Regular readers of this column know how loath I am to get to the Bears before the end of the baseball season. Not only do I find the idea of football in July–when training camp begins–utterly intolerable, I don’t even like the idea of football in September. If the Cubs and White Sox are still playing, the Bears can wait. In fact, the Bears can usually wait until after the World Series. This season, however, demands a different approach. The fifth year of the Dave Wannstedt administration finds the Bears spinning their wheels. There is little doubt that they are a worse team now than the team Wannstedt inherited from Mike Ditka (a haunting presence we’ll soon return to). They failed to make the playoffs last season yet were cursed with a punishing schedule this year, especially in the opening weeks. On Sunday I made time to sit down with the Bears, knowing that if I didn’t their season could be over before I got to them.
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The season got off to an inauspicious start with the latest in a series of humiliating losses to the Green Bay Packers, this one in front of a national Monday-night TV audience. If there’s one thing the Bears players and their fans both hate, it’s losing to the Pack; the rivalry is the longest and most storied in the National Football League. Fifteen-point underdogs, a spread they may have used to psych themselves up, the Bears came out playing with intensity at Lambeau Field, and after allowing the Pack to draw first blood with a field goal took the lead with a touchdown. What’s more, it looked as if the breaks might run the Bears’ way: when holder Todd Sauerbrun muffed the snap on the point-after attempt, he rolled out and, as he was tackled, lobbed an underhand pass–more a 16-inch-softball pitch, really–to Jim Flanigan for an unplanned two-point conversion. (The son of a former Green Bay player, Flanigan is one of the few Bears who have played well consistently against the Pack.) The Bears’ defense kept the vaunted Green Bay offense under control until Chicago quarterback Erik Kramer threw an interception that jump-started the Packers, setting up a touchdown and two-point conversion that put them back in front. The Bears tied the game with a field goal late in the first half, but Green Bay scored another touchdown before halftime to crush the Bears’ spirit. That’s what good football teams do, as any fan of the Bears of a decade ago can attest, and the defending NFL champs are a darn good–if not downright splendid–football team. The Packers added a couple of field goals in the third quarter, then a touchdown early in the fourth, and it took all the Bears’ luck–and a wonderful long run for a touchdown by Raymont Harris–for Chicago to cover the spread with a 38-24 final.
The Saints’ fortunes may not be brighter than those of the Bears this season–they too have started 0-2–but one gets the impression from Chicago fans that that’s irrelevant. As anyone who remembers the Abe Gibron era of the 70s well knows, Bears fans are much happier with a team of cantankerous, hard-hitting if untalented characters like Doug Plank than they are with namby-pamby “west coast offense” types who are content to trade touchdowns with the opponent. The traditional rough-and-tumble personality of the Bears defense seems concentrated in one man these days–middle linebacker Bryan Cox–and it has proved an inhuman concentration. (Cox was taken out of the Green Bay game after three straight personal fouls.) Yet beyond aesthetic preference, fans are leery of the current Bears because of their sheer lack of ability and football acumen. Five years into the Wannstedt regime, the Bears are a bad team, and Wannstedt is providing his own proof of the Peter Principle. That’s a business-oriented theory Bears owner Mike McCaskey should know something about. Unfortunately, to recognize it in Wannstedt he is going to have to recognize that he made a mistake in hiring him in the first place. For someone who refuses even to see the logic of the Bears staying downtown in a refurbished Soldier Field, that’s a tall order indeed.
“Can Bears stop Carter and Reed?” I jotted in my notebook, and the anxiety was well placed. Johnson threw again and again to Reed and Cris Carter–they finished with 12 and 9 catches on the day–usually to whoever was being guarded by Walt Harris. The Vikes drove to first and goal, but Carter missed a one-handed catch in the end zone, the Vikes committed a costly penalty (negating a touchdown), and Flanigan made a terrific sack, pushing the Vikes beyond the 40-yard mark for a field goal. Greg Davis missed the attempt. But then the Bears were three and out with a cautious series, and the Vikes got the ball back with plenty of time for another drive.
