It must have been, oh, 10 minutes into Sunday’s little garden party on the lake when it became apparent the Bills were done. Cooked. Finished. Probably buffaloed too.
If the Bills say they didn’t know that, then they are in deep-seated, clinical denial. Forget the scoreboard. The scoreboard was a liar. It said 6-0 Chicago. The Bears clearly were the better team. They were merely playing with their food.
Now imagine knowing you’re going to have to stare into the teeth of this team for another 2 1/2 hours or so. Imagine 2 1/2 hours of root-canal work. Now you’re getting the picture.
Imagine a Bears team with that kind of effect, with that kind of talent, with that kind of tenacity. If you can, then you have no trouble grasping how they managed to flatten the Bills 40-7 at Soldier Field. Or how they have come to be 5-0.
Or how nobody else is in their league right now.
Let’s be clear. This isn’t, or wasn’t, a bad Buffalo team. The Bills beat Minnesota last week and lost close games to New England and the Jets.
And they looked like the junior-varsity squad Sunday.
It’s one of the wonders of the 2006 Bears that you can now ask this question of both the defense and the offense, and not be accused of having lost your mind: How can opponents game-plan to stop you?
“I don’t know, man,” linebacker Brian Urlacher said after helping limit the Bills to 58 yards rushing. “Most teams say they’re going to come in and run it on us. They’re just going to pound us because we’re light, we’re underweight, we pursue to the ball. They’re going to do this and that.
“But then they don’t do it. They get in second-and-long and third-and-long, and it’s a little hard to do those things. We have so many good players on this defense, it’s tough to key on one guy. It’s just pick your poison with us.”
For the longest time, watching the Bears’ offense was like swallowing something bad. You have to go back to 1993 to find the last time the Bears scored 40 points in a game. Now you find yourself wondering how opposing teams are supposed to deal with Rex Grossman and the two-headed monster of Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson. Jones rushed for 109 yards on 22 carries Sunday and Benson ran for two touchdowns. Hemlock or cyanide?
It can’t be easy when a defense has to deal with the here-there-everywhere Jones and then has to cope with Benson’s imitation of a tractor.
“I agree, totally,” Benson said. “Because we do have two different running styles.”
A defensive end (Alex Brown), a linebacker (Lance Briggs) and a defensive back (Ricky Manning Jr.) each had an interception Sunday. Rookie defensive end Mark Anderson, who most of us didn’t know existed six months ago, had two more sacks, giving him a team-high 5 1/2 for the season. And opponents are supposed to cope with all of this?
The Bears were upset they lost the shutout with a little more than a minute left in the game. The last time they had a truly lopsided shutout was in a 44-0 victory over Dallas during the 1985 season. Perhaps you’ve heard of those ’85 Bears.
“They were good,” Brown said. “They won a Super Bowl, and until we win it we really can’t be compared to them. They crushed people.”
These Bears aren’t crushing people? Fine, then they’re mashing, pulverizing, crunching and trampling people. They’ve scored 77 points in their last two games. Robbie Gould’s next missed field-goal attempt of the season will be his first.
Injuries are the only thing that can slow down this gallop toward the postseason, and even then it’s not a guarantee things will be any easier for opponents. On Sunday the Bears were without Adewale Ogunleye and Ian Scott–half their defensive line–and still pounded Dick Jauron’s boys.
There was some debate among local reporters after the game whether the Bears are peaking too early, but that was a clear indication of how good this team is and how desperate we are for a new story angle.
That’s the scary thing about the Bears. There seems to be room for another growth spurt or two. Grossman is still learning. So is Benson. Bernard Berrian needs to remember how to stay inbounds.
Despite all that, the Bears are crushing people (forget you, Alex Brown). Imagine what they’ll look like when they stop growing. Like, dare we say it, those ’85 Bears?
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rmorrissey@tribune.com
