Bear Down Baffa

The mother #$%@ing Giants took one out of our own #$%@ing playbook with a “get out-played for 50-some minutes and then pull a #$%@ing horseshoe out of your @%$ in the final #$%@ing minutes” come-from-behind win.  As is typical this season, the Bears never fail to fail. 

This was the game we had to win.  This one win could have made up for each of our six losses at once.  It would have given us our entire season back with one blow of the referee’s whistle.  There was a symmetry to it – three teams in our division would have been neck, neck and neck at .500.  It was the game that we absolutely needed to win – that we could have won, that we should have won.  We intercepted their second pass of the game, and then marched 80 yards and scored a TD on our first drive.  We outplayed the 3^rd ranked team in the NFC for three quarters, and were up two scores with ten minutes to play.  And then, like a whore does her John’s John, we blew it.  We choked. We ate a big heaping pile of steaming shit.  Say it however you want, it all means the same thing – we lost for the seventh time this season.  And it was our fifth in five tries following a win.

We were so close.  The whole game I was thinking, “Oh yeah, we have this game.  We’ve got them right where we want them.”  Adrian Peterson (149 yards on 29 touches) showed the Bears haven’t kept him on the roster solely because of his special teams skills.  I’m not saying he’s the next LT or Jason Westbrook, or even the “other” Adrian Peterson, but he can do the job our type of team needs him to do.  And based on the type of team we are, it’s hard to point the finger at any one thing that caused this loss (other than us sucking, of course), or the other six.  But if forced to pick one thing, I think we really need to take a look at our offensive line.  And I’m talking from Olin Kreutz (one of my favorite all-time Bears O-Lineman), to John Tait (the big money free agent acquisition that was supposed to redefine our line), to Fred “Doo-Doo Brown” Miller, who it appears can simply no longer play in the NFL.  We otherwise have the basic offensive tools.  Rex isn’t that bad, our receivers aren’t bad (when they catch the ball), our TE’s are actually solid, and I like the prospect of Garrett Wolfe down the road.  But we need to start over from square one when it comes to our O-Line.  I think that’s where it all starts.

OK, so now that I’ve vented and had an afternoon to overcome the hangover (both literally and figuratively), there is some news that you may want to sit down for.  This is very hard to write, considering I’ve covered the Bears since about 1968, and consider so many of you, our readers, like family.  But no matter how much I still don’t believe it, and how much I don’t want it to be, the Bears are still technically only a single game out of the post season.  Impossible, you say?  Like I said last week, we’ll need help.  But IF we win out (and I’m talking a 700 point sized font “IF”), we could still somehow have a shot at the final Wild Card spot.  And I’m not saying that to woo anybody.  I’m out; I’ve officially resigned myself to the fact that our season is over.  But that spot is still there for the taking.  So as much as I’d like to call it a season, apparently we’re still open for business.  Let’s take a look at how things shake up if by some Ditka-sized hurricane of a miracle we win out.

If We Win Out (Yeah, Right!)
We play Washington (Thurs), Minnesota (12/17), Green Bay (12/23) and New Orleans (12/30).  The Giants virtually clinched the first Wild Card Sunday.  The second remains a toss-up between eight teams: 6 – 6 Detroit, Minnesota and Arizona; and 5 – 7 Carolina, Washington, New Orleans, Philadelphia and the suck-ass Bears.

First, let’s address the help we need.  Having lost twice to Detroit, they beat us in the head-to-head tie-breaker, so their one game lead is really two.  But they’ve lost four in a row since my good pal Andy predicted they’d finish 8 – 8 back when they were 6 – 2.  We’ll also need Arizona, who has won three of four, to lose one by someone else’s hand as they remain a game up on us, and we “may” need Carolina to lose at least one of their final four.  A tie-breaker with either of them would be difficult to determine at this stage (NFL.com/tie breaking procedures) because we don’t play either this year.  Even so, there is a very likely chance that all three of these teams finish no better than 2 – 2, which is all we would need if we win out.

So for sake of argument, let’s say all of the above help comes through.  If we do win our remaining four games, no matter what Minnesota, Washington, New Orleans and Philly do the rest of the way, these wins (and a previous win over Philly) would ensure us a tie-breaker over each of them.  So, even though I don’t want us to be, we’re still in this thing.  Lovie Smith said it best: “We’ll continue to play until they tell us we’re out of it…you just have to keep playing and see what happens.”  But don’t get your hopes up.  Even if we squeak into the post season, we’ll undoubtedly play one game on the road and lose.

This Week’s Challenge – Just How Bad Did the Bears Blow It?
We’re reaching out to you, the fans, to help us summarize just how bad the Bears sucked the big one on Sunday.  So click below to post your thoughts.  We will review each submission and select a winning post for the summary that is the most clever, the most real, and the most insulting to our embarrassment of a team.  We will announce the winner in our next post following the Bear’s next debacle.  Feel free to post comments on other readers’ comments as well, and so on.  Take advantage of the blog.  She’s there – like a dirty, dirty tramp – for you to use at your leisure.

© 2007

This entry was posted on Mon, Dec 3, 2007 at 5:37 pm 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.