As Kyle Orton left the locker room Monday, Muhsin Muhammad finalized plans to go pheasant hunting early Tuesday with the rookie quarterback and Fred Miller.
“I’ve never seen Kyle shoot,” said Muhammad, an avid hunter like Orton. “But it’s always good to get together and relax.”
Muhammad has seen Orton pass, and the two finally forged some much-needed chemistry by hooking up on a season-high eight completions against Pittsburgh. Their need to connect has been relaxed somewhat because of the successful formula the Bears used in their eight-game win streak–run the ball and play defense.
But Sunday’s loss offered a position the Bears could find themselves in as they play meaningful games down the regular-season stretch and possibly beyond–playing from behind. That’s when a passing game, and some more Orton-Muhammad chemistry, would be needed.
It might be too simplistic to say the Bears have to keep leads as they make their playoff push. But a 21-3 deficit caused the final statistics to reflect a game plan the Bears would like to avoid–35 passes as opposed to 18 rushes.
“We feel we can pass the ball when we need to,” coach Lovie Smith said. “We would rather run. We won eight football games in a row running the football. We had good passing yardage [Sunday] and we lost. I think we’ll be able to [play from behind] if we have to, but hopefully we won’t.”
That the Bears averaged 4.6 yards per rush and 4.9 yards per pass play underscores the passing game as a work in progress.
The Bears scored a fourth-quarter touchdown when Orton hit Desmond Clark for 27 yards and Bernard Berrian for 43 to account for all but one yard on the three-play, 71-yard drive. But the Bears haven’t proven they can do this consistently.
“We had to get away from the things we do well, running the ball, play-action passes,” Muhammad said. “We had to do a lot of dropbacks, and we didn’t handle that situation as well as we’d like to. There were some key third-down plays that we didn’t convert. And we had been moving the ball on a couple of those drives.
“If we had that test come up again, we need to be better prepared for it. I think we will be.”
Smith believes so too. He praised Orton, who threw for more than 200 yards for just the second time and didn’t throw an interception. But Orton also missed a wide-open Thomas Jones inside the 10-yard line, overshot Muhammad on a big third-down play and overthrew Justin Gage.
“He had a couple of passes that were dropped, a couple batted down and he threw away a few,” Smith said. “But I thought he did a decent job of getting the ball to receivers with touch.”
The Bears have eight offensive touchdowns in the last eight games, and their passing attack ranks 30th at 126.9 yards per game. Rex Grossman will get first-team reps in practice this week, but that’s it.
“We have to keep bringing our starting quarterback along,” Smith said. “Kyle will play unless there’s an injury.”
———-
kcjohnson@tribune.com
