By Carl Mohrbacher
The San Francisco Feat
Well golly-gee, we have ourselves a winner!
It came at the expense of Jay Cutler’s sternum, Chris Conte’s shoulder, Jeremiah Ratliff’s brain and Charles Tillman’s career, but a win nonetheless.
Or nonethemore. Whatever you call it when you lose three starters on defense for some amount of time/forever and your quarterback nearly has a pizza-sized hole punched in his chest.
That said, the value of this victory simply can’t be understated; this was a season-saving win for the Chicago Bears and a wildly entertaining 32 minutes of football.
Nevermind that accepting penalties against the 49ers was easily the second-most effective offensive weapon at the Bears’ disposal.
Nevermind the fact that the win obfuscated some truly awful decisions on Cutler’s part, including several throws to a hobbled and double-covered Alshon Jeffery (I love you Jay, but if I can see him limping from back in Chicago, I’m sure you can see it twice as good on the field).
Nevermind that the majority of this game was televised well after Al Michaels’ bedtime and we had to listen to the words that came out of his mouth hours after his brain went to sleep. (Did I hear both a Flag and Arbor Day joke dropped into the mix during the broadcast? Ouch.)
The point is that it’s safe to become excited about 2014 again.
At least until we find out that Matt Forte is going to be suspended indefinitely for stealing money from the elderly.
The Tall Tales Of Kyle Fuller
As fans, part of our job this season (aside from calling up The Score at 3 p.m. to drunkenly insist that Jimmy Clausen is a better option at both Bears quarterback and White Sox catcher) will be to assess Phil Emery’s level of success in the last two years of the draft.
The jury is still out on many of this year’s selections (Editor’s Note: the jury is not out on quarterback David Fales and the verdict is “We don’t get it.”), but rookie Kyle Fuller performed so well in Week 2, and the editorial voice I write in is so utterly biased, that it makes sense to start with the Bears’ 2014 first-round pick.
The positive attention Fuller has been getting this week is nothing new. He’s been enjoying notoriety since the time of his birth.
The details of his early years are unclear, mostly the stuff of myth and legend.
Some say he was such a strapping baby boy that it took five storks to deliver him to the Fuller family log cabin outside of Baltimore.
Others claim he leapt from his mother’s womb to return a Brad Johnson pass 41 yards during a 1991 game between Virginia Tech game against Florida State*.
What we do know about him is that after digging Lake Michigan as a watering trough for his blue ox, and successfully defending Baltimore from Rodan in 2010, Fuller attended Virginia Tech and played primarily in nickel packages as a true freshman.
During his sophomore year, Fuller broke a longstanding record for ACC prospects by felling 27 white ash trees at the combine; a key measurable that led to the Bears selecting him in the first round.
Since joining the Bears, his teammates have been singing his praises; most notably All-Pro wideout Brandon Marshall.
“I told him it’s not about starting, it’s not about making the Pro Bowl,” Marshall told reporters after Sunday night’s win. “For him, he needs to have Hall of Fame on his brain – because I saw him arm wrestle [Bears mascot] Barry at practice on Friday, and win.”
Marshall continued.
“The outcome was never in doubt. It wasn’t even like the suspense you’d find in, say, the last scene of Over The Top. You know, the movie in which custody of a young boy is awarded to a man who is a long-haul trucker and part-time professional arm wrestler?”
Something suddenly appeared to dawn on Marshall as local reporters racked their brains trying to remember anything specific about that movie. Was that the one where Stallone wore sunglasses into a grocery store meat locker?
“Come to think of it, given his two vocations, the guy probably can’t afford either the afterschool care, or provide the personal time necessary to responsibly parent that kid. What are the hours like for a trucker, let alone a guy who works mostly in bars at night afterwards . . . like 6 a.m. to one in the morning? I mean, he’s pulling in, what, 42 grand a year? It’s enough to live off of, but at what cost to their relationship?”
Marshall shook his head.
“So yeah, my point is that I saw Kyle Fuller beat a live Bear at competitive long-haul trucking. Next question.”
J-E-T-S: Jets! Jets! . . . uh, PETS!
Absolutely true story.
The wife and I were in Milwaukee last weekend drinking (surprise) and we happened across a large group of Jets fans at one of our favorite haunts, Mader’s Restaurant. Apparently, they had flown into what I assume is the only other city in Wisconsin, besides Green Bay, that anyone outside of the cheese state has heard of.
Now that they had arrived from New York, their plan was simple.
Step 1: Stare at my wife’s ample bosom. Step one went on for about 40 minutes.
Step 2: Get drunker.
Step 3: Repeat steps one and two.
Step 4: Arrange a cab from their hotel . . . in Milwaukee . . . to the game . . . in Green Bay.
They had no friends in the area, and they did not seem to think there was a shuttle running from Milwaukee to Green Bay.
They planned to cab it.
They indicated to us that this was such a trivial aspect of their cross-country excursion that it was merely an afterthought.
“So now that wuh here’s in Milwaukee, we hop in this fuckin’ cab and BOOM, we’re at the stadium. Fuhggetabotit!”
Some more fuhggetabotits where bandied about before we shook their hands (it was like watching a living cartoon; I didn’t think they actually talked like that), wished their Jets luck for the next 24 hours and moved onto another drunken adventure.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Jet fan, nature’s third-smartest primate.
Ahead of dolphin, but behind human.
Kool-Aid (3 of 5 Fingers – Canadian Club)
Thought I might go in a different direction there?
Manhattan is in New York. The Jets play in New Jersey.
Borrow a buddy’s “HBO Go” login if you haven’t seen Boardwalk Empire yet. It’s worth the 60 minutes a week.
If the Wonderlic scores of their fans are any indication, we can assume that the actual Jets football team is similarly hindered by a variety of learning disabilities.
Based on their coaching staff’s propensity to call the kind of timeouts that ruin football games, I might be onto something.
The thing us Bears fans are counting on is that the football squad can’t find a way to finish football games any better than their fans can find a map via the elusive creature known as Google.
There’s some legit talent on the defensive front of this team and the Bears’ banged up O-line is going to have to buy Cutler enough time to attack the soft secondary with his banged-up receiving corps.
I don’t think the Jets will have ironed out any of the kinks between their ears between last Sunday and this Monday (Sheldon Richardson is listed as questionable this week with actual iron burns on his head), so while their running game may run roughshod over the Bears D, it shouldn’t be enough.
Bears 24, Jets 20.
* This was of course a gross exaggeration. The pre-natal Fuller was called for a holding penalty when his umbilical cord prevented Seminoles running back Edgar Bennett from attempting a tackle, thus making the official return negative 10 yards.
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Carl Mohrbacher is our man on the Kool-Aid. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on September 18, 2014