Bear Down Baffa

We never doubted the Bears would win this game at the Bear Down Baffa blog.  Not when we learned that Urlacher was out for the season, not when we refused to mention it last week, and not even as Pittsburgh lined up for each of their two missed FG’s.  After a staff meeting early last week, we learned that Pitt’s best player, Troy Polamalupadupu, was out.  And the simple math there is that Polamalu is better than Urlacher.  So the injury advantage goes to the Bears.  You add in the fact that this was our home opener and we had a big loss last week, and I was convinced it was a done deal. 

Things didn’t start off on the right foot, however.  After we started the game 3-and-out, Pittsburgh marched 92 yards on an 8-minute scoring drive.  After making it look so easy, who woulda thought they’d only score once more over the next 50 minutes.  Their two missed field goals certainly helped.  But what some may overlook is that they were kicking FG’s because the Bears D stopped them.  Alex Brown got a huge sack on 3rd and 8 at our 11, pushing Pitt back 9 yards on the first attempt from 38 yds.  And we forced an incompletion on 3rd and 2 ahead of the second missed kick, from 43 yds.  Call it luck, but we forced them to make plays they couldn’t make.  And the person most excited to see that was Chicago’s savior, Jay “Jesus Christ” Cutler. 

Cutler not only beat two-time Supa Bow champ Ben Roethlisberger, who is 60-23 (72%) as a starter (including the post season), but he also had better passing numbers 27-38 (71.1%), 236 yds, 2 TD, 0 INT, 1 Sack, 104.7 QBR than Big Ben 23-35 (65.7%), 221 yds, 1 TD, 1 INT, 2 Sacks, 80.8 QBR.  That’s a pretty big improvement over last week’s 4 INT’s.  Cutler’s QBR was more than double last week’s (43.2), statistically the worst game of his life, ever.  AND we got the W.  As we said last week, he would be fine, and so would the Bears.  

Not only were they f-i-n-e fine, but they won me 5 BIG ONES.  I started getting a feeling sometime around Tuesday morning, once I stopped crying from Sunday’s loss.  I just thought that there was no way this team – especially Jay the Butler Cutler – was going to lose this game at home and fall to 0-2.  If for no other reason than for Urlacher, who would probably have felt the third worst in the city of Chicago (behind me and Cutler) if that were to happen.  And by Wednesday, I started to piece it all together.  By Thursday, I was absolutely convinced.  And by Friday, I was looking for someone to beat up on the streets downtown to prove my point.  When I couldn’t find any old ladies or unparented kids, I decided I’d instead find someone to bet.  And it turned out to be an executive at work. 

We were talking sports during a group lunch, and of course the Bears came up.  And he was the first to mention Cutler not looking too good.  So I pounced on the opportunity to tout my newly found confidence in our squad.  I told him I thought the Bears would pull off this upset – not that they would cover the spread, but that they would win the game outright.  And when he said he didn’t think that would happen, I asked if he cared to make it interesting.  Taken aback by my confidence, he asked what the spread was.  Since no one knew – and there were at least 5 other people watching this go down – he checked the paper to find the spread.  When he announced the Bears were getting 3 pts, I walked over and shook his hand.  It was on!  I told him I would not use his name here, though, to protect his privacy.  But I will say that his title rhymes with “resident.” 

We’re back.

15-1, here we come! 

Super Bowl, Super Bears! 

© 2009

This entry was posted on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:01 am and is filed under l) 2009 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.