WEEK SEVEN: The Perfect Storm.

"juyghfhfjfc fuck" Those are the words (or jumbles of letters and one word) that I typed a day ago on my first attempt at this post, before just walking away from the computer. Because at the time, there were pretty much no other appropriate words to describe what had happened. Because 17-14 only sounds like a near-miss, one of those "well if that one play blah blah we'll get 'em next time" sort of things where you keep your head up high and look forward to the next week. (And in this case, it's a bye week, and god damn, as someone just watching the games, even I need a break at this point.) And at 4-3, the Bears are still technically atop the NFC North, having for now a tie-breaker over the Packers, and even still have the second-best record in the awful, awful, awful, fucking AWFUL, shitty-bad NFC as a whole. But seriously, who the hell are we kidding? As far as the defense and occasionally Devin Hester's legs can carry this team, 2010 is already a lost season, a sixteen-game slap in the face that has to be endured until next year hopefully brings a new regime and the rebuilding years we should have begun in 2008. (and wouldn't have been necessary if players we actually needed who had actually been any good had been drafted between 2003 and 2007) Well, it'll either bring that or a lockout, but I'm trying to not think about that right now. But without an offense, a team can't win, and the one that the Bears have is in complete shambles.


It was only a few weeks ago that I was actually praising Mike Martz, after he actually made halftime adjustments against Dallas, something that I had never seen a head coach or offensive coordinator do in my time watching this team. But I suppose that even with a win over a team that was still supposed to be good at that point, the thought of straying from the plan - his beautiful, perfect plan that had been utterly exposed, exploited, and destroyed by opposing defenses as early as 2004 - and admitting that flexibility was not a vice, but a virtue, was simply too much for ol' Mike to take. Since then, we've gotten to see Martz's true, horrifying form, which is that of a bitter former genius whose death-grip on a dead football philosophy has rendered him something that less resembles a genius than it does a clearly retarded person who hates quarterbacks. And it is this, his rigid insistence on playing "Greatest Show on Turf" football - insisting on long dropbacks to allow long pass routes to unfold with no functioning offensive line to keep the QB vertical through all of this, refusing to hand the ball off even when the game is close and Chicago backs are averaging over four yards a carry, and completely writing the team's best receiver out of the playbook simply because of his position - that was the first part of the Perfect Storm of 2010 Bears football.

This man HATES quarterbacks.

The second part of the Storm is one you probably know of by now if you've been sitting through this gibberish I keep typing, and that's the offensive line - The Doom of 2010, a sad handful of broken men whose names I shall not utter here. Behind them, no running back can gain ground and a quarterback can only look down field at his peril. Seriously, there were points where these ass-dumplings made Albert Haynesworth look like a superbeast, and he's pretty much only known now as the guy who got so fat that his body physically rejected the act of jogging and started to literally destroy itself. They allowed four sacks, and that was actually a vast improvement for them. These guys fucking suck balls.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Williams.

And the final piece of the hellish puzzle of the Perfect Storm is the player who was supposed to be the glorious Chosen One to lead us out of fifty-plus years of quarterback hell - Jay Cutler himself. And I've defended this guy a lot over the last year and a half, because hell, there really was a lot worth defending. He spent last year behind an only slightly less shitty line, running Ron Turner's stupid-ass offense, throwing to a bunch of rookie receivers, while his favorite target, Devin Aromashodu, stayed off the field all year, in Lovie Smith's doghouse. (Where he remains this year. I think Lovie hates receivers as much as Mike Martz hates quarterbacks.) This year, he's been damned by The Doom of 2010 and cursed by Martz's hatred of short passes, running plays, and having the quarterback move anywhere but straight back. And despite all of this, for a while, the True Cutler shone through, and god damn, it was beautiful. And I truly believe that the quarterback of those first few games of touchdowns and glory really was the True Cutler. But the key word here is "was." Because god damn, we've been here before, haven't we? A quarterback being the subject of whispers of Pro Bowls and NFL MVP awards, only to completely fold up once opposing teams learned his Kryptonite-like weakness of being slammed in the dirt a bunch of times. And after that, he was never the same, and heard approaching footsteps behind him even when none were there, and god damn, who knows where he'll throw the ball this time. Yeah, we've seen this happen before.

And now, he's watched from the sideline as it happened to someone else.

Jay Cutler now has The Fear, the same creeping terror that took down our last Chosen One, and at the same time, a completely different thing altogether. Because you see, Rex Grossman, for all his gunslinging cockiness, was a coward. When faced with even an attempt at a pass rush, (at a time when the Bears still at least had John Tait, Ruben Brown, and a pre-downfall Olin Kreutz, even) would just hurl the ball skyward, and with all eleven men on the defense standing under the ball's shadow, waiting for it to land safely in their arms, he knew that there'd be no one left to hit him. But the Fear that Cutler has been relentlessly sacked into has turned into a whole new beast, with Cutler being way too cocky and arrogant to even realize what's happening to him. He stands firm in the pocket like a statue, as if to say, "come on, fuckers, I'm taking you all on," just before a pocket that never existed collapses into a four-man gang sack. He says, "yeah, that's right DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU," and then throws an interception. Then, he strides back onto the field, says "yeah, that's right DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU," and then throws another interception. Then, he strides back onto the field, says "yeah, that's right DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU," and then throws another interception. Then, he strides back onto the field, says "yeah, that's right DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU," and then throws another interception. And then, after the game? Much like the glassy-eyed, semi-coherent boxer who gets knocked out in the first round, and then curses his opponent as a weak-punching pussy at the press conference, he basically says, "yeah, that's right DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU," and then, presumably, somehow threw another interception. Perhaps it's not so much that Cutler has been pounded into the dirt so often that he now fears each play as though it may be his last, so much as all the hits he's taken have made him really, really, rrrrreeeeally fucking stupid.

"Yeah, that's right, DeAngelo Hall, I'm coming at YOU!"

So we have no offensive line, an offensive coordinator too stubborn to even try to work around that issue, and a quarterback who's been literally knocked stupid. And the hurting never stops.

YAY/BOO: Week Seven Edition.

BOO: The same stupid crap that's always wrong with this team is still wrong, and I'm going to run out of ways to lament this soon.
BOO: Devin Aromashodu actually starts a football game!... And then, is pretty much never seen after the first play.
BOO: Lance Briggs is injured, much like I said would happen before the season started.
YAY: Brian Iwuh has actually done okay filling in.
BOO: When we stumble upon a backup linebacker who might turn into a good player, it's not in the middle, where we're gonna need a young guy soon.
BOO: Seriously, after being completely 2005-level beastly for the first few games, Brian Urlacher has fallen off the face of the Earth.
BOO: In a season where he's already barely showing up on the stat sheet, Julius Peppers has been absolutely handled by rookie offensive tackle two weeks in a row.
YAY: On the other hand, Israel Idonije is starting to turn kind of okay.
YAY: D.J. Moore is starting to have one of those 2004 Nathan Vasher "this dude is going to be awesome next year" kinds of seasons.
BOO: You can't decline a delay-of-game penalty, so D.J. Moore only ran one pick back for a touchdown.

NEXT WEEK: Nothing!

It's a bye week, so they can't possibly lose. Meanwhile, depending on how lazy or motivated I become, I'll have a special not-quite-halfway report and/or a secret look inside the Chicago Brain Trust's bye-week brainstorming session. Early word from the underground says that the latter may or may not involve a killer cyborg and a racist parrot. Stay tuned.