Bears Need to Make Key Move for Revival

December 5, 2014 @ admin → No Comments

OK, perhaps I may be a bit biased, but the Chicago Bears’ performance — offense, defense, special teams — Thursday night vs. the Dallas Cowboys reaffirms the obvious: The franchise needs to take a bold step. Namely, bring back the Honey Bears! At the very least, couldn’t the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have been at the game, which from a Bears perspective was pretty unsightly?

Stephy C has this, which should be some consolation to Bears fans.

* On the bright (?) side about the Bears’ 41-28 loss, the team doesn’t play again until Dec. 15 against New Orleans on “Monday Night Football.” Which means there are a couple of Sundays before then that have the potential for less wasted time than usual.

* Something positive to build on for the Bears (well, other than only three games remain in their season): Quarterback Jay Cutler was not sacked. He was 32-for-46 for 341 yards and two touchdowns. OK, and the obligatory end zone interception with 1:29 left.

* Not being a football expert (OK, not being an expert of just about everything), your humble correspondent was tempted to turn away from watching the Bears game when it was 35-7 after three quarters. One option was to view a story about someone who never grew up in a place called Neverland or something. But that sounded too much like Cutler and the Cowboys end zone.

Nikki du Plessis most likely can take your mind off football.

* Bears coach Marc Trestman in his postgame press conference: “This team competes hard every day to get better, and it competes hard in the football game. That would be totally disrespecting our football team to think they’re not going out and competing as hard as they can.” Well, we hate to be disrespectful or anything, but if the Bears’ performance this season (which includes a 5-8 record with some incredibly ugly losses) is competing as hard as the players can, they need some different players.

* Speaking of postgame comments, Comcast SportsNet probably could save a lot of money on its Chicago Bears postgame programming by using re-runs and merely substituting the name of the opposing team and players. On the bright (?) side, the trio of Chris Boden, Jim Miller and Dan Jiggetts worked from the CSN studios rather than in the cold concourse at Soldier Field.

* Bears running back Matt Forte, who was coming off an eight-yard performance, had another noteworthy effort (or is that not worthy?). He rushed for 26 vs. Dallas on 13 carries with a long run of seven yards. With a ground game like that, the Bears might want to think about throwing the ball all the time.

* Speaking of ground games, Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray ran for 179 yards on 32 carries with a long of 40 yards. Meaning he had more yards on one carry than the Bears did for the entire game.

* Folks in the media and elsewhere can clamor for Trestman’s firing, getting rid of Cutler, new ownership and more. But about all that such sentiments are good for is elevating blood pressure.

* And this is why I ~~waste so much time~~ do research on Twitter. Cubs manager Joe Maddon tweeted this week: Respect 90… going to make daily push for our players to respect that distance..run hard for 90 feet, and the respect will come back to you. Showing some restraint (and you have no idea how difficult that can be at times), I wanted to reply: “Is that a cumulative 90 or all at one time?” To be fair, some Cubs may be unfamiliar with the distance between bases. Or with running hard for 90 feet. Sounds a bit juvenile. But, hey, whatever works. Something says Maddon also would like to see some of his players learn to walk (as in four ball and you automatically are on base — whether you run hard for 90 or not).

* Speaking of the Cubs, they added former Cubs outfielder Dave Martinez as their bench coach. He served in the same capacity for Maddon at Tampa Bay. Not sure if he’s the guy who occasionally measures the distance between bases to make sure that it’s 90 feet or what.

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