As a sideline observer, injured wide receiver Curtis Conway said he has been as perplexed as anyone over why the Bears have barely even tried to go deep to receivers Bobby Engram and Ricky Proehl.
“Any team needs balance,” Conway said, “and it seems like the (opposing teams’) focal point now is to stop Raymont (Harris). With Bobby and Rick out there, they figure all we’re going to do is three-step, throw the ball. So it’s not even so much that they’re capable of stopping us, they’re just playing right to what we’re doing.”
Conway said the two should at least be given a chance.
“You have to go out there and see what you can do. It was the same thing with Jeff Graham. Just because I was faster, they figured he couldn’t go deep. But he was able to go deep..”
Conway, who has missed the first three games with a broken collarbone, ran sprints Monday and said he hoped to be back for the New Orleans game in three weeks barring anything unforeseen showing up on X-rays this week.
“Honestly, I really feel like if it wasn’t a contact sport, I could go out there and play,” he said. “If I was guaranteed to go out there and not get hit on my shoulder, I could go through a whole game and make some plays. If it was flag football, I’d be fine.”
Taking a pass: Little wonder why the Bears tweaked the secondary first when they made a personnel change in their defense. Opposing quarterbacks are completing 70.3 percent of their passes, have six TD passes to two interceptions and own a combined quarterback rating of 106.8 to 62.8 for Bears quarterbacks.
Turning over: The Bears had more giveaways than takeaways in each of their three games, a factor in why they are 0-3. They are 5-28 under coach Dave Wannstedt when they lose the turnover battle. “As hard as we work on holding on to the ball in practice,” Wannstedt said, “that’s very disturbing.”
