2010 Bears Post-Season Awards, Part 2: Gritty Comebacks

[Last time we met: 2010 Rashaan Salaam's Bong Memorial Rookie of the Year: J'Marcus Webb.]

Football season is over. My brain's way of randomly pulling up information that I figured I'd never need tells me that this was the title of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. And it's kind of an appropriate thing to mention, I guess, both with football over for possibly a much longer time than usual and with Dave Duerson taking himself out a little while back. It's the end. The end of a yearly institution, a weekly ritual, a daily distraction, and an occasional drain on my finances. No more games, no more runs, no more passes. No more field goals or groin injuries. No more reasonable excuses to look at the Bears section on Rotoworld. And the current labor situation meaning that it could possibly be gone until way later than next fall cast way more of a pall over the end of the season than the bummer that it usually is. But you know what? This is not the time to be a downer. This is not the time to speak of grim, horrible, screaming death. This is not a suicide note - It's a love letter. A love letter to you and me and everyone and everything. This love letter is the 2010 Armchair Linebacker Chicago Bears Post Season Awards Celebration.

Award the Second: The Brian Piccolo Memorial Award for Gritty, Hard-Working Fan Favorite of the Year.


Brian Piccolo, or "Pic" as he was referred to by fans and teammates alike, has become a huge part of the team's 90-year history. Despite being a career backup whose on-field contributions to the team have been all but forgotten, his tragic death was immortalized in what is widely considered the greatest TV-movie of all time, (Lonesome Dove was a miniseries, which is a whole other category, you know) and he has become a beloved and cherished part of team lore, alongside greats such as Payton and Butkus. Meanwhile, Willie "The Wisp" Galimore was one of the NFL's brightest stars during his brief career and would have most certainly gone down as one of the league's all time greats, had his life not been tragically cut short, but compared to the eternal memory history has for Piccolo, he has been virtually forgotten by all but the most internet-savvy Bears fans. Not sure why, though.

It's a mystery.

But nevertheless, the Piccolo award for White Guy of the Year goes to:

Patrick Mannelly - Long-snapper.

It was a rough year for gritty fan-favorites this year in Chicago. Tim Shaw got released, Zeke Markshausen and Eric Peterman both failed to make the team, and Craig Steltz still sucks. But Mannelly was there, just like he's seemingly always been there. And that's an official thing now, as he's played more consecutive games than any other Bear, ever. Of course, it's not like a long-snapper gets smashed in the head as often as a quarterback or whatever, but that's got to count for something. And it's that sort of gritty, day-in, day-out dependability, mixed with a lack of athletic skill that causes him to lean heavily on the fundamentals - the dude actually won an award for fundamentals from someone I can't remember - that makes him the true essence of the gritty white-guy fan favorite. He may not be able to run fast or jump high, and he's likely to retire without ever scoring a touchdown or having a rookie card made, but goddammit, he's there. Time is but a window, death is but a door, and Patrick Mannelly will be here now and forever.

Theoretical Past Winners: DT Dusty Dvoracek (2008) and LB/ST Tim Shaw (2009)

Award the Third: The Zombie Brian Piccolo Award for Comeback Player of the Year.

Brian Piccolo, or "Pic" as he was referred to by fans and teammates alike, has become a huge part of the team's 90-year history. Despite being a career backup whose on-field contributions to the team have been all but forgotten, his tragic death was immortalized in what is widely considered the greatest TV-movie of all time, (Roots was a miniseries, which is a whole other category, you know) and he has become a beloved and cherished part of team lore, alongside greats such as Payton and Butkus. But as the saying goes, "you can't keep a good man down," and neither death nor six feet of dirt were enough to keep Piccolo down. No one knows how he rose from his unquiet grave or what gave him such an insatiable appetite for human flesh, but what we do know is that in a three-day rampage, Zombie Pic killed or maimed thirty-seven people before finally being subdued by a group of plucky teenagers and a creepy old man that everyone thought was a killer, but was really just an okay old dude who knew a lot about zombies. He still remains a beloved figure in Chicago sports however, even after his zombie murder rampage, due to the fact that at least 32 of his victims were believed to be Packers fans, and that one other guy Carl was kind of a prick. And speaking of the rage of the undead, the 2010 Comeback Player of the Year Award goes to:

Brian Urlacher - Middle Linebacker

This one was pretty much a no-brainer, honestly. Because yeah, everyone knows that he missed pretty much all of 2009, but even for a dude up into his thirties, a wrist injury isn't usually a career-ender. So even while he was sitting at home, conducting bitchy interviews about teammates and essentially becoming the literal Armchair Linebacker, there was never any concern, at least for me, that he'd be back the next year playing at the same level he was before. The problem there is that this is the dude with the degenerative neck condition (or whatever it was. Research is for suckers. Fuck the police.) who declined in 2007 and pretty much sucked by Urlacher standards in 2008. So in a season where I was prepared to watch him get swallowed up by blockers and think out loud why we didn't draft any of those five thousand linebackers who came out in 2009, Urlacher just showed the hell up again and owned the world for most of the season, and then gave the performance of three lifetimes in that shit-awful NFC Championship game. So for at least one year, the world felt at least semi-right again. Or something.

Theoretical Past Winners: Man, seriously, I don't think the Bears have really had any comeback lately. I guess Mike Brown did play several games in 2008 or something. Eh, forget it.

Next Time: Man, this post took me months to bother to finish, so if I ever close out the post season awards, it'll probably all in one big thing with just a couple sentences for each player. That opening paragraph sounded way better in February.