Bear Down Baffa

The season is over, and it couldn’t have come soon enough!   The 2009-10 Bears sucked, though we somehow ended up 7-9 (and 3-3 in our division).  Sure we finished strong, but we finished strong the last two years, and that doesn’t seem to have gotten us anywhere.  But I do like the fact that we are now 1-0 in 2010.  (more…)

Just when you give up hope and almost don’t even watch the game, the Bears go out on a Monday night and shock the world by beating what was the 3rd ranked team in the NFL.  And for the first time this year, we beat a team with more than 1 win, beating one with 11.  So f-ing what if the Vikes have gotten blown out 2 of their last 3 games, and each of their last 3 losses are to teams with 5 wins.  We’re now 6-9 bitches!  That means 7-9 is within reach, and that’s the best version of a losing record possible!    (more…)

The Ravens kept their playoff hopes alive with a win, and the Bears proved once again – but in particularly convincing fashion – that they suck.  Fa la la la la, la la la fricking la.  (more…)

Lovie Smith’s career as head coach of the beloved Chicago Bears died on Sunday.  He leaves behind him an assortment of tired colloquialisms, a team with talent but no play left in it, and a large contingency of shattered dreams.  I don’t like going after the head coach because it’s too easy, but I’m finally throwing him under the bus that the Bears get off running.  And losing.  Yes, after six years and a slightly better than average 50-43 (.537) regular season record, I’m calling for Lovie to man up, and step down.  (more…)

Finally.  FINALLY!  Once again, the Chicago Bears enjoy the sweet nectar of victory, and Sunday’s win against the 1-10 Rams couldn’t come too soon.  It’s our first W in 35 days, dating back to Nov. 1 when we beat 1-6 Cleveland, and only our second in 63 days, since our Oct. 4 win against 1-2 (now 2-10) Detroit.  But before we start setting off fireworks or throwing after parties, we checked our schedule, and there are no 1-win teams left on it.  So the prognosis remains slightly more promising than dismally pessimistic.

It may not have been pretty, but after being out-scored 111-57 in 4 straight losses, who the hell cares?  It ended up looking like a 2006-2008 Bears game – a lot of running, a lot of punting, good defense, and a win.  Whether it was planned or it was the result of an early lead on a cold day, the Bears barely threw the ball, choosing to inch yards out on the ground, and focus on field position and time of possession.  We wound up rushing for fewer yards than the Rams, and we lost field position and time of possession.  But for a moment, we were able to do what we weren’t able to do back then – air the ball out.  And that was the difference in this game.  (more…)

There are two days this year that I’ll hate Bret Favre more than a Packer fan.  The first was Sunday.  In a battle of the first place Twin Cities and the worst place Second City, there was (at least theoretically) potential for a great match-up, with the Vikings out-ranking the Bears in every statistic they record, and the Bears having nothing to lose.  But the missing ingredient for the Bears was the ability to win, which is one of the many things on their Christmas list this year.  And the result was what has become commonplace:  1) the Bears did not play well, and 2) the Bears did not win.

We’ve now lost 4 in a row, and 6 of 7.  That’s a .142 winning percentage since Oct 5, or 44% of our schedule.  Even throwing this game aside because Minn is clearly a dominant force in the NFC, the Bears are critically injured, on life support, and currently lying beneath the watchful eye of Obamacare’s Death Squads.  And it’s just a matter of time before the plug is yanked like the cord on a lawnmower by his merry band of Socialistic Nazis.  (more…)

Not to anyone’s surprise, Philly phoned in the Bear’s season Sunday night.  But at least this one was close.  Somehow, we managed to score 20 points.  The defense forced 3 turnovers and got 3 sacks.  And despite trailing most of the game, we actually had the lead with less than 6 minutes to play.  Yes, the Bears finally showed some signs of life, playing their best game in a month, and giving us reason to tune in next Sunday.  But it wasn’t enough.  And unlike last year, when we beat Philly and they went on to win the final Wild Card spot, there will be no reversal of fortune.

Having now lost 3 in a row, and 5 of our last 6, Bears fans will no longer be watching with post season aspirations.  No, we’ll be resigned to watching with scant hopes for an occasional, and most likely surprising, victory.  And that, dear friends, is our 2009 season.  (more…)

The Chicago Bears have now lost 4 out of 5, and have entered crisis mode.  The Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS) raised our threat level to red, or “Severe,” meaning there’s a severe risk the Bears may be allergic to the Red Zone.  But I don’t think this is a time to point fingers, partly because it’s not nice to point at people, but mostly because no one has enough fingers for all the blame that needs to go around.

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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.  (more…)

You gotta take a W whenever it comes, so I’ll take this one.  But I’m not planning any parades down Michigan Avenue just yet.  The Bears did bring the Browns down to Chinatown alright.  But you have to consider that in this analogy, the Browns were actually a group of Chinese people that were heading down to Chinatown at the time.  All the Bears really did was give them a lift.  So no, there was no Gatorade shower for Lovie.

After the Bears faked a trip to the Appalachian Trail last weekend and instead spent it in Cincinnati padding Chad Ochocinco’s stats, this victory is like I imagine the make-up sex would be for the wife of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford – if she caught him in the act on TV seven days ago: uncomfortable and unfulfilling, but a necessary step toward reconciliation.    (more…)

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.     (more…)

In the 35 days leading up to Sunday, two things hadn’t happened:  a 6-year old boy named Falcon Heene did not go for a joyride in a shiny balloon, and the Chicago Bears hadn’t lost a game.  Not only did both of these stories involve a flying object, the name Falcon, and the love and support of America’s hearts, but they both ended this weekend – in betrayal.  One was a conniving, despicable and criminal act that may call for some jail time, the other a simple hoax put on by a family looking for attention.  (more…)

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.  (more…)

Just about every game in the NFL is a must-win, and this game was no different.  Going on the road facing a back-up QB, this would be a great chance to steal a W, and a really bad scenario if we lost.  And after being down 13-0 only 18 minutes into the game, and going down again by 2 with 5 mins to play after a Cutler fumble, we came back and won on a Cutler-led, 6 play, 86 yard scoring drive – on which he was 3 for 3 for 48 yards including the game-winning TD pass.  With the win, the Bears advance to 2-1 for the first time since ’06 (the year we won the SB), and only the second time since ’02.  And we scored our first NFC win.  All we need now is our first division win, which could come next week when we host Detroit before heading into our bye week.  (more…)

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.  (more…)

Hopefully you didn’t read any of the papers or online reports about the Bears season being over already.  Because it’s not.  We were supposed to lose this game on the road.  GB had our number last year, especially on offense.  But our defense pretty much shut them down on Sunday.  GB only scored the one TD at the end of the game against our D, with the other one coming after an INT was returned to our one yd line.  So even with all the INT’s and our lack of offensive potency, we only lost by 5 points, and we were leading with just over a minute left.  It didn’t look to me like GB played much better than we did.  (more…)

April 2, 2009 – mark it on your calendars, folks.  It will go down as one of the greatest days in Chicago Bears history.  After decades of question marks, the Bears jumped into the fray and acquired Pro Bowl QB Jay “I’m a Bears Fan” Cutler from the disheveling Denver Broncos.  In doing so, the Bears dropped their drawers and finally exposed what was long thought to be a non-existent scrotal sack.  And in one fell swoop, they became the favorite to win the NFC without taking a single snap on the field.   (more…)

Welcome to a new season of the “Bear Down Baffa” blog!  We hope you are as fired up about the 2009 Chicago BEARS as we are.  You may notice that our new photos appear to have been taken on the grass inside Soldier Field.  That’s because they were.  Yeah, we don’t fuck around at the Bear Down Baffa blog.   (more…)