Chicago Bears 2008 Preemptive Autopsy Part 3: Defense/Special Teams

"I can't drive - FIFTY-FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE"

Now, we get to the parts of the team that really matter to the folks in charge: The defense and special teams. Because defense wins championships, baby, and we'll just ignore the fact that without an offense, you won't win enough games to make it there. We'll also ignore the fact that even a great defense turns into a bad defense if all the players are exhausted from the offense being an unstoppable machine of three-and-outs that keeps them on the field all day, and gets even worse when all the best players are injured. But yeah. So... Uh... DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS, WOOOOOOOO

DEFENSIVE LINE:

Even as what should have been one of the team's biggest strengths last year, this still ended up being a disaster. The biggest mistake, making Alex Brown be Mark Anderson's backup, has been corrected in a rare case of Bears management admitting they screwed up. Anderson was a sack machine as a rookie, but he got his ass spanked on first and second downs last year, and is back on third downs where he belongs. Brown is good for the most part, but his entire reputation rests on the three or four games a year where he really goes off, while resting for the other twelve. On the other side, Adewale Ogunleye is a consistently solid dude and one of the most underrated players in the league. Also, in some African language I cannot scarcely begin to understand, his name means "The God of Iron." Even if he was a piece of shit, I'd still make him a starter, just for that. It's like Thor and Iron Man gayed off together and had a miraculous football-baby. Or something. Yeah.
In the middle, Tommie Harris returns to the three-technique (to those of you who never played high school football, that's lined up on the outside shoulder of the offensive guard) to hopefully be a beast-creature of ultimate doom the way he's been in years past, but after two straight years of heavy injuries, (including a banged-up knee he's standing on right now) you have to get at least a little concerned about the $40 million they just sent his way. At nose tackle, the solid-but-unspectacular Anthony Adams returns to the spot he had to man last year after Dusty Dvoracek went down in week one and Darwin Walker ended up being a big fat huge pile of rotten snake feces, but you have to think he's just keeping the spot warm for a healthy Dvoracek (who's only managed two quarters of play in two years, so we'll see how that goes) or rookie Marcus Harrison. Harrison is a guy who would have been a first round pick if he hadn't been busted with some ecstasy a while back, which is somewhat of a concern, because that's not as violent a drug as you'd like a nose tackle to have. I mean, if he was on crack or was a raging alcoholic, he would have the inner violence needed to want to smash a halfback's face in, but rolling on X, he'd just want to rub up against people and dance, dance, dance. Dvoracek, I have no worries about on such a level, because he's already got a fine track record of violencing people when necessary. The other two guys are special teams ace Israel Idonije, a hybrid end/tackle who put on a bunch of weight in the offseason (in a good way) and looks like he's just about ready to have a breakout year, and Matt Toeaina, who they pilfered off the Cincinatti practice squad last year and looked really, really good in the two games he played in. He's also the sort of Wild Samoan influence that this team has needed for a long time.

LINEBACKERS

On paper, this really should be the strongest position on the team, starter-wise, with two All Pros and one... other guy. In the middle, Brian Urlacher returns healthy to try and continue what looks to be a Hall of Fame career as maybe the Bears fourth or fifth greatest middle linebacker of all time. (Seriously, people forget about Bulldog Turner and Bill George) He was invisible for most of last season with an arthritic back, but turned into enough of an unstoppable kill-machine over the last few weeks of the year to make the stats look like he had a really good year, most notably leading the team with a cornerback-like five interceptions. On the weak side, Lance Briggs returns after a turbulent offseason of contract-squabbling and baby-momma issues, and while picking up Urlacher's scraps is one of the easiest jobs in the NFL and made Warrick Holdman look like an actual good player back in he day, he played well enough while Urlacher was sucking eggs last year to indicate that he might be earning his money after all. On the strong side, there's nondescript white guy Hunter Hillenmeyer, who's just a guy who does what needs to get done, basically. He covers the occasional tight end, takes care of his assignments, and is usually good for about 100 tackles. He ain't a superstar, but he'll do. The all-purpose backup is Jamar Williams, who comes in when basically anyone gets hurt, especially since Hillenmeyer moves to the middle on occasions where Urlacher goes down. He's solid as hell, and I wasn't going to be too worried if Briggs didn't resign, because he might not be much of a step down. The other guys are Nick Roach and Darrell McClover, who are more special teams contributors than anything else. But if I was Darrell McClover, I'd drop the extra C, because being named "Darrell McLover" would be rad as hell.

DEFENSIVE BACKS

This was another area all ate up with injury last year, and it really showed just how valuable Nathan Vasher is. When he went down for most of the year, the opposing teams could just pass at will. I mean Charles Tillman on the other side is awesome on most occasions, but when he has an off-day, he's really bad. I think Steve Smith is still catching touchdowns on him in the 2006 divisional playoffs. Vasher has the kind of steady, sustained awesomeness that you can't really appreciate until he's not out there. But when both guys are healthy and on the field at the same time, they make one of the best cornerback tandems in the league, with Vasher serving as a nice speedy cover-corner yin to Peanut's bigger, more physical yang. Behind those two, the dropoff is pretty huge, though. Danieal Manning has been moved from safety to corner again, but it's more for the purpose of playing the nickel back, which is basically a third safety anyway. Hopefully for his sake, Mike Brown stays healthy, because he's made a career out of looking lost out there when Brown's not around to tell him what to do. Corey Graham and Trumaine McBride return as the main backups, and while the team website seemed to rave about them constantly, I never really saw it out on the field. Then again, they were rookies, so there's nowhere to go but up, probably.
At free safety, Mike Brown returns for his final shot at a meaningful NFL career, after spending the majority of the last few years in street clothes. Granted, all his injuries have been unrelated to each other, and every time he comes back, he always seems to be just as good as he was before, but at this point, I'm afraid the dude's just snakebit. Like maybe his ancestor, Colonel Ephraim Brown, defiled an ancient mummy's tomb or something, dooming every first-born male child of his line to a life of ligament damage. Hell, who knows. But when the guy's healthy, he's the best defensive player on this team. Better than Urlacher, Harris, and everyone else. Whenever he goes down, the entire defense goes down with him, and that's why things fell apart the way they did last year and toward the end of the year before. And given his cursed nature and the fact that Danieal Manning and lucky-he-wasn't-cut rookie Craig Steltz are the next options, that's a bad sign for 2008. At strong safety is Kevin Payne, who didn't last very long before going on injured reserve as a rookie last year, and that just makes you feel real good about the safety situation. Behind him is last year's starter Brandon McGowan, a painfully average dude who didn't so much earn the starting job last year as he was simply the last man standing after Chris Harris was traded to the Panthers to make room for Adam Archuleta, and we all know how that turned out. I hope Archuleta gets hit by a bus, that fucking pussy.


SPECIAL TEAMS

What hasn't been said about all-universe kick returner Devin Hester? Nothing. Everything has been said about him by someone at one point or another. So let's move on. In the painfully-likely even that Hester goes down to an injury while playing wide receiver, Danieal Manning spent most of the preseason looking like Devin Junior, so it may not be a complete disaster. Rookie wide receiver Earl Bennett has also looked pretty good returning punts, and Garrett Wolfe is another decent option. The Bears are pretty well stacked at the returner positions, and we all know that's the one true path to the Super Bowl.
At kicker, Robbie Gould returns with a big fat new contract, after being perhaps the only placekicker in history to threaten a holdout. That's the kind of enormous, swinging brass balls you'd much rather have on a guy whose job on the field involves smashing into people, but I suppose it works for kickers, too. Brad Maynard returns for his millionth season at punter, and he doesn't exactly have a monstrous cannon for a leg, but he's one of the best at making the ball land where he wants it to go. Setting up things for these guys is long-snapper Patrick Mannelly, a man who's been playing long-snapper for a decade and still has yet to make a bad snap in that time, a pretty big reason why they haven't had a punt blocked in a trillion years.
The coverage units, even after the loss of Brendon Ayanbadejo, are the stuff of nightmares. The kickoff team features a 300 pound wrecking ball of a wedge-buster in Israel Idonije, normally useless wide receivers like Brandon Lloyd and Mark Bradley have displayed a knack for blocking kicks, and if Ayanbadejo hadn't been around, it might have been Adrian Peterson making all those Pro Bowls. Add in other special teams maniacs like Charles Tillman, Darrell McClover, and Nick Roach, and even with all the press the defense gets, it's a no-brainer which unit is the best on this this team.

So there you have it. The special teams unit is going to be amazing, the defense will look great until it becomes riddled with injuries, and the offense might as well not take the field. The offense is the key here, though, where I think having an offensive line made up of rejects and old men and a wide receiver corps that looks like something from the football equivalent of a Major League movie are going to sink this team. I'm putting the over/under on 2008 wins at six, and as the eternal pessimist, I'm taking the under. I'm thinking 5-11, fourth place in the NFC North. It's gonna be a long, cold winter.