Bear Down Baffa

Keep hope alive, keep hope alive! 

On a beautifully breezy 80 degree day in Chicago on Sunday, I parred the last hole of what is most likely my last round of golf for the year with just enough time to make it home for the Bears kickoff.  And how lucky I feel that my golf season was the only season that ended today, as the Bears win kept them in the hunt.  At least for one more week.

3 – 4 sounds a heckuva lot better than 2 – 5.  And this win is doubly special.  With our season (once again) on the line, not only were we able to keep our post season hopes alive, but we were also able to exact some revenge on the Philadelphia Eagles.  They had beaten us five times in a row, including a playoff game in ’02 when Philly QB and Chicago native Donovan McNabb dunked the ball on our goal post after scoring a TD late in the game.  I’ve hated him ever since.

It’s no wonder they call this game “foot” ball.  In a week that featured Tennessee kicker Rob Bironas going a record 8 for 8, the Bear and Eagle kickers combined to go 7 for 8 themselves, making up all the scoring for the first 55 minutes.  And with Robbie Gould missing his first FG attempt and the “Phillies” kicking away from Devin Hester all day, the foot became all the more important to the game’s outcome.  But even though Hester hardly touched the ball all day, the field position their kicking around him gave us turned out to be a fairly big advantage, one that may have been worth more than him returning one for a score.  Starting on your own 40 versus your own 20 adds up over the course of four quarters, even though the Bears only had nine possessions all day.  The better your average starting field position, the more likely you are to put drives together.  And putting together several drives helped to keep our defense off the field for far longer than the 30 seconds it takes “Six” to run one back and for us to kick the ball back to them.

Our defense being fresh really showed late in the game.  In the Eagles third to last drive, we stopped them on three downs, with Tommie Harris sacking McNabb twice, forcing them to punt.  And even though they scored their first TD on their next drive, our defense came up big again, stopping Philly when they started on their own 40 with four minutes to play as they tried to run out the clock on us.  Helped by a holding penalty and a sack by Adam Archuleta (his first as a Bear, and only the second in his last 29 games), we held them to just 14 yards and one first down, forcing them to punt with almost two minutes left in the game.  Unfortunately for us, Philly saved their best kick for last, backing us up to our own end zone and sticking us with tough field position for the first time in the game.  But those successful drives that helped our defense give us the chance to come back also started to open things up for us offensively, eventually leading to a magical last-minute drive to win the game.

Down by four and pinned on our own 3-yard line with under two minutes left in the game and no timeouts remaining, we drove the length of the field and put the biscuit in the basket on the road for a victory, just the third in our first seven games.  Lovie Smith said, “We practiced that situation, but I can say we never practiced that situation from the 3-yard line with no time outs.”  This drive was all Brian Griese.  Like a pro QB does, he led us to victory.  With the headset in his helmet incommunicado, (one player on the field gets to communicate with the sidelines, designated by the green dot on his helmet), he called some of the plays on the 11-play drive himself.  He was only able to get calls from the sideline when the clocked stopped.  And with no time outs he could only spike the ball and lose the down to stop the clock if we got first downs.  And on that drive, he was able to get four of them.  Not counting his two spikes to stop the clock, Griese went 7 of 9 to five different receivers on this drive, including two to Hester and the 15 yarder to Muhsin Muhammad for the score (MOOOS!).

The keys to success of this dramatic drive were our receivers getting open, our offensive line giving Griese time, and our receivers catching everything thrown at them.  But most importantly, it was Griese’s maneuvering in the pocket and his composure on the field.  And as good as he was on the last drive, he also had a good day on the whole.  He was 27 of 41(66%) for 317 yards, 1 TD, no INT’s and a QB Rating of 97.8.  Throwing to nine different receivers for the third straight game, Griese also had a fumble instead ruled an offensive penalty (with our retaining possession) for the second time this season.  Considering our QB luck since McMahon left the helm, you’ve gotta love having a QB who, even when he fumbles, doesn’t turn the ball over.

Griese has been steady in the starter role, not counting his first start (his first in two years) which we kind of have to concede to rustiness.  And I think most would agree he’s doing better than Rex.  This was evidenced in part on Sunday by our two TE’s – Greg “Jimmy” Olsen and Desmond Clark “Kent” combining for 80 yards on 9 catches.  And in the four games since Griese took over, they have a combined 31 catches for 354 yards and 3 TD’s.  Griese brings a presence with him to the huddle, a cool confidence that Rex once had.  But the difference is that Griese is a proven guy.  He’s absolutely good enough to start on a team that needs a “slightly better than average” QB, and that’s what we are.  To date Griese is 102 for 163 (63%) for 1,203 yards (300/game), 8 TD’s, 6 INT’s and a QBR of 86.  By contrast, Rex was 47 for 89 (53%) for 500 yards (167 per game), 1 TD, 6 INT’s and a QBR of 45.  Not even close.

The other thing that’s become evident is that we are officially a second half team.  This is our new game plan.  We come out of the gate nice and relaxed, and don’t get going until after half-time.  We just play the first half like it’s the warm-up round for the second half because that’s when the game is really going to start for us.  We then come out revved up and focused, and deliver the key punches we need to knock them out.  We also run the football, as Lovie has said on more than one occasion, and we also try to win the turnover battle.  Today we tied in that battle.  Even though we didn’t get a turnover for the second straight week (and only the second time in 23 games), we had no turnovers ourselves.

Funny, not getting any turnovers, not turning the ball over at all, not running very well, only punting twice, passing almost twice as much as we ran, and not hearing from Hester all day don’t seem to be part of the Bears genre of football.  I guess this year is the Bears bizarro world, where everything is opposite.  So maybe we’ll get all of our losses out early this year, compared to last year when we started 7 – 0.  And maybe our offense will carry us in SPITE of our defense.  To me, it doesn’t matter.  If we can beat a Detroit team that we couldn’t beat on the road a few weeks ago at home next Sunday, we could close out the first half of our season going 3 – 1, and head into our perfectly timed bye week at 4 – 4.  So the question is can we win two in a row?  As you know, I’m biased.  But I gotta like our chances.  And that would mean it’s on in the second half, and we’re dressed sharp (like Muhsin Muhammad) for the occasion.

© 2007

This entry was posted on Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 2:40 am and is filed under n) 2007 Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.