Dick Jauron always did have a sense of priorities.
His Detroit Lions defense had just taken the game and heart from his old team with a last-second interception to save a 20-16 victory. His players had presented him with a game ball. There were well-wishers galore under the Soldier Field stands.
They could all wait.
The former Bears head coach excused himself and made his way to a young boy who is undergoing chemotherapy and who had his heart set on getting an autograph from Lions wide receiver Roy Williams. Jauron did better than that, escorting the boy into the Detroit locker room, where his smile might have been the only one bigger than Jauron’s.
Those close to him said Jauron wasn’t showing signs of nervousness before the game. But he had one worry in particular.
“The thing I didn’t want to happen was to lose the game for them,” Jauron said. “I didn’t want to lose it by making a call that they weren’t ready for. And they played hard. We didn’t always play smart, but we played hard.
“So this was fun.”
It was fun for his players, too, not only to end Detroit’s nightmare of 24 straight road losses, not only to beat a division rival on the road, but also to do it for a coach for whom they already have developed special feelings.
“He wasn’t saying anything but then, he never does,” Detroit defensive end Kalimba Edwards said. “We felt that it really meant something to him, and we wanted to show him our appreciation for what he’s done already for us.
“He has the stature of a head coach, and he will be one again one day.”
But Sunday he was a defensive coordinator, and one who understood all too well the team he was facing.
Lions players said the Bears are not built to come from behind, so Jauron’s strategy was to use a big, physical defensive front, make the Bears struggle to run and force quarterback Rex Grossman and his receivers to beat the Lions. They couldn’t, even with standout cornerback Dre’ Bly lost for the game after the first quarter.
“We tried to be physical and disrupt their routes,” cornerback Fernando Bryant said. “A couple of their routes are unorthodox. But we did know that was coming.”
The Bears called for the ball to go to running back Thomas Jones on nine of their first 12 first-down plays. Jones carried 21 times but for only 67 yards and, combined with Anthony Thomas’ 13 yards on four carries, gave the Bears only 80 rushing yards from their backfield.
Various reverses and end-arounds, plus four scrambles by Grossman, inflated the rushing total. But the Bears never solved a Detroit front that Jauron beefed up by starting 290-pound end Cory Redding instead of the 265-pound Edwards.
Jauron and the Lions simply waited for Grossman and the offense to make mistakes, which eventually came.
“A young quarterback, especially in a tight situation when the game is on the line, will force things,” defensive tackle Dan Wilkinson said. “That’s one of things that always happens: They try to make something out of nothing. Sometimes you have a turnover or do something that’s not in your system. Grossman did that.”
Jauron said simply that the victory was the important thing, not any personal vindication. The Lions, however, had more than enough emotional reaction to winning this one for Jauron.
“He’s our champion now,” Wilkinson said, “and we’re going to keep him.”
