Bear Down Baffa

It should be noted that we recommend you read this article while listening to John Mellencamp’s “Crumblin’ Down.”  When the walls, come tumblin’ down.  When the walls, come crumblin’, crumblin’, dooooown.

According to my calculations, we are no longer the favorite in the NFC.  In fact, right now we’d be lucky to be the third best team in our division of four.  The “Who’s Your Daddy In” Cincinnati Bengals gave the Bears the business Sunday, taking both their lunch and their dignity.  The final was 45-10.  To put it into perspective, the score of the Bear’s dominant Super Bowl win was 46-10.  This game wasn’t that close.  Cincy scored 6 TD’s and kicked a FG on their first 7 possessions, and punted only once – with 30 seconds left in the game.  It took the Bears 8 possessions, 50 minutes and 50 plays to score their lone TD, which merely cut Cincy’s 42-point lead down to 5 TD’s.    

You don’t get to lose this badly very often, so you almost have to watch, like when you drive past an accident on the highway.  But here’s what I did, something I probably haven’t done in 35 years:   I didn’t watch the second half of the Bears game.  There, I said it.  And I’m not ashamed.  If you did the same, you shouldn’t feel guilty either.  It was actually quite therapeutic.  I just hid in my closet with my bible and prayed it would stop.  Fricken God, he hates Jay Cutler and the Bears right now. 

With all the back story heading into this game, apparently the Bears forgot to prepare.  Lovie Smith said, “I didn’t have this team ready to go…it was a total breakdown of the bus.”  My guess is he was metaphorically referring to the bus that the Bears used to get off running, and now get off punting and turning the ball over.  Apparently asking them to be ready to play 16 days a year is asking too much.  “Nothing was working today,” he said.  Well then how about, “No one was getting paid today?” 

Benson’s Revenge
I admit I wanted our D to jack up Ced Benson for holding out his rookie season, causing a divide on the team, and not amounting to much other than fumbling on his one carry in the Super Bowl before tweaking his labia.  I wanted him to finish with negative yardage, a couple fumbles and a lacerated spleen.  But I would have settled for keeping him under 100 yards and out of the end zone, neither of which we did.  The Bears came into this game ranked sixth in the NFL against the run, allowing 88.4 yards a game.  Benson passed that mark alone on his 16^th carry, with about 4 minutes left in the first half.  If the game wasn’t over at that point, it was a minute later when Cincy scored and went up 28-0. 

The Cutler Identity
Jay Cutlerberry signed a two-year extension on Tuesday with about $20M guaranteed, locking him up thru 2013.  And he responded by having his second grisly game in six Bear starts.  The first one can be partly blamed on his receivers, and this one on the offensive line.  But this one can’t be excused like his first game with a new team.

Despite his 3 INT’s, the Butler’s numbers were surprisingly “decent”:  26 of 37 (70.3%) for 251 yds, 1 TD, 3 INT, 64.1 QBR.  But if you were forced to use that word to describe his play, it would have to be something like, “Compared to his worst game ever a few weeks ago when he threw 4 INT’s but almost threw 9 or 10, he still wasn’t decent.”  And when you compare him to Carson Palmer, you can see just how out-played he was:  20 of 24 (83.3%) for 233 yds, 5 TD, 0 INT, 146.7 QBR.  Does anyone know if Rex is still available? 

The Good News
1.  The Vikings finally lost, so we’re only 2.5 games back.
2.  Both of our last two losses were on the road, and we’re coming home for two in a row, starting against 1-6 CLE on Sunday.

After losing opening night, the Bears went 5 weeks without losing.  But come Sunday, it will be 4 weeks without a win.  Of course there’s 10 games still left to play, so a lot can happen.  But we have to bounce back HUGE next week, especially after this complete and utter failure.

A win puts us over .500 after 7 games, a loss puts us under.  Either way, this game will say a lot about this team’s character.  All teams lose, but good teams come back.  A solid win is the first step to overcoming this disaster.  But another loss would reveal what many probably already think – that the ’09 Bears are done.

13-3, yeah right!

Super Blow, Super Bears! 

© 2009

This entry was posted on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 7:57 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.