ON A LIMB By Bob Chochola Helium, 23 January 2007 Not so fast! Don’t put flowers on the Bears’ grave just yet, Or you may have to chow-down on crow at Terry Bradshaw’s Super Bowl party.
The weary and cold ground crew didn’t even have the frozen Soldier Field turf covered yet after this past Sunday’s NFC Championship game, when I heard the first TV sports commentator predict the Bears would fall victim to a much superior foe in Super Bowl XLI on February 4th. An opponent had not yet been decided, but their fate was already sealed as losers in “The Big Dance.” Certainly by the time Manning’s Colts had defeated their arch nemesis New England Patriots it had become a foregone conclusion that Peyton and crew would be way too much for the Bears and cruise to victory. Not so fast sports fans! It’s very easy to wait for the pundits to deliver their two-cents and then jump on a bandwagon. Hey, I like cheering a winner too. But in the two days following NFL Championship Sunday, I heard the phrase, “The Colts will win” at least two-dozen times. Oh really? By Monday morning every so-called “expert” from internet bloggers to Las Vegas odds makers had the Colts winning by a touchdown or more. News and sports anchors alike were spouting silly school boy praise and pledging eternal loyalty to the almighty Manning – cursing the lowly erratic QB in the WindyCity. Naturally a fickle public (most of whom had watched their own home town NFL team fall in defeat and wouldn’t know “good Rex” from “bad Rex” if he sat on their nose and wiggled) jumped on board the train for a safe-bet ride to a “most likely outcome” and picked the Colts too. A wager for a certainly happy Super Bowl Sunday is a good thing – I’m all for happy. But there’s a stop before you arrive at happy – the “sure thing” must play the game. Here’s what I know about experts: most of the time they are mistaken for someone who knows better than the average person when, in fact, they are guessing just like the rest of us. This is especially true for sports experts. Sports is not an exact science and sometimes you’d do just as well to forget the numbers, forget the talent match-up, forget the field conditions and home crowd advantage, and just flip a coin. The phrase “any given Sunday” may ring a bell with you? Super Bowl Sunday is no different in that respect from any other Sunday during the NFL season – it’s one game – any team can beat any team on any given Sunday. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the experts. In the week leading up to the NFC Championship game I read four game analysts/experts and watched a grand total of twelve more on TV (four on FOX, four on CBS, and four on ESPN) and certainly would have been given a better idea of who was going to win had I consulted a coin flip. Of those sixteen voices, only one picked the Bears to win over the Saints – Iron Mike Ditka, who you may, or may not remember, coached both the Saints and the Bears. The previous week, leading up to the Divisional Playoffs, this same cast of sixteen usual suspects picked the Seahawks to demolish the Bears - all sixteen of ‘em picked Seattle. Summing it all up for the two week period… I watched two Bears’ playoff games, read/watched thirty-two expert predictions, and got only ONE right answer. One out of thirty-two is a little better than 3% correct. If I did that poorly on my job, I’d be fired. Sixteen had said the Bears couldn’t beat the Seahawks and Shaun Alexander’s superb running game. The Bears won early in the season, but Seattle was missing the star running back due to injury. This time it would be a different story with a healthy Alexander, right? Wrong! The Bears kicked a game winning field goal (I know Cowboys’ fans were holding their collective breath during the snap) and the Seahawks were finished. When the Saints marched into town, Chicago’s chances of victory were slim and none, according to the pundits. The rushing tandem of rookie sensation Reggie Bush and “Deuuuuuuce” McAllister would overpower Chicago’s depleted D. Meanwhile QB Drew Brees would take full advantage too, making good use of his talented receiving core. The Bears, on the other hand, couldn’t “hide QB Rex Grossman any more.” They would “have to use him in this game sooner or later.” Spewed one sports’ learned. Grossman was a paradox for much of the season, but didn’t he prove himself against Seattle? Was he still the biggest chink in the Bears’ armor? “One day he’s throwing sixty-yard TD passes, the next he gets picked-off five times. If ‘bad Rex’ shows up,” said one ESPN pundit, “forget about the Bears.” Chicago was doomed. A slaughter in the making and right on the Bears’ new home turf too. Well, when the players took the field for the NFC title and I thought I could not bear to hear one single Hurricane Katrina story more of how “this team went from a 3-13 record to the big game and helped bring the city of New Orleans back to life,” I found out that all of the concern I had about being able to hold my head up again after the Saints destroyed my Bears was for naught. Following a superb Lovie Smith game plan, the offense found several ways to score against the Saints and they didn’t all depend on Rex throwing the ball. Imagine that? Inspiring was a 69 yard/8 running play drive that featured ONLY Thomas Jones’ rushing behind an offensive line that manhandled the Saints D. It was smash mouth football at its best – Bears’ football – reminiscent of the Gayle Sayers and Walter Payton days of old. They lined up, ran the ball, and dared the #1 defense in the NFL against the run to stop them. The Saints could not. Just when I was thinking, “Hey, the Bears CAN indeed ‘hide’ QB Rex” for good or bad, Rex would make an appearance. But it was “Good Rex” that showed-up for this NFC title game with a 4 play drive featuring ALL passing plays that put the Bears in the end zone again – ahead for good. The rout was ON and they would never look back, spanking the Saints all the way back down the Mississippi River to Louisiana with a Rex Grossman TD pass. It’s on to Super Bowl XLI. You’d think they were going to set-up a ring at mid-field and have Rex Grossman and Peyton Manning fight, while the rest of the hundred-plus players and coaches watch. One more game spells one more round of pundit-speak about how Peyton Manning will pick apart the Bears, one more round of everyone asking, “Which Rex will come to the game?” I thought we were past all that? Here’s my amateur take on Super Bowl XLI and please note the date of this article, so I can prove I wrote it before hand – just in case the Bears win. But that’s not going to happen according to the experts. No way! Rex isn’t up to it. The D is still injury depleted. We can’t hide our QB in the Super Bowl – sooner or later he’ll have to throw it and then we’re done. Blah… Blah… Blah… Before Peyton Manning starts making plans to visit Walt Disney World to plant a big wet and sloppy kiss on Mickey’s mug, maybe he’d better call Drew Brees and Matt Hasslebeck and get some pointers on how to remove blood and grass stains from a uniform? Just in case the Bears win. I mean, better safe than sorry and these two guys should have lots of practical knowledge on the subject, considering the beating they took at the hands of Urlacher & Co. The real short story is that “favorite” status puts enormous pressure on the Colts in this game. That’s obstacle #1 for Peyton Manning. Remember also that he has finally beaten the Patriots and that “curse” (if you can call it that) is over, but it still doesn’t explain why the team plays so poorly (historically) post Thanksgiving. Check their record and you’ll see what I mean. Maybe all that’s over with too – maybe not? That is obstacle #2. The Bears, on the other hand, are obstacle #3 and have zero expectations thrust upon them. Uh, except that they’ll lose. It’s unfinished business as usual for them, no matter how mad they get at the nay-say crowd. That “they cannot win” has followed them since training camp: “The Bears have a chance at winning a weak division this year with an equally weak schedule, but they’ll be a long shot in the playoffs.” I paraphrase, but all season it has been the same story – no one but the Bears themselves would believe. Then along came the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Rex Grossman somewhere around week 11 and the Bears were finished, so it seemed. They are in Super Bowl XLI now and still get no respect. I like that – it’ll make ‘em mean. Just one more win to prove the critics wrong once and for all. That, my friends, is motivation. They will spread the ball around and run it like there’s no tomorrow (there won’t be) behind that big offensive line. Rex will throw smart play action passes around that running attack, until it’s time to strike deep. Then (hopefully “Good”) Rex will throw the deep post route and strike (hopefully) paydirt. Nothin’ fancy here. Meanwhile a by then truly PO’ed Middle Linebacker Brian Urlacher, who will have had his fill of how the Bears are going to lose, will lead his mates to stuff the run and force the passing game. Force the pass with Manning at the helm, you ask? Yup! They’ve done it twice already. It’s always different when a QB can’t run the ball and must go to the air – particularly against an opportunistic defense that likes to cause fumbles and pick passes. Peyton will struggle with it too. If Indy cannot find a running game and Manning’s rhythm gets out of sync – Bears win. Look for Devin Hester to make a couple of big plays for the Bears against poor Indy kick coverage on special teams too. I’ll admit that QB is the most important position on the field. It isn’t the only position. It takes a team and a QB. Right now I believe that the Bears can win with (“Good”) Rex and will use him wisely so as to not put too many of their eggs in his basket – just the right eggs. Indy has another problem. Can they win if their QB is off his game? I don’t think so. Face it, like all the great QB’s throughout history, Manning is human and beatable. It’s really up to the team around him to allow him to shine and prevail over Chicago. The Bears are not going to just sit there and take it either. You bet they’ll be there and you bet they will be ready to prove all the critics wrong – again. I'll predict the Bears will win Super Bowl XLI by 17 points. If not, unlike my favorite sports pundits, I’ll take it like a man and admit I was wrong. If I'm right, there will be a whole bunch of folks out there eating crow come Monday morning. And that will be just fine with me.
