When Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron took some of the blame for three consecutive three-and-outs, it turned out he didn’t deserve that blame either.

An old Bears nemesis reared its ugly head in Caleb Williams’ very first home game in the preseason opener and was revisited in this week’s third episode of Hard Knocks.

Yes, the helmet microphone is broken. The Bears are coming back for another season.

Justin Fields, Mitchell Trubisky, Jay Cutler and even Nick Foles all complained that this happened one or more times during their time in Chicago.

HBO announcer Liev Schreiber pointed out at the beginning of the broadcast that Johnny Lujack was the Bears’ last All-Pro quarterback. If quarterback microphones existed back in 1950, Lujack would have had a broken one too. They didn’t even have face masks on their helmets back then, so it would have been interesting to see how long a Bears helmet microphone would have actually lasted back then.

It seems Caleb Williams has been initiated into the Bears quarterback tradition of standing in the huddle waiting for the offensive coordinator to make a play, only to have the play call come from Waldron breathing into his helmet.

Can’t the Bears get working equipment? They can pay out $110 million contracts to receivers and still not get working helmet mics.

Amazon might have something. Best Buy. Someone. Radio Shack is long gone, but the Bears’ tradition of broken helmet microphones lives on.

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This was by far the worst moment of the week on Hard Knocks, even worse than quarterback Austin Reed’s rendition of Keyshia Cole’s song “Love,” which received only a “poor” grade.

So that was the ugly part of this week’s Bears Hard Knocks: Good, Bad and Ugly.

Here are the good and the bad.

The good

Trading venues: The behind-the-scenes look at the Bears’ negotiations with Matthew Judon and Ryan Poles was an excellent study.

The same goes for the footage from draft day, when Jeff King, senior director of player personnel, is on the phone sealing a deal that will allow the Bears to get back into the fifth round and select Austin Booker.

The interesting thing about the negotiations with Judon is that they sound a little different than the narrative that Judon simply chose the Falcons over the Bears. Maybe the Patriots sent him to the Falcons because that’s where he wanted to go, but the Poles didn’t want to take a player who wasn’t going to get a contract extension.

“I don’t want the club to be stuck in a situation where we have a player who is here, we traded away a draft pick and we don’t have an agreement on the contract,” Poles said, adding that he did not want to “lose any flexibility.”

If that’s the case, no one needs to worry about them trying to trade Jets edge rusher Haason Reddick. He’s already holding out and is off contract.

Even more entertaining about this part of the show is the reveal when Poles says Montez Sweat is her #14 ranked Edge. Judon is only #50.

He is not an idiot: Backup quarterback Tyson Bagent is featured prominently in this episode, along with his arm-wrestling father Tavis. Bagent is coming off an excellent training camp and preseason and makes it clear that he doesn’t see himself as a lifelong backup, despite being a Division II product.

He said he wanted to “remind everyone that I’m not just some jerk in the quarterback room.”

Aussies, Aussies, Aussies: The episode is about Australian punter Tory Taylor and how he basically had no serious career prospects and more or less stumbled into the Aussie Rules Football conversion program that helped him become an NFL punter.

The footage from practice of Taylor throwing punts inside the 10 and then out of bounds doesn’t do justice to what he actually did during training camp. Sometimes he’ll have three or four coffin corner punts that go out of bounds inside the 5 in a single practice.

The funniest part of this segment is when Brazilian kicker Cairo Santos tells the Australian to drive on the right side of the road, even though he has been living in the US for over four years.

A very telling part of the film comes from the game, and HBO caught something that most might have missed. Backup long snapper Cameron Lyons had at least two bad snaps in this game. One was so high that Taylor had to use all his reach to catch it and bring it down for Santos.

Nerves of steel: One of the best moments of the entire show is Caleb Williams telling quarterback coach Kerry Joseph on the sidelines that he never gets nervous. At least not since his very first game in high school, when he remembers botching two snaps from center.

If your quarterback doesn’t get nervous, the battle is already won. It’s questionable whether Justin Fields could have said that after his 10-28 record and his difficulty making plays in the fourth quarter of games.

Clear evidence: Somehow the narrative was getting stronger that Keenan Allen had slowed down, wasn’t doing much training, and wasn’t in shape. This episode provided clear evidence that whoever came up with this idea needs better glasses.

Mr Nickname: Matt Eberflus has been the nickname minister since his arrival, walking through warmups with the microphone on, handing out nicknames as he walks through the stretching players.

The HBO microphone obviously works better than a helmet microphone.

The bad

Putting the cart before the horse: Kevin Warren and his team of administrators are currently busy meeting and discussing what type of seating will be needed in a specific area of ​​the new stadium.

Hey guys, you need to decide on a location for the stadium and build it before you worry about seating.

Cover: The HBO camerawork at the wet practice in the downpour was good, although they failed to capture the wet media standing outside huddled under umbrellas. The really bad part was that while they focused on the Bears slipping on the wet grass, they didn’t show the two Bengals players who suffered knee injuries at practice, even though they had a dry Payton Center with a roof a few hundred yards away.

Camp visitors: Rapper Lil Durk was a guest on the sidelines, and they devoted more time to him at practice than to another guest at Halas Hall, Ryan Poles’ college teammate Matt Ryan, a former Falcons MVP.

Nobody cares about the rapper on the sidelines at practice. There is always someone in Halas Hall during practice or camp. Reverend Jesse Jackson used to be there at camp and there was no section dedicated to him.

Simone Biles’ jacket: Speaking of courtside visitors, Simone Biles drew the ire of Bears fans on social media for wearing a Packers coat on the sidelines with the picture of her husband, Jonatha Owens, who is now with Chicago. Except the coat is a Packers coat.

The irony of all this is that in 2018, a judge dismissed a Packers fan’s lawsuit against the Bears because they denied him access to the sidelines at a Bears game when he should have been there and the reason was because he was wearing a Packers jersey. The Bears had a rule that they didn’t allow opposing team uniforms on the sidelines. Apparently that’s changed?

Can someone please get her a new jacket and a place to sit? The poor girl had her foot in a cast from the Olympics and was standing.

Twitter: BearsOnSI