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Bears back in the playoff hunt after overtime win

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When someone figures out the Chicago Bears, please give me a call. Despite seemingly being dominated for most of the game by the red hot Denver Broncos, Chicago managed to pull out a win, and in doing so, thrust itself back in the midst of the playoff picture.

Devin Hester was the main culprit of the miraculous win, running back both a punt, and a kickoff for touchdowns and keeping the Broncos from gaining any real momentum, despite Jay Cutler throwing for 302 yards, and 4th string running back Andre Hall rushing for 98 yards and a touchdown.

Hester’s antics allowed the Bears to overcome another ‘vintage’ performance from Rex Grossman, who completed just 17 of 33 passes, had one interception, and fumbled twice. Grossman did make a fantastic throw to Bernard Berrian, who made an equally fantastic catch in the corner of the endzone for the game tying score to end regulation.

With the win, Chicago seemingly controls it’s own playoff destiny, as their final five games are all against playoff contenders, 4 of the 5 will be against teams also searching for a wild-card birth, and the 5th will be an attempted season sweep of the Green Bay Packers.

Chicago will next take on the New York Giants, who suddenly are looking to hold on to a playoff spot with both hands after losing 2 of their last 3, including yesterday’s loss to the Minnesota Vikings, thanks to Eli Manning’s 4 interceptions.

Then the Bears will travel to Washington to take on a Redskin team that has lost 3 of 4 and is also 5-6 after yesterday’s loss. After that, Chicago travels to Minnesota hoping to get revenge on the Adrian Peterson-less Vikings who are tied with Chicago for 3rd in the NFC North. After coming home to face off against the Packers, the Bears will host the New Orleans Saints, who have shrugged off a terrible start to win 5 of their last 7 and are also sitting at 5-6 today.

After falling to 4-6, the Bears season looked all but over, now you could almost claim they are in the driver’s seat. But in order for the Bears to make the playoffs, they’ll need to do something they haven’t done all year, win two or more consecutive games.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 9:44 am and is filed under Rex Grossman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.