By Jim Coffman
Don’t hate Lovie for going for it on fourth-and-one. Dislike (and maybe hate just a little) Ron Turner for the play call on third-and-one, but the decision to go for it on fourth down at the one-yard line with the Bears leading 7-3 in the second quarter was definitely defensible. As for third down . . . hey Mr. Offensive Coordinator? Most of us Bears fans figured out a while ago that the fullback dive up the middle behind quick and smart but in no way overpowering center Olin Kreutz is not an effective play. So why do you keep running it? Especially with starting fullback Jason McKie out with an injury? Against a team with perhaps the best defensive tackle tandem in the league? My guess is you froze up a bit on this one . . . you didn’t want to watch another ineffective Forte sweep but the pass on first down hadn’t worked, and you knew the Vikings would be ready for a Forte run between the tackles. The play clock was about to start running down so you panicked and called the most basic play imaginable, the fullback dive, which failed, of course.
Fascinating, too, that the back-up fullback who received the handoff on the play in question, Jason Davis, played for you during your previous incarnation as head coach at Illinois. Davis is a player who did not distinguish himself during his college career and almost certainly will not distinguish himself in the pros. Do us a favor and don’t do him any more favors, okay Ron?
After that ill-advised play, fourth down loomed. Arguing in favor of a field goal was the fact that Robbie Gould might make a thousand 18-yard field goals in a row if you asked him to. He would have kicked this one through and the Bears would have led 10-3. Arguing against: Not only did the Bears have a great chance to gain a short yard and score a touchdown, in so doing they had a great chance to go up two scores (an 11-point lead!). So they went for it. And they gave the ball to their most reliable player behind the better half of their offensive line (the right side) fortified by third tackle and first-round rookie Chris Williams. After the snap, the initial blocks were there. The problem was the play was too slow in developing and the Vikings had speedy players coming down the line in pursuit. They grabbed ahold of Forte before he could get to the goal line and that was that.
There was one other argument against a field goal, of course, and that was that even if the Bears didn’t make it on fourth down, the Viking offense would be forced to take possession at their own one. To that point, the Bears defense had given up significant yards to Viking superback Adrian Peterson but had also made more than enough big plays. There was every reason to believe they could at least hold Minnesota deep in its own territory and maintain field position superiority. And an immediate big play, perhaps even resulting in the wonderful defensive cataclysm known as a safety, was right there for the taking. Then Charles Tillman lost his mind.
I suppose after years in the Tampa 2 defensive scheme, with safeties situated far, far from the line of scrimmage and focused first and foremost on preventing deep completions, part of Tillman’s brain just assumes he has deep help no matter what. Still, his apparent loss of focus on the next play, while covering the deep threat he should have known better than anyone (former teammate Bernard Berrian) was just inexcusable. Tillman was in position to – at the very least – seriously contest any sort of completion to Berrian on the first play after Forte was stuffed. But then he was distracted by a receiver running a shorter route in front of him, guessed that was where Gus Frerotte was going, and cheated toward it and away from Berrian. Frerotte’s pass was good enough that Berrian might have caught it no matter what Tillman did. But who knows what might have happened if Tillman had been properly focused on staying stride for stride with his former teammate.
The 99-yard touchdown was demoralizing and the Bears seemed to be feeling it on the next Viking drive, which was capped off by a far-too-easy Chester Taylor touchdown and a 17-7 lead at the half. The Bears had to hope the halftime break would turn things back around. And for a while it looked like it would.
But what could Kyle Orton possibly have been thinking when he threw his first interception after the Bears pulled within three in the third quarter? The Monsters were on their way right back into the ballgame before Orton suffered absolute brain lock and threw it right to Darren Sharper for the pick that put the Vikings in perfect position to stretch their lead back out to ten (24-14). And they soon did exactly that.
More than anything though, the specifics of that interception led to further appreciation of the 205 Orton passes (without an interception) that preceded it. Sharper’s pick demonstrated just one of the many things that can go wrong when a quarterback unleashes a pass – I’m thinking Orton just didn’t see Sharper lurking back there in the deep zone, waiting to make a play on exactly the sort of pass that came his way. That sort of thing could have happened, but didn’t, during the quarterback’s previous 10-score plus efforts. It was a very impressive streak.
The biggest shame of it all was that before the interception (and the two more that followed), Orton came out ready to lacerate the Viking defense at the start of the second half. Bear receivers dropped two catchable balls early to set up a third-and-10, but Orton shrugged it off and found Rashied Davis (who had his worst game in a while for the Bears, dropping several catchable balls) for more than enough for a fresh set of downs. Another Maynard (nice game Brad!) deep punt followed, Gus Frerotte threw his interception, etc. etc.
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Meanwhile, I thought Adewale Oguynleye’s late hit on Gus Frerotte, the one that amazingly wasn’t flagged and therefore did not lead to the Vikings earning an automatic first down inside the 10 early on (instead they kicked the field goal that made it 7-3), escaped scrutiny because it was so late. The referee focused on the quarterback as referees always do, until a beat or two after he released the ball. Then he was looking somewhere else when Ogunleye lowered the boom.
A note to Floppy Frerotte, who remarkably returned to the Viking lineup immediately the next time Minnesota had the ball despite his having lay on the turf for an extended period after Ogunleye’s hit: if you’re going to fraudulently claim grievous injury, take your act to the soccer pitch.
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A few of those Adrian Peterson runs (not so much the 59-yarder early . . . more the, what were they, about 9 and 12 yards in the second and third quarters)? Those were positively Payton-esque. The best Payton runs almost never resulted in touchdowns. They featured Walter bouncing off defender after defender, almost seeking out contact as he pinballed down the field for yet another first down. Peterson was an even bigger Payton Sunday.
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Gus Frerotte was who we thought he was (never gets old!) early in the third. At that point, despite his line fastidiously picking up a big Bear Blitz, Frerotte heaved a pass into double coverage that Danieal Manning tipped and Kevin Payne intercepted and returned inside the ten that resulted in a score that pulled the Bears within 17-14.
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Let’s talk a little about the situation with Devin Hester. There have been plenty of voices in town calling for the Bears to scale back their experiment with the young man at wide receiver. The thinking goes that Hester is such a good returner, the Bears need to continue to focus on that aspect of his game first and foremost. He needs to be out there on kicks and punts and if that means he’s not out there on offense as much, well, so be it.
There are several problems with this theory: Hester showed again how much of a game-changer he can be as a receiver on the first touchdown of Sunday’s game. His receiving career is still infantile and it still has a great deal of promise, despite some disheartening drops Sunday. And we always have to remember there is a reason Hester was right there on the verge of setting records for career return touchdowns after only two seasons in the NFL. The reason is that return excellence never lasts. Great returners always flame out quickly, plain and simple.
And oh by the way, shouldn’t Danieal Manning continue to do what he’s doing on kickoffs? He’s better than Hester at that task at this point (and he might be better on punts too – especially after Hester took that short line drive punt in the middle of the second half with room to run wherever . . . and went straight sideways before being tackled for no gain).
I’m confident Hester will continue to improve at wide receiver next Sunday, when the Bears open a three-game homestand. And if he can help the Bears win all three games, I’ll bet the loss to the Vikings will become but a distant memory.
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Posted on December 1, 2008