MVN - Most Valuable Network

Bye-bye playoffs, hello off-season

Putrid. Horrid. Utterly pathetic. %$#@*&. There aren’t enough adjectives, adverbs or curses in the English language to accurately describe the Bears’ 2007 campaign. Just when you think the year can’t get any more awful, the Bears turn around and make you think otherwise.

Throughout the first half of the game against the Redskins, the Bears offense looked utterly atrocious. The non-existent running game made potent Bears running attacks of yore spin in their graves. Rex Grossman looked lost, completing two passes for an unexceptional 14 yards before leaving the game with an undisclosed (but ugly looking) knee injury. Then Brian Griese entered the game and looked completely befuddled. How can you call yourself a professional, NFL caliber quarterback after staring down a big play potential receiver not once, not just twice in a game, but on consecutive drives? When a player like Devin Hester comes on to the field as a wide receiver, it would be logical to think that the defense will be paying very special attention to him. It becomes even easier for a team to cheat his way when you stare him down as he runs his route and proceed to throw the ball towards him despite coverage. It will get picked. It did get picked. Twice in a row. On nearly identical plays. To the same guy (Shawn Springs). Why, Brian? Why?

The Bears then came out in the second half and, following some very impressive catches by Greg Olsen and Bernard Berrian, scored a touchdown. Despite their best efforts to throw the game away with the score 14-10 in the third, there was hope for the Bears yet. Then, Griese reverted to first half Brian and proceeded to throw the ball everywhere but at his receivers. Fortunately, he didn’t hit the Redskins’ defense either. But with a second and goal on the four yard line and the score 17-10 in the fourth, how can you so horribly overthrow Greg Olsen on a fade route? How can you then proceed to under throw him on the same fade route to the opposite side? One can’t blame Lovie Smith for kicking a field goal in that situation; the Bears had four downs to drive one yard (as Adrian Peterson had a three yard loss on the first play) and failed three times. And Brian Griese is still gainfully employed?

Maybe I am being a bit harsh on Griese, as the offensive line didn’t do a whole lot to give him time in the pocket. Also, Griese had absolutely no running game to back him up. Aside from a few impressive gains from rookie running back Garrett Wolfe, the Bears’ running game was a potpourri of pathetic, horrible and laughable. Sixty total rushing yards. Six-zero. Putrid. But there’s no excuse for some of the high school error plays Griese made in this game, namely the two interceptions to Springs.

And the penalties, oh the penalties. Every offensive lineman, excluding Olin Kreutz, was flagged for a false start at least once throughout the game. Some of these penalties came on first downs. This makes it 1st and a mile, as 15 yards is a nearly unmanageable amount for the offense these days. What’s worse is that many of these false start penalties came at the most inopportune times, such as in the middle of a rare down field drive. If trying to lose was the name of the game, the Bears might be one of the best teams in the NFL.

The offensive play calling seemed to channel the glory days of John Shoop at a few key moments. Stubbornly running the ball on first down without a running game never helps. Passes that are short of the first down marker on third and manageable made me cringe in reminiscence of Mr. Shoop’s backwards offensive.

So the offense was terrible overall. The defense didn’t fare much better. Yes, it fared well enough in the first half, considering how Griese gift-wrapped the Redskins a short field twice consecutively in the last minute of the half. The front four played well. Alex Brown had a strip and a sack, Adewale Ogunleye recovered a fumble and Tommie Harris broke up some running plays. But even so, Todd Collins to Todd Yoder? Who and who? Todd Collins managed to carve the defense apart, completing 15-20 for 2 TDs and 224 yards.

How does a quarterback who hasn’t completed a pass since 2004 manage to do so well? You can point at injuries. It hurts not having Nate Vasher, Mike Brown and Dusty Dvoracek on the field. It’s worse that Tommie Harris is playing with a knee injury. The icing on the cake is the fact that Ron Rivera isn’t calling the plays anymore, which is quite obviously a huge factor in the Bears’ defensive drop-off from last year. The once unmovable run defense is a shell of its former self. The pass coverage is consistently clueless. And yes, Adam Archuleta, who’s good for nothing more than breaking up the wedge on kickoffs, still somehow finds his way onto the defensive side of the ball all too often. And by all too often I mean more than zero times a game. But again, I’ll save my Archuleta diatribe for later.

And can someone explain to me why, on third and long, the Bears don’t blitz anymore? I wouldn’t mind them dropping into the blanket zone coverage if they could actually stop their opponents from converting on the third and longs. Third-and-sixteen turning into a 22-yard Campbell-to-Randle-El connection is far from the Bears’ defense we long to have back.

Finally, the Bears’ special teams, the one unit that has consistently played better than sub-average this season, was stuffed the entire game. Robbie Gould had a kick blocked from 47 yards out. Devin Hester had four kick returns for 60 total yards and one punt return for 16 yards. Thus, no touchdowns.

There was some good that came out of this game. Greg Olsen got to show off his route running prowess and soft hands, further establishing himself as a great receiving TE in the making. Bernard Berrian made a few circus catches too…yeah, that about covers it.

So what now? The Bears are virtually eliminated from the playoffs. Grossman, by the looks of how his knee buckled, could be done for the year. Yes, I know he walked off the field, but even with torn ligaments in the knee it’s possible to walk. I’m not saying that’s the case, but with our luck and Grossman’s injury history, I’d give 2:1 odds that this is the last time we see Grossman in a Bears uniform (if I were a gambling man). The running game is pathetic and Benson could be the biggest bust since *shutter* Cade McNown. The defense is battered and a former shell of itself. Nothing has gone right all year. Nothing.

All the Bears can do now is start planning for what to do in the off-season. Say the Bears lose out. That’ll give them a 5-11 record and a top ten pick in next year’s draft. From there, they might be able to grab QBs Andre Woodson, Brian Brohm or Matt Ryan or OTs Gosder Cherilus or Sam Baker. And while I don’t want to see the Bears return to their late ’90s standings position, the potential there is hard to ignore.

If the Bears do end up putting a couple of wins back to back, something they haven’t done all year, and end up good enough to not have a top 10 draft pick, the consensus seems to be trade for Donovan McNabb. I’ve heard this a lot and I’m wary of the idea. Yes, McNabb would be an upgrade compared to Grossman. Yes, he would provide a sense of leadership and yes, he could benefit from a change of scenery. What worries me is his proneness to injury. His production has dropped off since 2005 and he has had several nagging injuries. Unless Bernard Berrian can prove to be a consistent target, McNabb will have arguably the same talent at the wide receiver corps as he does now. And what will the Bears have to trade with they want him? Still lots of questions that we’ll hopefully answer soon and in another column.

What we know for sure after this Redskins game is this: the Bears’ playoff hopes are gone. The best they can do now is start planning for the off-season, recuperate their injured team and start rebuilding the offense from the ground up. It’s been a long and disappointing season. Hopefully we can look forward to a bright and prosperous off-season.

Failing that, there’s always Devin Hester to watch.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 3:14 am and is filed under Bernard Berrian, Brian Griese, Adewale Ogunleye, Robbie Gould, Greg Olsen, Bears' Off-Season, Dusty Dvoracek, Nathan Vasher, Adam Archuleta, Mike Brown, Devin Hester, Alex Brown, Donovan McNabb, Tommie Harris, 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.