Poor Curtis Samuel. The Panthers’ second-round pick hasn’t gotten a lot of opportunities this season, and this was his chance. The whole point of drafting Samuel was to be a more-reliable Ted Ginn Jr., who the team let walk in free agency — and then this happened.

This is about Jackson though, and Jackson was equal parts lucky and awesome. In the second quarter quarter, a forced pass from Cam Newton got popped up in the air by Kelvin Benjamin like he was playing volleyball.

You can watch these two GIFs and you’ve seen the entire game, because literally everything else was a factory of sadness, for both teams. C’mon Bears fans, I know y’all are happy to get the W and you deserve it, but even you’ve got to admit that outside of Jackson the entire game was a waste of time.

The Bears ran a total of 37 offensive plays for 153 yards and a field goal. Jackson got 151 yards on his two returns and two touchdowns. Meanwhile it’s not even worth talking about the Panthers’ offense, because it’s not worth wasting breath on something so mediocre.

FINE I’ll talk about the Panthers. Newton got battered non-stop by a Bears defense that had as many sacks as 1st downs on offense, the receivers gifted two touchdowns to the defense, and Christian McCaffrey got 14 touches for a total of 46 yards. The “dancing in the backfield before getting dropped for a loss” has become his go-to rookie move, but at least he had a dope one-handed catch — because Panthers fans need a moral victory.

The Bears have matched their 2016 win total in just seven games, which is awesome. The NFL is a better place when the Bears are good, but they’re still not very good — not yet. Meanwhile it’s a relief to see the wheels come off for Carolina early, so we can all stop pretending this team is elite. Those were a fun couple of weeks right? Remember when they beat the Patriots? Yeah, that felt like a decade ago.

So cheers to the Bears, who got their third win. And while we’re at it let’s raise a glass to the Panthers as well. You both combined to give us a really boring game of football when we expected just a boring one. It’s nice to exceed expectations.