With each week everything shrinks for the Bears. Their window of opportunity, their margin for error, their odds of realistically improving on the last two seasons.
Convinced that this year’s 3-5 is drastically different from the 3-5 of last season, they put themselves under the added pressure of having to snap a three-game losing streak and begin the second half of the season on a positive note against the Packers.
Winners of the last 10 games in the series and dominant at Lambeau Field, where they have lost only three home games since 1994, the Packers intrude on a week that began with the death of Bears legend Walter Payton and concluded with promises of added inspiration from Bears players.
“Walter loved playing the Packers,” guard Chris Villarrial said. “This was the biggest game for him, and it’s going to be an emotional boost just knowing he’s up there looking down on us.”
Victories are becoming that much more essential for the Bears considering that a minimum of a 6-2 finish will give them a 9-7 final record and a good chance for a playoff berth. Since ’95, 12 teams that finished 9-7 made it to the playoffs while four, including the ’95 Bears, did not, a 75 percent proposition. But in this decade, only the 1991 Jets and the 1990 Saints have made it to the playoffs at 8-8. And though Tampa Bay is the only sub-.500 team the Bears have left on their schedule, they insist the arrow is facing up compared with the feeling of 3-5 last season.
“It’s different,” guard Todd Perry said. “It’s still very disappointing, but we know we’re a much better team all around. I think we were in a situation last year where the last two years had finally caught up to us. But this 3-5, we’re not discouraged at all.”
Until last week’s 48-22 loss to the Redskins in Washington, the Bears had lost four games by an average of 3.75 points. Their three wins, however, had also been by a slim average margin of three points, so the rationale that every game was winnable could also be viewed the opposite way.
Last year’s 3-5 team–without a blowout taken out of the equation–had an average margin in defeats of 6.8 points and an average margin of victory of 2.6 points.
“Still,” Glyn Milburn said, “the way we’ve lost this year shows more confidence. We’ve been in every game with the exception of this last one. We’re not discouraged, you don’t see guys pointing fingers, you don’t see division in the locker room. Any time you have a losing record but you still see a close-knit unit, there’s potential to turn things around, and our coaches have done a great job of keeping that perspective in all of us.”
Villarrial said the team’s general outlook is the biggest difference.
“Last year everyone got down right away,” he said. “There was just a negative attitude: `Why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that? Here we go again. What are you guys doing?’ It was kind of a personal thing last year with some of the coaches and staff whereas this year, these guys are still positive and we believe in them.”
Last week’s shellacking by the Redskins, in which the Bears trailed 45-0 in the third quarter, was especially discouraging considering the Bears had been the seventh-best team in the league in points allowed and were developing a propensity to be the most stubborn when the game was on the line. But that ranking plummeted to 18th and continued to raise serious doubts about the defense’s ability to avoid the big play.
“We have to look at it as an aberration,” coach Dick Jauron said.
Left end Bryan Robinson said the team is still learning.
“This system is as new to us as the offense is dealing with their stuff,” he said. “Any play the coaches call is designed to work. Execution is the key, and we’ve had a lot of bad execution around here for the past couple weeks.”
Offensively the Bears are under a severe handicap with the continued absence of wide receiver Curtis Conway, missing his fourth game with a sprained ankle, and quarterback Shane Matthews, who reinjured his hamstring in his first game back after a two-week absence.
Rookie Cade McNown had led the team to just one touchdown in his roughly 10 previous quarters of work when he passed for three in the second half at Washington. Playing his first game against the Packers in Green Bay, he admitted, was a heady proposition.
“Hopefully,” Jauron said, “Cade will just block the whole thing out and focus on what he’s going to have to do, which is deal with an excellent football team in a noisy stadium. But it will be tough.”
The Packers are coming off a humbling 27-7 loss to Seattle and former coach Mike Holmgren last Monday night Quarterback Brett Favre is battling a thumb injury and well off his usual pace with 11 touchdown passes to 12 interceptions, four of the picks coming against the Seahawks. He also fumbled twice.
“We’re not naive enough to think that will be the Brett Favre we’ll see on Sunday,” Bears defensive coordinator Greg Blache said. “We’ll see the regular Brett Favre.”
