Bear Down Baffa

The Lion growled on pink ribbon day, and the Bear roared back.  The Lion growled again, and the Bear roared back again.  Then the Bear did a spinning back kick and nailed the Lion in the head, splitting it open like a grapefruit. 

Most thought we would win this game easily.  And looking back, most would say we did.  But Detroit kept it close, going into half time with the score tied at 21.  This unfortunately led to an email from a friend who questioned – even doubted – the Bear’s defense would hold up the second half.  I won’t say who it was, but he received a one-game suspension from the blog last week after admitting he’d already given up on the Bears after our first game.  Apparently he didn’t learn his lesson, as he continued his knee-jerk reaction this week, even when the more important half of the game was still yet to be played.  And almost as if the Bears D read his message, they came out and dominated the second half.  Johnny Knox(ville) ran back the opening kick-off, our defense rebounded and kept them out of the end zone the rest of the game, and the Bears went on to double the Lion’s point total.  You could say we whooped they ass.

Did the defense give up a lot of yards?  Yes, almost 400.  But they held Detroit under 100 yards rushing, had 5 sacks, a fumble recovery and an INT.  Did we give up some big drives?  Sure, they yielded over 63 yards on four separate drives, all leading to scores.  But you can afford to do that when you score early and often, and when the opponent averages starting 82 yards from your end zone.  Field position was huge in this game.  Our WORST starting position was at our 27, and Detroit’s BEST was at their 28.  We started in Detroit territory 6 of our 12 possessions, with our average starting position being the 50 yard line.  Detroit’s average start was at their 18; that’s like having to go 32 more yards than the Bears on each drive.

Matt Forte answered some questions about our recently quiet running game.  He rushed for 121 yards, beating Detroit’s 16^th ranked season average by 10, on only 12 carries.  That’s an average of 10.1 yards – four times his season average.  His first run of the day went for 61 yards, and got us on the board a play later.  His last of the day was a 37-yd TD that put the game away.  Garrett Wolfe also rushed 5 times for 22 yards.  And even Jay the Butler Cutler got in on the run.  He went 8 yards on 3 carries, his first being a third down scramble that started on the 5 and ended on a head first dive that turned into a helicopter twist carrying him through the end zone and out of bounds.  If he had had a skateboard under his feet, you’d have thought it was a sweet new X-Games maneuver.  It would have been cool if it had been planned, but it clearly wasn’t (cool or planned).  Thank God he didn’t get killed, and more importantly, thank God he got the ball inside the pylon. 

That’s the one ingredient that’s been missing offensively, and it’s nice to see we can still run the ball.  But that’s what’s great about finally getting to play with a QB.  We used to have to run in order to win.  Now we have an alternative:  the forward pass.  And sometimes even the threat it provides is enough to boost your run game.  Wow, this NFL game is so much easier when you have a QB! 

But this time, because we ran the ball well, we didn’t have to rely on Cutler.  He only threw 10 times the entire second half while we scored 5 times on 7 possessions.  Not to say he didn’t contribute, though, going 4 for 4 in the fourth quarter (including 3 first downs) on our only 2 drives, both of which ended in TD’s.  But a lot of players got in on the action.  We had 3 rushing TD’s (Forte, Wolfe and Cutler), 2 TD receptions (Greg Olsen and Kellen Davis), Johnny Knox(Ville) returned a kick-off for a TD, and Robbie Gould kicked 2 FG’s, including a career-long 52-yarder.  There was a lot of pink ribbon love going around yesterday. 

The Cutler Supremacy
Even though he wasn’t asked to do much, Jay Cutler Supreme still had another solid game.  He was 18-28 (64%), for 141 yds, 2 TD, 0 INT and a QBR of 100.4.  That’s his third game in a row with a QBR over 100, the first time a Bear has done that since 1970.  His numbers over the last 3 games are 66-93 (71%) for 624 yds, 7 TD, 1 INT and an average QBR of 110.  Compare that to Kyle Orton’s last 3 games with the Bears:  60-104 (58%) for 558 yds, 3 TD, 5 INT, and an average QBR of 65.  Everyone talked about how the Bears won with Orton, and sure, he was 21-13 (62%).  But he had Urlacher.  Cutler is now 3-1 (75%), with 2.5 of those wins coming without Urlacher.  I’d say it’s time to start putting the kid out to stud. 

So the Bears jump out to 3-1, and will remain there for the next 13 days.  With a quarter of the season over after Monday night’s game between the Vikes and the Pack, we’ll either be in a 3-way tie for first place or alone in second heading into our bye week.  Then we play four Sundays in a row; going to 2-1 Atlanta (night) and 3-1 Cincy, then hosting 0-4 Cleveland and 1-2 Arizona.  I have to say, I’m optimistic about our chances. 

15-1, here we come! 

Super Bowl, Super Bears! 

© 2009

This entry was posted on Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 7:29 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.