The Chicago Bears are officially back in business. Unlike Joaquin Phoenix’s hip hop career, we are for reals. Coming from behind twice against a solid Dallas defense, we were able to hold on and win for the second week in a row. And this week’s win wasn’t due to a bad call at home against a terrible team without their starting QB – it was on the road against a Pro Bowl QB and what some experts called the NFC Super Bowl favorite. Don’t look now but the Bears have won 4 in a row, and are tied with GB for first place at 2-0.
Fixing our biggest issues from last week, we didn’t turn it over once and got 3 takeaways. After a bad start, we made the proper adjustments to the Cowboy’s defense, actually demonstrated some blocking skills, and took advantage of mismatches (what Martz was brought in to do). And our defense was once again stellar, knocking people around and holding a potent Dallas offense to 36 yards rushing and 1 TD. We’ve now allowed only 58 rushing yards in 2 games.
We did give up a special teams TD, as well as 374 yards passing, but in all we beat Dallas in just about every facet of the game. I have to say this was a huge win – we looked solid across the board, and were firing on all cylinders. We finally seem to be getting our shit together, and our off-season moves are starting to come to fruition. So much for that 0-4 pre-season, huh?
This is the first time we’ve won our first two games since our ’06 Supa Bow season (when we started 7-0), and the second time since ’02 (when we went on to lose our next 8). Let’s hope the rest of the season is more like ’06 than ’02. But the way we played this week, we have a lot to be excited about, and our best football could still be ahead of us.
The Cutler Supremacy
Cutler was 21 of 29 (72.4%) for 277 yards with 3 TD’s and no picks, averaging 9.6 yards per attempt (which is Brady/Manning type numbers). And of his 8 incompletions, at least 3 were good passes that could have been caught. Despite losing our left tackle in the first quarter and facing an onslaught of blitzes, the Butler was only sacked once. And he spread the ball around to 6 different receivers, completing 3 passes for over 35 yards. His 136.7 QBR was his highest as a Bear by 10 points, and less than 1 point below his 2nd and 3rd best NFL games (his highest was a 141.0 in ’07). He now has 5 TD’s to only 1 INT this year, and 13 TD’s to 2 INT’s over his last 4 games. Now THAT is the QB we traded for!
Game Ball
A 4th round pick in ’09 who didn’t play a game last season, D.J. Moore was responsible for all 3 Dallas turnovers in only his second NFL game. He had 2 picks, and had a hand in on a big fumble. Could he be the missing secondary ingredient we’ve longed for?
Summary
We host a tough GB team on Monday night, which doesn’t sound good on paper. We haven’t played well on Monday since WWII, but what better way to test this newly resurgent team? A win would be a huge statement in the NFC, with GB and Dallas both being top-ranked teams at the season’s start. I think we’ll lose, but with the Bears doing the opposite of what I think lately, I predict we win by 14 points.
Bring on Atlanta, bring on Dallas!
© 2010
Bear Down Baffa 
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