Well, somebody had to lose. A tie in this game would have been like kissing your livestock.
If this one had been a prize fight, instead of whatever it was, the marquee outside the Trans World Dome would not read “Rumble on the River,” but something more along the lines of “Tedium on the Tributary.” In this corner, from Chicago, weighing less than you think, Da Bears.
And in the blue shirts with the curly yellow horns on their hats, by way of Cleveland, through Los Angeles, the vagabond virtuosos of professional football, the Rams.
Ah, the promotion for this one was left to cable-TV mongers, who were welcome to it. Even they couldn’t have bothered to watch. This wasn’t even preseason curious, no matter what it looked like.
These two teams are not unpacking, full of optimism and ambition. These two teams are double parked, with the motor running.
Never mind that the Bears come out of it winning 13-10, or that they have now won three of their last four. They are not building, they are renting.
There was Rick Mirer again at quarterback having his passes batted back at him, and Darnell Autry being caught from behind as usual, and someone named Chris Gray playing the whole game at guard, his chief resource being that neither of his names is Todd.
Instead of the Bears’ millionaire kick returner Tyrone Hughes doing his typical job of pretending to be a refrigerator magnet running into an anvil, the chore was proxied to wide receivers Ricky Proehl and Eric Smith while Hughes was excused to invent new alibis.
And linebacker Bryan Cox, the highest paid Bear ever, was more often than not removed to the sideline on downs where he should have been earning all that money.
While Cox’s sack of Tony Banks caused the fumble that led to the winning field goal, one play in two years does not a legend make.
The short of it is Dave Wannstedt is second-guessing everything he had in mind back in August.
In Game 15 of the season, the Bears looked like their own waiver wire. In Game 15 of the season, with all their other problems, the Bears suddenly found that the guy who does his job upside down and backwards is their enemy.
Wannstedt wasted the rage he usually saves for Todd Sauerbrun on long snapper Harper Le Bel after Le Bel had managed to botch up place kicks, punts and trick plays by throwing the ball around like it was a subpoena.
When the least important person on the team stains the game, surrender is not an option, it is a solution.
The Rams, for their part, had such inglorious moments as Banks stripping himself of the ball and punt returner Eddie Kennison being tackled by his teammate Joe Rowe.
On the ineptitude meter, the Rams pegged the needle, while the Bears were able to counter with Curtis Conway, a pass catcher, throwing a forward pass to his own center, Chris Villarrial, which is generally against the rules no matter how tight the spiral or how deft the reception.
Still, it was a better pass than any thrown by Mirer, except for the dart Mirer threw to Todd Lyght, once a Mirer teammate at Notre Dame, now not.
Have two football teams ever played for anything more meager, done it so shabbily or, when it was over, had any idea of what any of it meant?
This was “Dim vs. Dubious,” or maybe “Murky vs. Shaky.” To the loser goes the opportunity to make a bigger mistake in the draft. A heavy responsibility, being lousy.
You take Rashaan Salaam and he’ll take Lawrence Phillips. And never the two shall meet.
The sad truth is that these are two teams not clearly awful enough to deserve the No. 1 pick, not so thoroughly worthless to threaten either coach’s job, not so irredeemably inadequate not to have actual, verifiable moments of competence.
They can’t even lose right.
