Steve McMichael used to talk with dread about having to play the Lions “on that damn carpet up there” at the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit. He knew that Barry Sanders ran that rug like a windup mouse–turning, twisting, spinning, and forever finding one way or another to race toward the goal line. That was several years ago, however. The frightening thing about Sanders now is that he runs that rug better than ever. The fast-playing surface of the Silverdome certainly helped his early career, as he ran for 1,470 yards in his rookie year and led the National Football League in rushing in his second season out of Oklahoma State, in 1990. Yet artificial turf should exact a cost over the years, in wear and tear on the legs and in hard tackles. When the Bears went to Detroit for the Lions’ annual Thanksgiving Day game last week, Sanders looked as spry as ever. What’s more, he seemed more skilled than ever in seeing the entire field–the trademark of greats in every sport, from Earvin “Magic” Johnson in basketball to Wayne Gretzky in hockey–in using his blockers, and in cutting the corners with the efficiency of a veteran.
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What happened was, I tuned in expecting to write a postmortem on the Bears’ dismal season and found Sanders in the process of performing it, slicing up the Chicago defense as the dead carcass it is and laying open all the Bears’ flaws. Greatness demands attention; instead of concentrating on the present-day Bears I returned to my last column, on the NFL’s greats, and noted Sanders’s painful omission. When he manufactured a 25-yard touchdown run against the Bears–one of three touchdowns he scored, this put the game away, giving the Lions a 34-20 lead–he moved past Eric Dickerson into second on the all-time rushing list behind Walter Payton. Payton has 16,726 lifetime yards to Sanders’s 13,319 at this point, but Sanders shows no signs of slowing down. Unlike Dickerson, who seemed to be mounting a serious challenge to Payton only to suffer a precipitous drop-off in his ninth season, Sanders in his ninth year looks in many ways better than ever. If he keeps racking up yardage at the current pace–and I mean his overall pace this season, not his almost ten yards a carry against the Bears–he will not only catch Payton in about two years but also approach Jim Brown’s sacred 5.2 lifetime rushing average. All along, Sanders has been playing with respect for his opponents and humility for his talents, handing the ball to referees or simply dropping it after every score, instead of spiking it or, in the manner of Emmitt Smith, tucking it away in some trunk like a miser’s riches. Humbly and without drawing excess attention to himself, Sanders has done everything. He is about to be acknowledged the greatest runner of all time.
The following Thursday’s game, against Detroit, had an equally promising beginning. The Lions defensive line manhandled the Bears on the first series, resulting in a quick punt, but the Bears stopped Sanders on his first two runs to force a return punt. On the Bears’ second possession, quarterback Erik Kramer read a blitz coming and barely got off a quick toss over the middle to wide receiver Ricky Proehl on a crossing pattern. The Lions were caught with nobody in the area, and Proehl ran the ball all the way down to the Detroit 12. Three crisp runs later, Raymont Harris scored. On the Bears’ next possession, rookie Detroit cornerback Kevin Abrams simply stopped covering Proehl on a down and out. Kramer hit him wide open, and he ran in for a 14-0 lead.
The Bears of McMichael and Dan Hampton and Mike Singletary never made stopping Sanders look easy–it always seemed to take the utmost in effort and strategy–but they usually managed to do it, by getting upfield, penetrating the Lions offensive line, and, barring that, by staying home to plug holes. That sort of ability is lacking on this team, and the very idea of playing defense with discipline seems foreign to the desperate, blitz-happy bunch. If it seems unfair to compare today’s Bears with those, consider the way these Bears proceeded to make Sanders’s backup, Ron Rivers, look like Sanders himself on another 13-yard touchdown run to make the score 48-20. When Chicago backup quarterback Steve Stenstrom–who probably should have seen action after Kramer’s third-quarter fumble–proceeded to throw an interception that was returned for a touchdown, the score rose to 55-20, the Bears’ worst losing margin of this awful season (2-11 and counting) and the most points the Bears ever have given up in a game.
