By Jim Coffman
Which play was the perfect microcosm? Was it the Vikings’ final touchdown? The one where everyone in the stadium knew the home team wasn’t going to have the backup quarterback, who had just entered the game without any sort of significant warm-up, pass the ball? Then, after a timeout, the Vikings ran a delay. Delays are only supposed to work when the other team thinks there is at least a tiny chance of a pass. And the delayed handoff was to Adrian Peterson, the guy all 11 Bears defenders should have had in their sights. But there was Peterson, scooting left, then through a hole and then into the end zone virtually untouched.
Or was it Devin Hester’s first attempt at a punt return, when he retreated all the way to his goal line and then broke right, carried out an absolutely inexplicable fake hand-off about halfway across the field and then was spun down at the 3-yard line, losing a fumble in the process. Fortunately it wasn’t just a little dribbler of a fumble, it was a ridiculous fumble. It zipped 10, 15 yards across the artificial turf. And it didn’t bounce into and then out of the end zone, something that would have given the ball to the Vikings. No, it never left the 3 as it headed out of bounds, giving the Bears possession. It must be said that Hester has been amazingly fortunate with fumbles this year. He has put a half-dozen balls on the turf, but he or his teammates have recovered virtually all of them.
No, the official microcosm of this comical 20-13 defeat – the one that finally officially eliminated the Bears from playoff contention – had to happen on offense. This contest was actually comforting in the way it represented a return to the Bears game archetype of yore, the one where the defense plays well, limits the opposing tailback to a sub-par performance and forces a substantial amount of turnovers . . . but the offense is too incompetent to take advantage. A Bears fan seeking the seminal play had the usual smorgasbord of false-starts to choose from, or perhaps one of Kyle Orton’s less-than-pinpoint passes.
But the play that best encapsulated the game and the season was the one right after Hester’s misadventure. That was when the Bears, needing a couple tough yards just outside their own goal line, gave the ball to the tailback who inspires cries of “God Bless Us Everyone!”
I actually covered Garrett “Tiny Tim” Wolfe (who is listed at 5-7 and probably stands about 5-5) when he led his now defunct Holy Cross (of Chicago) team to a victory over Loyola in a Prep Bowl playoff game about five years ago. And he was a great, great high school running back who then starred at NIU. The problem here was you just knew the pre-game plan was to put last spring’s controversial third-round pick in for a few plays during the Bears’ third possession. And they went ahead and did so even though the situation called for a slightly more physical presence at the position at that point. Unfortunately, as these Bears have shown more than a few times this fall, they don’t do mid-game, situational strategy switches very well. And with the Viking defense geared to stop an inside run, the Bears handed it to Wolfe headed right up the gut. There he was engulfed by one of those massive humans named Williams who man the defense tackle positions for Minnesota. I suppose we should just be glad Wolfe didn’t suffocate as he went down for a two-yard loss. Later on, Orton’s fourth-down pass attempt to Jason McKie was farcical as well, but for me that Wolfe run was the one that best summed up the latest chapter of Bear ineptitude.
On to the lowlights:
* For the longest time I enjoyed listening to John Madden analyze a game because I was confident that at some point, he would tell me something I didn’t already know about offensive line play or defense. I feel that way about Ron Jaworski these days. Jaws always has good stuff at the ready, especially regarding his specialty – quarterback play. Monday was no different as he broke down the flaws in Tarvaris Jackson’s throwing mechanics and essentially predicted the sort of trouble that materialized only a couple plays later (Nathan Vasher’s late first-half interception). Fellow analyst Tony Kornheiser is occasionally funny but seems almost desperate to prove he is the most clever ever by busting out ever-escalating put-downs (which are sometimes accurate but, especially late in the game, mostly redundant). And this was the most I have ever enjoyed a Mike Tirico play-by-play performance. No doubt emboldened by the radio talk show he now hosts for ESPN radio, Tirico simply did a great job.
* Oh by the way, the guys on talk radio in Chicago (OK, OK, the few I happened to listen to Monday afternoon) were appalled the Bears brought Vasher back from his groin injury, one that had forced him to miss 10 weeks of action. Their thinking was there was no way the Bears should risk Vasher re-aggravating the injury in a game that would almost certainly end up being meaningless (to a team that had all but officially been eliminated from the postseason). But football players risk injury every play. If a player is healthy enough to play, he should play, period. And it was apparent early on, and later on, that Vasher was more than healthy enough.
* Brian Urlacher! And again! And not just one sack but two! This was his best game in a long, long time. Maybe all isn’t quite lost for the Bears defense.
* Have offensive linemen ever been cut just for false start penalties? Actually Bill Parcells did that at one point (or two) didn’t he? At least three of the stiffs (if not four) on the Bears offensive line must be replaced sooner rather than later. All of the false starts – four more on Monday – had even the almost-always deadpan Lovie Smith looking exasperated against the Vikings. My six-year-old daughter sees the yellow flag icon on the screen these days and automatically intones “False start – offense.” And Tirico soon lowers the boom: “This offense is awful.” Later on, as Vasher returned his interception, Tirico was seized by the spirit of the season: “On Vasher! On Prancer!”
* Moving right along, early in the fourth quarter, Michelle Tafoya brings us a typically illuminating (illuminating like a match illuminates an operating room) tidbit from the sideline. It involves Viking head coach Brad Childress bringing his team together the night before the game for his weekly inspirational address. Childress, who looks like he should help his players with their taxes in the spring, apparently served up some gobbledygook about how the Vikings, in falling to 3-6 this season but then rallying to win four straight, had “experienced agony and then ecstasy.” After another wildly exaggerated transformational analogy, he brought the pep talk home by asking “Can you go from good to great?” The statement provoked giggles from the boys in the booth – clearly the Vikings didn’t make the jump in this game.
It all goes to a larger point, one that was also illuminated by Kornheiser’s story earlier in the game about Childress asking players if they would choose to be the water buffalo or the lion or some other animal, maybe a hippo, out in the wild. The players are supposed to say the lion and then Childress goes all Nature Channel on ’em and shows a tape of a juvenile water buffalo being culled from the herd and on the verge of being served for dinner. But then the herd of water buffalo intervenes and all of those big, dumb animals manage to scare off the lion by working together, like a team, get it? My larger point is that 95 percent of this motivational stuff is so much drivel. If the players need this sort of thing to get going before playing this amazingly fast and violent game in front of tens of thousands of rabid fans, well, they won’t last long. Either guys have the talent to make plays and the ability to motivate themselves or they don’t, and nothing a coach says, except of course for when he speaks of tactics, will make a darn bit of difference.
* The Bears have managed to lose games so many other teams would have won in so many different ways this fall. Teams that aren’t terrible always take advantage of opponents missing extra-point kicks to win by one. If Orton hadn’t thrown that final desperation interception, the Bears would have lost a second game in three weeks in which they recorded four more takeaways than the opposition. Tirico noted during the broadcast that the Bears had last done that (lost with a four-plus turnover differential) in 1970. But hey, at least the boys can still go 2-0 against the Packers this year! And that’s the main thing that matters, right? If nothing else, maybe we can obliterate that misguided sentiment once and for all this season.
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Jim Coffman brings you Bear Monday every . . . Monday. Except when the Bears don’t play on Sunday.
Posted on December 18, 2007