By Jim Coffman
Maybe now it will happen. Now the Bears will hop onto the ripple of momentum created by Sunday’s precarious victory over the rickety Raiders and ride it for all it’s worth. After all, a perfect deep ball drops into the arms of an open receiver in full stride like a pebble arcs into a lake and positive energy radiates out in barely perceptible, but expanding, circles. OK, so the squad didn’t exactly surf the waves created by its last two, much bigger wins – exciting conference triumphs over the Packers and the Eagles (as opposed to the AFC doormats who call Oakland home). One must conclude that Sunday’s victory generates but a trickle of hope. It is dew on a football that was left out in the grass last night.
Let’s dive right into the highlights:
* During the first half of the season, Bear defenders found numerous ways to make lousy offenses look good. On Sunday, they not only aided but often abetted Raider lousiness from the first quarter to the last. Thank you to Adewale Ogunleye (did you prefer his detonation of that silly little first-half shovel pass or his game-clinching sack and strip in the final minutes?) in particular for his delightful destructiveness.
* The game broadcast didn’t get off to the greatest of starts when play-by-play man Matt Vasgersian (no relation to Kim Kardashian) described an early Devin Hester end around. Unfortunately for Matt and Bears fans, the ball never made it to the end who was clearly on his way around the defense. Instead, as the cameraman and surely most viewers quickly noted, Brian Griese had already given the ball to Cedric Benson, resulting in one of his signature, slightly less-than-memorable, runs. It was the first episode in yet another half of Devin the Decoy on offense this season. And of course when they finally gave Hester the ball shortly after intermission they did a quick hitter against press coverage, i.e., they passed him the ball as he stood at the line off scrimmage with a cornerback approximately a foot away. A quick tackle ensued.
* Let’s go ahead and get the Benson stuff out of the way at this point. Cedric does have a knack for gaining the absolute minimum yardage available to him on handoff after handoff after handoff, doesn’t he? Which stat is most damning? Is it the fact that he carried 29 times – 29! – on Sunday without once busting into double figures (his longest run was nine yards)? The guy has now carried the ball 149 times this season and has never amassed more than 16 yards on a single carry.
Another vaguely troublesome stat, which I must say is slightly informal, is that he totaled zero tacklers avoided. Analyst J.C. Pearson, who did a serviceable if not quite inspiring job on the mike, was blunt in a third-quarter assessment: “He doesn’t make anyone miss.” He also (this is me again now) doesn’t break tackles. I don’t know if it’s because he came into the season primarily concerned about avoiding injury, but there is none of the “never die easy (R.I.P. Mr. Payton)” determination he flashed reasonably frequently last year.
I defy general manager Jerry Angelo, who told us at the start of the bye week that it was way too early to pull the plug on his top-five, first-round draft-pick guy Cedric, to find one professional talent evaluator other than himself who will step up and make the case for Benson. He’s not good enough and he hasn’t been good enough all year. It’s not even close. And it shouldn’t be hard to find a halfway decent replacement.
After all, at the end of training camp this year, the Packers brought in “not just little-known but really known only to his family” Ryan Grant to be their third-string running back. All he did on Sunday against what had heretofore been thought of as a particularly tough Minnesota Viking run defense was record his second 100-yard-plus game.
* Two quarterbacks today but only one center involved in a pair of fumbled snaps during first series for each (Brian Griese in the first quarter and Rex Grossman in the third). The common denominator was Mr. Olin Kreutz, who seemingly isn’t getting blasted back into the backfield as often as he was earlier in the season, but who still leads the world in screwed-up center-quarterback exchanges.
* Rookie Trumaine McBride had a great game at cornerback. If he continues to establish himself as a solid corner, he will add to Angelo’s impressive legacy of finding hidden defensive talent late in the draft. Maybe from here on out Jerry could simply bring in a consultant to handle first-round picks and then take it from there.
* Where were the Raider fan camera shots? I thought there was a rule that all games in Oakland had to feature extended video examinations of silver-and-black crazies packed into the mosh pits that pass for end-zone seating in their home stadium.
* The game was boring enough as the third quarter morphed into the fourth that I was paying closer attention to the new DVD commercials and trying to decide which “one-too-many” sequel I’ll watch on the first Sunday afternoon after the Bears are mathematically eliminated, Spiderman 3 or Shrek 3.
* And finally a few words, er, it will probably be more than a few, about that other (relatively) local Blue * Orange football team. That was some awesome emotion on display after Illinois’ magnificent victory Saturday over Ohio State. Coach Ron Zook kept looking up at the top of the Buckeyes’ stadium as he was being interviewed in a very apparent effort to keep the tears in his eyes from spilling down his cheeks. And sophomore quarterback Juice Williams was still doubled-over at the waist, trying to catch his breath, 10 minutes after the game ended and a few moments before his post-game interview began.
It was the Chicago kids who led the way. Feature back Rashard Mendenhall, who had freakishly powerful triceps even when he burst on the scene as a sophomore at Niles West a half-dozen years ago (his arms are now strong enough that I fully expect him to go through the rest of his career without fumbling) gained more than eighty hard-as-nails yards against Ohio State’s top-rated defense.
Williams, the latest greatest star athlete out of Chicago Vocational (following in the footsteps of Dick Butkus, Juwan Howard and Chris Zorich among others), was the star of the show with his four touchdown passes and his refusal to be tackled short of the first-down line during the final eight-minute-plus Illini drive that sealed the deal.
Can’t one of those guys declare hardship and immediately join their undermanned home (NFL) team?
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The Beachwood’s very own Jim Coffman brings you Bear Monday every week.
Posted on November 12, 2007