yes, this may come as a shock to those of you who have come to regard me as a transcendental being when it comes to babbling about things that typicall fall outside of the mainstream american-male lexicon of conversational topics, so i would like to take this moment to fore-warn you that i am going to talk about football. and not football as in it's-called-football-everywhere-else-exc
ept-here football, but like, american football. the mighty NFL. even worse than that, i'm going to talk about the chicago bears, aka one of the original NFL teams that has been around for so long that its built a fanbase capable of warranting parodies from smigel/saturday-night-live in convenient superfans (DA BEARS!) format.
it happened on a sunday afternoon early in september of 2001. i was at home, bored, and having some liquor and herballistics to help augment my state-of-reality for that day. the chicago bears were playing the baltimore ravens, fresh off of their superbowl victory the year before. there wasn't much, if any, hope for the bears, a team that was something pathetic like 4-12 or 5-11 the year before... you figured that the ravens would bitchslap them and easily march to victory. well at least I did. but still, i felt compelled to watch.
the bears were in the game for all but the final few minutes, and even though they lost their season opener, being game against last year's super-bowl-winner is enough to make people scratch their heads and think "hmm maybe they've got something here"
as you might remember if you're a football person, the bears went on to lose only two more games all season (both to the green bay packers, who ended up 12-4) which means that they finished 13-3. lame dick coach duck jauron, erm whoops, lame duck coach dick jauron, a man who was basically dead man walking for that 2001 season as then-new GM jerry angelo was expecting the bears to be sub-.500, then he would have reason to dump the underachieving lame dick, erm, lame duck coach dick jauron. except 13-3 happened, even despite overall ineptitude from coach dick that i've only seen transcended by the mighty marty morninwheg. our jim miller, a journeyman veteran QB with a proneness for injury, had his usual middling season... some games where he'd throw two to three TDs (a game against tampa bay where he hit booker three times in a ~24-3 type final score comes to mind), but then others where he was quite mortal, and of course an injury that kept him out around 2-3 games. even tho those were the cardiac/miracle bears, winning back-to-back games on interception returns in overtime by the same guy, mike brown, i still couldn't convince myself that they were indeed "for real" so even tho i hoped against my own logic, i wasn't surprised when the eagles drubbed them in the 2nd round of the playoffs (the bears earned a 1st round bye), hell they even took out "our" jim miller in the first half leaving us with the SHANE MATTHEWS EXPERIENCE, which had worked earlier i nthe season when the bears won those back-to-back overtime games, however shane was able to accumulate some rust and the eagles' D was at its mightiest point in the last ~5 years, so it wasnt happening.
while 2001 was fascinating in that this actually-kind-of-bad(-yet-still-13-and-3) managed to find new and amazing ways to win games that they had no business winning, evne with their coach's ineptitude stacking the deck against them, 2002 was equally fascinating in that the team found amazing ways to lose games that they actually might have had some legitimate business winning, with their coach's ineptitude factoring in to help the bears accumulate a 4-12 record. coach dick was spared because 2002 featured a whole heap of injuries to both offense and defense, as only injury can enable one to witness the unsurmountable greatness of the henry burris experience. 2003 came with both hope that the bears were actually good like 2001 sugested, but injured in 02, and for people like me, hope that the team was overall headed in the right direction with draft picks like rex grossman (a bigtime college QB from florida who had some monster numbers during the end of florida's spurrier-era, but deflated somewhat with the arrival of ron zook) however, if this team were to tank it like they did in 02, then and only then could we be rid of coach dick, an amazingly nice guy who you'd love to have over for sunday dinner @ gramma's, but not the guy you wanted coaching your football team (in terms of personnel decisions, or the lack thereof in dick's case, urlacher moved to MLB only when i think it was barry minter, the incumbant MLB, got injured about 1/2way through urlacher's rookie season). so lets tank the season, be rid of dick, get an actual coach, then have this team get good.
the 2003 bears started off crappy, but then reeled off something like 5 wins out of their last 6 games, ultimately ending the season at a 7-9 mark. fox announcers like brian baldinger questioned how a team could even consider getting rid of lame dick coach duck jauron when his team was going out there and putting up a formidable display of NFL-calibur football at the end of a season when they essentially had no shot at the playoffs.
fortunately, GM jerry angelo, a man who wanted to be rid of dick after the 01 season only to be fucked over by the 13-3 thing, still knew that dick wasn't his guy, and after some nick saban BS he brought in rams' defensive coordinator lovie smith. a guy who was perpetually mentioned for just about every coaching job out there, but never got it, as it was more likely than not that he was always mentioned because the NFL has a requirement for teams to interview at least one minority candidate for head coaching positions. so the bears got lovie after the saban thing failed...
lovie comes in for 2004, the team goes 5-11 or something, however with a total debacle at the quarterback position. rex goes down in the third game with a blown out ACL, thus ending his season. afterwards we had backup QB jonathin quiinn, arguably one of the worst QBs ever, and 6th round draft pick rookie craig krenzel, suck it up profusely. so essentially, we had no QB. despite that, the defense showed signs of taking strides towards being good if not potentially great, and the season ended with a glimmer of hope that this team was a couple or a few years away.
as for lovie, while he never really showed me anything that made me really like him, he never did anything to make me dislike him at all. he seemed more prone to make changes sooner than later, and he seemed like he was a definite upgrade over coach dick.
then this season comes. in preseason rex gets hurt again, and while most of us assume season ending there's speculation he'll be back in december. the bears never put him on injured reserve, thus keeping the possibility of his return. most assumed another lost season, as the QB options were journeyman jeff blake and draft-day-dropper-rookie kyle orton. orton comes in and plays on a team where the defense actually steps up and becomes great, taking over and holding hte #1 overall ranking for the whole damn NFL by midseason. the offensive line meshes, the running game thrives behind a career year from thomas jones, improvement from adrian peterson, and a sign or two from 4th-overall-draft-pick cedric benson. the bears end up 9-4 with orton, a guy who got consistently worse as the season went on, however never got bad enough to lose games singehandedly.
then yesterday, in a game with the bears up 6-3 despite orton being 2/12 for 12 yards, he brings in rex for the 2nd half. YES FUCKIN A FINALLY GOOD JOB LOVIE. lovie made a change that i prayed he'd make, which was putting in a guy with a higher cieling than the struggling rookie who was a godsend/saviour for the bears as he didnt give them last-year-bad quarterbacking which cost them games... altho he didnt go out and win any games himself, orton proved to be invaluable in avoiding the god-awful-mistake in every game but hte cincinnati game (5 interceptions)
rex didnt set the world on fire, as he ended up 9/16 for ~90 yards and an INT, which was a horrible INT on the goal line on third down where he stared down mushin muhammad so obviously that everyone watching at home knew where the ball was going, let alone the DB for atlanta... but the DB fumbled the ball after the INT, giving the balls a first and goal at the 1, which they cashed in with a rushing TD on the first play after re-claiming the ball.
grossman had a great quote in the postgame conference: paraphrasing here-- "yeah it was a bad INT and we got lucky, but hey, if anyone deserves some luck i think its me" so true.
but basically, to even get in that goal-line situation, grossman had to lead the offense down the field. at the time of the switch orton was 2/12 for 12 yards, which basically sums it all up right there. grossman came in and went 3/6 for 40 yards and that INT on the first drive, putting the bears up 13-3.
then atlanta got hte ball, moved downfield to just isnide bears territory i believe, and then mike green intercepted vick around the bears' 20 yard line.
here's where the difference between rex and orton was paramount.
orton was great if the defense forced a turnover and got the ball within the opponents' 10 yard line. however, if they turned it over downfield, he didnt tend to ride hte momentum and go in for a score, as he typically needed to basically be in FG range at the start of the drive to really ensure any points.
grossman gets the ball back and marches the bears down to around the ATL 20 yard line, and while the drive did sputter there, he still drove them to FG distance, which they capitalized on to go up 16-3. another drive or two later, grossman got them back to FG range but gould missed from 44 to end up 3/4 on the day.
it's a real big difference between grossman and orton. grossman is a better QB right now, no doubt. that means longer offensive drives, which means more time for the defense to rest. more offense = better field position for the defense. more points = less pressure on the defense. a big example is like, when the bears ar eup 6-3 over hte falcons, teh defense knows a big play TD puts the team down and behind the proverbial 8-ball. when they're up 13-3, the defense knows that even if a big play nets a TD, they're still up 13-10. therefore, in taht position, they're able to take more risks and be more aggressive on D, not having to play conservative most of hte time to make sure that there's no slip up that allows a TD.
when this bears' D can be aggressive, well, you know how good it can be. #1 defense in the NFL.
so while grossman's reprise doesnt guarantee a 41-3 superbowl victory over the colts, it does give the bears a legitimate chance to make noise in these playoffs. with orton, hey, it COULD happen but its way more than likely not. with grossman, hey, there's a chance. this was the QB the bears had as their #1 QB for-sure going into teh season. jerry angelo has made good or great draft picks in the past, and grossman is his #1 QB, first round draft pick and rah rah rah. htis is what he wants on the field leding the bears.
so lets see what happens. regardless, win or lose, i now officially like lovie smith for making a move that was technically unpopular with most of the complacent-at-9-and-4 masses, but popular with the intelligent people like me, boers and bernstein, and others who knew that grossman gives the bears team the best chance to win any given game, especially when you have exponentally tougher games in the playoffs.
so go bears. let's revive 1985 in the two-double-oh-five.
# tnuchetehcunt !!
