It felt like a given, a matter of time, a sure thing, like walking around here and eventually spotting a blond.
The Vikings were going to win this game Sunday night, and when former Chicago XFLer John Avery opened with a 34-yard kickoff return and Daunte Culpepper followed with a 51-yard pass to Kelly Campbell to get to the Bears’ 5-yard line, it seemed either preordained or just so Bear-like, if there’s a difference.
But a strange thing happened. After the Vikings scored the inevitable touchdown, they seemed intent on letting the Bears hang around–the same Bears who were so easily dismissed in San Francisco the week before. And these were the same Vikings who hung on to beat the mighty Packers last week.
The Bears seemed appreciative of the gesture, of being made to feel a part of the pomp and circumstance of an NFL game. Only a week ago they looked dead. On Sunday they looked like they wanted to hug somebody, and a hug isn’t far from a tackle, and the next thing you knew the Bears were really tackling people, though too often after a 10-yard rush.
So those are the good things, surely the good things the Bears will dwell on. They won’t dwell on the 400 yards of total offense they gave up or the final score, 24-13 Vikings.
“We can’t let them run up and down the field on us,” Bears defensive lineman Phillip Daniels said.
OK, so they are dwelling on the 400 yards of total offense.
It was Vikings coach Mike Tice who said last week that “one of the most vicious and deadly animals is a wounded Bear,” and though that statement seemed a little bizarre, most of us expected the Vikings to employ a tranquilizer gun at some point Sunday.
Granted the Bears didn’t have much in the way of a pass rush in Week 1, but Culpepper seemed lulled into the idea that they had no pass rush at all. So with the Vikings threatening to score again, Daniels sacked Culpepper and Brian Urlacher jumped on the ensuing fumble.
The Vikings clearly were the better the team, but the scoreboard at halftime said they were only 17-10 better than the Bears. There was hardly any Chicago offense to speak of. Kordell Stewart was busy throwing passes into the artificial turf. But all it took was a 25-yard run from Stewart–that’s what we were promised when they signed the guy, right?–and a 14-yard touchdown pass to the excitable David Terrell to make it 17-10 just before halftime.
“It didn’t matter,” Terrell said. “Nothing out there mattered because we lost.”
There were typical Bears moments. They had third down and 16 at their own 36 in the second quarter, got 12 and were content with it. Third-and-3 in the third quarter, the Metrodome sounding like a jet engine, and linemen Corbin Lacina and Mike Gandy were called for back-to-back false-start penalties.
But the Bears’ night was such that the Vikings were called for defensive holding right after, and the Bears got an automatic first down. On the next play–and I’m not sure what got into Goldwater conservative offensive coordinator John Shoop–the Bears ran play action and Stewart hit Dez White with a 49-yard bomb.
The Bears got the typical Bears field goal out of it after two straight sacks of Stewart.
The bigger point here is that the score was 17-13 after that field goal.
What exactly was going on here? Well, it had something to do with the superior team not taking the inferior team seriously. Let’s not try to make this into anything more than that. The Vikings are better, but they didn’t score a lot for a team so superior. The Bears played above their capabilities, and this is what they received for their efforts.
The Vikings have more talent than the Bears–most teams have more talent than the Bears–but if the opposition is going to allow the Bears to believe in themselves, they’re going to believe. Good for the Bears. Dumb for the Vikings.
By the end of the third quarter, the crowd noise included boos for the Vikings, and it must have been the sweetest sound for the Bears, who had spent a week listening to why they are so bad and why they might want to let the school president run the athletic department.
But they still lost.
“We’re not scoring enough points,” coach Dick Jauron said. “[We’ll do] whatever it takes to put more points on the board.”
There’s only so much they can do. Stewart isn’t going to be replaced. The line is weak. The coordinator is still Shoop.
The Bears get points for playing hard, but what matters from here on out is how far that will take them. When they face a team that knows how to go for the jugular, not very far.
So take it for what it was: a bad game that looked better on the scoreboard than it was. Almost sounds like a victory for the bad Bears.
