PICTURED: The entire gameWell, it had to happen sooner or later. Everything we all knew would happen eventually finally happened, the harvest was reaped, the chickens came home to roost, the Bears pretty much paid for ten years of just assuming that offensive linemen just sort of happen, and you don't have to actually go pay to them, and everyone who's been feverishly waiting for the chance is finally getting to bust out that "the Bears are who we thought they were" line that's so fucking original finally got to do so. And well, it's only one loss, and for all we know, Jay Cutler might miss one game or less, but as the eternal pessimist, it's hard to think that this was pretty much it for 2010. No amount of scheming or offensive coaching genius (you know, like the genius of scripting a play where your tight end who's famously a a so-so blocker goes one-on-one with Justin Tuck...) is going to fix these protection problems. On top of that, as it currently stands, we're one bad blindside hit (and I counted about a thousand of those last night, give or take) away from the 2004 hell of having to sign random-ass dudes from off the street in the hopes of having them play QB the next Sunday. Anyway, I was holding out hope for the definitive win that would finally make me not be so nervous about the Bears being a paper undefeated team, but in the end, it was definitive the other way around. And being as it was such a potentially season-defining loss, I'm going to ditch the "good, bad, and ugly" format to just explore what all we've learned, mainly because there would be nothing but ugly otherwise. That's funny thing about bottomless pits of despair; they really don't have a bottom.
This was proven in 2004.
First of all, there is no hope, no hope at all for this offensive line. We know this, because every single player at all the positions has seen extensive playing time now, and none of them have been any good at all. Olin Kreutz and Roberto Garza are completely done at this point in their careers, J'Marcus Webb is too green a rookie to be counted on any time soon, (if ever) and Frank Omiyale, Lance Louis, Kevin Shaffer, and Edwin Williams (who I never even heard of until he played last week) are all players who would have problems making the practice squad of most teams, much less the starting lineup. Add in injured first-round bust Chris Williams, and it's just a goddamn shock that a quarterback holocaust hadn't happened earlier. Because of these five-plus assholes, not only can you stop the running game with only four guys up front, but the Giants showed that you can also put a QB's dick in the dirt with the same amount of guys, if they're good enough. (nerd time begins now) Since Jerry Angelo became the GM in 2001, the Bears have only drafted thirteen offensive linemen, at all positions. Of these, only five were picked in the first four rounds of the draft, only Williams is still with the team, and aside from Marc Colombo, (whose entire productive career has been for the Cowboys) not a single one of those players have been any fucking good whatsoever. We managed to survive for a while on pre-Angelo players Kreutz and James Williams and occasionally lucking out on signings like Ruben Brown and John Tait, but treating the secret most important part of the offense as an optional thing was going to bite the team in the ass sooner or later, and it looks like it's happening now. Hopefully, this will be the last year with this gang of idiots running the team, and hopefully the next gang of idiots will at least try to build a line at some point.
PICTURED: Frank Omiyale in the act of stealing $11 million.
And past that, not much really matters. With the line as it is, there can be no running game, it's getting harder and harder to have a passing game, and all the defense in the world can't save you from that. And it really showed last night as the game went on, as the Bears' D visibly just gave up out there. As it became more and more apparent that the offense was never going to lift itself off the floor of the prison shower and fight back against the Aryan Brotherhood, there just wasn't any point in the defense exerting itself, and the sooner they got the game to end, the sooner the violation of the offense would be over. Hope was stamped out, from the players on the field as it was from us jackasses watching at home. It was the worst kind of game, the kind where after a while, you stop yelling at whoever just made a stupid play and just sort of lean back and accept the horror that's unfolding. It's like Omiyale's latest false start penalty or Todd Collins's neck stinger are no longer anything to be angry or worried about; they simply are just what is, and watching it all go down becomes as natural as watching the rain fall or the cars drive by. "Well, of course this is what's happening," you know? And this is how it starts.
PICTURED: Todd Collins puts Juice Williams one step closer to an NFL roster.Where do we go from here? No way to tell for sure, but all signs point down. It's hard to bounce back from a neck-stomping like this, especially when the team's chief weakness is something that's going to take years and as many as five new starters to fix, and you've got a coaching staff that hates admitting mistakes more than anything else. Not to mention that, like all the "who we thought they were" people are mentioning by now, this is a team that really should be 1-3 at this point, if it hadn't been for lucky breaks involving the really OCD refs against Detroit and half the Packers being idiots. Maybe something miraculous can happen. Maybe Cutler won't get The Fear from the curb-stomping he just had to endure, and maybe the line can get it together to keep him vertical long enough to get the ball out of his hands. Maybe someone like J'Marcus Webb can step up or Chris Williams can start playing like he played late last year and the line can get settled down and get the running game going for more than 30 yards a game or whatever. But probably not. There will be more ugly wins and more brief rays of hope to come, but I think we now know that this isn't a team that's truly a contender in the NFC North. This is a team that won't win ten games, but you know, that's okay. Because that's what's supposed to happen. That's just what is.
Panthers 9, Bears 6.
"DEAD BY DAWN!"
2 comments:
Edwin Williams played for the Redskins last year--four games total at right guard, two of which he started. That was later in the season, when we were deep into our own personal "sign random-ass dudes from off the street in the hopes of having them play QB the next Sunday" hell. Only for us, it was O-line we were trying to get them to play. but yeah, anyway, that should tell you all you need to know about that guy. My condolences.
My condolences, friendo.
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