Some players howl, some beat their chests and wave their arms triumphantly. Bears linebacker Vinson Smith simply kept walking after he dumped Warren Moon on the ground for his first sack of the season, a solitary figure soaking up the feeling.
“I just like to walk away and think about what happened,” said Smith, whose sack was one of four by the team’s visibly inspired defense in the Bears’ 14-6 victory over the Vikings Monday night. “But the win is what was important.”
As was the way the Bears won. The Bears’ visiting locker room at the Metrodome was divided in half, with the offense on one side and the defense on the other. After this game, both sides were mobbed and both sides were in good moods.
The Bears’ defense, which had been allowing 24 points per game, held the Vikings to two Fuad Reveiz field goals. Vikings quarterback Warren Moon threw for 252 yards, but he was also crunched four times as he dropped back to pass and had to scramble frantically throughout the game. Moon’s longest pass was a 19-yarder to Jake Reed. The Vikings gained 70 yards on the ground, nothing longer than a 16-yard spurt, and that was executed by Moon himself.
“To say (the defense) wasn’t feeling the heat would be lying,” said Bears safety John Mangum, who, with the help of Kevin Miniefield, sacked Moon in the fourth quarter on a third-and-7 play. The blitzing Mangum knocked Moon back 12 yards, forcing the Vikings to punt from their own 48-yard-line.
“It was important to not let their passing offense get into a rhythm and throw, throw, throw. I got to come in quite a bit tonight. When you’re in the huddle and instead of guarding Cris Carter you get to blitz, well, that’s always a good
feeling.”
Jim Flanigan tallied the Bears’ first sack of the evening in the second quarter when he threw Moon down for a 7-yard loss on a first-and-10 play from the Vikings’ 40. It gave him 6 1/2 sacks for the season, but he ranked it in the middle of his others. “It wasn’t a critical third-down situation,” Flanigan said. “But he lost yards so that was pretty good.”
John Thierry got to Moon in the third quarter in one of the quirkiest plays of the game. He forced a fumble, but the ball bounced past the line of scrimmage into the hands of Amp Lee for a first down.
“I was thinking, `Dang!’ ” said Thierry, who felt himself knock the ball loose. “I looked around for it, but couldn’t find it. It’s something that doesn’t happen too often. But I’d rather get the win than the fumble any day.”
Smith’s sack came on the Vikings’ last drive in the third quarter and put Minnesota in a third-and-9 situation it wasn’t able to convert. Mangum and Minifield teamed up in the fourth quarter.
“We talked a lot about being in a game where we’d have to rise up and win one 10-6 or 10-9, and our defense did that,” coach Dave Wannstedt said. “We felt it was critical to come after them early. Whether we sacked them or not, we wanted to hit them early and let them know that we were around. We mixed up a lot of blitzes and pressures and kept them off balance.”
Smith was so fired up to play against the Vikings that he needed intravenous fluids at halftime, which drew mocking comments from teammates. By the end of the game, Smith was back in the trainer’s room, the IV taped again to his arm.
“I was just so psyched that at the beginning of the game I lost most of my water,” Smith said. “It’s not hard to do when you’re playing the Vikings on `Monday Night Football.’ I guess I’m just getting old. But don’t tell (Bears vice president of operations) Ted Phillips that.”
