Bear Down Baffa

It’s getting hard to tell the difference between Bear losses.  They’ve become so frequent and so lopsided that they’ve started to blend together.  We’ve now lost three out of four while allowing 40 points twice in the last three weeks.  Granted, we were without our two best defensive players in the two blowouts, with Urlacher being injured and Tommie “I Find New Ways To Fail You Each Week” Harris being benched at Cincy and getting kicked out today on the game’s fifth play.  But injuries are not an excuse, and neither is stupidity.

AZ’s Kurt Warner picked the Bear’s defense apart.  He found holes in everything they threw at him, revealing deficiencies in both their preparation and execution, as well as an overall lack of competence – much like Katie Couric did when she interviewed Sarah Palin.  And that’s exactly who the Bear’s D has become.  Think about it; they’re polarizing, they quit early on their constituents and their best days appear to be behind them. 

This was supposed to be a great match-up.  Both teams recently lost a Super Bowl.  Both were 4-3.  AZ was 3-0 on the road, the Bears 3-0 at home.  Both QB’s had 11 TD’s and 11 INT’s.  Things started off alright.  After AZ returned the kickoff to the 19, Warner threw 2 incomplete passes with Harris rushing his second toss.  But then AZ completed a 23 yd pass.  And then they ran for 13 yds, after which Harris punched a guy on the ground in his facemask.  This not only got him tossed, but it gave AZ an additional 15 yds, moving them from their own 19 to the Bears 30 on two plays.  AZ took their first lead four plays later.  They didn’t go up 28-7 for another 25 minutes, but this game ended on the Harris penalty-ejection combo play.

The box score says AZ only had 21 more total yards than the Bears.  But AZ came in rated last in the NFL in rushing, averaging only 65 yards a game.  And they had a field day, rushing for nearly three times that (182), with two players passing that individually (Hightower 15-77 and Wells 13-72).  As a team, they crossed the 100-yard mark with five minutes left in first half – about a minute later than Benson did two weeks ago.

In the first half alone, AZ amassed 320 yards and 20 first downs, including going 6 for 6 on third down.  Field position didn’t even seem to matter.  Their first four possessions averaged starting on their own 22, but like Cincy, they scored TD’s on each of their first four drives.  The score might have been closer in this one, but the Bear’s D played just as badly as they did against Cincy. 

Aikman’s Insight
Sportscaster and former Cowboy QB Troy Aikman, who is not one prone to hyperbole or exaggeration, brought his A-game to the booth Sunday.  He warmed up by calling the Bears “downright embarrassing.”  After we committed back-to-back false starts, he took it to the next level: “I thought they played high school football on Friday.”  And he closed with a sophisticated, “I’m just calling it the way I see it, and I don’t think the Bears are a very good football team.”  If only he’d have thrown in a joke about Harris’s momma, he would have hit for the cycle. 

The Positives
There were four plays when the Bears weren’t the worst team on the field: when AZ brought in QB Matt “I Make Defenses Look Good” Leinart to start the 4^th quarter with a 20 point lead.  The Bears picked him off on the only pass he threw.  Even AZ acknowledged how awful he is, pulling him right after that, killing any chance we had at a comeback.  Minor victory, but we dominated him nonetheless. 

The Cutler Supremacy
Jay Cutler Supreme didn’t have a bad game.  In fact, it was actually pretty solid all things considered.  He came out slinging, going 5 for 6 for all 90 yards on our opening TD drive, including 2 passes for over 30 yards.  His QBR was 158.3 at that point, and he kept it over 100 until the second to last play of the game, when he was sacked for the fourth time.

Even down 34-7 at half-time, Cutler’s numbers (13-17 for 175 yds, 1 TD, 128.3 QBR) were comparable to Warner’s (17-22 for 189 yds, 4 TD, 141.9 QBR).  And at the end of the game, Cutler (29-47, 61.7%, 369 yds, 3 TD, 1 INT, 98.6 QBR) still wasn’t much worse than Warner (22-32, 68.8%, 261 yds, 5 TD, 0 INT, 132.9 QBR).  While he was clearly out-played, Culter’s numbers show he wasn’t the issue – at least not in this game. 

Outlook
With half the season over, we’ve accomplished very little.  We’re still afloat at 4-4, and without Urlacher, we’re lucky to be there.  We’re 3 games behind Minn, and with Green Bay losing again, we’re still tied for second place.

Surprisingly, we’re only chasing three teams for the Wild Card: Atlanta, the Giants and Philly.  And they’ve only got 5 wins each.  So we’re still alive.  But it’s not the up-beat, Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive,” where we’re strutting down the street with a can of paint in our hand.  It’s more the depressing, Pearl Jam’s “I’m Still Alive,” where we’re questioning whether we deserve to be.

After the game, they came back from commercial showing players from both teams glad-handing on the field.  I’m not making this up, but you could clearly hear someone in the background say: “There is no God.”  Amen, brother.  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

4-4 is better than 3-5, 2-6, 1-7 and 0-8!

Go Bears!

© 2009

This entry was posted on Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 8:53 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.